“My dear,” said the curate, “I am too tired to argue. I don’t blame Mildmay; he has done just what was natural, and I am glad he is coming here; while in the meantime talking will do no good, but I think my tea would do me good,” he added with a smile.
Always tea, Cicely could not help thinking as she went away dutifully to prepare it—or dinner, or some trifle; never any serious thought of what was coming, of what had already come. She was young and impatient and unjust, as it is so natural to be at her years. The curate put his hand over his eyes when he was left alone. He was not disappointed or surprised. He had known exactly all along how it would be; but when it thus came upon him with such obvious and unmistakable reality, he felt it sharply. Twenty years! All that part of his life in which anything to speak of had happened to him, and—what was almost as hard to bear—all the familiar things which had framed in his life—the scene, the place, the people, the surroundings he was used to. He had not even his favourite consolation, forlorn pride in never having asked anything, to sustain him, for that was no longer the case. He was asking something—a poor curacy, a priest’s place for a piece of bread. The pang was momentary, but it was sharp. He got up, and stretched his long languid figure, and said to himself, “Ah, well! what is the good of thinking? It is soon enough to make oneself wretched when the moment comes,” and then he went peacefully into the dining-room to tea. This was not how the younger people took it, but then perhaps they had more capacity for feeling left.
Next morning Cicely got a letter of a very unusual description, which affected her in no small degree. It was from Mildmay, and, perhaps, it will be best to give it in full here:—
“Dear Miss St. John,
“I have delayed writing to you until I could make sure that you must have seen or heard of the announcement in the papers which will tell the results of my last three weeks’ work. Do not think that our last conversation has been obliterated from my mind. Very far from that. I have seen the Master and all who are concerned, and have done my best to show them the step which bare justice required at their hands, but ineffectually. I made a point at the same time of ascertaining what were the views of the gentleman to whom Brentburn would be offered in case I refused it, and found him quite decided on the subject. What could I do then? Should I have declined and put myself entirely out of the way of being of any use at all?
“As a matter of simple justice, I refer the question to you. What am I to do now? My thoughts on the subject have been many, I need not say, since I saw you. May I ask your father to continue at Brentburn as my curate? I am quite inexperienced; his assistance would be of infinite advantage to me; and, in point of fact, as is natural at our respective ages, I should be his curate, not he mine. May I do this? or what else can I do? The position in which I find myself is a painful one. It would have been much easier, I assure you, to have shuffled the whole matter off upon Ruffhead, and to have withdrawn. But I felt a responsibility upon me since I met you; and I ask you now urgently, feeling that I have almost a right to your advice, what am I to do?
“Yours very truly,
“Roger Mildmay.”
This letter excited Cicely greatly. By chance it arrived before the others had come into the breakfast-room, and she was able to read it without any looker-on. She put it hurriedly into her pocket before her father and sister appeared. She did not know what answer to make, neither did she feel comfortable about making any answer, and she said nothing about it all day; though—oh, how the letter burned her pocket and her mind! She had scarcely ever known what it was to have a secret before, and not to tell Mab seemed almost wrong. She felt that there was something clandestine about her, going up and down the house with that letter in her possession which nobody knew of. And to answer it—to answer it without any one knowing? This she could not do. She bore the burden of her secret all the day, and surprised Mab very much by her silence about Mr. Mildmay, whom the younger sister abused roundly. “Perhaps it was not his fault,” Cicely faltered. What had come over her? What change had happened? Mab was lost in a maze.
The difficulty, however, was solved in a very unexpected way. Next morning—no later—Mr. St. John himself had a letter from Oxford; a letter which made him change colour, and bend his meek brows, and then smile—but not like himself. “Cicely, this must be your doing,” he said. “I never made any complaints to Mr. Mildmay, nor said anything to call for his pity. He asks me to be his curate,” the old man added, after a pause, with a strange smile. No one had suspected that Mr. St. John was proud, until it became apparent all at once how proud he was.
“His curate—O papa! you will stay here, and never go away at all,” cried Mab out of the fulness of her heart. Cicely knew better. She grew pale, and to stop that outcry of inconvenient delight, grasped tightly her sister’s hand.