“Speed on, speed on, the footpath way,
And merrily hunt the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the way,
A sad tires in a mile-a.”
—SHAKESPEARE.
SUNDAY morning rose with new and bright hopes. The girls looked out at
their window, and saw that it was a beautiful morning, and that the
spring sunshine glowed upon the purple summits of the hills. Agatha
supposed there would be a pleasant walk to church; Paulina said she had
heard good accounts of the services in that part of the country; Vera
hoped that they would see what their neighbours were like, and Thekla was
delighted with the jolly garden and places to scramble in.
On this first Sunday they were let alone to explore the garden before the
walk to church, which Magdalen foresaw would be a long affair with Mrs.
Best. After their decorous stillness at breakfast, it was a contrast to
hear the merry voices and laughter outside, but it subsided as soon as
she approached, though she did not hear the murmured ripple, “Here comes
maiden aunt! Behold—Quite a spicy hat!”
In truth, Magdalen’s hat was a pretty new one, not by any means
unsuitable to her age and appearance, and altogether her air was more
stylish than the country town breeding was accustomed to; her dress
perfectly plain, but well made.
Vera was perhaps the most sensible of the perfection of the turn-out;
Agatha chiefly felt that her more decorated skirt and mantle had their
inconveniences in walking through the red mud of the lanes, impeded by
books and umbrella, which left no leisure to admire the primroses that
studded the deep banks and which delighted Thekla in the freedom of short
skirts.
Magdalen herself had enough to do in steering along such a substantial
craft as poor Mrs. Best, used to church-going along a street, and
shrouded under a squirrel mantle of many pounds weight.
Barely in time was the convoy when at last the exhausted lady was helped
over the stone stile that led to the churchyard. Highly picturesque was
the grey structure outside, but within modernism had not done much; the
chancel was feebly fitted after the ideas of the “fifties,” but the faded
woodwork of the nave was intact, and Magdalen still had to sit in the
grim pew of her predecessors.
The girls’ looks at each other might have suited the entrance to a
condemned cell, and the pulpit towered above them with a faded green
cushion, that seemed in danger of tumbling down over their heads.
The service was a plain one, but reverent and careful; the music had a
considerable element of harmonium mixed with schoolchild voices, and the
sermon from an elderly man was a good one; but when the move to go out
was made, and the young ones were beyond ear-shot of their elders, the
exclamations were, “Well, I never thought to have gone back to Georgian
era.”
“Exactly the element of our maiden aunt.”
“And nobody to be seen.”
“Naggie, why do they shut one up in boxes?”
“Just to daunt Flapsy’s roving eye, Tickle, my dear.”
“Don’t, Polly. There was nobody to be seen if we hadn’t been in a box.
Of course no one comes there but stately old farmers and their smart
daughters. I saw one with a Gainsborough hat, and a bunch of cock’s
feathers, with a scarlet cactus cocking it up behind.”
“Flapsy made use of her opportunities, you see. Being ‘emparocked in a
pew’ cannot daunt her spirit of research.”
“Now, Nag, I only meant to show you what impossible people they are.”
“Natives who will repay the study perhaps,” continued Agatha, reading as
though from a book of travels. “We were able to observe a group of the
aborigines at their devotions. Conspicuous was a not ungraceful young
female, whose head, ornamented with a plume of feathers, towered above
the enclosure in which she was secluded, while an aged fakir, hakem or
medicine man pronounced from a loftier structure resembling a sentry
box.”
“Children, children, that’s the wrong way,” came Magdalen’s voice from
behind. “You must turn into that lane. Wait a moment.”
They waited till Mrs. Best’s lagging steps allowed Magdalen to come up
with them, but dead silence fell on them when Mrs. Best observed, “You
were very merry.” They could not speak of the cause. Perhaps Magdalen
divined something, for she said, “We hope to make some improvements, and
so indeed does Mr. Earl, but he is very poor. Besides, newcomers must
work slowly.”
The doubt whether she had heard Agatha’s speech made the girls conscious
enough to keep from responding, as she meant them to do, by cheerful
criticisms, and indeed the task of cheering and dragging on Mrs. Best was
quite enough to occupy her. There was only three years difference in
their ages, but this seemed to have made a great interval between one
whose _métier_ had been to be youthful and active, and her who had to be
staid and dignified.
