signified the less as Owen’s reminiscences were never allowed to languish for want of being dug up and revived, but she could not quite pardon the sailor for the commonplace air his presence cast over the walk.
The days were gone by when Mr. Sandbrook’s pulpit eloquence had rendered Wrapworth Church a Sunday show to Castle Blanch. His successor was a cathedral dignitary, so constantly absent that the former curate, who had been continued on at Wrapworth, was, in the eyes of every one, the veritable master. Poor Mr. Prendergast—whatever were his qualifications as a preacher—had always been regarded as a disappointment; people had felt themselves defrauded when the sermon fell to his share instead of that of Mr. Sandbrook, and odious comparison had so much established the opinion of his deficiencies, that Honora was not surprised to see a large-limbed and rather quaint-looking man appear in the desk, but the service was gone through with striking reverence, and the sermon was excellent, though homely and very plain-spoken. The church had been cruelly mauled by churchwardens of the last century, and a few Gothic decorations, intended for the beginning of restoration, only made it the more incongruous. The east window, of stained glass, of a quality left far behind by the advances of the last twenty years, bore an inscription showing that it was a memorial, and there was a really handsome font. Honor could trace the late rector’s predilections in a manner that carried her back twenty years, and showed her, almost to her amusement, how her own notions and sympathies had been carried onwards with the current of the world around her.
On coming out, she found that there might have been more kindness in Captain Charteris than she had suspected, for he kept Horatia near him, and waited for the curate, so as to leave her at liberty and unobserved. Her first object was that Owen should see his mother’s grave. It was beside the parsonage path, a flat stone, fenced by a low iron border, enclosing likewise a small flower-bed, weedy, ruinous, and forlorn. A floriated cross, filled up with green lichen, was engraven above the name.
How like it was to poor Owen! that necessity of expression, and the visible presage of weakening health so surely fulfilled! And his Lucilla! It was a melancholy work to have brought home a missionary, and secularized a parish priest! ‘Not a generous reflection,’ thought Honora, ‘at a rival’s grave,’ and she turned to the boy, who had stooped to pull at some of the bits of groundsel.
‘Shall we come here in the early morning, and set it to rights?’
‘I forgot it was Sunday,’ said Owen, hastily throwing down the weed he had plucked up.
‘You were doing no harm, my dear; but we will not leave it in this state. Will you come with us, Lucy?’
Lucilla had escaped, and was standing aloof at the end of the path, and when her brother went towards her, she turned away.
‘Come, Lucy,’ he entreated, ‘come into the garden with us. We want you to tell us the old places.’
‘I’m not coming,’ was all her answer, and she ran back to the party who stood by the church door, and began to chatter to Mr. Prendergast, over whom she had domineered even before she could speak plain. A silent, shy man, wrapped up in his duties, he was mortally afraid of the Castle Blanch young ladies, and stood ill at ease, talked down by Miss Horatia Charteris, but his eye lighted into a smile as the fairy plaything of past years danced up to him, and began her merry chatter, asking after every one in the parish, and showing a perfect memory of names and faces such as amazed him, in a child so young as she had been at the time when she had left the parish. Honora and Owen meantime were retracing recollections in the rectory garden, eking out the boy’s four years old memories with imaginations and moralizings, pondering over the border whence Owen declared he had gathered snowdrops for his mother’s coffin; and the noble plane tree by the water-side, sacred to the memory of Bible stories told by his father in the summer evenings—
‘That tree!’ laughed Lucilla, when he told her that night as they walked up-stairs to bed. ‘Nobody could sit there because of the mosquitoes. And I should like to see the snowdrops you found in November!’
‘I know there were some white flowers. Were they lilies of the valley for little Mary?’
‘It will do just as well,’ said Lucilla. She knew that she could bring either scene before her mind with vivid distinctness, but shrinking from the pain almost with horror, she only said, ‘It’s a pity you aren’t a Roman Catholic, Owen; you would soon find a hole in a rock, and say it was where a saint, with his head under his arm, had made a footmark.’
‘You are very irreverent, Lucy, and very cross besides. If you would not come and tell us, what could we do?’
‘Let it alone.’
‘If you don’t care for dear papa and mamma, I do,’ said Owen, the tears coming into his eyes.
‘I’m not going to rake it up to please Honora,’ returned his sister. ‘If you like to go and poke with her over places where things never happened, you may, but she shan’t meddle with my real things.’
‘You are very unkind,’ was the next accusation from Owen, much grieved and distressed, ‘when she is so good and dear, and was so fond of our dear father.’
‘I know,’ said Lucilla, in a tone he did not understand; then, with an air of eldership, ill assorting with their respective sizes, ‘You are a mere child. It is all very well for you, and you are very welcome to your Sweet Honey.’
Owen insisted on hearing her meaning, and on her refusal to explain, used his superior strength to put her to sufficient torture to elicit an answer. ‘Don’t, Owen! Let go! There, then! Why, she was in love with our father, and nearly died of it when he married; and Rashe says of course she bullies me for being like my mother.’
‘She never bullies you,’ cried Owen, indignantly; ‘she’s much kinder to you than you deserve, and I hate Ratia for putting it into your head, and teaching you such nasty man’s words about my own Honor.’
‘Ah! you’ll never be a man while you are under her. She only wants to keep us a couple of babies for ever—sending us to bed, and making such a figure of me;’ and Lucy relieved her feelings by five perpendicular leaps into the air, like an India-rubber ball, her hair flying out, and her eyes flashing.
Owen was not much astonished, for Lucy’s furies often worked off in this fashion; but he was very angry on Honor’s account, loving her thoroughly, and perceiving no offence in her affection for his father; and the conversation assumed a highly quarrelsome character. It was much to the credit of masculine discretion that he refrained from reporting it when he joined Honora in the morning’s walk to Wrapworth churchyard. Behold! some one was beforehand with them—even Lucilla and the curate!
The wearisome visit was drawing to a close when Captain Charteris began—‘Well, Miss Charlecote, have you thought over my proposal?’
‘To take Owen to sea? Indeed, I hoped you were convinced that it would never answer.’
‘So far from being so, that I see it is his best chance. He will do no good till the priggishness is knocked out of him.’
Honor would not trust herself to answer. Any accusation but this might have been borne.
‘Well, well,’ said the captain, in a tone still more provoking, it was so like hushing a petulant child, ‘we know how kind you were, and that you meant everything good; but it is not in the nature of things that a lad alone with women should not be cock of the walk, and nothing cures that like a month on board.’
‘He will go to school,’ said Honor, convinced all this was prejudice.
‘Ay, and come home in the holidays, lording