The girls went round by the rectory on their way home. It was a large red brick house, taller almost than the church, which was a very old church, credibly dating from the thirteenth century, with a Norman arch to the chancel, which tourists came to see. The rectory was of the days of Anne, three stories high, with many twinkling windows in framework of white, and a great deal of ivy and some livelier climbing plants covering the walls, with the old mellow red bricks looking through the interstices of all this greenery. The two Miss Warrenders did not stop to knock or ring, but opened the door from the outside, and went straight through the house, across the hall and a pa.s.sage at the other end, to the garden beyond, where Mrs. Wilberforce sat under some great limes, with her little tea-table beside her. She was alone; that is, as near alone as she ever was, with only two of the little ones playing at her feet, and the little Skye comfortably disposed on the cushions of a low wicker-work chair. The two sisters kissed her, and disturbed the children"s game to kiss them, and displaced the little Skye, who did not like it at all. Mrs. Wilberforce was a little roundabout woman, with fair hair and a permanent pucker in her forehead. She was very well off,--she and all her belongings; the living was good, the parish small, the work not overpowering: but she never was able to shake off a visionary anxiety, the burden of some ancestral trouble, or the premonition of something to come. She was always afraid that something was going to happen: her husband to break down from overwork (which for clergymen, as for most other people in this generation, is the fashionable complaint), the parish to be invaded with dissent and socialism, the country to go to destruction. This latter, as being the greatest, and at the same time the most distant, a thing even which might happen without disturbing one"s individual comfort, was most certain; and she waited till it should happen, with always an anxious outlook for the first symptoms.
She received Minnie and Chatty, who were her nearest neighbours, and whom she saw almost daily, with a tone of interest and attachment beyond the ordinary, as she had done ever since their father"s death. Indeed, they had found this everywhere, a sort of natural compensation for their "great loss." They were surrounded by the respect and reawakened interest of all the people who were so familiar with them. A bereaved family have always this little advantage after a death.
"How are you, dears," Mrs. Wilberforce said, "and how is your dear mother?" Ordinarily Mrs. Warrender was spoken of as their mother, _tout court_, without any endearing adjective.
"Mamma is quite wonderful," said Minnie. "She thinks of everything and looks after everything almost as if--nothing had ever happened."
"She keeps up on our account," said Chatty, "and for Theo"s sake. It is so important, you know, to keep home a little bright--oh, I mean as little miserable as possible for him."
"Bright, poor child!" said Mrs. Wilberforce pathetically. "You have not realised as yet what it is. When the excitement is all over, and you have settled down in your mourning, then is the time when you will feel it. I always tell people the first six weeks is nothing; you are so supported by the excitement. But afterwards, when everything falls into the old routine. I suppose, however, you are going away."
"Mamma said something about it: but we all preferred, you know----"
"You had much better go away. I told you so the moment I heard it. And as Theo has all the summer to himself before he requires to go back to Oxford, what is there to stop you?" Mrs. Wilberforce took great pleasure in settling other people"s plans for them, and deciding what they were to do.
"That wasn"t what we came to talk about," said the elder Miss Warrender, who was quite able to hold her own. "Mrs. Wilberforce, we have just come from old Mrs. Bagley"s at the shop, and there we made quite a painful discovery. We said what we could, but perhaps it would be well if you would interfere. I think, indeed, you ought to interfere with authority, or even, perhaps, the rector."
"What is it? I always thought that old body had a turn for Dissent. She will have got one of those people from Highcombe to come out and hold a meeting: that is how they always begin."
"Oh no,--a great deal worse than that."
"Minnie means worse in our way of thinking," the younger sister explained.
"I don"t know anything worse," said the clergyman"s wife, "than the bringing in of Dissent to a united parish such as ours has been. But I know it will come. I am always expecting to hear of it every day; things go so fast nowadays. What with radicalism, and the poor people all having votes, and what you call progress, one never knows what to expect, except the worst. I always look for the worst. Well, what is it then, if it isn"t Dissent?"
Then Miss Warrender gave an account of the real state of affairs. "The letter was there on the table, dated the Elms, Underwood, Highcombe, as if--as if it was a county family; just as we put it ourselves on our paper."
"But far finer than ours,--gilt, and paper so polished and shining, and a quarter of an inch thick. Oh, much finer than ours!"
"Ours, of course, will be black-edged for a long, long time to come; there could not be any comparison," said Minnie, with a sigh. "But think of the a.s.surance of such people! I am so glad to have found you alone, for we couldn"t have talked about it before the rector. And I believe if we hadn"t gone there just at the right moment she would have accepted.
I told her mamma would never employ her again."
"I never had very much opinion of that little thing," said Mrs.
Wilberforce. "She is a great deal too fine. If her grandmother was a sensible person, she would have put a stop to all those feathers and flowers and things."
"Still," said Minnie, with some severity, "a young woman who is a dressmaker and gets the fashion-books, and is perhaps in the way of temptation, may wear a feather in her hat; but that is not to say that she should encourage immorality, and make for anybody who asks her: especially considering the way we have all taken her up."
"Who is it that encourages immorality?" said a different voice, over Mrs. Wilberforce"s head,--quite a different voice; a man"s voice, for one thing, which always changes the atmosphere a little. It was the rector himself, who came across the lawn in the ease of a shooting-coat, with his hands in his pockets. He wore a long coat when he went out in the parish, but at home there can be no doubt that he liked to be at his ease. He was a man who was too easy in general, and might, perhaps, if his wife had not scented harm from the beginning, have compromised himself by calling at the Elms.
