Is it not strange how you may live on and live on in some quiet country
spot, or retired suburb, without anything ever occurring to vary the
dull monotony of its even existence; and yet, the moment you go away
from this whilom, stagnant neighbourhood--which you had got to believe
was everlastingly unchangeable--change then succeeds change with
startling rapidity:--as you at a distance hear from those friends whom
you had left behind--to simmer on there, as you had simmered on, until
the end of the chapter?
Of course, from having become more interested with the deeds and designs
of those actors that might be connected with the new scenes amidst which
you may now be situated, you will not attach such importance to these
events as you would probably have done had you been yet living on in the
time-honoured routine of your old abiding-place. They are to you, at
present, only so many little fly-blows on the scroll of time, so to
speak. But, there was a period when you would have regarded them as of
the utmost moment; and when, the deaths of people whom you thought would
never die, the marriages of those that seemed the most unlikely subjects
for matrimony, the flittings of persons of the "oldest inhabitant"
class--that you calculated would stick-on there for ever, and their
replacement by the advent of new families, whom you would have supposed
to be the last in the world to settle down in the locality in question--
would have been matters of nine days' wonderment.
It was so now with myself in, regard to Saint Canon's.
Horner's engagement, Lady Dasher's contemplated removal, the idea of the
curate's incubus--all of which would have once filled me with surprise,
astonishment, delight--I only looked upon with half-amused interest.
Even the intelligence that Miss Spight had joined the sisterhood
organised by Brother Ignatius, hardly affected me as it would formerly
have done.
I belonged to another world now, as it were; and, the announcements of
births--Mrs Mawley had already presented her lord and master with a
little pledge of her affection--and bridals, and burials, at the two
last of which I might once have assisted, hardly awoke a passing
interest in me!
I was too far removed from the orbit in which these phenomena were
displayed.
I felt that there were not many now in whom I felt concern at Saint
Canon's.
No exceptions, you ask?
Certainly, there were exceptions.