"TWOE SISTERS."
"The haunted aisles, the gathering gloom,
By some stray shaft of eve made fair;
The stillness of the neighbouring air,
The faded legends of the tomb.
I loved them all..."
_Songs of Two Worlds_.
Hathercourt Church is not beautiful, though the internal evidence in
favour of its having at one time been so is considerable. It has
suffered sorely at the hands of plasterers and white-washers; yet the
utmost efforts of these misguided people have not altogether succeeded
in effacing the traces of a better state of things--there is still
grandeur in the sweep of the lofty roof, oak-raftered behind its dingy
white covering; still "meaning and mystery" in the quaintly varying
windows; much satisfaction for the learned in such matters, and indeed
for the unlearned too, in the unmistakable beauty of the carved screen,
the one object untampered with since the days when it gladdened the eyes
of the ancient men who fashioned it, long, long ago.
A _very_ long "long ago" that time used to seem to Mary Western when, in
the intervals of her attention to the service, she sometimes dreamed of
those far-away days. She was not much given to dreaming, but in
Hathercourt Church there were circumstances under which the temptation
became irresistible.
After a course of years the words of the morning service, especially
when read, Sunday after Sunday, by the same familiar voice with
precisely the same intonations, are apt to grow monotonous; and had Mary
not occasionally allowed her thoughts to go wool-gathering, the chances
are that her brown straw hat would have been seen to nod, and she might
have fallen asleep altogether. For that part of Sunday morning which
preceded their appearance in church was a tiring and trying ordeal to
the elder daughters of the Western household. There was the early class
at the school, there were "the boys" at home to keep peace among, there
were the very little children in the nursery to coax into unwonted
quiet, for on Sunday mornings "papa" really must not be disturbed, and
mamma, "poor mamma," looked to her girls to do their part in helping
her.
Hathercourt Rectory offered in every particular a contrast to its
neighbour, the church. The one was old, very old, the other
comparatively new; the Rectory was full to overflowing of life and noise
and bustle, the church, even when its whole congregation was assembled,
seemed empty and bare and strangely silent.
"It is thinking about all the people that used to be here--the air is
too full of their voices for outs to be heard much," Mary said to
herself sometimes, and her girlish eyes would see strange scenes, and
strange murmurs would sound in her ears. There was the leper window in
the chancel, which alone, she had been told, testified to a date not
more recent than that of the reign of King John. Mary's glance never
fell upon it without a shudder, as in imagination--imagination in this
case no doubt falling far short of reality--she saw huddled together the
crowd of accursed beings, old world Pariahs, gazing up with bleared yet
longing eyes at the priestly forms about to dispense the mystery to
them, doubtless with little meaning but that of a charm. Then there
were the tablets on the walls, many of them very old, telling in a few
simple words a whole life history, or in some cases that of an entire
family, whose members had either died out or left the neighbourhood so
long that these chronicles of death were all that remained to tell of
their ever having lived.
There was one tablet in particular on which Mary, sitting in her own
corner of the wide bare pew, had for so many years, Sunday after Sunday,
allowed her eyes to rest that it had grown to seem to her a part of her
own life. The service would not have been the same to her without it;
her father, she almost fancied, could not have got through his morning's
work had the tablet been removed from its place, a little to the left of
the reading-desk. Mary knew its burden by heart as well as, or better
than, "the creed, the ten commandments, and the Lord's prayer," yet she
could no more help reading it afresh every time she came into church
than one can help counting the tantalising telegraph-wires, as they
slowly rise up, up, then down again, from the window of a
railway-carriage.
Of a time far remote from railways and telegraphs told the old tablet in
Hathercourt Church.
