They had a peep at the sea from their window, and they had their youth--what could any one desire more? In the winter nights, when it was cold sitting up in their fireless room, they used to lie down in those two little beds side by side and talk, often in the dark, for the lights had to be extinguished at ten o"clock. They had not spoken even to each other of their father"s marriage. This unexpected event had shocked and bewildered them in the fantastic delicacy of their age. They could not bear to think of their father as so far descended from his ideal elevation, and shed secret tears of rage more than of sorrow when they thought of their mother thus superseded. But the event was too terrible for words, and nothing whatever was said of it between them. When the next great occurrence, the birth of the two babies, was intimated to them, their feelings were different. They were first indignant, almost annoyed; then amused; in which stage Mab made such a sketch of Miss Brown with a baby in each arm, and Mr. St. John pathetically looking on, that they both burst forth into laughter, and the bond of reserve on this event was broken; and then all at once an interest of which they were half ashamed arose in their minds. They fell silent both together in a wondering reverie, and then Mab said to Cicely, turning to her big eyes of surprise--
"They belong to us too, I suppose. What are they to us?"
"Of course our half-brothers," said Cicely; and then there was another pause, partly of awe at the thought of a relationship so mysterious, and partly because it was within five minutes of ten. Then the candle was put out, and they jumped into their beds. On the whole, perhaps, it was more agreeable to talk of their father"s other children in the dark, when the half-shame, half-wonder of it would not appear in each face.
"Is one expected to be fond of one"s half-brother?" said Mab doubtfully.
"There is one illusion gone," said Cicely, in all the seriousness of sixteen. "I have always been cherishing the idea that when we were quite grown up, instead of going out for governesses or anything of that sort, we might keep together, Mab, and take care of papa."
"But then," said Mab, "what would you have done with Mrs. St. John? I don"t see that the babies make much difference. _She_ is there to take care of papa."
On this Cicely gave an indignant sigh, but having no answer ready held her peace.
"For my part, I never thought of that," said Mab. "I have always thought it such a pity I am not a boy, for then I should have been the brother and you the sister, and I could have painted and you could have kept my house. I"ll tell you what I should like," she continued, raising herself on her elbow with the excitement of the thought; "I should like if we two could go out into the world like Rosalind and Celia.
"Were it not better, Because that I am more than common tall, That I did suit me all points like a man?""
"But you are not more than common tall," said Cicely, with unsympathetic laughter; "you are a little, tiny, insignificant thing."
Mab dropped upon her pillow half-crying. "You have no feeling," she said. "Aunt Jane says I shall go on growing for two years yet. Mamma did----"
"If you please," said Cicely, "you are not the one that is like mamma."
This little pa.s.sage of arms stopped the chatter. Cicely, penitent, would have renewed it after an interval, but Mab was affronted. Their father"s marriage, however, made a great difference to the girls, even before the appearance of the "second family;" the fact that he had now another housekeeper and companion, and was independent of them affected the imagination of his daughters, though they were scarcely conscious of it.
They no longer thought of going home, even for the longer holidays; and settling down at home after their schooling was over had become all at once impossible. Not that this change led them immediately to make new plans for themselves; for the youthful imagination seldom goes so far unguided except when character is very much developed; and the two were only unsettled, uneasy, not quite knowing what was to become of them; or rather, it was Cicely who felt the unsettledness and uneasiness as to her own future. Mab had never had any doubt about hers since she was ten years old. She had never seen any pictures to speak of, so that I cannot say she was a heaven-born painter, for she scarcely understood what that was. But she meant to draw; her pencil was to be her profession, though she scarcely knew how it was to be wielded, and thus she was delivered from all her sister"s vague feelings of uncertainty.
Mab"s powers, however, had not been appreciated at first at school, where Miss Maydew"s large a.s.sertions as to her niece"s cleverness had raised corresponding expectations. But when the drawing-master came with his little stock of landscapes to be copied, Mab, quite untutored in this kind, was utterly at a loss. She neither knew how to manage her colours, nor how to follow the vague lines of the "copy," and I cannot describe the humiliation of the sisters, nor the half disappointment, half triumph, of Miss Blandy.
