THE ARTIST AND THE HOUSEKEEPER.
I do not suppose that Cicely St. John had really any hope in her new
acquaintance, or believed, when she looked at the matter reasonably,
that his self-renunciation, if he had the strength of mind to carry it
out, would really secure for her father the living of Brentburn. But yet
a certain amount of faith is natural at her years, and she was vaguely
strengthened and exhilarated by that suppressed expectation of something
pleasant that might possibly happen, which is so great an element in
human happiness; and, with this comfort in her soul, went about her
work, preparing for the worst, which, to be sure, notwithstanding her
hope, was, she felt, inevitable. Mab, when the stranger's enthusiastic
adoption of her sister's suggestion was told to her, accepted it for her
part with delight, as a thing settled. A true artist has always more or
less a practical mind. However strong his imagination may be, he does
not confine himself to fancies, or even words, but makes something
tangible and visible out of it, and this faculty more or less shapes the
fashion of his thinking. Mab, who possessed in addition that delightful
mixture of matter-of-factness which is peculiar to womankind, seized
upon the hope and made it into reality. She went to her work as gaily as
if all the clouds had been in reality dispersed from her path. This time
it was little Annie, the nursemaid--Cicely having interfered to protect
the babies from perpetual posing--who supplied her with the necessary
"life." Annie did not much like it. She would have been satisfied,
indeed, and even proud, had "her picture" been taken in her best frock,
with all her Sunday ribbons; but to be thrust into a torn old dingy
garment, with bare feet, filled the little handmaiden with disgust and
rage great enough for a full-grown woman. "Folks will think as I hain't
got no decent clothes," she said; and Mab's injudicious consolation, to
the effect that "folks would never see the picture," did not at all mend
the matter. Cicely, however, drew up her slight person, and "looked Miss
St. John," according to Mab's description; and Annie was cowed. There
were at least twenty different representations in Mab's sketch-books of
moments in which Cicely had looked Miss St. John; and it was Mab's
conviction in life as well as in art that no opponent could stand before
such a demonstration. Bare-footed, in her ragged frock, Annie did not
look an amiable young person, which, I am ashamed to say, delighted the
artist. "She will do for the naughty little girl in the fairy tale, the
one with toads and frogs dropping from her lips," cried Mab, in high
glee. "And if it comes well I shall send it to Mr. Mildmay, to show we
feel how kind he is."
"Wait till he has been kind," said Cicely, shaking her head. "I always
liked the naughty little girl best, not that complacent smiling creature
who knew she had been good, and whom everybody praised. Oh, what a pity
that the world is not like a fairy tale! where the good are always
rewarded, and even the naughty, when they are sorry. If we were to help
any number of old women, what would it matter now?"
"But I suppose," said Mab, somewhat wistfully, for she distrusted her
sister's words, which she did not understand, and was afraid people
might think Cicely Broad Church, "I suppose whatever may happen in the
meantime, it all comes right in the end?"
"Papa is not so very far from the end, and it has not come right for
him."
"O Cicely, how can you talk so! Papa is not so old. He will live years
and years yet!" cried Mab, her eyes filling.
"I hope so. Oh, I hope so! I did not think of merely living. But he
cannot get anything very great now, can he, to make up for so long
waiting? So long--longer," said Cicely, with a little awe, thinking of
that enormous lapse of time, "than we have been alive!"
"If he gets the living, he will not want anything more," said Mab,
blithely working away with her charcoal. "How delightful it will be!
More than double what we have now? Fancy! After all, you will be able to
furnish as you said."
"But not in amber satin," said Cicely, beguiled into a smile.
"In soft, soft Venetian stuff, half green, half blue, half no colour at
all. Ah! she has moved! Cicely, Cicely, go and talk to her, for heaven's
sake, or my picture will be spoilt!"
"If you please, miss, I can't stop here no longer. It's time as I was
looking after the children. How is Betsy to remember in the middle of
her cooking the right time to give 'em their cod-liver oil?"
"I'll go and look after the children," said Cicely. "What you have got
to do, Annie, is to stop here."
Upon which Annie burst into floods of tears, and fell altogether out of
pose. "There ain't no justice in it!" she said. "I'm put up here to look
like a gipsy or a beggar; and mother will never get over it, after all
her slaving and toiling to get me decent clothes!"
