Kitabı oku: «The Clever Woman of the Family», sayfa 28
“And will make you much more really useful and effective than ever you could have been alone,” said Ermine.
“He does talk of doing things together, but, oh! I feel as if I could never dare put out my hand again!”
“Not alone perhaps.”
“I like to hear him tell me about the soldiers’ children, and what he wants to have done for them.”
“You and I little thought what Lady Temple was to bring us,” said Ermine, cheerfully, “but you see we are not the strongest creatures in the world, so we must resign ourselves to our fate, and make the best of it. They must judge how many imperfections they choose to endure, and we can only make the said drawbacks as little troublesome as may be. Now, I think I see Miss Curtis watching in fear that I am over-talking you.”
“Oh, must you go? You have really comforted me! I wanted an external opinion very much, and I do trust yours! Only tell me,” she added, holding Ermine’s hand, “is this indeed so with you?”
“Not yet,” said Ermine, softly, “do not speak about it, but I think you will be comforted to hear that this matter of yours, by leading to the matron’s confession, may have removed an obstacle that was far more serious in my eyes than even my own helplessness, willing as Colin was to cast both aside. Oh, Rachel, there is a great deal to be thankful for.”
Rachel lay down on her sofa, and fell asleep, nor did Alick find any occasion for blaming Grace when he returned the next day. The effect of the conversation had been to bring Rachel to a meek submission, very touching in its passiveness and weary peacefulness. She was growing stronger, walked out leaning on Alick’s arm, and was even taken out by him in a boat, a wonderful innovation, for a dangerous accident to Mr. Curtis had given the mother such a horror of the sea that no boating excursions had ever taken place during her solitary reign, and the present were only achieved by a wonderful stretch of dear Alexander’s influence. Perhaps she trusted him the more, because his maimed hand prevented him from being himself an oarsman, though he had once been devoted to rowing. At any rate, with an old fisherman at the oar, many hours were spent upon the waters of the bay, in a tranquillity that was balm to the harassed spirit, with very little talking, now and then some reading aloud, but often nothing but a dreamy repose. The novelty and absence of old association was one secret of the benefit that Rachel thus derived. Any bustle or resumption of former habits was a trial to her shattered nerves, and brought back the dreadful haunted nights. The first sight of Conrade, still looking thin and delicate, quite overset her; a drive on the Avoncester road renewed all she had felt on the way thither; three or four morning visitors coming in on her unexpectedly, made the whole morbid sense of eyes staring at her recur all night, and when the London solicitor came down about the settlements, she shrank in such a painful though still submissive way, from the sight of a stranger, far more from the semblance of a dinner party, that the mother yielded, and let her remain in her sitting-room.
“May I come in?” said Alick, knocking at the door. “I have something to tell you.”
“What, Alick! Not Mr. Williams come?”
“Nothing so good. In fact I doubt if you will think it good at all. I have been consulting this same solicitor about the title-deeds; that cheese you let fall, you know,” he added, stroking her hand, and speaking so gently that the very irony was rather pleasant.
“Oh, it is very bad.”
“Now wouldn’t you like to hear it was so bad that I should have to sell out, and go to the diggings to make it up?”
“Now, Alick, if it were not for your sake, you know I should like—”
“I know you would; but you see, unfortunately, it was not a cheese at all, only a wooden block that the fox ran away with. Lawyers don’t put people’s title-deeds into such dangerous keeping, the true cheese is safe locked up in a tin-box in Mr. Martin’s chambers in London.”
“Then what did I give Mauleverer?”
“A copy kept for reference down here.” Rachel hid her face.
“There, I knew you would think it no good news, and it is just a thunder-clap to me. All you wanted me for was to defend the mother and make up to the charity, and now there’s no use in me,” he said in a disconsolate tone.
“Oh, Alick, Alick, why am I so foolish?”
“Never mind; I took care Martin should not know it. Nobody is aware of the little affair but our two selves; and I will take care the fox learns the worth of his prize. Only now, Rachel, answer me, is there any use left for me still?”
“You should not ask me such things, Alick, you know it all too well.”
“Not so well that I don’t want to hear it. But I had more to say. This Martin is a man of very different calibre from old Cox, with a head and heart in London charities and churches, and it had struck him as it did you, that the Homestead had an easier bargain of it than that good namesake of yours had ever contemplated. If it paid treble or quadruple rent, the dear mother would never find it out, nor grow a geranium the less.”
