CHAPTER X
IN THE PARISH
MR. MILDMAY had a very pleasant walk. He went through Brentburn proper, which was a mile from the church on the rich woodland side of the parish, an ordinary little village, a mixture of old picturesque Berkshire cottages, with high sloping roofs and aged harmonious mossy brick walls, and very new square houses in the bilious brick of modern use – mean and clean and angular. The cottages, with their wild old gardens and mossed apple-trees delighted him; but the curate shook his head, “They will be the curse of your life,” he said solemnly, at which the young Oxford man was disposed to laugh.
A few people were standing about their doors enjoying the cool evening, at whom the new rector looked with curiosity. They were very commonplace people, with the set hard faces so common among the rural poor, half caused by exposure to the open air, and half by the dull routine in which their life is spent. Mildmay looked at them wistfully. Were they the kind of people among whom he could find the life he sought? A few of the women were gossiping, the men stared blankly at him as he passed, saluting the curate gruffly; and evidently the wag among them made some rough joke, received with loud laughter, upon the two blackcoats.
“Yes,” said the curate mildly, “that fellow Joe Endley is one of the worst in the parish. It was at us, no doubt, they were laughing. Anything above their own level, except money, they don’t understand; and they know I have no money. Good evening, Mr. Wilkins. What a sweet evening it is!”
“Good evening, sir,” said the grocer, coming, with his apron round him from his shop-door. “I thought perhaps as you was comin’ to me, sir, along o’ the letter I sent you.”
“I did not get any letter,” said Mr. St. John, looking at the grocer in a helpless, pitiful way, which his companion remarked wonderingly. The curate seemed to shrink somehow: a painful look came upon his face.
“I sent up this afternoon with my cart,” said Wilkins, “to say as, if it was quite convenient – ”
“My daughter will see to it – my daughter will see to it,” said the curate anxiously. “I am occupied at present, as you perceive, and in a hurry. She will see you, or I, to-morrow.”
And he shuffled on through the dust of the highroad, quickening his pace. His step had been the long, firm, manly step of a man still young, till they met with this interruption. But poor Mr. St. John fell into a shuffle when he met the grocer. His cheek got a hectic flush; he shrank visibly; his knees and his elbows grew prominent. He did not speak again till they had got beyond the village. Then he drew breath, and his natural outline came slowly back. “You will find much hardness among the people,” he said; “Heaven forbid that I should blame them, poor souls: they live hardly, and have hardness to bear from others; but when any question arises between them and one who has unfortunately the niceties – the feelings – that we are brought up to – ” (the curate stopped); “and I never was used to it,” he said, as if to himself, in a low voice.
What did it all mean? the new rector said to himself. I think it was easy enough to divine, for my part; but then the rector was young, and had always been well off, and it did not occur to him that a grocer, simply as grocer, could have any power over a clergyman; more and more he felt convinced that some drama, some domestic tragedy, must be connected with the St. Johns, and he felt more and more eager to find it out. They went to the station, and sent a boy to the rectory with Mildmay’s portmanteau, and then they strayed home by the common, across which the setting sun threw its very last slanting arrow of gold.
“This is delightful!” said Mildmay. “What freedom! what breadth of atmosphere! One feels oneself on the moors, in the great, ample world, not shut in by walls and houses.”
“No, there is little of these,” said the curate; “and it is very healthy, I have always understood: the common is what my girls love. But I don’t see them coming.” He arched his hand over his eyes as a defence against the light, as he looked along the road for his daughters. Mr. St. John had quite recovered himself. I don’t think that even the name of Wilkins would have discouraged him now. In the warm and balmy air he took off his hat, holding up his venerable bare head to the sky. It was a head which might have served for that of an old saint. His white hair was still thick and abundant, his eyes full of soft light, his expression tranquil as the evening. “I have come here in many troubles,” he said, “and I have always been refreshed. I don’t pretend to know much about art, Mr. Mildmay, but nature is always soothing. Greenness cools the eyes whether it is study or tears that have fevered them. But I wonder what has become of the girls.”
Mildmay was charmed by the meditative turn his companion’s remarks had taken, but the question about the girls embarrassed him.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that my intrusion has perhaps given Miss St. John some trouble.”
