The Curate in Charge Part 4

She went about mournfully all day long, and in the evening Mab found her seated at the window of their attic, looking out with her eyes big with tears upon the darkening sea. When her sister touched her on the shoulder Cicely's tears fell. "Oh, poor Miss Brown!" she said, her heart having gone back to the time when they had no grievance against their kind little governess. "Oh, Mab, if one could only tell her how one was sorry! if she could only see into my heart now!"

"Perhaps she can," said Mab, awe-stricken and almost under her breath, lifting her eyes to the clear wistful horizon in which the evening star had just risen.

"And one could have said it only yesterday!" said Cicely, realizing for the first time that mystery of absolute severance; and what light thoughts had been in their minds yesterday! Sighs for Alice Robinson's ball, depression of soul and spirit caused by the distant strains of the Lancers, and the "Blue Danube"--while this tragedy was going on, and the poor soul who had been good to them, but to whom they had not been good, was departing, altogether and for ever out of reach. Cicely in her sorrow blamed herself unjustly, as was natural, and mourned for the mystery of human shortsightedness as well as for Mrs. St. John. But I do not mean to say that this grief was very profound after the first sting, and after that startling impression of the impossibility of further intercourse was over. The girls went out quietly in the afternoon, and bought black stuff to make themselves mourning, and spoke to each other in low voices and grave tones. Their youthful vigour was subdued--they were overawed to feel as it were the wings of the great Death-Angel overshadowing them. The very sunshine looked dim, and the world enveloped in a cloud. But it was within a week or two of Miss Blandy's "breaking up," and they could not go away immediately. Miss Blandy half audibly expressed her satisfaction that Mrs. St. John was only their step-mother. "Had she been their own mother, what should we have done?"

she said. So that it was not till the end of July, when the establishment broke up, that the girls were at last able to get home.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GIRLS AT HOME.

We are so proud in England of having a word which means home, which some of our neighbours we are pleased to think have not, that, perhaps, it is a temptation to us to indulge in a general rapture over the word which has sometimes little foundation in reality. When Cicely and Mab walked to the rectory together from the station a suppressed excitement was in their minds. Since they first left for school, they had only come back for a few days each year, and they had not liked it. Their stepmother had been very kind, painfully kind; and anxious above measure that they should find everything as they had left it, and should not be disappointed or dull; but this very anxiety had made an end of all natural ease, and they had been glad when the moment came that released them. Now, poor woman, she had been removed out of their way; they were going back to take care of their father as they might have done had there been no second Mrs. St. John; and everything was as it had been, with the addition of the two babies, innocent little intruders, whom the girls, you may be sure, could never find it in their hearts to be hard upon. Cicely and Mab took each others' hands instinctively as they left the station. It was the first of August, the very prime and glory of summer; the woods were at their fullest, untouched by any symptom of decay. The moorland side of the landscape was more wealthy and glorious still in its flush of heather. The common was not indeed one sheet of purple, like a Scotch moor; but it was all lighted up between the gorse bushes with fantastic streaks and bands of colour blazing in the broad sunshine, and haunted by swarms of bees which made a hum in the air almost as sweet and all-pervading as the murmur of the sea. As they drew near the house their hearts began to beat louder. Would there be any visible change upon it? Would it look as it did when they were children, or with that indefinable difference which showed in _her_ time? They did not venture to go the familiar way by the garden, but walked up solemnly like visitors to the front door. It was opened to them by a new maid, whom they had never seen before, and who demurred slightly to giving them admittance, "Master ain't in," said the girl; "yes miss, I know as you're expected," but still she hesitated. This was not the kind of welcome which the daughters of a house generally receive. They went in to the house nevertheless, Betsy following them.

The blinds were drawn low over the windows, which were all shut, and though the atmosphere was stifling with heat, yet it was cold, miserably cold to Cicely and Mab. Their father's study was the only place that had any life in it. The rectory seemed full of nothing but old black heavy furniture, and heavier memories of some chilled and faded past.

"What a dreadful old place it is," said Mab; "it is like coming home to one's grave," and she sat down on the black haircloth easy-chair and shivered and cried; though this was coming home, to the house in which she had been born.

"Now it will be better," said Cicely pulling up the blinds and opening the window. She had more command of herself than her sister. She let the sunshine come down in a flood across the dingy carpet, worn with the use of twenty years.

"Please, miss," said Betsy interposing, "missis would never have the blinds up in this room 'cause of spoiling the carpet. If master says so, I don't mind; but till he do----" and here Betsy put up her hand to the blind.

"Do you venture to meddle with what my sister does?" cried Mab, furious, springing from her chair.

Cicely only laughed. "You are a good girl to mind what your mistress said, but we are your mistresses now; you must let the window alone, for don't you see the carpet is spoiled already? I will answer to papa. What is it? Do you want anything more?"

"Only this, miss," said Betsy, "as it's the first laugh as has been heard here for weeks and weeks, and I don't like it neither, seeing as missis is in her grave only a fortnight to-day."

"I think you are a very good girl," said Cicely: and with that the tears stood in that changeable young woman's eyes.

No Betsy that ever was heard of could long resist this sort of treatment. "I tries to be, miss," she said with a curtsy and a whimper.

"Maybe you'd like a cup of tea?" and after following them suspiciously all over the house, she left them at last on this hospitable intent in the fading drawing-room, where they had both enshrined the memory of their mother. Another memory was there now, a memory as faded as the room, which showed in all kinds of feeble feminine decorations, bits of modern lace, and worked cushions and foolish foot-stools. The room was all pinafored and transmogrified, the old dark picture-frames covered with yellow gauze, and the needlework in crackling semi-transparent covers.

"This was how she liked things, poor soul! Oh, Mab," cried Cicely, "how strange that she should die!"

