“Left!” cried the doctor; there was derision in the very word. “They are not left at all; they have not a penny in the world. Poor St. John, we must not say a word now against him, and there is not much to say. He got on with everybody. He did his duty by rich and poor. There was never a better clergyman, always ready when you called him, early or late; more ready for nothing,” the doctor added remorsefully, “than I am for my best paying patients. We might have done more to smooth his way for him, perhaps, but he never could take care of money or do anything to help himself; and now they’ll have to pay for it, these two poor girls.”
Thus the curate’s record was made. The news went through the parish like the wind, in all its details; dozens of people were stopped in the village going to the sale, and a little comforted for their disappointment by the exciting story. Some of the people thought it was poor Miss Brown, the other Mrs. St. John, whom he was looking for. Some felt it a strange heathenish sort of thing of him, a clergyman, that he should be thinking at that last moment of anything but the golden city with the gates of pearl; and thought there was a dreadful materialism in the cloak and hat. But most people felt a thrill of real emotion, and the moment he was dead, mourned Mr. St. John truly, declaring that Brentburn would never see the like of him again. Mrs. Ascott cried so that she got a very bad headache, and was obliged to go and lie down. But she sent her maid to ask if they could do anything, and even postponed a dinner-party which was to have been that evening, which was a very gratifying token of respect. Mrs. Joel, who was perhaps at the other extremity of the social scale, cried too, but had no headache, and went off at once to the rectory to make herself useful, pulling all the blinds down, which Betsy had neglected, and telling all the callers that poor Miss Cicely was as well as could be expected, though “it have given her a dreadful shock.” The trunks stood all ready packed and corded, with Mr. St. John’s name upon them. But he had no need of them, though he had kept his word and left Brentburn on the appointed day. After a while people began to think that perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened—best for him certainly—he could never have borne the rooting up, they said—he could never have borne Liverpool, so noisy and quarrelsome. “Why, it would have killed him in a fortnight, such a place,” said Mr. Ascott, who had not, however, lent a hand in any way to help him in his struggle against fate.
Mab, it is needless to say, came down at once with Aunt Jane, utterly crushed and helpless with sorrow. Poor Cicely, who was only beginning to realize what it was, and to make sure that her father absolutely was dead, and beyond the reach of all bringing back, had to rouse herself, and take her sister into her arms and console her. Mab sobbed quietly when she was in her sister’s arms, feeling a sense of strong protection in them.
“I have still you, Cicely,” she said, clinging to her.
“But Cicely has no one,” said Aunt Jane, kissing the pale girl with that compassionate insight which age sometimes brings even to those who do not possess it by nature. “But it is best for you to have them all to look after, if you could but see it, my poor child!”
“I do see it,” said Cicely—and then she had to disentangle herself from Mab’s clinging, and to go out of the room where they had shut themselves up, to see somebody about the “arrangements,” though indeed everybody was very kind and spared her as much as they could.
After the first shock was over it may well be supposed what consultations there were within the darkened rooms. The funeral did not take place till the following Tuesday, as English custom demands, and the days were very slow and terrible to the two girls, hedged round by all the prejudices of decorum, who could do nothing but dwell with their grief in the gloomy house which crushed their young spirits with its veiled windows and changeless dimness. That, and far more, they were ready to do for their father and the love they bore him; but to feel life arrested and stopped short by that shadow of death is hard upon the young. Miss Maydew, whose grief naturally was of a much lighter description than that of the girls, and with whom decorum was stronger than grief, kept them upstairs in their rooms, and treated them as invalids, which was the right thing to do in the circumstances. Only at dusk would she let them go even into the garden, to get the breath of air which nature demanded. She knew all the proper ceremonials which ought to be observed when there was “a death in the house,” and was not quite sure even now how far it was right to let them discuss what they were going to do. To make up for this, she carried to them the scraps of parish gossip which she gleaned from Mrs. Joel and from Betsy in the kitchen. There had, it appeared, been a double tragedy in the parish. A few days after the death of the curate, the village schoolmistress, a young widow with several babies, had “dropped down” and died of heart disease in the midst of the frightened children. “It is a terrible warning to the parish,” said Miss Maydew, “two such events in one week. But your dear papa, everybody knows, was ready to go, and I hope Mrs. Jones was so too. They tell me she was a good woman.”
“And what is to become of the children?” said Cicely, thinking of her own burden.
“Oh, my dear, the children will be provided for; they always are somehow. There are so many institutions for orphans, and people are very good if you know how to get at them. No doubt somebody will take them up. I don’t doubt Mr. Ascott has votes for the British Orphans’ or St. Ann’s Society, or some of these. Speaking of that, my dears, I have been thinking that we ought to try for something of the same kind ourselves. Cicely, hear first what I have got to say before you speak. It is no disgrace. How are Mab and you to maintain these two little boys? Of course you shall have all that I can give you, but I have so little; and if girls can maintain themselves, it is all they are likely to do. There is a society, I am sure, for the orphans of clergymen——”
“Aunt Jane! Papa’s sons shall never be charity boys—never! if I should work my fingers to the bone, as people say.”