The early dinner passed in all demureness and formality, and the poor
visitor was too much tired for any more services to be thought of for
her. Magdalen explained that when the days would be longer, she thought
of walking to Rockstone for evensong, but now the best way was to go to
the chapel at Clipstone, which was nearer than either of the others.
“There is a lovely little chapel there, beautifully fitted up by Lord
Rotherwood and Sir Jasper Merrifield, for the hamlet,” she said.
“How far?” asked Mrs. Best.
“About a mile and a half across the fields; further by the road. You
will find your bicycles available when you know the way.”
“Don’t we go to Rockstone?” asked Paulina. “I am sure there is a really
satisfactory church there.”
“St. Kenelm’s, do you mean? That is not so near as St. Andrew’s Church,
but that is very satisfactory, and I go to one or other of them on
week-days. It is too late to come back on these spring Sundays.”
“I should not like to live among so many churches,” said Mrs. Best, “and
so far from them all!”
“You love your old parish church, like a faithful old churchwoman,” said
Magdalen. “Well, you see, I am faithful enough to go to my parish in the
morning, but I think we may be discursive afterwards. There is a Sunday
school in which I was waiting to offer help till our party was made up.”
Magdalen had looked twice for a responding smile, first from Agatha, and
then from Paulina, but none was awakened. The girls clustered together
in the bedroom, and the word “Goody” passed between them.
“Tempered by respect for my Lord and Sir Jasper,” added Agatha.
“And avoiding St. Kenelm’s because it is the real correct church,” said
Paulina.
“Oh, yes!” cried Vera. “Mr. Hubert Delrio went to see it in case Eccles
and Beamster should have an order. We must go there.”
“Of course,” said Paulina, with a sympathetic nod.
“But,” said Agatha, “there will be an embargo on all acquaintance except
the grandees at Clipstone.”
“I shall never drop old friends,” cried Vera. “I am a rock of crystal as
regards them, whatever swells may require, if they burst themselves like
the frog and the ox.”
“Well done, crystal rock; but suppose the old friends slide off and drop
you?” laughed Agatha.
Vera tossed her head; and Thekla ran in to say that Sister was ready.
The walk was shorter and pleasanter than that in the morning, over
moorland, but with a good road; but all Magdalen discovered on the walk
was that though the girls had attended botanical classes, they did not
recognise spear-wort when they saw it, and Agatha thought the old
catalogue fashions of botany were quite exploded. This was a sentiment,
and it gave hopes of something like an argument and a conversation, but
they were at that moment overtaken by the neighbouring farmer’s wife, who
wanted to give Miss Prescott some information about a setting of eggs,
which she did at some length, and with a rapid utterance of dialect that
amused, while it puzzled, Magdalen, and her inquiries and comments were
decided to be “thoroughly good-wife” by all save Thekla, who hailed the
possible ownership of a hen and chicken as almost equal to that of a
bicycle.
Magdalen further discovered that Thekla’s name in common use was
“Tickle,” or else “Tick-tick”; Paulina was, of course, Paula or Polly;
Vera had her old baby title of Flapsy, which somehow suited her restless
nervous motions, and Agatha had become Nag. Well, it was the fashion of
the day, though not a pretty one; but Magdalen recollected, with some
pain, her father’s pleasure in the selection of saintly names for his
little daughters, and she wondered how he would have liked to hear them
thus transmuted. There had been something bordering on sentiment in her
father’s character, and something in Paulina’s expression made her hope
to see it repeated by inheritance. She saw the countenance brighten out
of the morning’s antagonistic air when they entered the little chapel at
Clipstone, and saw the altar adorned and carefully decked with white
narcissus and golden daffodils.
The little chapel was old and plain, very small, but reverently cared
for. There was no choir, but the chairs of those who could sing were
placed near the harmonium, which was played by one of the young ladies
from the large gabled house to which the chapel was attached, and the
singing had the refined tones that belong to the music of cultivated
people. The congregation was evidently of poor folks from the hamlet,
dependants of the great house, and the family itself, a grey-haired,
fine-looking general, a tall dark-eyed lady, a tall youth, a schoolboy,
and four girls—one of whom was musician, and the other presided over the
school children. The service was reverent, the catechising good and
effective, the sermon brief, and summing up in a spiritual and devotional
manner; Magdalen was happy, and trusted that Paulina was so likewise.