“No, she would not! But after all, the lace apprenticeships are poor work.”
“So they are, but Martin says there would be very little difficulty in getting a private bill to enable the trustees to apply the sum otherwise for the benefit of the Avonmouth girls.”
“Then if I had written to him, it would have been all right! Oh, my perverseness!”
“And, Rachel, now that money has been once so intended; suppose it kept its destination. About £500 would put up a tidy little industrial school, and you might not object to have a scholarship or two for some of our little —th Highlander lassies whose fathers won’t make orphans of them for the regular military charities. What, crying, Rachel! Don’t you like it?”
“It is my dream. The very thing I wished and managed so vilely. If Lovedy were alive! Though perhaps that is not the thing to wish. But I can’t bear taking your—”
“Hush! You can’t do worse than separate your own from mine. This is no part of the means I laid before Mr. Martin by way of proving myself a responsible individual. I took care of that. Part of this is prize-money, and the rest was a legacy that a rich old merchant put me down for in a transport of gratitude because his son was one of the sick in the bungalow where the shell came. I have had it these three or four months, and wondered what to do with it.”
“This will be very beautiful, very excellent. And we can give the ground.”
“I have thought of another thing. I never heard of an industrial school where the great want was not food for industry. Now I know the Colonel and Mr. Mitchell have some notion floating in their minds about getting a house for convalescents down here, and it strikes me that this might supply the work in cooking, washing, and so on. I think I might try what they thought of it.”
Rachel could only weep out her shame and thankfulness, and when Alick reverently added that it was a scheme that would require much thought and much prayer, the pang struck her to the heart—how little she had prayed over the F. U. E. E. The prayer of her life had been for action and usefulness, but when she had seen the shadow in the stream, her hot and eager haste, her unconscious detachment from all that was not visible and material had made her adhere too literally to that misinterpreted motto, laborare est orare. How should then her eyes be clear to discern between substance and shadow?
CHAPTER XXIV. THE HONEYMOON
“Around the very place doth brood
A calm and holy quietude.”
—REV. ISAAC WILLIAMS.
The level beams of a summer sun, ending one of his longest careers, were tipping a mountain peak with an ineffable rosy purple, contrasting with the deep shades of narrow ravines that cleft the rugged sides, and gradually expanded into valleys, sloping with green pasture, or clothed with wood. The whole picture, with its clear, soft sky, was retraced on the waters of the little lake set in emerald meadows, which lay before the eyes of Rachel Keith, as she reclined in a garden chair before the windows of a pretty rustic-looking hotel, but there was no admiration, no peaceful contemplation on her countenance, only the same weary air of depression, too wistful and startled even to be melancholy repose, and the same bewildered distressed look that had been as it were stamped on her by the gaze of the many unfriendly eyes at the Quarter Sessions, and by her two unfortunate dinner parties.
The wedding was to have been quietness itself, but though the bridegroom had refused to contribute sister, brother-in-law, or even uncle to the numbers, conventionalities had been too strong for Mrs. Curtis, and “just one more” had been added to the guests till a sufficient multitude had been collected to renew all Rachel’s morbid sensations of distress and bewilderment with their accompanying feverish symptoms, and she had been only able to proceed on her journey by very short stages, taken late in the day.
Alick had not forgotten her original views as to travelling, and as they were eventually to go to Scotland, had proposed beginning with Dutch reformatories and Swiss cretins; but she was so plainly unfit for extra fatigue and bustle, that the first few weeks were to be spent in Wales, where the enjoyment of fine scenery might, it was hoped, be beneficial to the jaded spirits, and they had been going through a course of passes and glens as thoroughly as Rachel’s powers would permit, for any over-fatigue renewed feverishness and its delusive miseries, and the slightest alarm told upon the shattered nerves.
She did not easily give way at the moment, but the shock always took revenge in subsequent suffering, which all Alick’s care could not prevent, though the exceeding charm of his tenderness rendered even the indisposition almost precious to her.
“What a lovely sunset!” he said, coming to lean over the back of her chair. “Have you been watching it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you very much tired?”
“No, it is very quiet here.”
“Very; but I must take you in before that curling mist mounts into your throat.”
“This is a very nice place, Alick, the only really quiet one we have found.”
“I am afraid that it will be so no longer. The landlord tells me he has letters from three parties to order rooms.”