Thus it will be perceived that life studies in the domestic circle are
very difficult to manage. After a little interval of mingled coaxing and
scolding, something like the lapsed attitude was recovered, and Annie
brought back into obedience. "If you will be good, I'll draw a picture
of you in your Sunday frock to give to your mother," said Mab--a
promise which had too good an effect upon her model, driving away the
clouds from her countenance; and Cicely went away to administer the
cod-liver oil. It was not a very delightful office, and I think that now
and then, at this crisis, it seemed to Cicely that Mab had the best of
it, with her work, which was a delight to her, and which occupied both
her mind and her fingers; care seemed to fly the moment she got that
charcoal in her hand. There was no grudge in this sense of disadvantage.
Nature had done it, against which there is no appeal. I don't think,
however, that care would have weighed heavily on Mab, even if she had
not been an artist. She would have hung upon Cicely all the same if her
occupation had been but needlework, and looked for everything from her
hands.
But it was not until Annie was released, and could throw off the ragged
frock in which she had been made picturesque, and return to her charge,
that Cicely could begin the more important business that waited for her.
She took this quite quietly, not thinking it necessary to be on the
look-out for a grievance, and took her work into the nursery, where the
two babies were playing in a solemn sort of way. They had their
playthings laid out upon the floor, and had some mild little squabbles
over them. "Zat's Harry's!" she heard again and again, mingled with
faint sounds of resistance. The children were very mysterious to Cicely.
She was half afraid of them as mystic incomprehensible creatures, to
whom everybody in heaven and earth did injustice. After a while she put
down her work and watched them play. They had a large box of bricks
before them, playthings which Cicely herself well remembered, and the
play seemed to consist in one little brother diving into the long box in
search of one individual brick, which, when he produced it, the other
snatched at, saying, "Zat's Harry's." Charley, who wanted both his hands
to swim with on the edge of the box, did not have his thumb in his mouth
this time; but he was silenced by the unvarying claim. They did not
laugh, nor did they cry, as other children do; but sat over the box of
bricks, in a dumb conflict, of which it was impossible to tell whether
it was strife or play.
"Are they all Harry's?" asked Cicely, suddenly moved to interfere. The
sound of the voice startled the little creatures on the floor. They
turned right round, and contemplated her from the carpet with round and
wondering eyes.
"Zat's Harry's," said the small boy over again with the iteration common
to children. Charley was not prepared with any reply. He put his thumb
into his mouth in default of any more extended explanation. Cicely
repeated her question--I fear raising her voice, for patience was not
Cicely's forte; whereupon Harry's eyes, who was the boldest, got bigger
and bigger, and redder and redder, with fright, and Charley began to
whimper. This irritated the sister much. "You little silly things!" she
said, "I am not scolding you. What are you crying for? Come here, Harry,
and tell me why you take all the bricks? They are Charley's too."
Children are the angels of life; but they are sometimes little demons
for all that. To see these two pale little creatures sitting half dead
with fright, gazing at her sunny young countenance as if she were an
ogre, exasperated Cicely. She jumped up, half laughing, half furious,
and at that movement the babies set up a unanimous howl of terror. This
fairly daunted her, courageous as she was. She went back to her seat
again, having half a mind to cry too. "I am not going to touch you,"
said Cicely piteously. "Why are you frightened at me? If you will come
here I will tell you a story." She was too young to have the maternal
instinct so warmly developed as to make her all at once, without rhyme
or reason, "fond of" her little half-brothers; but she was anxious to do
her duty, and deeply wounded that they did not "take to her." Children,
she said to herself with an internal whisper of self-pity, had always
taken to her before; and she was not aware of that instinctive
resistance, half defiance, half fright, which seems to repel the
child-dependant from those whose duty it is to take care of it--most
unreasonable, often most cruel, but yet apparently most universal of
sentiments. Is it that the very idea of a benefactor, even before the
mind is capable of comprehending what it is, sets nature on edge? This
was rather a hard lesson for the girl, especially as, while they were
still howling, little Annie burst in indignant, and threw herself down
beside the children, who clung to her, sobbing, one on each side. "You
have made 'em cry, miss," cried Annie, "and missus's orders was as they
was never to be allowed to cry. It is very dangerous for boys; it busts
their little insides. Did she frighten 'em, then? the naughty lady.
