"Papa," said Cicely, in a low voice full of agitation, "the best thing of all would be to settle now, while Mr. Mildmay is here; to find out when he wishes to come; and then there need be no more to put up with than is absolutely necessary. It is better to know exactly when we must go."

The curate turned his mild eyes to the young man's face. There was a look of pain and reluctance in them, but of submission; and then he smiled to save the stranger's feelings. "It is hard upon Mr. Mildmay,"

he said, "to be asked this, as if we were putting a pistol to his head; but you will understand that we wish you every good, though we may be grieved to leave our old home."

Mildmay had been making a pretence at eating, feeling as if every morsel choked him. Now he looked up flushed and nervous. "I am afraid I have inadvertently said more than I meant," he said. "I don't think I have made up my mind beyond the possibility of change. It is not settled, as you think."

"Dear me," said Mr. St. John, concerned, "I am very sorry; I hope it is not anything you have heard here that has turned you against Brentburn?

It is not a model parish, but it is no worse than other places. Cicely has been telling you about my troubles with those cottages; but, indeed, there is no parish in England where you will not have troubles of some kind--unwholesome cottages or other things."

"I said nothing about the cottages," said Cicely, with downcast looks.

"I hope Mr. Mildmay does not mind anything I said. I say many things without thinking. It is very foolish, but it would be more foolish to pay any attention. I am sure you have often said so, papa."

"I?" said the curate, looking at her disturbed countenance with some surprise. "No, I do not think you are one of the foolish talkers, my dear. It is a long story about these cottages; and, perhaps, I let myself be more worried than I ought. I will tell you all about it on the way to the Heath, for I think you ought to call on the Ascotts, if you will permit me to advise. They are the chief people about here. If you are ready, perhaps we should start soon; and you will come back and have some of our early dinner before you go?"

"I am ashamed to give so much trouble, to--receive so much kindness,"

said Mildmay, confused. He rose when Mr. St. John did, but he kept his eyes fixed upon Cicely, who kept her seat, and would not look at him.

The curate had various things to do before he was ready to start. He had his scattered memoranda to collect, and to get his note-book from his study, and yesterday's newspaper to carry to an old man in the village, and a book for a sick child, and I don't know how many trifles besides.

"Papa's things are always all over the house," Mab cried, running from one room to another in search of them. Cicely generally knew exactly where to find all these properties which Mr. St. John searched for habitually with unfounded yet unalterable confidence in the large pockets of his long clerical coat. But Cicely still kept her seat, and left her duties to her sister, her mind being full of other things.

"What is the matter with Cicely?" said Mab, running back with her hands full. "I have found them, but I don't know which of your pockets they belong to. This is the one for the note-book, and this is the one for the newspaper; but what does Cicely mean, sitting there like a log, and leaving everything to me?"

"Miss St. John," said Mildmay, in this interval, "may I come back as your father says? May we finish the conversation we began this morning?

or is the very sight of me disagreeable to you? There are so many things I want to know."

Cicely got up suddenly, half impatient, half sad. "We are always glad to see any one whom papa asks," she said; "you must call it luncheon, Mr.

Mildmay, but to us it is dinner; that makes the difference between rector and curate," she added, with a laugh.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PARSON'S ROUND.

