“I a beggar for a living!” said Mr. St. John. “I who have never asked for anything in my life!” A deep flush came upon his delicate pale face. He had borne a great many more serious blows without wincing. Death had visited him, and care dwelt in his house—and he had borne these visitations placidly; but there was one flaw in his armour, and this unlooked-for assault found it out. A flame of injured pride blazed up in him, swift as fire and as glowing. “I thought I should have died without this,” he said with a groan, half fierce, half bitter. “What was it to you? I never asked you for anything! Oh, this is hard—this is very hard to bear.”
In the memory of man it had never been known that Mr. St. John thus complained before. The girls had never heard his voice raised or seen the flush of anger on his face; and they were overawed by it. This kind of sentiment too has always a certain fictitious grandeur to the inexperienced. Never to ask for anything; to wait—patient merit scorning all conflict with the unworthy—till such time as its greatness should be acknowledged. This sounds very sublime in most cases to the youthful soul.
“Well, Mr. St. John,” said Miss Maydew, “you may say I have no right to interfere; but if you had stooped to ask for something it might have been a great deal better for your family. Besides, you have not asked for anything now. I am not responsible for my actions to any one, and I hope I may do either for you or anybody else whatever I please in the way of service. If the Lord Chancellor does give you the living——”
Mr. St. John smiled. “I need not make myself angry,” he said, “for it is all sheer ignorance. The living is a college living. I don’t know what your ideas are on the subject, but the Lord Chancellor has as much to do with it as you have. Cicely, let us have tea.”
Miss Maydew shrivelled up upon her chair. She sat very quiet, and did not say a word after this revelation. What she had done would have troubled her mind little; but that she had done nothing after risking so much was hard to bear. After this little ebullition, however, the curate fell back into his usual calm. He spoke to them in his ordinary way. His voice resumed its tranquil tone. He took his tea, which was a substantial meal, doing justice to the bread and butter, and on the whole showed signs of being more concerned for Mr. Chester than he was for himself.
“I remember him at college—we were of the same college,” he said; “but he always the richest, much the best off. How little that has to say to a man’s happiness! Poor Chester was never happy; he might have been very well here. How much I have had to be thankful for here! but it was not his disposition. He was good-looking too when he was young, and did very well in everything. Any one would have said he had a far better chance for a happy life than I had.”
The gentle old man grew quite loquacious in this contrast, though he was in general the most humble-minded of men; and the two girls sat and listened, giving wondering glances at each other, and blushing red with that shame of affection which lively girls perhaps are particularly disposed to feel when their parents maunder. This sort of domestic criticism, even though unexpressed, was hard upon Mr. St. John, as upon all such feeble good men. His last wife had adored him at all times, as much when he was foolish as when he was wise. She would have given him the fullest adhesion of her soul now, and echoed every word he said; but the girls did not. They would have preferred to silence him, and were ashamed of his gentle self-complacency. And yet it was quite true that he felt himself a happier man than Mr. Chester, and higher in the scale of merit though not of fortune; and the calm with which he took this event, which was neither more nor less than ruin to him, was fine in its way.
“But what are we to do, papa?” Cicely ventured to ask him, looking up into his face with big anxious eyes, as he took his last cup of tea.
“My dear, we must wait and see,” he said. “There is no very immediate hurry. Let us see first who is appointed, and what the new rector intends to do.”
“But, Mr. St. John, you are a very learned man—and if it is a college living”—suggested Miss Maydew.