THE GIRLS AT HOME.
We are so proud in England of having a word which means home, which some
of our neighbours we are pleased to think have not, that, perhaps, it is
a temptation to us to indulge in a general rapture over the word which
has sometimes little foundation in reality. When Cicely and Mab walked
to the rectory together from the station a suppressed excitement was in
their minds. Since they first left for school, they had only come back
for a few days each year, and they had not liked it. Their stepmother
had been very kind, painfully kind; and anxious above measure that they
should find everything as they had left it, and should not be
disappointed or dull; but this very anxiety had made an end of all
natural ease, and they had been glad when the moment came that released
them. Now, poor woman, she had been removed out of their way; they were
going back to take care of their father as they might have done had
there been no second Mrs. St. John; and everything was as it had been,
with the addition of the two babies, innocent little intruders, whom the
girls, you may be sure, could never find it in their hearts to be hard
upon. Cicely and Mab took each others' hands instinctively as they left
the station. It was the first of August, the very prime and glory of
summer; the woods were at their fullest, untouched by any symptom of
decay. The moorland side of the landscape was more wealthy and glorious
still in its flush of heather. The common was not indeed one sheet of
purple, like a Scotch moor; but it was all lighted up between the gorse
bushes with fantastic streaks and bands of colour blazing in the broad
sunshine, and haunted by swarms of bees which made a hum in the air
almost as sweet and all-pervading as the murmur of the sea. As they drew
near the house their hearts began to beat louder. Would there be any
visible change upon it? Would it look as it did when they were
children, or with that indefinable difference which showed in _her_
time? They did not venture to go the familiar way by the garden, but
walked up solemnly like visitors to the front door. It was opened to
them by a new maid, whom they had never seen before, and who demurred
slightly to giving them admittance, "Master ain't in," said the girl;
"yes miss, I know as you're expected," but still she hesitated. This was
not the kind of welcome which the daughters of a house generally
receive. They went in to the house nevertheless, Betsy following them.
The blinds were drawn low over the windows, which were all shut, and
though the atmosphere was stifling with heat, yet it was cold, miserably
cold to Cicely and Mab. Their father's study was the only place that had
any life in it. The rectory seemed full of nothing but old black heavy
furniture, and heavier memories of some chilled and faded past.
"What a dreadful old place it is," said Mab; "it is like coming home to
one's grave," and she sat down on the black haircloth easy-chair and
shivered and cried; though this was coming home, to the house in which
she had been born.
"Now it will be better," said Cicely pulling up the blinds and opening
the window. She had more command of herself than her sister. She let the
sunshine come down in a flood across the dingy carpet, worn with the use
of twenty years.
"Please, miss," said Betsy interposing, "missis would never have the
blinds up in this room 'cause of spoiling the carpet. If master says so,
I don't mind; but till he do----" and here Betsy put up her hand to the
blind.
"Do you venture to meddle with what my sister does?" cried Mab, furious,
springing from her chair.
Cicely only laughed. "You are a good girl to mind what your mistress
said, but we are your mistresses now; you must let the window alone, for
don't you see the carpet is spoiled already? I will answer to papa. What
is it? Do you want anything more?"
"Only this, miss," said Betsy, "as it's the first laugh as has been
heard here for weeks and weeks, and I don't like it neither, seeing as
missis is in her grave only a fortnight to-day."
"I think you are a very good girl," said Cicely: and with that the
tears stood in that changeable young woman's eyes.
No Betsy that ever was heard of could long resist this sort of
treatment. "I tries to be, miss," she said with a curtsy and a whimper.
"Maybe you'd like a cup of tea?" and after following them suspiciously
all over the house, she left them at last on this hospitable intent in
the fading drawing-room, where they had both enshrined the memory of
their mother. Another memory was there now, a memory as faded as the
room, which showed in all kinds of feeble feminine decorations, bits of
modern lace, and worked cushions and foolish foot-stools. The room was
all pinafored and transmogrified, the old dark picture-frames covered
with yellow gauze, and the needlework in crackling semi-transparent
covers.
"This was how she liked things, poor soul! Oh, Mab," cried Cicely, "how
strange that she should die!"
"No stranger than that any one else should die," said Mab, who was more
matter of fact.
"A great deal stranger! It was not strange at all that little Mary
Seymour should die. One saw it in her eyes; she was like an angel; it
was natural; but poor Miss Brown, who was quite happy working cushions
and covering them up, and keeping the sun off the carpets, and making
lace for the brackets! It looks as if there was so little sense or
method in it," said Cicely. "She won't have any cushions to work up
there."
