Margaret Oliphant: The Curate in Charge

“Brighter than that!” said Miss Maydew, seeing across the mists of years a glorified vision of youth, more lovely than Hester had ever been. “Ah, well!” she added with a sigh, “time goes very quickly, girls. Before you know, you will be old, too, and tell the young ones how pretty you were long ago. Yes, Miss Audacity! you mayn’t believe it, but I was pretty, too.”

“Oh yes, I believe it!” cried Mab, relieved from the momentary gravity which had subdued her. “You have a handsome nose still, and not nearly so bad a mouth as most people. I should like to draw you, just as you stood under the beech-tree; that was beautiful!” she cried, clapping her hands. Miss Maydew was pleased. She recollected how she had admired the two young creatures under that far-spreading shade; and it did not seem at all unnatural that they should in their turn have admired her.

“Mabel! Mabel!” said Miss Brown, who knew better, lifting a warning finger. Miss Maydew took up the sketch-book which Cicely had laid on the rough table in the summer-house. “Is this what you were all talking about?” she said. But at this moment the governess withdrew and followed Cicely into the house. She walked through the garden towards the rectory in a very dignified way. She could not stand by and laugh faintly at caricatures of herself as some high-minded people are capable of doing. “I hope Miss Maydew will say what she thinks very plainly,” she said to Cicely, who flew past her in a great hurry with a fresh clean white napkin out of the linen-press. But Cicely was much too busy to reply. As for Mab, I think she would have escaped too, had she been able; but as that was impossible, she stood up very demurely while her old aunt turned over the book, which was a note-book ruled with blue lines, and intended for a more virtuous purpose than that to which it had been appropriated; and it was not until Miss Maydew burst into a short but hearty laugh over a caricature of Miss Brown that Mab ventured to breathe.

“You wicked little thing! Are these yours?” said Miss Maydew; “and how dared you let that poor woman see them? Why, she is there to the life!”

“Oh! Aunt Jane, give me the book! She has never seen them: only a few innocent ones at the beginning. Oh! please give me the book! I don’t want her to see them!” cried Mab.

“You hate her, I suppose?”

“Oh! no, no! give me the book, Aunt Jane! We don’t hate her at all; we like her rather. Oh! please give it me before she comes back!”

“Why do you make caricatures of her, then?” said Miss Maydew, fixing her eyes severely on the girl’s face.

“Because she is such fun!” cried Mab; “because it is such fun. I don’t mean any harm, but if people will look funny, how can I help it? Give me the book, Aunt Jane!”

“I suppose I looked funny too,” said Miss Maydew, “under the beech-tree, fanning myself with my pockethandkerchief. I thought I heard you giggle. Go away, you wicked little thing! Here is your sister coming. I like her a great deal better than you!”

“So she is, a great deal better than me,” said Mab, picking up her book. She stole away, giving herself a serious lecture, as Cicely tripped into the summer-house carrying a tray. “I must not do it again,” she said to herself. “It is silly of me. It is always getting me into scrapes; even papa, when I showed him that one of himself!” Here Mab paused to laugh, for it had been very funny – and then blushed violently; for certainly it was wrong, very wrong to caricature one’s papa. “At all events,” she said under her breath, “I’ll get a book with a lock and key as soon as ever I have any money, and show them only to Cicely; but oh! I must, I must just this once, do Aunt Jane!”

Cicely meanwhile came into the summer-house carrying the tray. “It is not the right time for it, I know,” she said, “but I felt sure you would like a cup of tea. Doesn’t it smell nice – like the hay-fields? Tea is always nice, is it not, Aunt Jane?”

“My 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.”