"Thank my stars! I ain't no man's wife," said Mrs. Joel. "I be old John Joel's widow--and a queer one he was; and the curate he say as I was to keep the place, though there's a deal of jealousy about. I never see in all my born days a jealouser place than Brentburn."

"Who is the curate?" asked Mr. Mildmay.

"Bless your soul, sir, he'll be as pleased as Punch to see you. You go up bold to the big door and ask for Mr. St. John; he would always have the hartis-gentlemen and that sort in, to take a cup of tea with him.

The Missis didn't hold with it in her time. She had a deal of pride, though you wouldn't have thought it at first. But since she's dead and gone, Mr. St. John he do have his way; and two pretty young ladies just come from school," said Mrs. Joel with a smirk. She was herself very curious about the stranger, who was evidently not a "hartis-gentleman."

"Maybe you was looking for lodgings, like?" she said, after a pause.

"No, no," said Mildmay, with unnecessary explanatoriness; "I was only struck by the church, in pa.s.sing, and wished to know who was the clergyman----"

"Between ourselves, sir," said Mrs. Joel, approaching closer than was pleasant, for her dinner had been highly seasoned, "I don't know as Mr.

St. John is what you call the clergyman. He ain't but the curate, and I do hear as there is a real right clergyman a-coming. But you won't name it, not as coming from me? for I can't say but he's always been a good friend."

"Oh no, I shall not name it. Good morning," cried Mildmay hurriedly. A new church, a horrible duck-pond, an old woman who smelt of onions. He hurried along, scarcely aware in his haste until he arrived in front of it that the house beyond the church was the rectory, his future home.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ENEMY.

The girls I need not say had been engaged in calculations long and weary during these intervening days. Cicely, who had at once taken possession of all the details of housekeeping, had by this time made a discovery of the most overwhelming character; which was that the curate was in arrears with all the tradespeople in the parish, and that the "books,"

instead of having the trim appearance she remembered, were full of long lists of things supplied, broken by no safe measure of weeks, but running on from month to month and from year to year, with here and there a melancholy payment "to account" set down against it. Cicely was young and she had no money, and knew by her own experience how hard it was to make it; and she was overwhelmed by this discovery. She took the books in her lap and crept into the drawing-room beside Mab, who was making a study of the children in the dreary stillness of the afternoon.

The two little boys were posed against the big sofa, on the carpet. The young artist had pulled off their shoes and stockings, and, indeed, left very little clothes at all upon Charley, who let her do as she pleased with him without remonstrance, sucking his thumb and gazing at her with his pale blue eyes. Harry had protested, but had to submit to the taking away of his shoes, and now sat gloomily regarding his toes, and trying to keep awake with supernatural lurches and recoveries; Charley, more placid, had dropped off. He had still his thumb in his mouth, his round cheek lying flushed against the cushion, his round white limbs huddled up in a motionless stillness of sleep. Harry sat upright, as upright as possible, and nodded. Mab had got them both outlined on her paper, and was working with great energy and absorption when Cicely came in with the books in her lap. "Oh, go away, go away," cried Mab, "whoever you are! Don't disturb them! If you wake them all is lost!"

Cicely stood at the door watching the group. Mab had improvised an easel, she had put on a linen blouse over her black and white muslin dress. She had closed the shutters of two windows, leaving the light from the middle one to fall upon the children. In the cool shade, moving now and then a step backwards to see the effect of her drawing, her light figure, full of purpose and energy, her pretty white hand a little stained with the charcoal with which she was working, she was a picture in herself. Cicely, her eyes very red and heavy--for indeed she had been crying--and the bundle of grocery books in her ap.r.o.n, paused and looked at her sister with a gush of admiration, a sharp pinch of something like envy. Mab could do this which looked like witchcraft, while she could only count, and count, and cry over these hopeless books. What good would crying do? If she cried her eyes out it would not pay a sixpence.

Cicely knew that she had more "sense" than Mab. It was natural. She was nineteen, Mab only eighteen, and a year is so much at that age! But Mab was clever. She could do something which Cicely could not even understand; and she would be able to make money, which Cicely could scarcely hope to do. It was envy, but of a generous kind. Cicely went across the room quite humbly behind backs, not to disturb her sister's work, and sat down by the darkened window, through which a fresh little breeze from the garden was coming in. It distracted her for a moment from her more serious cares to watch the work going on. She thought how pretty Mab looked, lighting up the poetical darkness, working away so vigorously and pleasantly with only that pucker of anxiety in her white forehead, lest her sitters should move. "Oh, quiet, quiet!" she said, almost breathless. "He must not either go to sleep or wake right up, till I have put them in. Roll the ball to him softly, Cicely, quite softly as if he were a kitten." Cicely put away the terrible books and knelt down on the carpet and rolled the big ball, which Mab had been moving with her foot towards little dozing Harry, who watched it with eyes glazing over with sleep. The light and the warmth and the stillness were too much for him. Just as the ball arrived at his soft little pink toes he tumbled over all in a heap, with his head upon Charley. Mab gave a cry of vexation. "But never mind, it was not your fault," she said, to make up for her impatience. And indeed Cicely felt it was rather hard to be blamed.