Never mind, never mind, my precious! Annie's here."
To see this child spread out upon the floor with these chicks under her
wings would have been amusing to a cool spectator. But Cicely did not
take it in that light. She waited till the children were pacified, and
had returned to their play, and then she took the little nursemaid by
the arm, and led her to the door. "You are not to enter this room again
or come near the children," she said, in a still voice which made Annie
tremble. "If you make a noise I will beat you. Go downstairs to your
sister, and I will see you afterwards. Not a word! I have nothing more
to say to you here."
Cicely went back again to her seat trembling with the excitement of the
moment, and then said to herself, what a fool she was! but, oh! what a
much greater fool Miss Brown had been to leave this legacy of trouble to
two girls who had never done any harm to her. "Though, I suppose,"
Cicely added to herself with a sense of justice, "she was not thinking
about us." And indeed it was not likely that poor Mrs. St. John had
brought these babies into the world solely to bother her husband's
daughters. Poor Cicely, who had a thousand other things to do, and who
already felt that it was impolitic, though necessary, to dismiss Annie,
pondered long, gazing at those pale-faced and terrible infants, how she
was to win them over, which looked as hard as any of her other painful
pieces of business. At last some kind fairy put it into her head to
sing: at which the two turned round once more upon their bases solemnly,
and stared at her, intermitting their play till the song was finished.
Then an incident occurred almost unparalleled in the nursery chronicles
of Brentburn. Charley took his thumb out of his mouth, and looking up at
her with his pale eyes, said of his own accord, "Adain."
"Come here then, and sit on my lap," said Cicely, holding out her hand.
There was a momentary struggle between terror and gathering confidence,
and then pushing himself up by the big box of bricks Charley approached
gradually, keeping a wary eye upon her movements. Once on her lap,
however, the little adventurer felt himself comfortable. She was soft
and pleasant, and had a bigger shoulder to support him and a longer arm
to enfold him than Annie. He leant back against her, feeling the charm
of that softness and sweetness, though he did not know how. "Adain,"
said Charley; and put his thumb in his mouth with all the feelings of a
connoisseur in a state of perfect bodily ease prepared to enjoy the
_morceau_ specially given at his desire.
Thus Cicely conquered the babies once for all. Harry, too much astounded
by thus seeing his lead taken from him to make any remonstrance,
followed his brother in dumb surprise, and stood against her, leaning on
her knee. They made the prettiest group; for, as Mab said, even when
they are ugly, how pretty children are! and they "compose" so
beautifully with a pretty young woman, making even a commonplace mother
into a Madonna and Lady of Blessing. Cicely sang them a song, so very
low down in the scale at once both of music and of poetry that I dare
not shock the refined reader by naming it, especially after that
well-worn comparison; and this time both Harry and Charley joined in
the encore, the latter too happy to think of withdrawing that cherished
thumb from his mouth, murmuring thickly, "Adain."
"But, oh, what a waste of time--what a waste of time it will be!" cried
poor Cicely, when she took refuge in the garden, putting the delicate
children to play upon a great rug, stretched on the grass. "To be sure
there will be one mouth less to feed, which is always something. You
must help me a little while I write my letters, Mab."
"Who are you going to write to?" said Mab, with colloquial incorrectness
which would have shocked out of their senses the Miss Blandys, and all
the excellent persons concerned in bringing her up. "Oh yes, I will try
to help; but won't you forgive Annie, just for this little time, and let
her stay?"
"I can't be defied in my own house," said Cicely, erecting her head with
an air which frightened Mab herself; "and I must take to it sooner or
later. Wherever we go, it is I that must look after them. Well! it will
be a trouble at first; but I shall like it when I get fond of them. Mab,
we ought to be fond of them now."
Mab looked at the children, and then laughed. "I don't hate them," she
said; "they are such funny little things, as if they had been born about
a hundred years before their time. I believe, really, they are not
children at all, but old, old men, that know a great deal more than we
do. I am sure that Charley could say something very wonderful if he
liked. He has a great deal in him, if he would but take his thumb out of
his mouth."
"Charley is my boy," said Cicely, brightening up; "he is the one I like
best."
"I like him best, too. He is the funniest. Are you going to write
there?"