"Here lieth," so ran the inscription, headed in the first place by an
imposing coat-of-arms, the date 1597, and the initials M.B.--"Here lieth
the bodi of Mawde, the elder sister of the twoe dovghters of Arthur
Mayne, late of Southcotte, and the late wife of John Beverley of
Hathercourt, who departed this worlde the sixt day of November, 1597,
whiche John and Mawde had issve five soones and five dovghters, whiche
Mawde, the wife of the seid John Beverley, esqvier, and dovghter of the
seid Arthur Mayne, esqvier, was 37 yeres oolde at the time of her
deathe."
Mary's meditations on "whiche Mawde" represented various stages in her
own history. Long ago, in the days of little girlhood, the era of brown
straw hats and tendency to nod, it was not Mawde herself, so much as the
great army of "soones and dovghters" she had left behind, on which her
imagination dwelt. They must have been quite tiny things, she
calculated, some of these Beverley boys and girls, when their mother
died. How they must have missed her! How, beyond words, terrible would
be _their_ plight, that of the nineteenth century Western children, that
is to say, in such a case! Mary trembled at the mere dream of such a
possibility. Poor little Beverley boys and girls! what had become of
them all? Had they grown up into good men and women, and married and
had children of their own, and died, and in their turn, perhaps, had
tablets put up about them in far-away churches? What a great many
stories might be told of all that had happened to poor Mawde's children
and children's children since that dreary "sixt of November" when they
were left motherless!
But as time passed on, and Mary grew into womanhood, Mawde herself
engaged her sympathy. Thirty-seven when she died, that was not so
_very_ old. She must have been married young, probably, and had a busy
life of it. Was her husband kind and good, and did she love him and
look up to him? They could not have been poor, that was one comfort to
think of; life, even with the ten "soones and dovghters," could not have
been quite so hard upon John Beverley's wife as, Mary thought with a
little sigh, "mamma" found it sometimes. And then her fancy would
wander to the sister dimly alluded to in the inscription, the _younger_
daughter of Arthur Mayne. What was her name, what had become of her,
and did she and Mawde love each other very much? Mary used to wonder,
as her glance strayed to _her_ sister at the other corner of the old
pew--her own especial sister, for somehow Alexa and Josephine, being
much the younger for one thing, never seemed _quite_ as much her sisters
as Lilias. How strange and sad that the record of affection should die,
and only the bare fact of the old relationships exist! Mary could
hardly picture to herself a tablet even three hundred years hence
bearing _her_ name, on which there should be no mention of Lilias too.
The congregation at Hathercourt Church was never, under the most
favourable circumstances, those even of "weather permitting" to the
extent of cloudless skies and clean roads, anything but a scanty one.
And on rainy days, or very cold days, or very hot days, it was apt to
dwindle down to a depressing extent. Of an afternoon it was seldom
quite so poor, for, unlike the denizens of the manufacturing regions,
who would consider it very hard lines to have to hurry over their Sunday
hot joint for the sake of so-called evening service three or four hours
before its time, the agriculturalists, employers, and employed of
Meadshire and its neighbouring counties, much prefer the half-past two
o'clock service to any other. So, as a rule, Mr Western reserved his
_new_ sermon for the afternoon, contenting himself with choosing for the
morning one of the neatly tacked together manuscripts which for many
years had lain in a dusty pile in a corner of his study. Sometimes,
when they compared notes on the subject, Lilias and Mary agreed that
they preferred the old sermons to the new.
"Papa must have been clever when he was young," Mary would observe,
thoughtfully.
"He is clever _now_," Lilias would rejoin, with some little show of
indignation.
"Yes--but--I suppose anxieties, and cares, and growing older, cloud it
over in a way," was the best solution Mary could arrive at as to why
greater things had not come of her father's talents.
Perhaps the truth was that they were not very remarkable--not so
remarkable, certainly, as to have forced for themselves a way through
the adverse circumstances of being united to a somewhat easy-going,
kindly, and contented nature such as that of the Rector of Hathercourt,
whose worldly needs had never been pressing enough to force him to great
exertion, who loved the place he had lived in for a quarter of a
century, and was not hard upon his people, even though they were averse
to morning service, and now and then indulged in forty winks, even of an
afternoon.