"My dear, you must not be discouraged; I am sure you did as well as you could; and the fact is, we have a very high standard here," the school-mistress said.
It happened, however, after two or three of these failures that Cicely, sent by Miss Millicent Blandy on a special message into that retired and solemn chamber, where Miss Blandy the elder sister sat in the mornings supervising and correcting everything, from the exercises to the characters of her pupils, found the head of the establishment with the drawing-master looking over the productions of the week. He had Mab"s drawing in his hand, and he was shaking his head over it.
"I don"t know what to say about the youngest Miss St. John. This figure is well put in, but her sky and her distance are terrible," he was saying. "I don"t think I shall make anything of her."
When Cicely heard this she forgot that she was a girl at school. She threw down a pile of books she was carrying, and flew out of the room without a word, making a great noise with the door. What she ought to have done was to have made a curtsy, put down the books softly by Miss Blandy"s elbow, curtsied again, and left the room noiselessly, in all respects save that of walking backward as she would have done at Court.
Need I describe the look of dismay that came into Miss Blandy"s face?
"These girls will be my death," she said. "Were there ever such colts?--worse than boys." This was the most dreadful condemnation Miss Blandy ever uttered. "If their aunt does not insist upon drawing, as she has so little real talent, she had better give it up."
At this moment Cicely burst in again breathless, her hair streaming behind her, her dress catching in the door, which she slammed after her.
"Look here!" she cried; "look here, before you say Mab has no talent!"
and she tossed down on the table the square blue-lined book, which her sister by this time had almost filled. She stood before them glowing and defiant, with flashing eyes and flowing hair; then she recollected some guilty recent pages, and quailed, putting out her hand for the book again. "Please it is only the beginning, not the end, you are to look at," she said, peremptory yet appealing. Had Miss Blandy alone been in the seat of judgment, she would, I fear, have paid but little attention to this appeal; but the old drawing-master was gentle and kind, as old professors of the arts so often are (for Art is Humanity, I think, almost oftener than letters), and besides, the young pet.i.tioner was very pretty in her generous enthusiasm, which affected him both as a man and an artist. The first page at once gave him a guess as to the inexpediency of examining the last; and the old man perceived in a moment at once the mistake he had made, and the cause of it. He turned over the first few pages, chuckling amused approbation. "So these are your sister"s," he said, and laughed and nodded his kind old head. When he came to a sketch of Hannah, the maid-of-all-work at the rectory, the humour of which might seem more permissible in Miss Blandy"s eyes than the caricatures of ladies and gentlemen, he showed it to her; and even Miss Blandy, though meditating downright slaughter upon Cicely, could not restrain a smile. "Is this really Mabel"s?" she condescended to ask.
"As you say, Mr. Lake, not at all bad; much better than I could have thought."
"Better? it is capital!" said the drawing-master; and then he shut up the book close, and put it back in Cicely"s hands. "I see there are private scribblings in it," he said, with a significant look; "take it back, my dear. I will speak to Miss Mabel to-morrow. And now, Miss Blandy, we will finish our business, if you please," he said benevolently, to leave time for Cicely and her dangerous volume to escape. Miss Blandy was vanquished by this stratagem, and Cicely, beginning to tremble at the thought of the danger she had escaped, withdrew very demurely, having first piled up on the table the books she had thrown down in her impetuosity. I may add at once that she did not escape without an address, in which withering irony alternated with solemn appeal to her best feelings, and which drew many hot tears from poor Cicely"s eyes, but otherwise so far as I am aware did her no harm.
Thus Mab"s gifts found acknowledgment at Miss Blandy"s. The old drawing-master shook his fine flexible old artist hand at her. "You take us all off, young lady," he said; "you spare no one; but it is so clever that I forgive you; and by way of punishment you must work hard, now I know what you can do. And don"t show that book of yours to anybody but me. Miss Blandy would not take it so well as I do."
"Oh, dear Mr. Lake, forgive me," said Mab, smitten with compunction; "I will never do it again!"