"I must keep my eye upon them," said Cicely, with great solemnity. She
was pleased with her victory, and felt it to be of the most prodigious
importance that she should not lose the "influence" she had gained; for
she was silly, as became her age, as well as wise. She had brought out
her little desk--a very commonplace little article, indeed, of rosewood,
with brass bindings--and seated herself under the old mulberry-tree,
with the wind ruffling her papers, and catching in the short curling
locks about her forehead. (N.B.--Don't suppose, dear reader, that she
had cut them short; those stray curls were carefully smoothed away under
the longer braids when she brushed her hair; but the breeze caught them
in a way which vexed Cicely as being untidy). It was as pretty a garden
scene as you could see; the old mulberry bending down its heavy
branches, the babies on the rug at the girl's feet; but yet, when you
look over Cicely's shoulder, a shadow falls upon the pretty scene. She
had two letters to write, and something still less agreeable than her
letters--an advertisement for the _Guardian_. This was very difficult,
and brought many a sigh from her young breast.
"'An elderly clergyman who has filled the office of curate for a very
long time in one parish, finding it now necessary to make a change,
desires to find a similar----'"
"Do you think that will do?" said Mab. "It is as if poor papa were a
butler, or something--'filled the office of curate for a long time in
one parish'--it does not sound nice."
"We must not be bound by what sounds nice," said Cicely. "It is not
nice, in fact--is it? How hard it is to put even such a little thing as
this as one ought! Will this do better?--'A clergyman, who has long
occupied the position of curate in charge, in a small parish, wishes to
hear of a similar----' What, Mab? I cannot say situation, can I? that
is like a butler again. Oh, dear, dear; it is so very much like a butler
altogether. Tell me a word."
"Position," said Mab.
"But I have just said position. 'A clergyman who has long held the--an
_appointment_ as curate in charge'--there, that is better--'wishes to
hear of a similar position in a small parish.' I think that will do."
"Isn't there a Latin word? _Locum_ something or other; would not that be
more dignified?" said Mab.
"_Locum tenens_. I prefer English," said Cicely; "and now I suppose we
must say something about his opinions. Poor dear papa! I am sure I do
not know whether he is High, or Low, or Broad."
"Not Broad," said Mab, pointedly; for she was very orthodox. "Say sound;
I have often seen that, and it does not commit you to anything,--sound,
but not extreme, like Miss Blandy's clergyman."
"'Of sound, but not extreme principles,'" wrote Cicely. "That sounds a
little strange, for you might say that a man who could not tell a lie,
but yet did not mind a fib, was sound, but not extreme. 'Church
principles'--is that better? But I don't like that either. Stop, I have
it--'He is a sound, but not extreme Churchman'--that is the very
thing--'and has much experience' (Ah, poor papa!) 'in managing a parish.
Apply'--but that is another question. Where ought they to apply? We
cannot give, I suppose, the full name and address here?"
"I wonder if any one will apply? But, Cicely, suppose all comes right,
as I am sure it will, you may be deceiving some one, making them
think--Here is the very person I want; and then how disappointed they
will be!"
"Oh, if there is only _their_ disappointment to think of! Mab, you must
not think there is any reliance to be put on Mr. Mildmay. He meant it;
yes, tears came into his eyes," cried Cicely, with a look of gratitude
and pleasure in her own. "But when he goes back among those Oxford men,
those dons, do you think they will pay any attention to him? They will
laugh at him; they will say he is a Quixote; they will turn it all into
fun, or think it his folly."
"Why should Oxford dons be so much worse than other men?" said Mab,
surprised. "Papa is an Oxford man--he is not hard-hearted. Dons, I
suppose, are just like other people?"
"No," said Cicely, who was arguing against herself, struggling against
the tide of fictitious hope, which sometimes threatened to carry her
away. "They live by themselves among their books; they have nobody
belonging to them; their hearts dry up, and they don't care for common
troubles. Oh, I know it: they are often more heathens than Christians. I
have no faith in those sort of people. He will have a struggle with
them, and then he will find it to be of no use. I am as sure as if it
had happened already," cried Cicely, her bright eyes sparkling indignant
behind her tears.
"At least we need not think them so bad till we know," said Mab, more
charitably.
