“That is true enough,” said Mildmay; “but his long services to the parish, his age, his devotion to his work—it does not seem right. I don’t say for you or for me, but in the abstract——”
“Devotion?” said Mr. Ascott. “Oh yes; he has done his work well enough, I suppose. That’s what is called devotion when a man dies or goes away. Yes, oh yes, we may allow him the credit of that, the poor old fogey, but—yes, oh yes, a good old fellow enough. When you have said that, there’s no more to say. Perhaps in the abstract it was a shame that Chester should have the lion’s share of the income, and St. John all the work; but that’s all over; and as for any hesitation of yours on his account——”
“It may be foolish,” said the young man, “but I do hesitate—I cannot help feeling that there is a great wrong involved—to Mr. St. John, of course, in the first place—but without even thinking of any individual, it is a sort of thing that must injure the Church; and I don’t like to be the instrument of injuring the Church.”
“Tut—tut—tut!” said Mr. Ascott; “your conscience is too tender by far.”
“Mr. Mildmay,” said the lady sweetly, “you must not expect me to follow such deep reasoning. I leave that to superior minds; but you ought to think what a great thing it is for a parish to have some one to look up to—some one the poor people can feel to be really their superior.”
“Not a poor beggar of a curate,” cried her husband. “There, Adelaide! you have hit the right nail on the head. That’s the true way to look at the subject. Poor old St. John! I don’t say he’s been well treated by destiny. He has had a deal of hard work, and he has stuck to it; but, bless you! how is a man like that to be distinguished from a Dissenting preacher, for instance? Of course, he’s a clergyman, in orders and all that, as good as the Archbishop of Canterbury; but he has no position—no means—nothing to make him the centre of the parish, as the clergyman ought to be. Why, the poorest labourer in the parish looks down upon the curate. ‘Parson’s just as poor as we is,’ they say. I’ve heard them. He has got to run up bills in the little shops, and all that, just as they have. He has no money to relieve them with when they’re out of work. The farmers look down upon him. They think nothing of a man that’s poor; and as for the gentry——”
“Stop, Henry,” said Mrs. Ascott; “the gentry have always been very kind to the St. Johns. We were always sorry for the girls. Poor things! their mother was really quite a lady, though I never heard that she had anything. We were all grieved about this last sad affair, when he married the governess; and I should always have made a point of being kind to the girls. That is a very different thing, however, Mr. Mildmay,” she added, with a sweet smile, “from having a clergyman whom one can really look up to, and who will be a friend and neighbour as well as a clergyman. You will stay to luncheon? I think I hear the bell.”
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT THE GIRLS COULD DO.
MILDMAY left the house of the Ascotts hurriedly at this intimation. He thought them pleasant people enough—for who does not think those people pleasant who flatter and praise him?—but he would not allow himself to be persuaded out of his determination to return to the rectory. I must add however that his mind was in a more confused state than ever as he skirted the common by the way the curate had taken him on the previous night. There were two sides to every question; that could not be gainsaid. To leave Brentburn after passing twenty years here in arduous discharge of all the rector’s duties, but with the rank and remuneration only of the curate, was an injury too hard to contemplate to Mr. St. John; but then it was not Mildmay’s fault that he should interfere at his own cost to set it right. It was not even the fault of the parish. It was nobody’s fault but his own, foolish as he was, neglecting all chances of “bettering himself.” If a man would do nothing for himself, how could it be the duty of others, of people no way connected with him, scarcely knowing him, to do it for him? This argument was unanswerable; nothing could be more reasonable, more certain; and yet—Mildmay felt that he himself was young, that the rectory of Brentburn was not much to him one way or the other. He had wanted it as the means of living a more real life than that which was possible to him in his college rooms; but he had no stronger reason, no special choice of the place, no conviction that he could do absolute good here; and why should he then take so lightly what it would cost him nothing to reject, but which was everything to the curate? Then, on the other hand, there was the parish to consider. What if—extraordinary as that seemed—it did not want Mr. St. John? What if really his very poverty, his very gentleness, made him unsuitable for it? The argument seemed a miserable one, so far as the money went; but it might be true. The Ascotts, for instance, were the curate’s friends; but this was their opinion. Altogether Mr. Mildmay was very much perplexed on the subject. He wished he had not come to see for himself, just as an artist has sometimes been sorry for having consulted that very troublesome reality, Nature, who will not lend herself to any theory. If he had come without any previous inspection of the place, without any knowledge of the circumstances, how much better it would have been! Whereas now he was weighed down by the consideration of things with which he had really nothing to do. As he went along, full of these thoughts, he met the old woman whom he had first spoken to by the duck-pond on the day before, and who had invited him to sit down in her cottage. To his surprise—for he did not at first recollect who she was—she made him a curtsy, and stopped short to speak to him. As it was in the full blaze of the midday sunshine, Mildmay would very gladly have escaped—not to say that he was anxious to get back to the rectory, and to finish, as he persuaded himself was quite necessary, his conversation with Cicely. Old Mrs. Joel, however, stood her ground. She had an old-fashioned large straw bonnet on her head, which protected her from the sun; and besides, was more tolerant of the sunshine, and more used to exposure than he was.
“Sir,” she said, “I hear as you’re the new gentleman as is coming to our parish. I am a poor woman, sir, the widow o’ Job Joel, as was about Brentburn church, man and boy, for more than forty year. He began in the choir, he did, and played the fiddle in the old times; and then, when that was done away with, my husband he was promoted to be clerk, and died in it. They could not ezackly make me clerk, seeing as I’m nothing but a woman; but Dick Williams, as is the sexton, ain’t married, and I’ve got the cleaning of the church, and the pew-opening, if you please, sir; and I hope, sir, as you won’t think it’s nothing but justice to an old servant, to let me stay?”