"Had you a good sermon to-day, Dove?" asked Mr. Anerley.
"Yes, papa; but I don't like Mr. Oldham."
She had never forgiven the good man for his too great anxiety about the Athanasian Creed.
"By the way, mamma," continued Mr. Anerley, "don't let me forget to tell you what I was reading in the papers this morning – although it will shock you, I know. They are going to secularize the Church."
Mrs. Anerley looked up – vaguely conscious that something dreadful was going to happen.
"The Ecclesiastical Commissioners are to be abolished; the churches are to be turned into schoolrooms; and the clergymen may, if they like, remain and be schoolmasters. If they don't, they must walk out."
"Quite true, mother," continued Will, taking up the wondrous tale; "and the Government means to cut up the entire ecclesiastical property, the glebe-lands, and what not, into small farms for the use of the poor people all over the three Kingdoms."
"The Prime Minister himself says it is useless trying to save the soul of a man until you give him a soul; and says that no man has a soul who is not properly fed and educated."
"He says no man can have a soul," repeated Will, "who has less than twenty shillings a week; and until that minimum is reached, the clergymen must turn farm-bailiffs or teachers. After then, the people may think about getting up churches once more. All the bishops are to be provided with a home in the Dramatic College at Maybury; the archbishops, in consideration of their inexperience of the world – "
"They're only laughing at you, mamma," said Dove.
"And a pretty example to set the children," said Mrs. Anerley. "Whoever laughs at mamma is sent upstairs to bed at once."
"Dove," said Will, suddenly, "do you know where you are going to-morrow?"
"No."
"Up to town. We're all going, except those young people who must remain in expectation of what we shall bring them when we return. You shall see, Dove – what shall you not see? I have always promised to give you a good dose of town; and now you shall have it. You shall sit up in a wire cage in the House of Commons, and look over the heads of the reporters on the drowsy gentlemen beneath. You shall see Mr. Gladstone, lying back, with his head in the air; you shall see Mr. Disraeli, apparently going to cry; and Lord Stanley, with his hat on the back of his head, and his hands in his pockets, looking as if he had just lost a bet."
"I shouldn't care a bit about one of them," said Dove.
"Then you shall go to another wire cage at Evans's; and you shall see a row of pale little boys in black, with their hands behind them, singing to rows of decorous gentlemen; or you may light upon the audience in its idiotic stage, and find them applauding Philistinic politics over their raw chops. Then – and listen, mamma! – the programme begins with a box, to-morrow evening, at the – theatre, where Miss Annie Brunel is playing her 'Juliet.'"
"The new actress, Will?" asked his father.
"Yes."
"Ah! now you promise us something worth seeing," said Dove, with glad eyes. "And oh, mamma, Will knows Miss Brunel, and has spoken to her, and says that she is – "
"Lovely," she was about to say; but she added "pretty," moderating her enthusiasm.
"Yes, I think she is rather pghetty," said Will; at which all the children laughed. "But you'll judge for yourself to-morrow night."
After dinner, and when the children had received a tiny sip of port wine along with their fruit, Mr. Anerley proposed to Will that they should smoke outside; and so a small table, some decanters and glasses, and a few chairs were carried out, and placed under a great cedar tree, which was now beginning to get a soft green velvet over its dark shelves of branches.
"Dove," whispered Mr. Anerley, "go and ask mamma if I mayn't have my song to-day?"
"But, papa, it's Sunday."
"Tell mamma to take all the children into the meadow, with some bread for the pony. They won't hear it, then."
This was accordingly done; and then Dove, opening the French window of the drawing-room, so that the music might pass out to the gentlemen underneath the cedar, sang, very prettily indeed, Mr. Anerley's particular song – "Where the bee sucks." Her voice was not a powerful one, but it was very tender and expressive; and there was a quaint softness in that purring habit of hers which made her sing, "Meghily, meghily shall I sleep now."
And when she went outside to Mr. Anerley, and knelt down beside him, to ask him if he was satisfied, he put his arm round her waist and said, with a smile,
"Meghily, meghily shall I sleep now, my darling. I should have been miserable all the afternoon if I had not heard my own song. I believe I wrote it, Dove."
"You mustn't sleep now, papa," she said, blushing a little over her bad pronunciation, "for you said we were going to walk over to the Place this afternoon."
"So I did; and we will start presently."
CHAPTER VII.
BALNACLUITH PLACE
"It often surprises me," said Mr. Anerley, as the little party made its way across the common of St. Mary-Kirby in the warm evening glow, "that Hubbard cares to keep up acquaintance with us. We always dislike people who have known us in ill-fortune, or penury, or great depression. I even hate the flavour of cigars that I have smoked when recovering from sickness; I must have others when I get quite well again. Now, Hubbard, with his deer-park, and harriers, and thirty thousand a year, ought to be disgusted with people who knew him as a tea-broker."
"Don't be so ill-natured about Mr. Hubbard, dear," said his wife, with a smile. "I'm sure he is a big, soft, stupid, well-meaning sort of man."
Mr. Anerley was not quite so certain about the softness and good intentions of the Count; but he charitably forbore to speak. Dove and Will, who had stood for a few seconds on the bridge, to watch the two swans come sailing towards them in expectation of crumbs – cleaving the burnished gold of the mill-head into long purple lines – now came up; and they walked away from the still little village, along the green lanes, until they drew near the Place.
It was a great, sombre, fine old building, which had figured in history under another name – a large building of gloomy red brick, with innumerable mullioned windows, and peaks, and stone griffins – a building that had here and there grown grey and orange with the lichens and rain and wind of many years. It stood upon a high terrace on the side of a hill sloping down to the river, which ran along the valley to St. Mary-Kirby; and at this point the stream – a line of flashing gold winding through the soft green – divided the terrace and lawn of the house from the great park opposite, with its magnificent elms and its small close-lying herd of deer. Round about the Place, too, were some fine trees, on a particular cluster of which a colony of rooks had established themselves at some bygone time. Altogether a noble and handsome old building was this Balnacluith Place, for which the Graf von Schönstein had – not without a purpose – expended a large sum of money, on his accession to fortune. Alas! the influence of the Place had fled the moment he bought it. The brilliant gentlemen and lovely ladies whom the Count had pictured to himself dining in the great hall, or walking in the broad park, never appeared. The grand old house had lost its mesmeric power; and no longer drew down from London those brilliant parties of wits, and beaux, and belles who once – as the Count had informed himself – held their merry revels there. He had sparkling wines at his command; lights he could have in abundance; when he chose, the dining-hall was brilliant with plate, and flowers, and fruit – but the ladies and gentlemen whom he had mentally invited stayed away. And he was not the man to go out into the highways and byways, and gather in beggars to his feast. He had aimed at a particular kind of guests: they had not come; but there was yet hope of their coming.
When the Anerleys drew near they perceived the figure of a man walking solitarily up and down the stone terrace in front of the house. His only