"After all it does not matter," said Mab. "I have done enough--but I shall never never get them to look like that again. How pretty children are even when they are ugly! What pictures such things make! how anybody can help making pictures all the day long I can't imagine. It is only that you will not try."

"I would try if I had any hope," said Cicely; "I would do anything. Oh, I wonder if there is anything I could do!"

"Why, of course you can teach," said Mab, consoling her, "a great deal better than I can. I get impatient; but you shan't teach; I am the brother and you are the sister, and you are to keep my house."

"That was all very well," said Cicely, "so long as there was only us two; but now look," she cried pointing to the two children lying over one another in the light, asleep, "there is _them_--and papa----"

"They are delightful like that," cried Mab starting up; "oh, quick, give me that portfolio with the paper! I must try them again. Just look at all those legs and arms!--and yet they are not a bit pretty in real life," cried Mab in the fervour of her art, making a fine natural distinction.

Cicely handed her all she wanted, and looked on with wondering admiration for a moment; but then she shook her head slightly and sighed. "You live in another world," she said, "you artists. Oh, Mab, I don't want to disturb you, but if you knew how unhappy I am----"

"What is the matter? and why should you be more anxious than papa is?"

cried Mab busy with her charcoal. "Don't make yourself unhappy, dear.

Things always come right somehow. I think so as well as papa."

"You don't mind either of you so long as you have---- Oh, you don't know how bad things are. Mab! we are in debt."

Mab stopped her work, appalled, and looked her sister in the face. This was a terrible word to the two girls, who never had known what it was to have any money. "In debt!" she said.

"Yes, in debt--do you wonder now that I am wretched? I don't know even if papa knows; and now he has lost even the little income he had, and we have given up our situations. Oh, Mab! Mab! think a little; what are we to do?"

Mab let her chalk fall out of her hand. She went and knelt down by Cicely's side, and put one soft cheek against another as if that would do any good. "Oh, how can I tell?" she said with tears in her eyes. "I never was any good to think. Is it much--is it very bad? is there anything we can do?"

Cicely shed a few tears over the butcher's book which was uppermost. "If we were staying here for ever," she said, "as we were all foolish enough to think when we came--we might have paid it with a struggle. I should have sent away those two maids, and tried to do everything myself."

"Everything, Cicely?" Mab was as much appalled at the thought of life without a Betsy, as a fine lady would be denuded of her establishment.

The want of a maid-of-all-work represents a dreadful coming down in life, almost more than a greater apparent loss does. Her countenance fell, the corners of her mouth took a downward curve, and her pride received a crushing blow. Yet if you consider what Betsy was, the loss was not deadly. But as usual it was not the actual but the sentimental view of the case which struck the girls.

"Yes," said Cicely, with a solemn paleness on her face. She felt the humiliation too. "I shouldn't mind _doing_ things," she said, her voice breaking a little; "it is what people will think. Us, a clergyman's daughters! But what is the use even of that?" she cried; "it will do no good now. Papa must leave Brentburn, and we have not a shilling, not a penny now, to pay those things with. I think and think--but I cannot tell what we are to do."

The two clung together in an agony of silence for a moment; how many wringings of the heart have been caused by a little money! and so often those who suffer are not those who are to blame. The ruin that seemed to be involved was unspeakable to the two girls; they did not know what the butcher and the baker might be able to do to them; nor did they know of any way of escape.

"If there was any hope," said Cicely after a pause, "of staying here--I would go round to them all, and ask them to take pity upon us; to let us begin again paying every week, and wait till we could sc.r.a.pe some money together for what is past. That, I think, would be quite possible, if we were to stay; and we might take pupils----"

"To be sure," cried Mab, relieved, springing up with the easy hope of a sanguine disposition, "and I might get something to do. In the meantime I can finish my drawing. They have not stirred a bit, look, Cicely. They are like two little white statues. It may be a pity that they were ever born, as Aunt Jane says--but they are delightful models. I almost think," Mab went on piously, working with bold and rapid fingers, "that in all this that has happened there must have been a special providence for me."

Cicely looked up with surprise at this speech, but she made no reply.

She was too full of thought to see the humour of the suggestion. Mab's art furnished a delightful way of escape for her out of all perplexity; but Cicely could only go back to the butcher's book. "What could we do, I wonder," she said half to herself, for she did not expect any advice from her sister, "about the living? Very likely they don't know anything about poor papa. It may be very highminded never to ask for anything,"

said poor Cicely, "but then how can we expect that other people will come and thrust bread into our mouths? It is better to ask than to starve. As a matter of fact we cannot starve quietly, because if we are found dead of hunger, there is sure to be a business in the papers, and everything exposed. 'Death, from starvation, of a clergyman's family!'

That would make a great deal more fuss than quietly going and asking for something for papa. I am not a bold girl--at least I don't think so,"

she cried, her soft face growing crimson at the thought, "but I would not mind going to any one, if it was the Head of the College, or the Lord Chancellor, or even the Queen!"