"We have got into each other's ways," he would say sometimes, with a
mixture of deprecation and self-congratulation, when, even to
Hathercourt, echoes of the strange noises beginning to be heard in the
ecclesiastical "great world" would find their way. "We understand each
other, and know each other's good points. I don't pretend to go along
with all these changes, though I am far from saying no good may come out
of them. But they are not in our way--they are not in our way; and,
after all, there is something in letting well alone. It is something to
feel, as I hope to do when I die, that at least I haven't left my people
_worse_ men and women than I found them--eh, Polly?"
For on his second daughter's face there came sometimes a look her father
hardly understood--a look of questioning and consideration, of less
readiness to take things just as she found them, than altogether tallied
with his philosophy. Yet Mary was his favourite child. Lilias
disagreed with him openly in her sweet-tempered way, grumbling with a
sunny face at their monotonous and secluded life, and openly avowed her
determination to change it for a different one, should she ever get a
chance of doing so to advantage.
"What _would_ you do with five old maids, papa?" she would say
sometimes. "Just fancy us all in a doleful row--the _five_ Miss
Westerns! In ten years hence even Francie will be grown up, remember."
"Ten years may bring--indeed, are sure to bring many changes, Lily
dear," her mother would say--"some, perhaps, that it would take half the
heart out of us could we foresee."
"Mamma is so sensible and reasonable always, I sometimes think she has
forgotten what it was to be a girl," said the elder to the younger
sister one October Sunday morning as they were crossing the pretty
little bit of inclosed meadow land which was all that separated the
church from the Rectory.
"No," said Mary, "it isn't that; she knows and remembers quite well. It
is that she knows _too_ well, I fancy."
"How do you mean, Polly? I'm stupid at understanding things, unless
people say them plainly. Stay a minute, we are in plenty of time--
nobody is coming to church yet, and it is so nice here under the trees."
Lilias leaned against one of a beautiful cluster of horse-chestnuts
growing in the middle of the church paddock, and as she spoke looked up
through the already fast baring branches to the cold, grey, blue sky
overhead. "Dear me, how very quickly the leaves are falling this year!"
she said, "it was that stormy weather in September that shook them, and,
once they begin to fall, winter seems to come with a rush."
Mary smiled, and her lips moved as if she was going to speak, but she
stopped and said nothing.
"What were you going to say, Mary?" asked Lilias, whose eyes had idly
journeyed down from the sky to her sister's face. "Why did you stop?"
"On second thoughts I thought it not worth saying," replied Mary, "but
I'll tell you if you like. It was only what you said about the leaves--
it made me think that was what mother feels. _She_ knows how fast they
fall once they begin, and it makes her afraid for us in a way. _She_
doesn't want to hurry us out into the storms; we have always been so
well sheltered."
Lilias looked at her sister for a minute without speaking. "How
prettily you see things," she said, admiringly. "You think of things
that would never come into my head, yet people fancy you are the
practical and prosaic one of us all. I believe it is all because you
are called Mary."
"But Mary was just _not_ the practical and prosaic one. You mean
Martha."
"No; no, I don't. Marys nowadays are practical and prosaic, any way. I
don't mean to say that you are, except sometimes, perhaps. I think you
must be very like what mamma was at your age, but I fancy you are
cleverer and--"
"And what?"
"And wiser--at least, in some ways. You would not be satisfied to marry
just such a person as my father must have been; you would want some one
more energetic and stronger altogether."
"Perhaps," said Mary. "But I do not think we need speculate about that
sort of thing for me, Lilias; there's plenty of time to think what sort
of a person I would marry, if ever I do, which very likely I won't."
"Don't speak like Mrs Gamp, and please don't be so sensible, Mary. If
you only would be silly sometimes, you would be perfect--quite perfect,"
said Lilias.
Mary smiled.