"Never, till the next time," he said, shaking his head; "but, anyhow, keep it to yourself, for it is a dangerous gift."
And from that day he put her on "the figure" and "the round"--studies, in which Mab at first showed little more proficiency than she had done in the humbler sphere of landscape; for having leapt all at once into the exercise of something that felt like original art, this young lady did not care to go back to the elements. However, what with the force of school discipline, and some glimmerings of good sense in her own juvenile bosom, she was kept to it, and soon found the ground steady under her feet once more, and made rapid progress. By the time they had been three years at school, she was so proficient, that Mr. Lake, on retiring, after a hard-worked life, to well-earned leisure, recommended her as his successor. So that by seventeen, a year before Mrs. St.
John"s death, Mab had released Miss Maydew and her father from all responsibility on her account. Cicely was not so clever; but she, too, had begun to help Miss Blandy in preference to returning to the rectory and being separated from her sister. Vague teaching of "English" and music is not so profitable as an unmistakable and distinct art like drawing; but it was better than setting out upon a strange world alone, or going back to be a useless inmate of the rectory. As teachers the girls were both worse off and better off than as pupils. They were worse off because it is a descent in the social scale to come down from the level of those who pay to be taught, to the level of those who are paid for teaching--curious though the paradox seems to be; and they were better off, in so far as they were free from some of the restrictions of school, and had a kind of independent standing. They were allowed to keep their large attic, the bare walls of which were now half covered by Mab"s drawings, and which Cicely"s instinctive art of household management made to look more cheery and homelike than any other room in the house. They were snubbed sometimes by "parents," who thought the manners of these Miss St. Johns too easy and familiar, as if they were on an equality with their pupils; and by Miss Blandy, who considered them much too independent in their ways; and now and then had mortifications to bear which are not pleasant to girls. But there were two of them, which was a great matter; and in the continual conversation which they carried on about everything, they consoled each other. No doubt it was hard sometimes to hear music sounding from the open windows of the great house in the square, where their old schoolfellow, Miss Robinson, had come to live, and to see the carriages arriving, and all the glory of the ball-dresses, of which the two young governesses got a glimpse as they went out for a stroll on the beach in the summer twilight, an indulgence which Miss Blandy disapproved of.
"Now, why should people be so different?" Cicely said, moralizing; "why should we have so little, and Alice Robinson so much? It don"t seem fair."
"And we are not even prettier than she is, or gooder--which we ought to be, if there is any truth in compensation," said Mab, with a laugh.
"Or happier," said Cicely, with a sigh. "She has the upper hand of us in everything, and no balance on the other side to make up for it. Stay, though; she has very droll people for father and mother, and we have a very fine gentleman for our papa."
"Poor papa!" said Mab. They interchanged moods with each other every ten minutes, and were never monotonous, or for a long time the same.
"You may say why should people be so different," said Cicely, forgetting that it was herself who said it. "There is papa, now; he is delightful, but he is trying. When one thinks how altered everything is--and those two little babies. But yet, you know, we ought to ask ourselves, "Were we happier at home, or are we happier here?""
"We have more variety here," said Mab decisively; "there is the sea, for one thing; there we had only the garden."
"You forget the common; it was as nice as any sea, and never drowned people, or did anything dangerous; and the forest, and the sunset."
"There are sunsets here," said Mab,--"very fine ones. We are not forgotten by the people who manage these things up above. And there is plenty of work; and the girls are amusing, and so are the parents."
"We should have had plenty of work at home," said Cicely; and then the point being carried as far as was necessary the discussion suddenly stopped. They were walking along the sands, almost entirely alone. Only here and there another group would pa.s.s them, or a solitary figure, chiefly tradespeople, taking their evening stroll. The fresh sea-breeze blew in their young faces, the soft dusk closed down over the blue water, which beat upon the sh.o.r.e at their feet in the softest whispering cadence. The air was all musical, thrilled softly by this hush of subdued sound. It put away the sound of the band at Miss Robinson"s ball out of the girls" hearts. And yet b.a.l.l.s are pleasant things at eighteen, and when two young creatures, quite deprived of such pleasures, turn their backs thus upon the enchanted place where the others are dancing, it would be strange if a touch of forlorn sentiment did not make itself felt in their hearts, though the soft falling of the dusk, and the hush of the great sea, and the salt air in their faces, gave them a pleasure, had they but known it, more exquisite than any mere ball, as a ball, ever confers. One only knows this, however, by reflection, never by immediate sensation; and so there was, as I have said, just a touch of pathos in their voices, and a sense of superiority, comfortable only in that it was superior, but slightly sad otherwise, in their hearts.