"No stranger than that any one else should die," said Mab, who was more matter of fact.

"A great deal stranger! It was not strange at all that little Mary Seymour should die. One saw it in her eyes; she was like an angel; it was natural; but poor Miss Brown, who was quite happy working cushions and covering them up, and keeping the sun off the carpets, and making lace for the brackets! It looks as if there was so little sense or method in it," said Cicely. "She won't have any cushions to work up there."

"I dare say there won't be anything to draw up there," said Mab; "and yet I suppose I shall die too in time."

"When there are the four walls for Leonardo, and Michel Angelo and Raphael and poor Andrea," said the other. "How you forget! Besides, it is quite different. Hark! what was that?" she cried, putting up her hand.

What it was soon became very distinctly evident--a feeble little cry speedily joined by another, and then a small weak chorus, two voices entangled together. "No, no; no ladies. Harry no like ladies," mixed with a whimpering appeal to "papa, papa."

"Come and see the pretty ladies. Harry never saw such pretty ladies,"

said the encouraging voice of Betsy in the pa.s.sage.

The girls looked at each other, and grew red. They had made up their minds about a great many things, but never how they were to deal with the two children. Then Betsy appeared at the door, pushing it open before her with the tea-tray she carried. To her skirts were hanging two little boys, clinging to her, yet resisting her onward motion, and carried on by it in spite of themselves. They stared at the new-comers with big blue eyes wide open, awed into silence. They were very small and very pale, with light colourless limp locks falling over their little black dresses. The girls on their side stared silently too. There was not a feature in the children's faces which resembled their elder sisters. They were both little miniatures of Miss Brown.

"So these are the children," said Cicely, making a reluctant step forward; to which Harry and Charley responded by a renewed clutch at Betsy's dress.

"Yes, miss; them's the children! and darlings they be," said Betsy, looking fondly at them as she set down the tea. Cicely made another step forward slowly, and held out her hands to them; when the little boys set up a scream which rang through the house, and hiding their faces simultaneously in Betsy's gown, howled to be taken away. Mab put up her hands to her ears, but Cicely, more anxious to do her duty, made another attempt. She stooped down and kissed, or tried to kiss the little tear-stained faces, to which caress each small brother replied by pushing her away with a repeated roar.

"Don't you take no notice, miss. Let 'em alone and they'll get used to you in time," said Betsy.

"Go away, go away! Harry no like 'oo," screamed the spokesman brother.

No one likes to be repulsed even by a child. Cicely stumbled to her feet very red and uncomfortable. She stood ruefully looking after them as they were carried off after a good preliminary "shake," one in each of Betsy's red hands.

"There is our business in life," she said in a solemn tone. "Oh, Mab, Mab, what did papa want with these children? All the trouble of them will come on you and me."

Mab looked at her sister with a look of alarm, which changed, however, into laughter at sight of Cicely's solemn looks and the dreary presentiment in her face.

"You are excellent like that," she said; "and if you had only seen how funny you all looked when the little demons began to cry. They will do for models at all events, and I'll take to painting children. They say it's very good practice, and nursery pictures always sell."

These lighter suggestions did not, however, console Cicely. She walked about the room with clasped hands and a very serious face, neglecting her tea.

"Papa will never trouble himself about them," she said half to herself; "it will all fall on Mab and me. And boys! that they should be boys. We shall never be rich enough to send them to the University. Girls we might have taught ourselves; but when you think of Oxford and Cambridge----"

"We can't tell," said Mab; "how do you know I shan't turn out a great painter, and be able to send them wherever you like? for I am the brother and you are the sister, Ciss. You are to keep my house and have the spending of all my money. So don't be gloomy, please, but pour out some tea. I wish, though, they were not quite so plain."

"So like their mother," said Cicely with a sigh.

"And so disagreeable; but it is funny to hear one speak for both as if the two were Harry. I am glad they are not girls. To give them a share of all we have I don't mind; but to teach them! with those white little pasty faces----"

"One can do anything when one makes up one's mind to it," said Cicely with a sigh.

At this moment the hall door opened, and after an interval Mr. St. John came in with soft steps. He had grown old in these last years; bowed down with age and troubles. He came up to his daughters and kissed them, laying his hand upon their heads.

"I am very glad you have come home," he said, in a voice which was pathetic in its feebleness. "You are all I have now."

"Not all you have, papa," said Mab; "we have just seen the little boys."

A momentary colour flushed over his pale face. "Ah, the babies," he said. "I am afraid they will be a great deal of trouble to you, my dears."

Cicely and Mab looked at each other, but they did not say anything--they were afraid to say something which they ought not to say. And what could he add after that? He took the cup of tea they offered him, and drank it standing, his tall frame with a stoop in it, which was partly age and partly weakness, coming against one tall window and shutting out the light. "But that you are older looking," he said at last, "all this time might seem like a dream."

"A sad dream, papa," said Cicely, not knowing what to say.

"I cannot say that, my dear. I thank G.o.d I have had a great deal of happiness in my life; because we are sad for the moment we must not forget to thank Him for all His mercies," said Mr. St. John; and then with a change in his voice, he added, "Your aunt sends me word that she is coming soon to see you. She is a very strong woman for her years; I look older than she does; and it is a trouble to me now to go to town and back in one day."

"You have not been ill, papa?"

"No, Cicely, not ill; a little out of my usual," he said, "that is all.

Now you are here, we shall fall into our quiet way again. The changes G.o.d sends we must accept; but the little worries are trying, my dear. I am getting old, and am not so able to brave them; but all will be well now you are here."

"We shall do all we can," said Cicely; "but you must remember, papa, we are not used to housekeeping, and if we make mistakes at first----"