THE next day the family walked forth in a body, to make acquaintance with the “new neighbourhood.” There was Papa and Mamma first of all, Mrs Atheling extremely well dressed, and in all the cheerful excitement of an unaccustomed holiday; and then came Agnes and Marian, pleased and curious—and, wild with delight, little Bell and Beau. Hannah, who was very near as much delighted as the children, stood at the door looking after them as they turned the angle of the grassy path. When they were quite out of sight, Hannah returned to her kitchen with a brisk step, to compound the most delicious of possible puddings for their early dinner. It was worth while now to exercise those half-forgotten gifts of cookery which had been lost upon Miss Bridget; and when everything was ready, Hannah, instead of her black ribbon, put new white bows in her cap. At sight of the young people, and, above all, the children, and in the strange delightful bustle of “a full house,” hard-featured Hannah, kind and homely, renewed her youth.
The father and mother sent their children on before them, and made progress slowly, recalling and remembering everything. As for Agnes and Marian, they hastened forward with irregular and fluctuating curiosity—loitering one moment, and running another, but, after their different fashion, taking note of all they saw. And between the vanguard and the rearguard a most unsteady main body, fluttering over the grass like two butterflies, as they ran back and forward from Agnes and Marian to Papa and Mamma “with flichterin’ noise and glee,” came Bell and Beau. These small people, with handfuls of buttercups and clovertops always running through their rosy little fingers, were to be traced along their devious and uncertain path by the droppings of these humble posies, and were in a state of perfect and unalloyed ecstasy. The little family procession came past the Old Wood House, which was a large white square building, a great deal loftier, larger, and more pretending than their own; in fact, a great house in comparison with their cottage. Round two sides of it appeared the prettiest of trim gardens—a little world of velvet lawn, clipped yews, and glowing flower-beds. The windows were entirely obscured with close Venetian blinds, partially excused by the sunshine, but turning a most jealous and inscrutable blankness to the eyes of the new inhabitants; and close behind the house clustered the trees of the park. As they passed, looking earnestly at the house, some one came out—a very young man, unmistakably clerical, with a stiff white band under his monkish chin, a waistcoat which was very High Church, and the blandest of habitual smiles. He looked at the strangers urbanely, with a half intention of addressing them. The girls were not learned in Church politics, yet they recognised the priestly appearance of the smiling young clergyman; and Agnes, for her part, contemplated him with a secret disappointment and dismay. Mr Rivers himself was said to be High Church. Could this be Mr Rivers? He passed, however, and left them to guess vainly; and Papa and Mamma, whose slow and steady pace threatened every now and then to outstrip these irregular, rapid young footsteps, came up and pressed them onward. “How strange!” Marian exclaimed involuntarily: “if that is he, I am disappointed; but how funny to meet them both!”
And then Marian blushed, and laughed aloud, half ashamed to be detected in this evident allusion to Rachel’s castles in the air. Her laugh attracted the attention of a countrywoman who just then came out to the door of a little wayside cottage. She made them a little bob of a curtsy, like Hannah’s, and asked if they wanted to see the church, “’cause I don’t think the gentlemen would mind,” said the clerk’s wife, the privileged bearer of the ecclesiastical keys; and Mr Atheling, hearing the question, answered over the heads of his daughters, “Yes, certainly they would go.” So they all went after her dutifully over the stile, and along a field-path by a rustling growth of wheat, spotted with red poppies, for which Bell and Beau sighed and cried in vain, and came at last to a pretty small church, of the architectural style and period of which this benighted family were most entirely ignorant. Mr Atheling, indeed, had a vague idea that it was “Gothic,” but would not have liked to commit himself even to that general principle—for the days of religious architecture and church restorations were all since Mr Atheling’s time.
They went in accordingly under a low round-arched doorway, solemn and ponderous, entirely unconscious of the “tressured ornament” which antiquaries came far to see; and, looking with a certain awe at the heavy and solemn arches of the little old Saxon church, were rather more personally attracted, we are pained to confess, by a group of gentlemen within the sacred verge of the chancel, discussing something with solemnity and earnestness, as if it were a question of life and death. Foremost in this group, but occupying, as it seemed, rather an explanatory and apologetic place, and listening with evident anxiety to the deliverance of the others, was a young man of commanding appearance, extremely tall, with a little of the look of ascetic abstraction which belongs to the loftier members of the very high High Church. As the Athelings approached rather timidly under the escort of their humble guide, this gentleman eyed them, with a mixture of observation and haughtiness, as they might have been eyed by the proprietor of the domain. Then he recognised Mr Atheling with such a recognition as the same reigning lord and master might bestow upon an intruder who was only mistaken and not presumptuous. The father of the family rose to the occasion, his colour increased; he drew himself up, and made a formal but really dignified bow to the young clergyman. The little group of advisers did not pause a minute in their discussion; and odd words, which they were not in the habit of hearing, fell upon the ears of Agnes and Marian. “Bad in an archaic point of view—extremely bad; and I never can forgive errors of detail; the best examples are so accessible,” said one gentleman. “I do not agree with you. I remember an instance at Amiens,” interrupted another. “Amiens, my dear sir!—exactly what I mean to say,” cried the first speaker; “behind the date of Winterbourne a couple of hundred years—late work—a debased style. In a church of this period everything ought to be severe.”
And accordingly there were severe Apostles in the painted windows—those slender lancet “lights” which at this moment dazzled the eyes of Agnes and Marian; and the new saints in the new little niches were, so far as austerity went, a great deal more correct and true to their “period” than even the old saints, without noses, and sorely worn with weather and irreverence, who were as genuine early English as the stout old walls. But Marian Atheling had no comprehension of this kind of severity. She shrunk away from the altar in its religious gloom—the altar with its tall candlesticks, and its cloth, which was stiff with embroidery—marvelling in her innocent imagination over some vague terror of punishments and penances in a church where “everything ought to be severe.” Marian took care to be on the other side of her father and mother, as they passed again the academic group discussing the newly restored sedilia, which was not quite true in point of “detail,” and drew a long breath of relief when she was safely outside these dangerous walls. “The Rector! that was the Rector. Oh Agnes!” cried Marian, as Papa announced the dreadful intelligence; and the younger sister, horror-stricken, and with great pity, looked sympathetically in Agnes’s face. Agnes herself was moved to look back at the tall central figure, using for a dais the elevation of that chancel. She smiled, but she was a little startled—and the girls went on to the village, and to glance through the trees at the great park surrounding the Hall, with not nearly so much conversation as at the beginning of their enterprise. But it was with a sigh instead of a laugh that Marian repeated, when they went home to dinner and Hannah’s magnificent pudding—“So, Agnes, we have seen them both.”