"I don"t know what makes me go on thinking of home," said Cicely, after a pause. "If we had been at home we should have had more pleasure, Mab.
The people about would have asked us--a clergyman"s daughters always get asked; and there are very nice people about Brentburn, very different from the Robinsons and their cla.s.s."
"We should have had no dresses to go in," said Mab. "How could we ever have had ball-dresses off papa"s two hundred a year?"
"Ball-dresses sound something very grand, but a plain white tarlatan is not dear when one can make it up one"s self. However, that is a poor way of looking at it," said Cicely, giving a little toss to her head, as if to throw off such unelevated thoughts. "There are a great many more important things to think of. How will he ever manage to bring up the two boys?"
Mab made a pause of reflection. "To be sure Aunt Jane is not their relation," she said, "and boys are more troublesome than girls. They want to have tutors and things, and to go to the university; and then what is the good of it all if they are not clever? Certainly boys are far more troublesome than girls."
"And then, if you consider papa," said Cicely, "that he is not very strong, and that he is old. One does not like to say anything disagreeable about one"s papa, but what _did_ he want with those children? Surely we were quite enough when he is so poor."
"There is always one thing he can do," said Mab. "Everybody says he is a very good scholar. He will have to teach them himself."
"We shall have to teach them," said Cicely with energy; "I know so well that this is what it will come to. I don"t mean to teach them ourselves, for it is not much Latin I know, and you none, and I have not a word of Greek--but they will come upon us, I am quite sure."
"You forget Mrs. St. John," said Mab.
Cicely gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, but beyond that she did not pursue the subject. Mrs. St. John"s name stopped everything; they could not discuss her, nor express their disapprobation, and therefore they forbore religiously, though it was sometimes hard work.
"Blandina will think we are late," at last she said, turning round. This was their name for their former instructress, their present employer.
Mab turned dutifully, obeying her sister"s touch, but with a faint sigh.
"I hope they will be quiet at the Robinsons as we are pa.s.sing," the girl said. "What if they are in full swing, with the "Blue Danube" perhaps! I hate to go in from a sweet night like this with noisy fiddles echoing through my head."
Cicely gave a slight squeeze of sympathy to her sister"s arm. Do not you understand the girls, young reader? It was not the "Blue Danube" that was being played, but the old Lancers, the which to hear is enough to make wooden legs dance. Cicely and Mab pressed each other"s arms, and glanced up at the window, where dancing shadows and figures were visible. They sighed, and they went into their garret, avoiding the tacit disapproval of Miss Blandy"s good-night. She did not approve of twilight walks. Why should they want to go out just then like the tradespeople, a thing which ladies never did? But if Miss Blandy had known that the girls were quite saddened by the sound of the music from the Robinsons", and yet could not sleep for listening to it, I fear she would have thought them very improper young persons indeed. She had forgotten how it felt to be eighteen--it was so long ago.
On the very next morning the news came of their stepmother"s death. It was entirely unexpected by them, for they had no idea of the gradual weakness which had been stealing over that poor little woman, and they were moved by deep compunction as well as natural regret. It is impossible not to feel that we might have been kinder, might have made life happier to those that are gone--a feeling experienced the moment that we know them to be certainly gone, and inaccessible to all kindness. "Oh, poor Mrs. St. John!" said Mab, dropping a few natural tears. Cicely was more deeply affected. She was the eldest and had thought the most; as for the young artist, her feeling ran into the tips of her fingers, and got expansion there; but Cicely had no such medium.