“Oh, then, pray let us go on,” said Rachel, looking alarmed.
“To-morrow afternoon then, for I find there’s another waterfall.”
“Very well,” said Rachel, resignedly.
“Or shall we cut the waterfall, and get on to Llan—something?”
“If you don’t think we ought to see it.”
“Ought?” he said, smiling. “What is the ought in the case? Why are we going through all this? Is it a duty to society or to ourselves?”
“A little of both, I suppose,” said Rachel.
“And, Rachel, from the bottom of your heart, is it not a trying duty?”
“I want to like what you are showing me,” said Rachel.
“And you are more worried than delighted, eh?”
“I—I don’t know! I see it is grand and beautiful! I did love my own moors, and the Spinsters’ Needles, but—Don’t think me very ungrateful, but I can’t enter into all this! All I really do care for is your kindness, and helping me about,” and she was really crying like a child unable to learn a lesson.
“Well,” he said, with his own languor of acquiescence, “we are perfectly agreed. Waterfalls are an uncommon bore, if one is not in a concatenation accordingly.”
Rachel was beguiled into a smile.
“Come,” he said, “let us be strong minded! If life should ever become painful to us because of our neglect of the waterfalls, we will set out and fulfil our tale of them. Meantime, let me take you where you shall be really quiet, home to Bishopsworthy.”
“But your uncle does not expect you so soon.”
“My uncle is always ready for me, and a week or two of real rest there would make you ready for the further journey.”
Rachel made no opposition. She was glad to have her mind relieved from the waterfalls, but she had rather have been quite alone with her husband. She knew that Lord and Lady Keith had taken a house at Littleworthy, while Gowanbrae was under repair, and she dreaded the return to the bewildering world, before even the first month was over; but Alick made the proposal so eagerly that she could not help assenting with all the cordiality she could muster, thinking that it must be a wretched, disappointing wedding tour for him, and she would at least not prevent his being happy with his uncle; as happy as he could be with a person tied to him, of whom all his kindred must disapprove, and especially that paragon of an uncle, whom she heard of like an intensification of all that class of clergy who had of late been most alien to her.
Alick did not press for her real wishes, but wrote his letter, and followed it as fast as she could bear to travel. So when the train, a succession of ovens for living bodies disguised in dust, drew up at the Littleworthy Station, there was a ready response to the smart footman’s inquiry, “Captain and Mrs. Keith?” This personage by no means accorded with Rachel’s preconceived notions of the Rectory establishment, but she next heard the peculiar clatter by which a grand equipage announces its importance, and saw the coronetted blinkers tossing on the other side of the railing. A kind little note of welcome was put into Rachel’s hand as she was seated in the luxurious open carriage, and Alick had never felt better pleased with his sister than when he found his wife thus spared the closeness of the cramping fly, or the dusty old rectory phaeton. Hospitality is never more welcome than at the station, and Bessie’s letter was complacently accepted. Rachel would, she knew, be too much tired to see her on that day, and on the next she much regretted having an engagement in London, but on the Sunday they would not fail to meet, and she begged that Rachel would send word by the servant what time Meg should be sent to the Rectory for her to ride; it would be a kindness to exercise her, for it was long since she had been used.
Rachel could not help colouring with pleasure at the notion of riding her own Meg again, and Alick freely owned that it was well thought of. He already had a horse at his uncle’s, and was delighted to see Rachel at last looking forward to something. But as she lay back in the carriage, revelling in the fresh wind, she became dismayed at the succession of cottages of gentility, with lawns and hedges of various pretensions.
“There must be a terrible number of people here!”
“This is only Littleworthy.”
“Not very little.”
“No; I told you it was villafied and cockneyfied. There,” as the horses tried to stop at a lodge leading to a prettily built house, “that’s Timber End, the crack place here, where Bessie has always said it was her ambition to live.”
“How far is it from the Parsonage?”
“Four miles.”
Which was a comfort to Rachel, not that she wished to be distant from Bessie, but the population appalled her imagination.
“Bishopsworthy is happily defended by a Dukery,” explained Alick, as coming to the end of the villas they passed woods and fields, a bit of heathy common, and a scattering of cottages. Labourers going home from work looked up, and as their eyes met Alick’s there was a mutual smile and touch of the hat. He evidently felt himself coming home. The trees of a park were beginning to rise in front, when the carriage turned suddenly down a sharp steep hill; the right side of the road bounded by a park paling; the left, by cottages, reached by picturesque flights of brick stairs, then came a garden wall, and a halt. Alick called out, “Thanks,” and “we will get out here,” adding, “They will take in the goods the back way. I don’t like careering into the churchyard.”