How brilliant was that August morning when the two men went out! the sky so blue and warm and full of sunshine, bending with friendly tenderness toward the luxuriant earth which it embraced, lost everywhere in soft distances, limits that were of the eye and not of the infinite melting s.p.a.ce--showing through the foliage, opening out sweet and full over the breezy purpled common. The red cottage roofs, with all their lichens, shone and basked in the light; the apples reddened moment by moment, the yellow corn rustled and waved in every breath of air, conscious of the coming sickle. Everything was at its fullest blaze of colour; the trees more deeply green than usual, the sky of more profound and dazzling blue, the heather purple-royal, showing in its moorland flush against the russet-golden fields burning in the sun which gave them their last perfection of ripeness; and even the flowers in the gardens blazing their brightest to hide the fact from all men that the sweetness and hope of the year were almost lost in that harvest and climax which touches upon decay, as everything does which is perfect. The sun was too fierce for anything but red burning geraniums, and gaudy hollyhocks and rank dahlias. But the red old cottages at Brentburn were of themselves like growths of nature, with all their stains of moss, red and grey and yellow, relieved and thrown up by the waving greyness of the willows, that marked every spot of special dampness, and by the wealthy green woods that rolled away into the distance, into the sky. Everything is musical in such a morning; the very cackle of the ducks in that brown pond--how cool it looks to the dusty wayfarer!--takes a tone from the golden air; the slow roll of the leisurely cart along the country road; the voices from the cottages calling in full Berkshire drawl to Jyain or Jeo outside. A harmonious world it seemed, with nothing in it to jar or wound; the very air caressing every mother's son it met, blowing about the rags as if it loved them, conveying never a chill to the most poorly clad. How different was that broad outdoor satisfaction and fulness to the complainings and troubles enclosed by every set of four walls in the parish! Mildmay, as was natural, knew nothing about these nor suspected them; his spirits rose when he came out into the summer air--to walk along the cool side of the road in the shade, and watch the triumphant sunshine blazing over everything, leaving not an inch even of the common high road unglorified, brought a swell of pleasure to his heart he could not tell why.

"You must not come to a country parish with the idea that it is Arcadia," said Mr. St. John; "such ideas lead to a great deal of disappointment; but you must not let yourself be discouraged either. I don't think that Cicely knows all the outs and ins of the story about the cottages."

"Miss St. John said nothing about the cottages."

"Ah! I thought she had put you out of spirits; that would be foolish,"

said the curate kindly. "You see, Mr. Mildmay, everybody here thinks a great deal of a little money; it is so, I believe, in every small place; they have little, very little, Heaven knows; and somehow, when one is very poor, that gets to look of more importance than anything else. I don't say so from personal experience, though I have always been poor enough. My way, I am afraid, is to think too little of the money, not too much--which is, perhaps, as great a mistake the other way; but it is much easier, you know, to condemn those faults we have no mind to," Mr.

St. John added with a smile. The visit of an intelligent stranger had quite brightened the good man up, though it ought to have depressed him, according to all principles of good sense. The curate forgot how much he himself must suffer from the change that was coming. Mildmay pleased him; he was deferential to his own grey hairs and long experience; he was willing to hear and apparently to take, his predecessor's opinion, and Mr. St. John liked the novelty, the new companion, the attentive listener. He walked on quite briskly, with the easy steps of a man to whom the way is so familiar that he does not need to pause to look where he is going. Now and then he would stop to point out a view, a glimpse of the distant forest, a slope opening down upon the lower level of the common, or even a pretty cottage; and one of them, a most picturesque refuge of misery, with tiny little cas.e.m.e.nt windows bulging anyhow from the ruddy old wall, and a high roof of the most indescribable and beautiful mixture of tints, set him easily afloat again upon the subject of which his mind was full.

"Look at it!" he said; "it is a picture. If one could only clear them out and shut them up--or rather throw them open, that the winds of heaven might enter, but not our fellow-creatures, Mr. Mildmay! As I was saying, they are all poor here. The people think you do them an injury when you speak of anything that has to be paid for. Because I have tried to get the cottages put into good repair, the arrangements made a little more decent, and the places fit to live in, more than two or three of the people have left the parish church. Yes, that is quite true--I thought Cicely must have told you--well-to-do people, who might have spared a few pounds well enough. It was a trial; but what of that? I have outlived it, and perhaps done a little good."

"The cottagers, at least, must have been grateful to you," said Mildmay; but the curate shook his head.

"The cottagers thought I was only trying to get them turned out," he said. "They almost mobbed me once. I told them they should not take lodgers and lodgers till every room was crowded. They are as bad as the landlords; but, poor souls! it was easy to forgive them, for the shilling or two they gained was such an object to them. I thought it best to tell you; but there was really nothing in it, nothing to be annoyed about. It was soon over. You, a young man, need not be discouraged by any such episode as that."