"But indeed," continued Lilias, "I am not at all sure that it _is_
sensible to look at things as you do. If none of us marry, or do
anything for ourselves, it will come to be rather hard upon papa in a
few years."
"But why suppose none of us will marry?" said Mary. "It is unlikely, to
say the least, that we shall _all_ be old maids."
"I don't know that it is," replied Lilias, seriously. "I am
three-and-twenty, remember, and you not two years younger, and things go
on just the same year after year; we never make a new acquaintance or go
anywhere."
"Except to the Brocklehurst ball," put in Mary.
"Oh, that Brocklehurst ball," said Lilias, laughing. "Many and many a
time, when it comes round again, I have been tempted to give up going,
just that I might be able to say I had not been, when every one shakes
it at me reproachfully if ever I grumble. What good is the Brocklehurst
ball, Mary? It is so crowded, and the people come all in great parties;
we never get to know any one. I suppose our beauty is not of that
striking order to shine out through country made dresses, and crowds of
finer people! I enjoy it, of course--even dancing with Frank Bury is
better than not dancing at all."
"Or with one of Mr Greville's curates," said Mary, mischievously.
"Don't," said Lilias. "I cannot bear the subject. I told you some time
ago--and I shall always say so--the bane of our life has been curates.
Because papa is a poor clergyman, with lots of daughters, every one
seems to think there can be, and should be, nothing before us but
curates. It almost makes me dislike papa, to think he ever was one!"
"Lilias," said Mary, suddenly, "we shall be late. The school-children
have gone in, and there are the Smithson girls coming up the lane, and
they are always late. Do come!"
It felt chilly in church that morning. There was a decidedly autumn
"feel" in the air, and the ancient building always seemed ready to meet
winter, with its gloom and cold, more than half way. With corresponding
reluctance to admit warmth and sunshine, it shrank from the genial
spring-time--summer had to be undeniably summer before its presence
could be realised within the aged walls. And this morning the
congregation was even unusually small, which made the bareness and
chilliness more obtrusive.
Mary was busy in a calculation as to how many years would have passed
since Mawde Beverley's death "come" the next "sixt of November," a date
fast approaching, for it was now late in October, when there fell on her
ears a sound--the mere shadow of a sound it seemed at first--which
almost made her think she was dreaming. Such a sound had _never_ before
been heard in Hathercourt Church on a Sunday morning; the sensation it
produced in her, as gradually it grew louder and clearer, and more
unmistakable, was so overpowering that she was positively afraid to look
up. Had she done so she would have expected to see the whole
congregation turning to the door in awestruck anticipation of some
portentous event. For the sound was that of carriage wheels--coming
nearer, nearer, till at last--yes, there could now be no mistake, they
stopped at the church gate. Then, after a little pause, came the
creaking of the heavy oaken door, opened cautiously--the intruders
evidently expecting themselves to be late comers--and seeming, as is the
manner of doors, on that account to make all the more noise. Again a
little hesitation, then the sound of footsteps, several footsteps,
coming along the aisle, the rustle of dresses, a faint, indescribable
stir in the air, the result, probably, of the heads of nearly all the
congregation present being turned in the direction of the persons
approaching. Mary's curiosity overcame her at last. She glanced up,
first at Lilias, whose eye she caught for an instant, an instant in
which it spoke volumes.
"You _must_ look at what is coming up the aisle," it said, "it is worth
looking at. See how discreetly I manage to do so--my prayer-book a
little to one side. No one would guess I was not attending to the
service."
But from where Mary sat so much diplomacy was hardly called for.
