“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