"I dare say there won't be anything to draw up there," said Mab; "and
yet I suppose I shall die too in time."
"When there are the four walls for Leonardo, and Michel Angelo and
Raphael and poor Andrea," said the other. "How you forget! Besides, it
is quite different. Hark! what was that?" she cried, putting up her
hand.
What it was soon became very distinctly evident--a feeble little cry
speedily joined by another, and then a small weak chorus, two voices
entangled together. "No, no; no ladies. Harry no like ladies," mixed
with a whimpering appeal to "papa, papa."
"Come and see the pretty ladies. Harry never saw such pretty ladies,"
said the encouraging voice of Betsy in the passage.
The girls looked at each other, and grew red. They had made up their
minds about a great many things, but never how they were to deal with
the two children. Then Betsy appeared at the door, pushing it open
before her with the tea-tray she carried. To her skirts were hanging two
little boys, clinging to her, yet resisting her onward motion, and
carried on by it in spite of themselves. They stared at the new-comers
with big blue eyes wide open, awed into silence. They were very small
and very pale, with light colourless limp locks falling over their
little black dresses. The girls on their side stared silently too. There
was not a feature in the children's faces which resembled their elder
sisters. They were both little miniatures of Miss Brown.
"So these are the children," said Cicely, making a reluctant step
forward; to which Harry and Charley responded by a renewed clutch at
Betsy's dress.
"Yes, miss; them's the children! and darlings they be," said Betsy,
looking fondly at them as she set down the tea. Cicely made another step
forward slowly, and held out her hands to them; when the little boys set
up a scream which rang through the house, and hiding their faces
simultaneously in Betsy's gown, howled to be taken away. Mab put up her
hands to her ears, but Cicely, more anxious to do her duty, made another
attempt. She stooped down and kissed, or tried to kiss the little
tear-stained faces, to which caress each small brother replied by
pushing her away with a repeated roar.
"Don't you take no notice, miss. Let 'em alone and they'll get used to
you in time," said Betsy.
"Go away, go away! Harry no like 'oo," screamed the spokesman brother.
No one likes to be repulsed even by a child. Cicely stumbled to her feet
very red and uncomfortable. She stood ruefully looking after them as
they were carried off after a good preliminary "shake," one in each of
Betsy's red hands.
"There is our business in life," she said in a solemn tone. "Oh, Mab,
Mab, what did papa want with these children? All the trouble of them
will come on you and me."
Mab looked at her sister with a look of alarm, which changed, however,
into laughter at sight of Cicely's solemn looks and the dreary
presentiment in her face.
"You are excellent like that," she said; "and if you had only seen how
funny you all looked when the little demons began to cry. They will do
for models at all events, and I'll take to painting children. They say
it's very good practice, and nursery pictures always sell."
These lighter suggestions did not, however, console Cicely. She walked
about the room with clasped hands and a very serious face, neglecting
her tea.
"Papa will never trouble himself about them," she said half to herself;
"it will all fall on Mab and me. And boys! that they should be boys. We
shall never be rich enough to send them to the University. Girls we
might have taught ourselves; but when you think of Oxford and
Cambridge----"
"We can't tell," said Mab; "how do you know I shan't turn out a great
painter, and be able to send them wherever you like? for I am the
brother and you are the sister, Ciss. You are to keep my house and have
the spending of all my money. So don't be gloomy, please, but pour out
some tea. I wish, though, they were not quite so plain."
"So like their mother," said Cicely with a sigh.
"And so disagreeable; but it is funny to hear one speak for both as if
the two were Harry. I am glad they are not girls. To give them a share
of all we have I don't mind; but to teach them! with those white little
pasty faces----"
"One can do anything when one makes up one's mind to it," said Cicely
with a sigh.
At this moment the hall door opened, and after an interval Mr. St. John
came in with soft steps. He had grown old in these last years; bowed
down with age and troubles. He came up to his daughters and kissed them,
laying his hand upon their heads.
"I am very glad you have come home," he said, in a voice which was
pathetic in its feebleness. "You are all I have now."
"Not all you have, papa," said Mab; "we have just seen the little boys."
A momentary colour flushed over his pale face. "Ah, the babies," he
said. "I am afraid they will be a great deal of trouble to you, my
dears."
Cicely and Mab looked at each other, but they did not say anything--they
were afraid to say something which they ought not to say. And what could
he add after that? He took the cup of tea they offered him, and drank
it standing, his tall frame with a stoop in it, which was partly age and
partly weakness, coming against one tall window and shutting out the
light. "But that you are older looking," he said at last, "all this time
might seem like a dream."
"A sad dream, papa," said Cicely, not knowing what to say.