Rachel, alighting, saw that the lane proceeded downwards to a river crossed by a wooden bridge, with an expanse of meadows beyond. To her left was a stable-yard, and below it a white gate and white railings enclosing a graveyard, with a very beautiful church standing behind a mushroom yew-tree. The upper boundary of the churchyard was the clipped yew hedge of the rectory garden, whose front entrance was through the churchyard. There was a lovely cool tranquillity of aspect as the shadows lay sleeping on the grass; and Rachel could have stood and gazed, but Alick opened the gate, and there was a movement at the seat that enclosed the gnarled trunk of the yew tree. A couple of village lads touched their caps and departed the opposite way, a white setter dog bounded forward, and, closely attended by a still snowier cat, a gentleman came to meet them, so fearlessly treading the pathway between the graves, and so youthful in figure, that it was only the “Well, uncle, here she is,” and, “Alick, my dear boy,” that convinced her that this was indeed Mr. Clare. The next moment he had taken her hand, kissed her brow, and spoken a few words of fatherly blessing, then, while Alick exchanged greetings with the cat and dog, he led her to the arched yew-tree entrance to his garden, up two stone steps, along a flagged path across the narrow grass-plat in front of the old two-storied house, with a tiled verandah like an eyebrow to the lower front windows.
Instead of entering by the door in the centre, he turned the corner of the house, where the eastern gable disclosed a window opening on a sloping lawn full of bright flower-beds. The room within was lined with books and stored with signs of parish work, but with a refined orderliness reigning over the various little ornaments, and almost betokening feminine habitation; and Alick exclaimed with admiration of a large bowl of fresh roses, beautifully arranged.
“Traces of Bessie,” said Mr. Clare; “she brought them this morning, and spent nearly an hour in arranging them and entertaining me with her bright talk. I have hardly been able to keep out of the room since, they make it so delicious.”
“Do you often see her?” asked Alick.
“Yes, dear child, she is most good-natured and attentive, and I take it most kindly of her, so courted as she is.”
“How do you get on with his lordship?”
“I don’t come much in his way, he has been a good deal laid up with sciatica, but he seems very fond of her; and it was all her doing that they have been all this time at Littleworthy, instead of being in town for the season. She thought it better for him.”
“And where is Mr. Lifford?” asked Alick.
“Gone to M– till Saturday.”
“Unable to face the bride.”
“I fear Ranger is not equally shy,” said Mr. Clare, understanding a certain rustle and snort to import that the dog was pressing his chin hard upon Rachel’s knee, while she declared her content with the handsome creature’s black depth of eye; and the cat executed a promenade of tenderness upon Alick.
“How are the peacocks, Alick?” added Mr. Clare; “they, at least, are inoffensive pets. I dreaded the shears without your superintendence, but Joe insisted that they were getting lop-sided.”
Alick put his head out at the window. “All right, sir; Joe has been a little hard on the crest of the left-hand one, but it is recovering.”
Whereupon, Rachel discovered that the peacocks were creatures of yew-tree, perched at either end of the garden fence. Mr. Clare had found them there, and preserved them with solicitous fidelity.
Nothing could be less like than he was to the grave, thin, stooping ascetic in a long coat, that she had expected. He was a tall, well-made man, of the same youthful cast of figure as his nephew, and a far lighter and more springy step, with features and colouring recalling those of his niece, as did the bright sunny playful sweetness of his manner; his dark handsome eyes only betraying their want of sight by a certain glassy immobility that contrasted with the play of the expressive mouth. It was hard to guess why Bessie should have shunned such an uncle. Alick took Rachel to the bedroom above the library, and, like it, with two windows—one overlooking churchyard, river, and hay-fields, the other commanding, over the peacock hedge, a view of the playground, where Mr. Clare was seen surrounded by boys, appealing to him on some disputed matter of cricket. There was a wonderful sense of serenity, freshness, and fragrance, inexpressibly grateful to Rachel’s wearied feelings, and far more comfortable than the fine scenery through which she had been carried, because no effort to look and admire was incumbent on her—nay, not even an effort to talk all the evening. Mr. Clare seemed to have perfectly imbibed the idea that rest was what she wanted, and did not try to make small talk with her, though she sat listening with pleased interest to the conversation between him and his nephew—so home like, so full of perfect understanding of one another.