“No; there is the servant, you know, a very good sort of girl, and Cicely is like her dear mother – never taken by surprise. If you are here as long as I have been you will know how pleasant it is to see a new face. We country folks rust: we fall into a fixed routine. I myself, see, was about to take this little byway unconsciously, a path I often take, forgetting there was any one with me – ”
The curate looked wistfully along the thread of path; it had been worn by his own feet, and he seldom concluded his evening walk otherwise. Mildmay followed the narrow line with his eyes.
“It leads to the churchyard,” he said. “I like a country churchyard. May we go there before we go in? What a pity the church is so new! and this part of Berkshire is rich in old churches, I understand?”
“It is in good repair, and much more wholesome than the old ones,” said Mr. St. John. “They may be more picturesque. Here you can see into the rectory garden, the ground slopes so much; the church is very much higher than the common. It used to be sweet to me, looking back at the lights in the girls’ rooms, when I stood – there they are on the lawn now, Mr. Mildmay. They have not gone out, after all.”
Mildmay, looking down from the churchyard path, felt that it was dishonourable to spy upon the two girls unaware of his scrutiny, whom he could just see within the wall of the rectory garden; but he could not help feeling that this was more and more like a drama which was being played before him. He followed Mr. St. John along the narrow path to the little white stile which admitted to the churchyard. The curate ceased his tranquil talk as they entered that inclosure. He turned mechanically as it seemed, to the left hand, and went round to a white cross upon a grave turned towards the common. It was of common stone, grey with years. The curate took off his hat again, and stood by it quite simply and calmly.
“It used to be sweet to me, standing here, to see the lights in the girls’ rooms,” he said once more. The soft tranquillity of his tone suited the still twilight, the pensive silent plain. It was too still for sorrow, nor was there any touch of unhappiness in the gentle voice. Young Mildmay uncovered too, and stood wondering, reverent, with a swell of sympathy in his heart. Some men would have felt with anguish the unspeakable separation between the mother under the dews and the twinkle of the lights in her children’s windows; but Mr. St. John was not of that mind. Yet, somehow, to have this stranger here made his loss seem fresher to him. “Cicely is very like her mother,” he said, and touched the cross softly with his hand as if caressing it, and turned away. Mr. Mildmay could see that there were two paths up the mound to the white gate, and the meaning of them struck him vividly – one was that by which they had just come from the common, the other led down straight to the rectory. His heart was more touched than I can say, by the gentle fidelity, consoled and calm, yet always tender, which had worn that double line through the grass.
Mr. St. John, however, made a hesitating pause at a corner before he took this second way home. “My other poor wife, poor Mrs. St. John, lies there; but that I can show you to-morrow,” he said, in his gentle unchanged voice, and quietly went on to the gate, leading the way. “Supper will be ready,” the curate continued, when they emerged again upon the turf. “We live a very simple primitive life here; our meals are not arranged quite as yours are, but it comes to the same thing. In short, whatever seeming differences there are, all ways of living come to much the same thing.”
Did they so? Mr. St. John’s meaning was of the simplest. He meant that whether you called your latest meal dinner or supper did not matter much; but his companion gave it a broader sense. With a jar of laughter in his mind that broke up the reverential respect of the previous moment, he followed his simple host into the house, which by-and-by was to be his own house. Poor Mrs. St. John, who was not the mother of the girls; whose grave could be shown to-morrow; for whose sake these paths had not been worn across the grass; the stranger gave her her little meed of human notice in that smothered laugh. Poor Miss Brown!