"Mr. St. John, there is something which discourages me much more," said Mildmay. "When I came yesterday to see Brentburn, I did not know you at all. I had heard your name; that was all. I thought you were most likely a man of my own standing, or younger----"

"As a curate ought to be," said Mr. St. John, once more shaking his head. "Yes; I was saying to Cicely, it is almost a stigma upon a man to be a curate at my age; but so it is, and I cannot help it. Perhaps if I had not settled down so completely when I was young, if I had been more energetic; I feel that now--but what good does it do? it is too late now to change my nature. The children are the worst," he said, with a sigh, "for they must come upon the girls." Then recovering himself with a faint smile, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Mildmay, for going off with my own thoughts. You said it discouraged you. Do you mean my example? You must take it as a lesson and a warning, not as an example. I am very sensible it is my own fault."

"I came to supplant you, to take your place, to turn you out of your home," said Mildmay, finding it a kind of relief to his feelings to employ Cicely's words, "and you received me like a friend, took me into your house, made me sit at your table----"

The curate was startled by his vehemence. He laughed, then looked at him half alarmed. "What should I have done else?" he said. "I hope you are a friend. Supplant me! I have been here a great deal longer than I had any right to expect. Of course, we all knew a new rector would come. The girls, indeed, had vague notions about something that might be done--they did not know what, poor things! how should they? But of course from the first I was aware what must happen. No, no; you must not let _that_ trouble you. I am glad, on the contrary, very glad, that the people are going to fall into hands like yours."

"Poor hands," said Mildmay. "Mr. St. John, you may think it strange that I should say this; but it is you who ought to be the rector, not me. You ought to stay here; I feel it. If I come after all, I shall be doing a wrong to the people and to you, and even to the Church, where such things should not be."

Once more Mr. St. John slowly shook his head; a smile came over his face; he held out his hand. "It is pleasant to hear you say it; somehow it is pleasant to hear you say it. I felt sure Cicely had been saying something to you this morning. But no, no; they would never have given me the living, and I should never have asked for it. As for a wrong, n.o.body will feel it a wrong; not myself, nor the Church, and the people here last of all."

"They must look upon you as their father," said Mildmay warmly. "Nothing else is possible. To them it is the greatest wrong of all."

"You speak like a--boy," said the curate. "Yes; you speak like a kind, warm-hearted boy. The girls say the same kind of things. You are all young, and think of what ought to be, not of what is. The people! The Church does not give them any voice in the matter, and it is just as well. Mr. Mildmay, I've been a long time among them. I've tried to do what I could for them. Some of them like me well enough; but the people have never forgotten that I was only curate--not rector. They have remembered it all these twenty years, when sometimes I was half tempted to forget it myself."

"Oh, sir, do not think so badly of human nature!" said Mildmay, almost with a recoil from so hard a judgment.

"Do I think badly of human nature? I don't feel that I do; and why should this be thinking badly? Which is best for them to have, a man who is well off, who is a real authority in the parish, whom the farmers and masters will stand in awe of, and who will be able to help them in trouble--or a poor man who has to struggle for himself, who has nothing to spare, and no great influence with any one? I shall feel it, perhaps, a little," said Mr. St. John, with a smile; "but it will be quite unreasonable to feel it. In a month you will be twice as popular in the parish as I am after twenty years."

"It is not possible!" said the young man.

"Ah, my dear Mr. Mildmay, a great many things are possible! The girls think like you. I suppose it is natural; but when you come to take everything into account--the only thing to have been desired was that I should have died before Mr. Chester; or, let us say that he should have outlived me, which sounds more cheerful. Come," said the curate with an effort, "don't let us think of this. I hope you are a friend, Mr.

Mildmay, as I said; but, as you say yourself, you are only a friend of yesterday, so why you should take my burden on your shoulders I don't know. I think we may venture to call on the Ascotts now. He is a little rough, or rather bluff, but a good man; and she is a little--fanciful,"

said the curate, searching for a pleasant word, "but a kind woman. If you take to them, and they to you----"

"On what pretence should I go to see them, unsettled as I am about my future?" said Mildmay, hesitating.

The curate looked at him with a smile. He rang the bell, then opened the door, which, like most innocent country doors, opened from the outside.