"I wonder," said Mab, "if we met the Queen driving in the forest--as one does sometimes--whether we might not ask her, as people used to do long ago? I don't think she would mind. Why should she mind? She could not be frightened, or even angry, with two girls."

Cicely shook her head. "The Queen has nothing to do with Brentburn; and why should she be troubled with us any more than any other lady? No!

that sort of thing has to be done in a business way," said the elder sister seriously. "If I could find out who was the chief man, the Head of the College----"

They had been so much absorbed that they had not heard any sound outside; and at this moment the door was suddenly thrown open, admitting a flood of cross light, and revealing suddenly the figures of the curate and some one who followed him.

"My dears!" began Mr. St. John, surprised.

"Oh, papa! you have woke them up. You have spoiled my light!" cried Mab, in despair.

Cicely started to her feet, letting the account books tumble on the floor; and the two little boys raised a simultaneous howl of sleepy woe.

"Harry wants his tea," they both piped piteously. Mr. Mildmay, whom the curate had met at the gate, looked with a surprise I cannot describe on this extraordinary scene. The white babies in the light had seemed to him at first an exquisite little "composition," which went to his very heart; and the two other figures, half lit up by the stream of unwelcome light from the door, bewildered the young man. Who were they, or what?

One indignant, holding her charcoal with artistic energy; the other, startled, gazing at himself with a hostile sentiment, which he could not understand, in her eyes.

"My love," said the gentle curate, "you should not make a studio of the drawing-room." Mr. St. John was not disturbed by the wailing of the little boys, to which, I suppose, he was used. "Cicely, this is Mr.

Mildmay, from Oxford, who has come--to look at the parish," he added, with a gentle sigh. "Let us have tea."

Why did the girl look at him with that paleness of anger in her face?

Mr. Mildmay's attention was distracted from the drawing and the artist, who, naturally, would have interested him most, by the gleam of hostility, the resentment and defiance in Cicely's eyes.

"Yes, papa," she said shortly; and with merely an inclination of her head to acknowledge his introduction to her, she took up the children, Charley in one arm, who was half dressed; Harry under the other, whose feet were bare, and carried them out of the room. She had divined the first moment she saw him, a dark figure against the light, who he was; and I cannot describe the bitterness that swelled like a flood through poor Cicely's heart. It was all over, then! There was no further hope, however fantastical, from College or Chancellor, or Queen! Fantastic, indeed, the hope had been; but Cicely was young, and had been more buoyed up by this delusion, even in her despair, than she was aware of.

She felt herself fall down, down into unspeakable depths, and the very heart within her seemed to feel the physical pain of it, lying crushed and sore, throbbing all over with sudden suffering. The pa.s.sionate force of the shock gave her strength, or I do not think she could have carried the two children away as she did, one in each arm, while the stranger looked on amazed. Little Charley, always peaceable, held her fast round the neck, with his head against her cheek; but Harry, whom she carried under her other arm, lifted his head a little from that horizontal position, and kept up his melancholy whine. She was not fond of the children; how could she be? and I think would gladly have "given them a shake" in the excitement and misery of her feelings. It was so hard upon the girl, that I think she might be forgiven for feeling that thus her young arms were to be hampered all her life; and, meanwhile, she felt that her father and sister would be perfectly amiable to the stranger, who was about to supplant them, and turn them out of their house. This, I am afraid, exasperated Cicely as much as anything else. "These two"

would have no _arriere pensee;_ they would be perfectly kind to him, as though he were acting the part of their best friend.

And, indeed, this was how it turned out. When she went back, having disposed of the children, to make the tea, Cicely found Mab and Mr.

Mildmay in great amity over the uncompleted drawing. He had been criticising, but he had been praising as well; and Mab was flushed with pleasure and interest. She ran off laughing, to take off her blouse and wash her hands, when Cicely came in, and the elder sister, who felt that her eyes were still red, felt at the same time that her ungenial and constrained reception of him had struck the new-comer. She went and gathered up the account-books from the floor with a sigh. Despair was in her heart. How could she talk and smile as the others had been doing? As for Mr. St. John, he was as pleased with his visitor as if he had brought him something, instead of taking all hope from him. It was rarely the good man saw any but heavy parish people--the rural souls with whom indeed he was friendly, but who had nothing to say to him except about their crops and local gossip. The gossip of Oxford was much sweeter to his ears. He liked to tell of the aspect of things "in my time," as I suppose we all do; and how different this and that was now-a-days. "I knew him when he was a curate like myself," he said, with a soft sigh, talking of the dean, that lofty dignitary. "We were at school together, and I used to be the better man;" and this was spoken of the vice-chancellor himself; and he enjoyed and wondered to hear of all their grandeurs. He had met Mildmay on the road, looking through the gate at the rectory, and had addressed him in his suave old-world way as a stranger. Then they had talked of the church, that most natural of subjects between two clergymen; and then, half reluctantly, half with a sense of compulsion, the stranger had told him who he was. Mr. St. John, though he was poor, had all the hospitable instincts of a prince. He insisted that his new acquaintance should come in and see the house, and hear about everything. He would have given the same invitation, he said afterwards, to any probable new resident in the parish, and why not to the new rector? for in Mr. St. John's mind there was no gall.