“Is there anything to be read aloud?” presently asked Alick.
“You have not by chance got ‘Framley Parsonage?’”
“I wish I had. I did pick up ‘Silas Marner,’ at a station, thinking you might like it,” and he glanced at Rachel, who had, he suspected, thought his purchase an act of weakness. “Have you met with it?”
“I have met with nothing of the sort since you were here last;” then turning to Rachel, “Alick indulges me with novels, for my good curate had rather read the catalogue of a sale any day than meddle with one, and I can’t set on my pupil teacher in a book where I don’t know what is coming.”
“We will get ‘Framley,’” said Alick.
“Bessie has it. She read me a very clever scene about a weak young parson bent on pleasing himself; and offered to lend me the book, but I thought it would not edify Will Walker. But, no doubt, you have read it long ago.”
“No,” said Rachel; and something withheld her from disclaiming such empty employments. Indeed, she was presently much interested in the admirable portraiture of “Silas Marner,” and still more by the keen, vivid enjoyment, critical, droll, and moralizing, displayed by a man who heard works of fiction so rarely that they were always fresh to him, and who looked on them as studies of life. His hands were busy all the time carving a boss for the roof of one of the side aisles of his church—the last step in its gradual restoration.
That night there was no excitement of nerve, no morbid fancy to trouble Rachel’s slumbers; she only awoke as the eight o’clock bell sounded through the open window, and for the first time for months rose less weary than she had gone to rest. Week-day though it were, the description “sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright,” constantly recurred to her mind as she watched the quiet course of occupation. Alick, after escorting his uncle to a cottage, found her searching among the stores in the music stand.
“You unmusical female,” he said, “what is that for?”
“Your uncle spoke of music last night, and I thought he would like it.”
“I thought you had no such propensity.”
“I learnt like other people, but it was the only thing I could not do as well as Grace, and I thought it wasted time, and was a young ladyism; but if can recover music enough to please him, I should be glad.”
“Thank you,” said Alick, earnestly. “He is very much pleased with your voice in speaking. Indeed, I believe I first heard it with his ears.”
“This is a thorough lady’s collection of music,” said Rachel, looking through it to hide her blush of pleasure. “Altogether the house has not a bachelor look.”
“Did you not know that he had been married? It was when he first had the living twelve years ago. She was a very lovely young thing, half Irish, and this was the happiest place in the world for two years, till her little brother was sent home here from school without proper warning of a fever that had begun there. We all had it, but she and her baby were the only ones that did not recover! There they lie, under the yew-tree, where my uncle likes to teach the children. He was terribly struck down for years, though he went manfully to his work, and it has been remarkable how his spirits and sociability have returned since he lost his sight; indeed, he is more consistently bright than ever he was.”
“I never saw any one like him,” said Rachel. “I have fallen in with clergy that some call holy, and with some that others call pious, but he is not a bit like either. He is not even grave, yet there is a calming, refreshing sense of reverence towards him that would be awe, only it is so happy.”
Alick’s response was to bend over her, and kiss her brow. She had never seen him so much gratified.
“What a comfort your long stay with him must have been,” she said presently, “in the beginning of his blindness!”
“I hope so. It was an ineffable comfort to me to come here out of Littleworthy croquet, and I think cheering me did him good. Rachel, you may do and say what you please,” he added, earnestly, “since you have taken to him.”
“I could not help it,” said Rachel, though a slight embarrassment came over her at the recollection of Bessie, and at the thought of the narrow views on which she expected to differ. Then, as Alick continued to search among the music, she asked, “Will he like the piano to be used?”
“Of all things. Bessie’s singing is his delight. Look, could we get this up?”
“You don’t sing, Alick! I mean, do you?”
“We need not betray our talents to worldlings base.”
Rachel found her accompaniment the least satisfactory part of the affair, and resolved on an hour’s practice every day in Mr. Clare’s absence, a wholesome purpose even as regarded her health and spirits. She had just sat down to write letters, feeling for the first time as if they would not be a toil, when Mr. Clare looked in to ask Alick to refer to a verse in the Psalms, quoting it in Greek as well as English, and after the research had been carried to the Hebrew, he told Rachel that he was going to write his sermon, and repaired to the peacock path, where he paced along with Ranger and the cat, in faithful, unobtrusive attendance.
