Just at this period a singular change came over Mr. Austin Ambrose's mode of life. As a rule he rarely left London. At a certain hour of the day you would find him in his chambers, at another riding or walking in the park, at another he would be dining at his club, and every night you were sure of seeing him at the whist table at any rate for an hour or two. But immediately after Margaret's promise to marry Lord Blair, Mr. Austin Ambrose took to taking little excursions in the environs of London, and the special objects of attraction for him seemed to be, strangely enough, seeing that he could by no means be called a religious man, the various churches in the villages dotted about Kent and Surrey. The smaller and more out of the way the village, and the more dilapidated and neglected the church, the more Mr. Austin Ambrose seemed to be attracted by them.
He chose the churches where the congregation is small and the clergyman old and feeble, and he would sit and listen as the old parsons dribbled out their prosy sermons, and the scattered people in the great pews nodded and slept.
One church he appeared to have a special liking for. It was situated in one of the small villages in Surrey called Sefton. There were only a few cottages and a farm, and the church was in a very dilapidated condition, and the clergyman seemed almost as worn out.
He was a very old man and nearly blind, and how he got through the service only those who are acquainted with similar cases can understand or believe. So past his time and dead to everything did the old gentleman appear that one could easily understand the point of the poet's lines:
"He lived but in a living sleep,
Too old to laugh or smile or weep."
"If one were to be married or buried by him on Monday he would forget it on Tuesday," Austin Ambrose murmured to himself as he sat at the back of one of the high backed pews and watched the old gentleman.
There was a parish clerk, too, who droned out the responses, and slept through the sermon—and snored—who was almost as old as the clergyman, and Mr. Austin Ambrose waylaid him and got into conversation with him after the service. It could scarcely be called conversation, however, for the old man merely grunted a "Yes," or "No," and smiled a toothless smile to Austin Ambrose's questions and remarks.
He seemed to remember nothing—excepting that "It were forty-two years agone since the small bell were cracked, and that's why we doan't ring 'em at marriages; they do seem so like a tolling, sir."
"You don't have many weddings, I suppose?" asked Mr. Ambrose.
The old man shook his head.