Part 8 (1/2)

”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 cus.h.i.+on, 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.”