Then he fixed his mild eyes upon the young man. He had some gentle insight in his way by right of his years and experience of life, simple-minded as he was. "You go as the new rector--the best of introductions," he said, and led the way smiling. It was not difficult, perhaps, to see through the struggle in Mildmay's mind between his own wish and determination, and his sympathetic sense of the hardship involved to others. I think the curate was quite right in believing that it was the personal inclination which would gain the day, and not the generous impulse; as, indeed, Mr. St. John fully recognized it ought to be.

Mr. Ascott was in his library, reading the newspaper, but with such an array of papers about him, as made that indulgence look momentary and accidental. He was not the squire of the parish, but he had a considerable landed property in the neighbourhood, and liked to be considered as holding that position. He received Mr. Mildmay, boldly introduced by the curate as the new rector, with the greatest cordiality. "I had not seen the appointment," he said, "but I am most happy to welcome you to the parish. I hope you like what you have seen of it? This is quite an agreeable surprise."

Mildmay found it very difficult to reply, for was not every word of congratulation addressed to him an injury to his companion, whose star must set as his rose? The curate, however, showed no such feeling. His _amour propre_ was quite satisfied by being the first to know and to present to the parish its new rector. "Yes, I thought you would be pleased to hear at once," he said, with gentle complacency. "I would not let him pa.s.s your door."

"Poor Chester! This reminds me of him," said Mr. Ascott. "He came to Brentburn in my father's time, when I was a young fellow at home fresh from the university. He was a very accomplished man. It was a pity he had such bad health. A parish gets out of order when it is without the proper authorities. Even a good deputy--and St. John, I am sure, has been the best of deputies--is never like the man himself."

"That is just what I have been saying," said Mr. St. John; but though he took it with great equanimity, it was less pleasant to him to hear this, than to say it himself. "I think I will leave you now," he added. "I have a great deal to do this morning. Mr. Ascott will tell you many things that will be really valuable, and at two o'clock or sooner we will expect you at the rectory."

"It is a pity to trouble you and your girls, St. John. He can have some luncheon here. Mrs. Ascott will be delighted to see him."

"I shall be at the rectory without fail," said Mildmay, with a sense of partial offence. He belonged to the rectory, not to this complacent secular person. A certain _esprit de corps_ was within him. If the rest of the world neglected the poor curate, he at least would show that to him the old priest was the first person in the parish. "Or," he added, hesitating, "I will go with you now."

Mr. St. John did not wish this. He felt that he would be less at his ease with his poor people if conscious of this new man fresh from Oxford at his elbow. There might be, for anything he knew to the contrary, newfangled ways even of visiting the sick. To talk to them cheerily, kindly, as he had always done, might not fall in with the ideas of duty held by "high" schools of doctrine, of whatever kind. He went away plodding along the high road in the sultry noon, with a smile still upon his face, which faded, however, when the stimulus of Mildmay's company, and the gratification of presenting the stranger to the great people of the parish, had subsided. These circ.u.mstances were less exhilarating when the curate was alone, and had to remember Wilkins and all the outstanding bills, and the fact that the furniture in the rectory was to be sold, and that Cicely that very night would ask him once more what he had made up his mind to do. What could he make up his mind to do? The very question, when he put it to himself merely, and when it was not backed up by an eager young face, and a pair of eyes blazing into him, was bewildering enough; it made the curate's head go round and round. Even when he came to Brentburn twenty years ago it was not his own doing. Friends had found the appointment for him, and arranged all the preliminaries. Nothing had been left for him but to accept it, and he had accepted. And at that time he had Hester to fall back upon. But now to "look out for something," to apply for another curacy, to advertise and answer advertis.e.m.e.nts, describing himself and his capabilities--how was he to do it? He was quite ready to consent to anything, to let Cicely manage for him if she would; but to take the initiative himself! The very thought of this produced a nervous confusion in his mind which seemed to make an end of all his powers.

"You must come upstairs and see my wife," said Mr. Ascott. "She will be delighted to make your acquaintance. She has been a great deal in society, and I don't doubt you and she will find many people to talk about. As for me, I am but a country fellow, I don't go much into the world. When your interests are all in the country, why, stick to the country is my maxim; but my wife is fond of fine people. You and she will find a hundred mutual acquaintances in half-an-hour, you will see."