She expected to hear some commendation as they walked home, but Vera
alone kept with her, to examine her on the names and standing of the
persons she had seen, on which there was as yet little to tell, for the
first move towards acquaintance had not yet been made. All that was
known was that there were Sir Jasper and Lady Merrifield, connections of
Lord Rotherwood, who owned most of the Rockstone property, and who with
his family had once been staying in the country house where Magdalen had
been governess; but it was a long time ago, and she only recollected that
there were some nice little girls. At least she said no more, but her
friend thought the more.
“I suppose they will call?” said Vera.
“Most likely they will.”
“Has nobody called?”
“Mr. Earl, the Vicar of Arnscombe. He has promised to tell me how we can
be of use here. I believe there is great want of a lady at the Sunday
school.”
This did not interest Vera—and she went on asking questions about the
neighbourhood, and whether any of the Rockstone people had left cards,
and whether there were any parties, garden or evening, at Rockstone—more
than Magdalen could yet answer, though she was glad to promote any sort
of conversation with either of the girls who did not stand aloof from
her.
“I say, the M.A. (maiden aunt) knows nobody but that old clergyman, who
wants her to teach his Sunday school.”
“I’m out of that, thank goodness,” said Agatha.
“And Sunday schools are a delusion, only hindering the children from
going to church with their parents,” said Paulina.
“And if nobody calls, and they all think her no better than an old
governess, how awfully slow it will be,” continued Vera.
“I do not suppose that will last,” said Agatha. “There is Rockstone,
remember.”
“Ten miles off,” said Vera disconsolately. “Oh, Nag, Nag, isn’t it
horrid! We shall be just smart enough to be taken for swells, and know
nobody; and the swells won’t have us because she is a governess. We
might as well be upon a desert island at once.”
Agatha could not help laughing and repeating—
“I am out of humanity’s reach,
I must finish my journey alone—
Never hear the sweet music of speech,
I start at the sound of my own.”
“But really, Nag,” broke in Paulina, “it is horrid. Here we are
equidistant from three or four churches, and condemned to the most behind
the world of them all, and then to the one where there is this distant
fragrance of swells, instead of the only Catholic one.”
Agatha had a little more common sense than the other two, and she
responded—
“After all, you know, you are better off than if you were still at
school; and the M.A. is a good old soul at the bottom, and you may manage
her, depend on it. Though I wish she had let me go to Girton.”
Magdalen and Mrs. Best meantime were going over future prospects and old
times. Mrs. Best’s destination was Albertstown, in Queensland, where her
son George had a good practice as a doctor, and where he assured her she
would find church privileges—even a cathedral, so-called, and a
bishop—though Bishop Fulmort was always out on some expedition among the
colonists or the natives, but among his clergy there was always Sunday
service. In fact, Magdalen thought the good old lady expected to find a
town more like Filsted than the Goyle. There was a sisterhood located
there too, which tried, mostly in vain, to train the wild native women—an
attempt at which George Best laughed, though he allowed that the sisters
were splendid nurses, especially Sister Angela, who had a wonderful way
of bringing cases round.
Magdalen could feel secure that her old friend would be near kind people;
and presently Mrs. Best, returning to the actual neighbourhood, observed—
“Merrifield! It is not a common name.”
“No; but I do not think this is the same family. This is a retired
general, living in a house of Lord Rotherwood’s. I once met one of his
little girls, who came to Castle Towers with the Rotherwood party, and
though she had a brother of the name, he was evidently not the same
person.”
Mrs. Best asked no more, for tell-tale colour had arisen in Magdalen’s
cheeks; and she had been the confidante of an engagement with a certain
Henry Merrifield, who had been employed in the bank at Filsted when
Magdalen was a very young girl. His father had come down suddenly, had
found debt and dissipation, had broken all off decidedly, and no more had
been heard of the young man. It was many years previously; but those
cheeks and the tone of the reply made her suspect that there was still
poignancy in the remembrance.