Another moment brought the new-comers full in her view, as they filed
in, one after the other, two ladies, then two gentlemen, to a pew some
little way in front. The first lady was middle-aged, if not elderly,
well-dressed and rather fat; the second was tall and thin, and seemingly
very young, well-dressed too, and--an accidental turn of her head
brought the face full in sight--yes, there was no doubt of it, very,
_very_ pretty. Pretty with the prettiness that is almost, but not
_quite_, beauty, that might, perhaps, grow to be such in a few years,
for just now she could not, thought Mary, be more than sixteen or
seventeen--the rounded cheek and white forehead, on which the dark, soft
hair lay so nestlingly, had no lines or suspicions of furrows such as
are seldom altogether escaped even at twenty; the nose, the mouth, the
lovely, happy-looking eyes, showing bright blue through the long black
lashes, all told of the very first spring-time of life; the poise of the
graceful little head on the shoulders, the flutter of unconcealed
interest with which she looked about her, put her extreme youth beyond a
doubt.
"How pretty she is!" thought Mary. "How bright and sweet and happy she
looks!"
And for a moment or two the girl personally so interested her that she
forgot to ask herself the question at which Lilias had long ago aimed,
"Who can she be?" or rather, "Who can they be?"
For the "they" was made up by more interesting objects than the
well-dressed, rather fat lady at the top of the pew. The rest of the
"they" consisted of two gentlemen, who next fell under Mary's
investigation. Neither of them was old, yet one was decidedly older
than the other; both were good-looking, but one was better than
good-looking, he was undoubtedly handsome, and his expression was almost
as attractive in its way as that of the young girl beside him. Could
they be brother and sister? thought Mary to herself. There was no
striking likeness between them, certainly, but neither was there any
decided _unlikeness_, and she fancied there was something brother and
sister-like in the way they sat together, sharing a hymn-book when the
time came for the anthem's substitute, Hathercourt Church being supposed
to be "a place where they sing," though the way in which the singing was
performed was sometimes a matter of mortification to the Western girls,
considering the time and labour they bestowed on the "choir." It seemed
unusually bad to Mary to-day, listening, as she caught herself doing,
with "other people's ears;" and once, when she fancied that she detected
the ghost of a smile pass between the two young people on whom she was
bestowing so much attention, she felt her cheeks grow hot, and she
turned her eyes away from them with a little feeling of irritation.
"I wish strangers would stay away, if they come to criticise," she said
to herself.
Just then for the first time she caught distinct sight of the face of
the other gentleman, the elder of the two. It was grave and serious
enough to please her, surely! Too grave and serious by far, she
decided. It was like turning from sunshine into gloom to watch his
dark, quiet face after the two beside him. He looked older, a great
deal older, than his companions.
"Thirty-three or four, at least," was the age with which many credited
him, but when she looked at his face again, she doubted the correctness
of her opinion. It was more grave than old, after all, and after all,
too, there was something rather nice about it. What fun it would be to
talk them all over with Lilias afterwards! What--Suddenly a little
pause in her father's voice startled her wandering thoughts back to the
present; the sermon was just coming to an end, and with considerable
compunction Mary confessed the truth to herself--she had not heard a
word of it! Certainly these strangers had a great deal to answer for.
There was a little delay in the coming out of church. The Smithson
girls, and old Mrs Bedell, and even the school-children and the clerk
seemed to be stupefied by the presence of the unexpected visitors; they
all hung back and stared at the strangers, and at each other, as if they
did not know what to do, till at last Lilias Western, waxing impatient,
touched her mother with the end of her parasol, and leaning across
little Francie and Brooke, whispered something which resulted in the
rector's wife, contrary to the usual order of procedure, leading the way
down the aisle, followed by her goodly array of sons and daughters.
Thus encouraged, the rest of the congregation followed with a rush, and
when Lilias looked back from the door, there was no one to be seen in
the church but the two gentlemen and two ladies, gazing about them in
dignified desertion.
"What a set of boors all the people make themselves look," exclaimed
Lilias, almost before the Rectory party was out of ear-shot of the other
members of the congregation.
"Hush, Lilias, some of them will hear you," said her mother. "They
don't mean to be rude, poor people. You must remember how unaccustomed
they are to strangers."