Cicely had excited herself by this impassioned statement, in which
indeed the Oxford men were innocent sufferers enough, seeing that she
knew nothing about them. "I must not let myself believe it; I dare not
let myself believe it," she said in her heart; "but, oh! if by chance
things did happen _so_!" What abundant compensation, what lavish
apology, did this impetuous young woman feel herself ready to offer to
those maligned dons!
The advertisement was at last fairly written out, with the exception of
the address to be given. "Papa may surely tell me where they are to
apply," Cicely said, though with doubts in her mind as to whether he was
good even for this; and then she wrote her letters, one of which was in
Mr. St. John's name to the lawyer who had written to him about the
furniture, asking that the sale might not take place until the curate's
half-year, which ended in the end of September, should be out. Mr. St.
John would not do this himself. "Why should I ask any favour of those
people who do not know me?" he said; but he had at length consented that
Cicely might write "if she liked;" and in any case the lawyer's letter
had to be answered. Cicely made this appeal as business-like as
possible. "I wonder how a man would write who did not mind much--to whom
this was only a little convenience," she said to her sister. "I don't
want to go and ask as if one was asking a favour of a friend--as if we
cared."
"But we do care; and it would be a favour----"
"Never mind. I wish we knew what a man would say that was quite
independent and did not care. 'If it is the same to you, it would be
more convenient for me not to have the furniture disturbed till the 22nd
of September'--that is the kind of thing. We girls always make too much
of a favour of everything," said Cicely, writing; and she produced an
admirable imitation of a business letter, to which she appended her own
signature, "Cecil St. John," which was also her father's, with great
boldness. The curate's handwriting was almost more womanlike than hers,
for Cicely's generation are not taught to write Italian hands, and I do
not think the lawyer suspected the sex of the production. When she had
finished this, she wrote upon another sheet of paper, "My dear Aunt, I
am----" and then she stopped sharply. "It is cool now, let us take them
out for a walk on the common," she said, shutting up her desk. "I can
finish this to-night."
It was not, however, the walk on the common Cicely wanted, but to hide
from her sister that the letter to Aunt Jane was much less easy than
even those other dolorous pieces of business. Poor Cicely looked upon
the life before her with a shudder. To live alone in some new place,
where nobody knew her, as nursemaid to these babies, and attendant upon
her father, without her sweet companion, the little sister, who, though
so near in age, had always been the protected one, the reliant dependent
nature, believing in Cicely, and giving her infinite support by that
belief! How could she do it? Yet she herself, who felt it most, must
insist upon it; must be the one to arrange and settle it all, as so
often happens. It would not be half so painful to Mab as to Cicely; yet
Mab would be passive in it, and Cicely active; and she could not write
under Mab's smiling eyes betraying the sacrifice it cost her. Mab
laughed at her sister's impetuosity, and concluded that it was exactly
like Cicely to tire of her work all in a moment, and dash into something
else. And, accordingly, the children's out-door apparel was got from the
nursery, and the girls put on their hats, and strayed out by the garden
door upon the common, with its heathery knolls and furze bushes. Harry
and Charley had never in all their small lives had such a walk as this.
The girls mounted them upon their shoulders, and ran races with them,
Charley against Harry, till first one twin, and then the other, was
beguiled into shrill little gusts of laughter: after which they were
silent--themselves frightened by the unusual sound. But when the races
ended, Charley, certainly the hero of the day, opened his mouth and
spoke, and said "Adain!" and this time when they laughed the babies were
not frightened. Then they were set down and rolled upon the soft grass,
and throned in mossy seats among the purple fragrant heather. What an
evening it was! The sky all ablaze with the sunset, with clouds of rosy
flame hanging like canopies over the faint delicious openings of that
celestial green which belongs to a summer evening. The curate, coming
from a distant round into the parish, which had occupied him all the
day, found them on the grass under the big beech-tree, watching the glow
of colour in the west. He had never seen his girls "taking to" his
babies before so kindly, and the old man was glad.
"But it is quite late enough to have them out; they have been used to
such early hours," he said.
"And Harry wants his tea," piped that small hero, with a half whimper.
Then the girls jumped up, and looked at each other, and Cicely grew
crimson. Here was a beginning to make, an advantage terrible to think
of, to be given to the dethroned Annie, who no doubt was enjoying it
keenly. Cicely had already forgotten the children's tea!