"I cannot say that, my dear. I thank God I have had a great deal of
happiness in my life; because we are sad for the moment we must not
forget to thank Him for all His mercies," said Mr. St. John; and then
with a change in his voice, he added, "Your aunt sends me word that she
is coming soon to see you. She is a very strong woman for her years; I
look older than she does; and it is a trouble to me now to go to town
and back in one day."
"You have not been ill, papa?"
"No, Cicely, not ill; a little out of my usual," he said, "that is all.
Now you are here, we shall fall into our quiet way again. The changes
God sends we must accept; but the little worries are trying, my dear. I
am getting old, and am not so able to brave them; but all will be well
now you are here."
"We shall do all we can," said Cicely; "but you must remember, papa, we
are not used to housekeeping, and if we make mistakes at first----"
"I am not afraid of your mistakes," said Mr. St. John, looking at her
with a faint smile. He had scarcely looked full at her before, and his
eyes dwelt upon her face with a subdued pleasure. "You are your mother
over again," he said. "You will be a blessing to me, Cicely, as she
was."
The two girls looked at him strangely, with a flood of conflicting
thoughts. How dared he speak of their mother? Was he relieved to be able
to think of their mother without Miss Brown coming in to disturb his
thoughts? If natural reverence had not restrained them, what a
cross-examination they would have put him to! but as it was, their eager
thoughts remained unsaid. "I will do all I can, papa, and so will Mab,"
said Cicely, faltering. And he put down his cup, and said, "God bless
you, my dears," and went to his study as if they had never been absent
at all, only out perhaps, as Mab said, for a rather long walk.
"I don't think he can have cared for her," said Cicely; "he is glad to
get back to the idea of mamma; I am sure that is what he means. He is
always kind, and of course he was kind to her; but there is a sort of
relief in his tone--a sort of ease."
"That is all very well for us," said Mab; "but if you will think of it,
it seems a little hard on poor Miss Brown."
This staggered Cicely, who loved justice. "But I think she should not
have married him," she said. "It was easy to see that anybody could have
married him who wished. I can see that now, though I never thought of it
then. And, kind as it was of Aunt Jane, perhaps we should not have left
him unprotected. You ought to have gone to school, Mab, because of your
talent, and I should have stayed at home."
They decided, however, after a few minutes, that it was needless to
discuss this possibility now, so long after it had become an
impossibility. And then they went upstairs to take off their
travelling-dresses and make themselves feel at home. When they came down
again, with their hair smooth, Cicely carrying her work-basket and Mab
her sketch-book, and seated themselves in the old faded room, from
which the sunshine had now slid away, as the sun got westward, a
bewildered feeling took possession of them. Had they ever been absent?
had anything happened since that day when Aunt Jane surprised them in
their pinafores? The still house, so still in the deep tranquillity of
the country, after the hum of their schoolroom life and the noises of a
town, seemed to turn round with them, as they looked out upon the
garden, upon which no change seemed to have passed. "I declare," cried
Mab, "there is exactly the same number of apples--and the same branch of
that old-plum-tree hanging loose from the wall!"
Thus the first evening passed like a dream. Mr. St. John came from his
study to supper, and he talked a little, just as he had been in the
habit of talking long ago, without any allusion to the past. He told
them a few pieces of news about the parish, and that he would like them
to visit the school. "It has been very well looked after lately," he
said. Perhaps this meant by his wife--perhaps it did not; the girls
could not tell. Then Betsy came in for prayers, along with a small
younger sister of hers who had charge of the little boys; and by ten
o'clock, as at Miss Blandy's, the door was locked, and the peaceful
house wrapped in quiet. The girls looked out of their window upon the
soft stillness with the strangest feelings. The garden paths were
clearly indicated by a feeble veiled moon, and the trees which thickened
in clouds upon the horizon. There was not a sound anywhere in the
tranquil place except the occasional bark of that dog, who somewhere,
far or near, always indicates existence in a still night in the country.
The stillness fell upon their souls. "He never asked what we were going
to do," said Mab, for they were silenced too, and spoke to each other
only now and then, chilled out of the superabundance of their own
vitality. "But he thinks with me that the children are to be our
business in life," said Cicely, and then they went to bed, taking refuge
in the darkness. For two girls so full of conscious life, tingling to
the finger points with active faculties and power, it was a chilly
home-coming, yet not so unusual either. When the young creatures come
home, with their new lives in their hands to make something of, for good
or evil, do not we often expect them to settle down to the level of the
calm old lives which are nearly worn out, and find fault with them if it
is a struggle? Mr. St. John felt that it was quite natural his girls
should come home and keep his house for him, and take the trouble of the
little boys, and visit the schools--so naturally that when he had said,
"Now you are here, we shall fall into our quiet way again," it seemed to
him that everything was said that needed to be said.