“What, you can read Hebrew, Alick?”
“So can you.”
“Enough to appreciate the disputed passages. When did you study it?”
“I learnt enough, when I was laid up, to look out my uncle’s texts for him.”
She felt a little abashed by the tone, but a message called him away, and before his return Mr. Clare came back to ask for a reference to St. Augustine. On her offer of her services, she was thanked, and directed with great precision to the right volume of the Library of the Fathers, but spying a real St. Augustine, she could not be satisfied without a flight at the original. It was not, however, easy to find the place; she was forced to account for her delay by confessing her attempt, and then to profit by Mr. Clare’s directions, and, after all, her false quantities, though most tenderly and apologetically corrected, must have been dreadful to the scholarly ear, for she was obliged to get Alick to read the passage over to him before he arrived at the sense, and Rachel felt her flight of clever womanhood had fallen short. It was quite new to her to be living with people who knew more of, and went deeper into, everything than she did, and her husband’s powers especially amazed her.
The afternoon was chiefly spent in the hay-field under a willow-tree; Mr. Clare tried to leave the young people to themselves, but they would not consent; and, after a good deal of desultory talk and description of the minnows and water-spiders, in whom Mr. Clare seemed to take a deep interest, they went on with their book till the horses came, and Alick took Rachel for a ride in Earlsworthy Park, a private gate of which, just opposite to the Rectory, was free to its inhabitants. The Duke was an old college friend of Mr. Clare, and though much out of health, and hardly ever able to reside at the Park, all its advantages were at the Rector’s service, and they were much appreciated when, on this sultry summer’s day, Rachel found shade and coolness in the deep arcades of the beech woods, and freshness on the upland lawns, as she rode happily on the dear old mare, by whom she really thought herself fondly recognised. There was something in the stillness of the whole, even in the absence of the roll and plash of the sea waves beside which she had grown up, that seemed to give her repose from the hurry and throb of sensations and thoughts that had so long preyed upon her; and when the ride was over she was refreshed, not tired, and the evening bell drew her to the conclusion most befitting a day spent in that atmosphere of quietude. She felt grateful to her husband for making no remark, though the only time she had been within a church since her illness had been at their wedding, he only gave her his arm, and said she should sit in the nook that used to be his in the time of his lameness; and a most sheltered nook it was, between a pillar and the open chancel screen, where no eyes could haunt her, even if the congregation had been more than a Saturday summer evening one.
She only saw the pure, clear, delicately-toned hues of the east window, and the reverent richness of the chancel, and she heard the blind pastor’s deep musical voice, full of that expressive power always enhanced by the absence of a book. He led the Psalms with perfect security and a calm fervour that rendered the whole familiar service like something new and touching; the Lessons were read by Alick, and Rachel, though under any other circumstances she would have been startled to see him standing behind the Eagle, could not but feel all appropriate, and went along with each word as he read it in a tone well worthy of his uncle’s scholar. Whether few or many were present, Rachel knew not, thought not; she was only sensible of the fulness of calm joy that made the Thanksgiving touch her heart and fill her eyes with unbidden tears, that came far more readily than of old.
“Yet this can’t be all,” she said to herself, as she wandered among the tall white lilies in the twilight; “is it a trance, or am I myself? I have not unthought or unfelt, yet I seem falling into a very sweet hypocrisy! Alick says thought will come back with strength. I don’t think I wish it!”
The curate did not return till after she had gone to bed, and in the morning he proved to be indeed a very dry and serious middle-aged man, extremely silent, and so grave that there was no knowing how much to allow for shyness. He looked much worn and had a wearied voice, and Mr. Clare and Alick were contriving all they could to give him the rest which he refused, Mr. Clare insisting on taking all the service that could be performed without eyes, and Alick volunteering school-work. This Rachel was not yet able to undertake, nor would Alick even let her go to church in the morning; but the shady garden, and the echoes of the Amens, and sweet, clear tones of singing, seemed to lull her on in this same gentle, unthinking state of dreamy rest; and thence, too, in the after part of the day, she could watch the rector, with his Sunday class, on his favourite seat under the yew-tree, close to the cross that marked the resting-place of his wife and child.
