“I am going back to Oxford,” he said hastily. “I shall not go to town. The first thing I do will be to see everybody concerned, and to tell them what you say. Yes, Miss St. John, you are right; it is wicked and wrong that I or any one should have it while your father is here. I will tell the Master so, I will tell them all so. It shall not be my fault if Mr. St. John does not have his rights.”
They were close to the rectory gate, and as fire communicates to fire, the passionate impulse and fervour of Cicely’s countenance had transferred themselves to Mr. Mildmay, whose eyes were shining, and his cheeks flushed with purpose like her own. Cicely was not used to this rapid transmission of energy. She gazed at him half frightened. Usually her interlocutor did all that was possible to calm her down—wondered at her, blamed her a little, chilled her vehemence with surprised or disapproving looks. This new companion who caught fire at her was new to the girl. She was half alarmed at what she had done.
“Will you do so, really?” she said, the tears starting to her eyes. “O Mr. Mildmay, perhaps I am wrong! Papa would not advise you so. He would say he never asked for anything in his life, and that he would not be a beggar for a living now. And think—perhaps I should not have said half so much if I could have done anything. I am too ignorant and too inexperienced for any one to be guided by me.”
“Yes, you are ignorant,” cried the young man. “You don’t know the sophistries with which we blind ourselves and each other. You dare to think what is right and what is wrong—and, for once in my life, so shall I.”
The moisture that had been gathering dropped all at once in two great unexpected tears out of Cicely’s eyes. Her face lighted like the sky when the sun rises, a rosy suffusion as of dawn came over her. Her emotion was so increased by surprise that even now she did not know what to think. In the least likely quarter all at once, in her moment of need, she had found sympathy and succour; and I think perhaps that even the most strong and self-sustaining do not know how much they have wanted sympathy and comprehension until it comes. It made Cicely weak, not strong. She felt that she could have sat down on the roadside and cried. She had an idiotic impulse to tell him everything, and especially about the butcher—how kind he had been. These impulses passed through her mind mechanically, or, as one ought to say nowadays, automatically; but Cicely, who had no notion of being an automaton, crushed them in the bud. And what she really would have said in the tumult of her feelings, beyond what the look in her eyes said, behind the tears, I cannot tell, if it had not been that the curate came forth leisurely at that moment from the rectory, making it necessary that tears and every other evidence of emotion should be cleared away.
“Cicely, it is just time for dinner,” he said. “You should not walk, my dear, in the heat of the day; and Mr. Mildmay, too, must be tired, and want something to refresh him. It is a long time since breakfast,” said the gentle curate, opening the door that his guest might precede him. Mr. St. John was not a great eater, but he had a mild, regular appetite, and did not like any disrespect to the dinner hour.
CHAPTER XIV.
HOW TO EXERCISE CHURCH PATRONAGE.
MILDMAY made his way back to Oxford without any delay. He knew that the Master of the college, who was a man with a family, had not yet set out on the inevitable autumn tour. But I must add that, though no man could have been more anxious to obtain preferment in his own person than he was to transfer his preferment to another, yet various doubts of the practicability of what he was going to attempt interfered, as he got further and further from Brentburn, with the enthusiasm which had sprung up so warmly in Cicely’s presence. It would be very difficult, he felt, to convey to the Master the same clear perception of the rights of the case as had got into his own head by what he had seen and heard at the rectory; and if all he made by his hesitation was to throw the living into the hands of Ruffhead! For Brentburn was no longer an indifferent place—the same as any other in the estimation of the young don; quite the reverse; it was very interesting to him now. Notwithstanding the bran-new church, he felt that no other parish under the sun was half so attractive. The churchyard, with those two narrow threads of paths; the windows, with the lights in them, which glimmered within sight of the grave; the old-fashioned, sunny garden; the red cottages, with not one wall which was not awry, and projecting at every conceivable angle; the common, with its flush of heather—all these had come out of the unknown, and made themselves plain and apparent to him. He felt Brentburn to be in a manner his own; a thing which he would be willing to give to Mr. St. John, or rather to lend him for his lifetime; but he did not feel the least inclination to let it fall into the hands of any other man. Neither did he feel inclined to do as Mr. Chester, the late rector, had done—to expatriate himself, and leave the work of his parish to the curate in charge. Besides, he could not do this, for he was in perfect health; and he could neither tell the necessary lie himself, nor, he thought, get any doctor to tell it for him. As he got nearer and nearer to the moment which must decide all these uncertainties, he got more and more confused and troubled in his mind. The Master was the college, as it happened at that moment; he was by far the most influential and the most powerful person in it; and what he said was the thing that would be done. Mildmay accordingly took his way with very mingled feelings, across the quadrangle to the beautiful and picturesque old house in which this potentate dwelt. Had he any right to attempt to make such a bargain as was in his mind? It was enough that the living had been offered to him. What had he to say but yes or no?
The Master’s house was in a state of confusion when Mildmay entered it. The old hall was full of trunks, the oaken staircase encumbered with servants and young people running up and down in all the bustle of a move. Eight children of all ages, and half as many servants, was the Master—brave man!—about to carry off to Switzerland. The packing was terrible, and not less terrible the feelings of the heads of the expedition, who were at that moment concluding their last calculation of expenses, and making up little bundles of circular notes. “Here is Mr. Mildmay,” said the Master’s wife, “and, thank Heaven! this reckoning up is over;” and she escaped with a relieved countenance, giving the new comer a smile of gratitude. The head of the college was slightly flustrated, if such a vulgar word can be used of such a sublime person. I hope no one will suspect me of Romanizing tendencies, but perhaps a pale ecclesiastic, worn with thought, and untroubled by children, would have been more like the typical head of a college than this comely yet careworn papa. The idea, however, flashed through Mildmay’s mind, who had the greatest reverence for the Master, that these very cares, this evident partaking of human nature’s most ordinary burdens, would make the great don feel for the poor curate. Does not a touch of nature make the whole world kin?
“Well, Mildmay,” said the Master, “come to say good-bye? You are just in time. We are off to-night by the Antwerp boat, which we have decided is the best way with our enormous party.” Here the good man sighed. “Where are you going? You young fellows don’t know you’re born, as people say—coming and going, whenever the fancy seizes you, as light as a bird. Ah! wait till you have eight children, my dear fellow, to drag about the world.”