In the morning the children were found less inaccessible, and made
friends with by dint of lumps of sugar and bits of toast, of which Mab
was prodigal. They were very tiny, delicate, and colourless, with pale
hair and pale eyes; but they were not wanting in some of the natural
attractions of children. Charley was the backward one, and had little
command of language. Harry spoke for both; and I will not say it was
easy for these girls, unaccustomed to small children, to understand even
him. Mr. St. John patted their heads and gave them a smile each by way
of blessing; but he took little farther notice of the children. "I
believe Annie, the little maid, is very kind to them," he said. "I
cannot bear to hear them crying, my dears; but now you are here all
will go well."
"But, papa," said Cicely, "will it be right for us to stay at home, when
you have them to provide for, and there is so little money?"
"Right for you to stay? Where could you be so well as at home?" said the
curate, perturbed. The girls looked at each other, and this time it was
Mab who was bold, and ventured to speak.
"Papa, it is not that. Supposing that we are best at home" (Mab said
this with the corners of her mouth going down, for it was not her own
opinion), "yet there are other things to consider. We should be earning
something----"
Mr. St. John got up almost impatiently for him. "I have never been left
to want," he said. "I have been young, and now I am old, but I have
never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.
Providence will raise up friends for the children; and we have always
had plenty. If there is enough for me, there is enough for you."
And he went out of the room as nearly angry as it was possible for his
mild nature to be. Cicely and Mab once more looked at each other
wondering. "Papa is crazy, I think," said Mab, who was the most
self-assertive; but Cicely only heaved a sigh, and went out to the hall
to brush his hat for him, as she remembered her mother used to do. Mr.
St. John liked this kind of tendance. "You are a good girl, Cicely; you
are just such another as your mother," he said, as he took the hat from
her; and Cicely divined that the late Mrs. St. John had not shown him
this attention, which I think pleased her on the whole.
"But, papa, I am afraid Mab was right," she said. "You must think it
over, and think what is best for Mab."
"Why should she be different from you?" said Mr. St. John, feeling in
his breast pocket for the familiar prayer-book which lay there. It was
more important to him to make sure it was safe, than to decide what to
do with his child.
"I don't know why, but we _are_ different. Dear papa, you must think, if
you please, what is best."
"It is nonsense, Cicely; she must stay where she is, and make herself
happy. A good girl is always happy at home," said Mr. St. John; "and, of
course, there is plenty--plenty for all of us. You must not detain me,
my dear, nor talk about business this first morning. Depend upon it,"
said Mr. St. John, raising his soft, feeble hand to give emphasis to his
words, "it is always best for you to be at home."
What a pity that children and women are not always convinced when the
head of the house thus lays down the law! Cicely went back into the
dining-room where they had breakfasted, shaking her head, without being
aware of the gesture. "Why should I depend upon it?" she said. "Depend
upon it! I may be quite willing to do it, for it is my duty; but why
should I depend upon it as being the best?"
"What are you saying, Cicely?"
"Nothing, dear; only papa is rather odd. Does he think that two hundred
a year is a great fortune? or that two of us, and two of them, and two
maids (though they are little ones), and himself, can get on upon two
hundred a year?"
"I must paint," said Mab; "I must paint! I'll tell you what I shall do.
You are a great deal more like a Madonna than most of the women who have
sat for her. I will paint a Holy Family from you and _them_---- They are
funny little pale things, but we could light them up with a little
colour; and they are _real_ babies, you know," Mab said, looking at
them seriously, with her head on one side, as becomes a painter. She had
posed the two children on the floor: the one seated firmly with his
little legs stretched out, the other leaning against him; while she
walked up and down, with a pencil in her hand, studying them. "Stay
still a moment longer, and I will give you a lump of sugar," she said.
"Harry like sugar," said the small spokesman, looking up at her. Charley
said nothing. He had his thumb, and half the little hand belonging to
it, in his mouth, and sucked it with much philosophy. "Or perhaps I
might make you a peasant woman," said Mab, "with one of them on your
back. They are nature, Ciss. You know how Mr. Lake used to go on, saying
nature was what I wanted. Well, here it is."
"I think you are as mad as papa," said Cicely, impatient; "but I must
order the dinner and look after the things. That's nature for me. Oh,
dear--oh, dear! We shall not long be able to have any dinner, if we go
on with such a lot of servants. Two girls, two boys, two maids, and two
hundred a year! You might as well try to fly," said Cicely, shaking her
pretty head.