"Oh, please!" cried Minnie, with a blush. "Mrs. Wilberforce will tell you. We really have not time to stay any longer. Not any tea, thank you.
We must be running away."
"There is nothing to be so sensitive about," said the clergyman"s wife.
"Of course Herbert knows that you must know: you are not babies. It is Lizzie Hampson, the dressmaker, who has been asked to go and work at the Elms."
"Oh!" said the rector. He showed himself wonderfully reasonable,--more reasonable than any one could have expected. "I wouldn"t let her go there if I was you. It"s not a fit place for a girl."
"We are perfectly well aware of that," said Mrs. Wilberforce. "I warned you from the beginning. But the thing is, who is to prevent her from going? Minnie has told her plainly, it appears, and I will speak to her, and as her clergyman I should say it was your duty to say a word; but whether we shall succeed, that is a different matter. These creatures seem to have a sort of real attraction for everything that is wrong."
"We all have that, I"m afraid, my dear."
"But not all in that way. There may be a bias, but it doesn"t take the same form. Do sit down, girls, and take your tea, like reasonable creatures. She shall never enter the rectory, of course, if--and if you are sure Mrs. Warrender will do the same. But you know she is very indulgent,--more indulgent than I should be in her place. There was that story, you know, about f.a.n.n.y, the laundry-maid. I don"t think we shall do much if your dear mother relents, and says the girl is penitent as soon as she cries. She ought to know girls better than that. A little thing makes them cry: but penitence,--that is getting rarer and rarer every day."
"There would be no need for penitence in this case. The girl is a very respectable girl. Don"t let her go there, that"s all: and give me a cup of tea."
"Isn"t that like a man!" said Mrs. Wilberforce. "Don"t let her go there, and give him a cup of tea!--the one just as easy as the other. I am sure I tell you often enough, Herbert, what with all that is done for them and said about them, the poor people are getting more and more unmanageable every day."
"Our family has always been Liberal," said Minnie. "I think the poor people have their rights just as we have. They ought to be educated, and all that."
"Very well," said the other lady; "when you have educated them up to thinking themselves as good--oh, what am I saying? far better--than their betters, you"ll see what will come of it. I for one am quite prepared. I pity the people who deceive themselves. Herbert chooses to laugh, but I can"t laugh; it is much too serious for that."
"There will be peace in our days," said the rector, "and after all, f.a.n.n.y, we can"t have a revolution coming because Lizzie Hampson----"
"Lizzie Hampson," said his wife solemnly, "is a sign of the times. She may be nothing in herself,--none of them are anything in themselves,--but I call her a sign of the times."
"What a grand name for a little girl!" he said, with a laugh. But he added seriously, "I wish that house belonged to Theo, or some one we could bring influence to bear upon; but what does a city man care? I wish we could do as the Americans do, and put rollers under it, and cart it away out of the parish."
"Can the Americans do that?"
"They say so. They can do every sort of wonderful thing, I believe."
"And that is what we are coming to!" said Mrs. Wilberforce, with an air of indignant severity, as if this had been the most dreadful accusation in the world.
"I suppose," said the rector, strolling with the young ladies to the gate, "that Theo holds by the family politics? I wonder whether he has given any attention to public questions. At his age a young fellow either does--or he does not," he added, with a laugh. "Oxford often makes a change."
"We don"t approve of ladies taking any part in politics," said Minnie, "and I am sure I have never mentioned the subject to Theo."
"But you know, Minnie, mamma said that Theo was--well, I don"t remember what she said he was, but certainly not the same as he was brought up."
"Then let us hope he has become a Conservative. Landholders should be and clergy must," said the rector, with a sigh. Then he remembered that this was not a style of conversation likely to commend itself to the two girls. "I hope we shall see you back next Sunday at the Sunday school,"
he said. "Of course I would not hurry you, if you found it too much; but a little work in moderation I have always thought was the very best thing for a grief like yours. Dear Mrs. Warrender, too," he added softly. He had not been in the habit of calling her dear Mrs. Warrender; but it seemed a term that was appropriate where there had been a death.
"I hope she does not quite shut herself up."
"Mamma has been with Lady Markland several times," said Minnie, with a mixture of disapproval and satisfaction. "Naturally, we have been so much thrown together since----"
"To be sure. What a sad thing!--twice in one house, within a week, was it not, the two deaths?"
"Just a week," said Chatty, who loved to be exact.
"But you know Lord Markland was no relation," added Minnie, too conscientious to take to herself the credit of a grief which was not hers. "It was not as if we felt it in that way."
"It was a dreadful thing to happen in one"s house, all the same. And Theo, I hear, goes a great deal to Markland. Oh, it is quite natural.
He had so much to do for her from the first. And I hear she is a very attractive sort of woman, though I don"t know much of her, for my own part."
"Attractive? Well, perhaps she may be attractive, to some people," said Minnie; "but when a woman has been married so long as she has, one never thinks--and her attractiveness has nothing to do with Theo," she added, with some severity.
"Oh no, I suppose not," said the rector. "Tell him I hope we shall soon see him here, for I expect his friend d.i.c.k Cavendish in the end of the week. You remember Cavendish? He told me he had met you at Oxford."