The supper was homely enough – cold meat and salad, and bread and cheese and jam – and would have been cheerful and pleasant, Mr. Mildmay thought, but for the absorbed looks of that elder daughter, who was still somewhat unfriendly to him. He went upstairs to his room, where a large mahogany four-post bed, with heavy moreen hangings, awaited him, before the night was very far advanced. When he had been there for a short time, he saw that his door was not shut, and went to close it. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of Cicely going downstairs. She had retired some time before he did, so that her reappearance struck him all the more; and she was quite unconscious that he saw her. She carried a candle in one hand, and a pile of tradesmen’s books in the other. She was pale, her look fixed, her nostrils a little dilated, like some one going to a painful task, he thought. As she moved down the dark staircase, a speck of light, with her candle shining on the whiteness of her face and dress, the walls, by which she flitted, looked more and more like the scenery of a drama to the young man. If they only would have opened, as in the real theatre, and shown him where she was going, what she was about to do! But this was very mean curiosity on Mr. Mildmay’s part. He shut his door humbly, that she might not be disturbed by the sound, and after a while went meekly to bed, trying to say to himself that he had no right to pry into the business of these good people, who had been so kind to him; though, indeed, she had not been kind to him, he reflected, by way of lessening his own sense of guilt. He heard subdued voices below for some time after, and wished more than ever that the scenery would open, and reveal this scene to him; but the substantial walls stood fast, and the moreen curtains hung grimly about him, shutting out everything. There was no compromise about the furniture at the rectory; the pillared bedposts stood square, and stern, and strong, till poor Mildmay, dozing within them in the warm August night, thought them Samson’s pillars in the house of Dagon, or the pillars of the earth.
Cicely went down to her father very resolute with her books. She had intended to say very little to him, but he had exasperated her, and she felt that she could not let him off. But her courage sank a little when she got into the study, and saw his white head in the light of the solitary candle. There were two candles on the table, but faithful to an old frugal habit, Mr. St. John had put out one of them when his guest left him. The room was good-sized, and full of huge mahogany bookcases; and as the table was at one end of it, there is no telling how full of gloom it was. One of the windows was open, and a great solid piece of darkness seemed to have taken its place, and to be pouring in. Mr. St. John was looking over some old sermons, bending his head over the papers, with spectacles upon his nose, which he took off when Cicely came in. He did not usually sit up so long, and he was rather aggrieved at the late interview she had asked for. He did not like to be disturbed out of his usual way, and he felt that she was going to speak to him about Wilkins, the most painful subject which could be suggested. Cicely, too, when he raised his head, and took off his spectacles, found the interview a great deal more difficult than in her excited feelings she had supposed.
“Well, my dear,” he said gently; “you wanted to speak to me.” He gave a little shiver when he saw the books in her hand.
“Yes, papa,” she said, laying them down on the table; and then there was a pause. The soft night air came in, and crept wistfully about the room, moving the curtains. When it approaches midnight, even in August, there is always something chill and mournful in the night wind.
“I wanted to speak to you,” said Cicely, catching her breath a little; “it was about the books. I don’t know if you have looked at them lately. Oh, papa! do you know that we are – in debt? I don’t know how to say it – a great deal in debt!”
“Not a great deal, my dear,” he said faintly; “something, I know. Wilkins spoke to me to-day – almost before Mr. Mildmay.”
“It is not Wilkins alone,” said Cicely solemnly; “it is everybody. The butcher, too; and, oh! so many little people. How are they ever to be paid? When I looked over the books to-day, not knowing – Oh! do you know how it has happened? Can they be cheating? It is my only hope.”
“My dear,” said the curate, faltering, “better that one should have done wrong than that a great many should have done wrong. Poor Mrs. St. John – nay, I should say both of us, Cicely; for I was also to blame. We were not like your mother, my dear; it all came natural to your mother; but she, or rather we – ” Mr. St. John’s voice sank into an indistinct confusion. He was too good to blame the poor woman who was dead, and he did not know how to meet the eyes thus shining upon him, youthful, inexorable, of Hester’s child. But even Cicely was moved by her father’s wistful looks, and the humility of his tone.
“If only one could see any way of paying them,” she said; “if even we had been staying here! I had a plan, and we might have done it. And it brings it all so near, and makes it so certain, to see this man.”
“My love,” said the curate remonstrating, “we knew that some one must come. It is not his fault. Why should we be unkind to him?”
“Unkind! Oh papa!” cried Cicely in her exasperation, “what had we to do with him? It was not our business to feast him and pet him. But that is nothing,” she said, trembling with excitement; “I will not blame you, papa, for that or anything, if only you will say now what you are going to do, or where you think we can go, or what I must say to these poor people. We cannot stay here and starve, or till they put us in prison – only tell me what we must do.”