"Mamma," interrupted George, the second Western boy, hurrying
up--"mamma, who can those people be? They've come out of church, and
they're standing staring about as if they didn't know what to do. Where
can they be going to? Their carriage hasn't come back."
Lilias's fair face flushed--a very small amount of excitement was enough
to deepen the soft pink colour of her cheeks at any time.
"We should do something, mamma," she said, appealingly. "Shouldn't
Basil or George run back and ask them if they would like to wait at the
Rectory till their carriage comes? You, Basil, run back, do, and ask
them if they wouldn't like to come in and rest a little." (Basil was
much the best-looking of "the boys.")
"Rest--rubbish!" he said, contemptuously. "Haven't they been resting in
church all this time? I'm not going with such a nonsensical message,"
and he turned away.
"George, you go, as Basil seems afraid of behaving like a gentleman,"
said Mrs Western.
But George, too, hesitated.
"I wouldn't mind if it wasn't for those ladies. Mother, they are so
_awfully_ grand," he said, beseechingly.
Lilias's face grew scarlet.
"I will go myself, then," she exclaimed, and turning quickly, she had
gone some way across the grass before the others quite understood her
intention. Mrs Western looked distressed.
"Lilias excites herself so," she said.
"I'll ran after her, mother," said Mary, quickly, and in another moment
she was by her sister's side. Lilias was still flushed and breathless
to boot.
"Did you ever know such ill-mannered, rude--" she was beginning, but
Mary interrupted her.
"They are just _boys_," she said, philosophically. "But, Lilias, you
have put yourself quite into a fever. Let me go and speak to these
ladies--yes, do, I would rather--it is better for me than for you."
"But why?" said Lilias, doubtfully, though visibly relaxing her speed.
Mary laughed.
"I can't say exactly, but somehow it's not dignified for you to go
hurrying back in that sort of way, and for me--well, I don't think it
matters."
Lilias still hesitated.
"It isn't that," she said; "I wouldn't have you do anything I would not
do myself, only--Mary, you will laugh at me--I do feel _so_ shabbily
dressed."
Mary did not laugh. She looked at her sister with real sympathy and
concern. There are some of the trials of poverty whose stings are even
more acutely felt at three-and-twenty than at seventeen, and Mary pitied
Lilias where she might have laughed at Alexa.
"Let me speak to them, then," she repeated. "Do, Lilias; I will hurry
on, and you may follow slowly and see how I comport myself," and Lilias
made no further objection.
"How Lilias under-estimates herself," she thought. "Who, with eyes in
their heads, would think of her dress when they see her face?"
She was close to the little group of strangers by this time. They were
standing just outside the porch, "staring about them," George had said--
rather, it seemed to Mary, examining with some interest the outside
appearance of the ancient church. Three of them did not see her
approach, the two ladies and the handsome, fair-haired man were at a
little distance and looking the other way; only the elder of the two
gentlemen was standing so as to face her, and he appeared sublimely
unconscious of her errand having anything to do with himself or his
friends. He moved aside a little as she drew near, evidently with the
idea that she was going into the church again. Mary's heart beat a
little faster; this was by no means what she had bargained for, but
there was no retreat possible now. There was Lilias slowly advancing in
the background, her grey alpaca skirt trailing behind her on the grass
with all the elegance of silk or cashmere--somehow Lilias _never_ looked
shabbily dressed!--her very observant blue eyes doubtless taking in the
situation fully. Mary felt that the credit of the family was in her
hands; she must prove herself equal to the occasion.
"I--I beg your pardon--excuse me," she began, but the gentleman did not
seem to understand that she was speaking to him; half mechanically he
raised his hat, under the impression that the young woman, or lady, he
had scarcely observed which, was about to pass by him into the porch,
when again she spoke, and this time more distinctly. "Excuse me," she
said again; "mamma--my mother, I mean--thinks perhaps the ladies will be
tired. Do you think they would like to come over to the Rectory and
rest a little?"