The Curate in Charge. Oliphant Margaret
darling, you are the very image of your poor mother!” said Miss Maydew with tears in her eyes. “She was always one who took the trouble to think what her friends would like best. And what good tea it is, and how nicely served! Was the kettle boiling? Ah! I recognise your dear mother in that. It used always to be a saying with us at home that the kettle should always be boiling in a well-regulated house.”
Then the old lady began to ask cunning questions about the household: whether Cicely was in the habit of making tea and carrying trays about, as she did this so nicely; and other close and delicate cross-examinations, by which she found out a great deal about the qualities of the servant and the governess. Miss Maydew was too clever to tell Cicely what she thought at the conclusion of her inquiry, but she went in thoughtfully to the house, and was somewhat silent as the girls took her all over it – to the best room to take off her bonnet, to their room to see what a pretty view they had, and into all the empty chambers. The comments she made as she followed them were few but significant. “It was rather extravagant of your papa to furnish it all; he never could have wanted so large a house,” she said.
“Oh! but the furniture is the Rector’s, it is not papa’s,” cried her conductors, both in a breath.
“I shouldn’t like, if I were him, to have the charge of other people’s furniture,” Miss Maydew replied; and it seemed to the girls that she was rather disposed to find fault with all poor papa’s arrangements, though she was so kind to them. Mr. St. John was “in the parish,” and did not come back till it was time for the early dinner; and it was late in the afternoon when Miss Maydew, knocking at his study door, went in alone to “have a talk” with him, with the intention of “giving him her mind” on several subjects, written fully in her face. The study was a well-sized room looking out upon the garden, and furnished with heavy book-shelves and bureaux in old dark coloured mahogany. The carpet was worn, but those mournful pieces of furniture defied the action of time. She looked round upon them with a slightly supercilious critical glance.
“The room is very well furnished,” she said, “Mr. St. John; exceedingly well furnished; to rub it up and keep it in order must give your servant a great deal of work.”
“It is not my furniture, but Mr. Chester’s, my rector,” said the curate; “we never had very much of our own.”
“It must give the maid a deal of work all the same, and that’s why the girls have so much housemaiding to do, I suppose,” said Miss Maydew sharply. “To tell the truth, that was what I came to speak of. I am not at all satisfied, Mr. St. John, about the girls.”
“The girls? They are quite well, I think, quite well,” said Mr. St. John meekly. He was not accustomed to be spoken to in this abrupt tone.
“I was not thinking of their health; of course they are well; how could they help being well with so much fresh air, and a cow, I suppose, and all that? I don’t like the way they are managed. They are nice girls, but that Miss Brown knows just about as much how to manage them as you – as that table does, Mr. St. John. It is ridiculous. She has no control over them. Now, I’ll tell you what is my opinion. They ought to be sent to school.”
“To school!” he said, startled. “I thought girls were not sent to school.”
“Ah, that is when they have a nice mother to look after them – a woman like poor Hester; but what are those two doing? You don’t look after them yourself, Mr. St. John?”
“I suppose it can’t be said that I do,” he said, with hesitation: “perhaps it is wrong, but what do I know of girls’ education? and then they all said I should have Miss Brown.”
“Who are ‘they all?’ You should have asked me. I should never have said Miss Brown. Not that I’ve anything against her. She is a good, silly creature enough – but pay attention to me, please, Mr. St. John. I say the girls should go to school.”
“It is very likely you may be right,” said Mr. St. John, who always yielded to impetuosity, “but what should I do with Miss Brown?”
“Send her away – nothing could be more easy – tell her that you shall not want her services any longer. You must give her a month’s notice, unless she was engaged in some particular way.”
“I don’t know,” said the curate in trepidation. “Bless me, it will be very unpleasant. What will she do? What do you think she would say? Don’t you think, on the whole, we get on very well as we are? I have always been told that it was bad to send girls to school; and besides it costs a great deal of money,” he added after a pause. “I don’t know if I could afford it; that is a thing which must be thought of,” he said, with a sense of relief.
“I have thought of that,” said Miss Maydew triumphantly: “the girls interest me, and I will send them to school. Oh, don’t say anything. I don’t do it for thanks. To me their improving will be my recompense. Put all anxiety out of your mind; I will undertake the whole – ”
“But, Miss Maydew!”
“There are no buts in the matter,” said Aunt Jane, rising; “I have quite settled it. I have saved a nice little sum, which will go to them eventually, and I should like to see them in a position to do me credit. Don’t say anything, Mr. St. John. Hester’s girls! – poor Hester! – no one in the world can have so great a claim upon me; and no one can tell so well as I what they lost in poor Hester, Mr. St. John – and what you lost as well.”
The curate bowed his head. Though he was so tranquil and resigned, the name of his Hester went to his heart, with a dull pang, perhaps – for he was growing old, and had a calm unimpassioned spirit – but still with a pang, and no easy words of mourning would come to his lip.
“Yes, indeed,” said Aunt Jane, “I don’t know that I ever knew any one like her; and her girls shall have justice, they shall have justice, Mr. St. John. I mean to make it my business to find them a school – but till you have heard from me finally,” she added, turning back after she had reached the door, “it will be as well not to say anything to Miss Brown.”
“Oh no,” said the curate eagerly, “it will be much best to say nothing to Miss Brown.”
Miss Maydew nodded at him confidentially as she went away, and left him in all the despair of an unexpected crisis. He say anything to Miss Brown! What should he say? That he had no further occasion for her services? But how could he say so to a lady? Had he not always gone upon the amiable ground that she had done him the greatest favour in coming there to teach his daughters, and now to dismiss her – to dismiss her! Mr. St. John’s heart sunk down, down to the very heels of his boots. It was all very easy for Aunt Jane, who had not got it to do; but he, he! how was he ever to summon his courage and say anything like this to Miss Brown?
CHAPTER IV
MISS BROWN
MR. STMR. ST. John’s mind was very much moved by this conversation. It threw a shadow over his harmless life. He could not say good night or good morning to Miss Brown without feeling in his very soul the horror of the moment when he should have to say to her that he had no further need for her services. To say it to Hannah in the kitchen would have been dreadful enough, but in that case he could at least have employed Miss Brown, or even Cicely, to do it for him, whereas now he could employ no one. Sometimes, from the mere attraction of horror, he would rehearse it under his breath when he sat up late, and knew that no one was up in the rectory, or when he was alone on some quiet road at the other extremity of the parish. “I shall have no further need for your services.” Terrible formula! the mere thought of which froze the blood in his veins. This horror made him less sociable than he had ever been. He took no more of those evening walks which he had once liked in his quiet way, – when, the two girls speeding on before, with their restless feet, he would saunter along the twilight road after them, at ease and quiet, with his hands under his coat-tails; while little Miss Brown, generally a step or two behind, came trotting after him with her small steps, propounding little theological questions or moral doubts upon which she would like to have his opinion. The evening stillness, the shadowy, soft gloom about, the mild, grey mist of imperfect vision that made everything