“How can I tell you, Cicely,” said the curate, “when I do not know myself? I must advertise or something,” he said helplessly. “I am old, my dear. Few people want a curate of my age; I suppose it almost looks like a stigma on a man to be a curate at my age.”
“Papa!” Cicely stopped short in what she was going to say, and looked at him with strained and anxious eyes. She had meant to assail him for still being a curate, but his self-condemnation closed the girl’s lips, or rather roused her in defence.
“Yes,” said Mr. St. John, “you may say I ought to have thought of that sooner; but when things go on for a long time one asks one’s self why should not they go on for ever? ‘He said, There will be peace in my time.’ That was selfish of Hezekiah, my dear, very selfish, when you come to think of it. But I dare say it never seemed so to him, and neither did it to me.”
Cicely was utterly overpowered by this; her anger and impatience died out of her, and compunction and remorse rose in her heart. “That is not the right way to look at it,” she said. “It is a shame that a man like you should only be a curate – oh, a shame to the Church and every one! Mr. Chester, who never was here, never did anything, what right had he to be the rector? – and this other person – ” It was so necessary for poor Cicely in the disturbance of her mind to be angry with some one that naturally her wrath grew wild and bitter when she was free to pour it out upon strangers.
“Hush! hush! my dear,” said the curate, with a half smile at her vehemence; for indeed he was deeply relieved to have the tide of indignation turned away from himself.
“Why should I hush, papa? It is your own college, you say; but they never take the trouble to ask who is at Brentburn, who has been taking the duty, who has looked after the people when the rector has been so long away. When people have the patronage of a parish in their hands, ought they not to know about it? And how did they dare, how did they venture, to give it to anybody but you?”
“You don’t understand,” said Mr. St. John. “The livings are given to the Fellows, Cicely, to people who have distinguished themselves. The dons have no right to alienate a living, as it were, to put it away from those who have a right to it, and give it to one like me.”
“What have they distinguished themselves in, papa? In Latin and Greek – which will do a great deal in the parish, don’t you think? whereas you have distinguished yourself in Brentburn – ”
“I have not done very much, my dear,” said the curate, shaking his head.
“You have done all that has been done, papa; what are those college people worth? This fine gentleman!” cried Cicely, with scorn. (I wonder poor Mildmay did not feel himself shrink even within his four pillars and moreen curtains.) “He knows about art if you please, and shudders at the sight of Mr. Chester’s mahogany. Poor old things,” the girl cried, turning round to look at the old bookcases with her eyes streaming, “I only know how fond I am of them now!”
I cannot tell how thankful her father was that the conversation had taken this turn. He too felt tenderly towards the old unlovely walls which had sheltered him so long, and in the circumstances he felt it no harm to speak a little more strongly than he felt. He looked round upon the ghostly room so dark in all its corners. “A great many things have happened to us here,” he said; “this was the first room we sat in, your mother and I. What changes it has seen! I don’t know how to make up my mind to leave it.”
This brought back the girl to the original question. “But now,” she said, drying her eyes, “there is no choice – we must leave it. I suppose that is what this Mr. Mildmay has really come about? He will give you some little time, I suppose. But papa, papa!” said Cicely, with a stamp of her foot to emphasize her words, “don’t you see you must decide something – make up your mind to something? Hoping on till the last day will do no good to any one. And to think we should be so deep in debt! Oh, papa, what are we to do?”
“My dear, do not be hard upon me,” said poor St. John; “I acknowledge, indeed, that it was my fault.”
“It was not your fault – but I don’t blame anybody. There was illness and weakness, and some people can and some people can’t,” said Cicely, with that mercy and toleration which are always, I fear, more or less, the offspring of contempt. “Let us not go back upon that – but, oh, tell me, what is to be done now?”
Mr. St. John shook his venerable head piteously. “What do you think, Cicely?” he said.
This was all she could get from him; and, oh, how glad he was when he was permitted to go to bed, and be done with it! He could not tell what to do – anything he had ever done had been done for him (if it is not a bull to say so), and he had no more idea what independent step to take in this emergency, than one of the little boys had, to whose room he paid a half-surreptitious visit on his way to his own. Poor little souls! they were surreptitious altogether; even their father felt they had no right to be there in his daughters’ way. He went in, shading his candle with his hand, not to disturb the slumbers of Annie, the little nursemaid, and approached the two little cots on tip-toe, and looked at the two little white faces on the pillows. “Poor little things,” he said to himself. Miss Brown was well out of it; she had escaped all this trouble, and could not be called to account, either for the babies, or those debts, which thus rose up against her in judgment. A dim giddiness of despair had made Mr. St. John’s head swim while his daughter was questioning him; but now that the pressure was removed he was relieved. He sighed softly as he left the subject altogether, and said his prayers, and slept soundly enough. Neither the debts nor the babies weighed upon him – at least “no more than reason;” he was quite able to sleep and to forget.
When Mr. Mildmay came downstairs next morning, and looked in at the open door of the dining-room, he saw Cicely “laying the cloth” there, putting down the white cups and saucers, and preparing the breakfast-table with her own hands. He was so much surprised at this, that he withdrew hastily, before she perceived him, with an uneasy sense that she might not like to be caught in such an occupation, and went to the garden, where, however, he could still see her through the open windows. He was not used to anything of the kind, and it surprised him much. But when he got outside he began to reflect, why should she be ashamed of it? There was nothing in the action that was not graceful or seemly. He saw her moving about, arranging one thing after another, and the sight made somehow a revolution in his mind. He had been in the habit of thinking it rather dreadful, that a man should expose his wife – a lady – to be debased into such ignoble offices, or that any gentlewoman should have such things to do. This was the first time he had ever seen domestic business of a homely kind done by a lady, and my dilettante was utterly annoyed at himself, when he found that, instead of being hurt and wounded by the sight, he liked it! Terrible confession! He went up and down the garden walks, pretending to himself that he was enjoying the fresh air of the morning, but actually peeping, spying, at the windows, watching Miss St. John arrange the breakfast. She had not seen him, but, quite unconscious of observation, absorbed in her own thoughts, she went on with her occupation. There were more things to do than to put the table to rights, for Betsy’s work was manifold, and did not admit of very careful housemaid work. Mr. Mildmay watched her for some time, coming and going; and then he became aware of another little scene which was going on still nearer to himself. Out from a side door came the two little boys, hand in hand, with their hats tied on, and overshadowing the little pallid faces like two mushrooms. They were followed out by their little nurse, who watched their decorous exit with approval. “Now take your walk, till I come and fetch you,” said this small guardian; upon which the two little urchins, tottering, but solemn, began a serious promenade, so far along the gravel walk, so far back again, turning at each end as on an imaginary quarterdeck. The little boys tottered now and then, but recovered themselves, and went on steadily up and down, backward and forward, without a break. Mildmay was fond of children (so long as they did not bore him), and he was more amused than he could say. He made a few steps across the lawn to meet them, and held out his hands. “Come along here,” he said; “come on the grass.” The solemn babies paused and looked at him, but were not to be beguiled from their steady promenade. Their portentous gravity amazed him – even the children were mysterious in this romantic rectory. He went up to meet them on their next turn.
“Come, little ones,” he said, “let us be friends. What are your names?”
They stood and looked at him with their big blue eyes, holding fast by each other. They were unprepared for this emergency, as their father was unprepared for the bigger emergency in which he found himself. At last one small piping voice responded “Harry!” the other instinctively began to suck his thumb.
“Harry – and what else? – come, tell me,” said the new rector; “you are not both Harry.” He stood looking at them, and they stood and looked at him; and the two babies, three years old, understood as much about that quintessence of Oxford, and education and culture, as he did of them; they gazed at him with their four blue eyes exactly in a row. “Come, speak,” he said, laughing; “you have lost your tongues.” This reproach roused Charlie, who took his thumb out of his mouth and put his whole hand in, to search for the tongue which was not lost.
The sound of Mildmay’s voice roused Cicely. She came to the window, and looking out saw him there, standing in front of the children. Many schemes had been throbbing in her head all night. She had not slept tranquilly, like her father. She had been pondering plans till her brain felt like a honeycomb, each cell holding some active notion. She paused a moment, all the pulses in her beginning to throb, and looked out upon the opportunity before her. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she put down the little brush she held in her hand, threw up the window a little higher and stepped out – to try one other throw, though the game seemed played out, with Fortune and Fate!