“Oh, Uncle James,” said Harry, with a spice of mimicry, “he likes his glass of grog and his ferrets too well to put himself out of the way. By Jove, here’s Aunt Julia! I shall be off before I’m asked what has become of Dick.”
Virginia sat still where he had left her. She only half believed him, and strange to say there was something so comical in his manner that she was rather attracted by its cool sauciness. But she was frightened and perplexed. What sort of a world was this into which she had come? Those stories, even if true, happened a long time ago; Harry must be in joke about Dick, and everything was different nowadays.
It was true. The golden age, if such an expression can be permitted, of Seyton wickedness had passed away; and these were smaller times, times of neglect, mismanagement, and low poor living, the dreary dregs of a cup long since drained. Nobody could quote Mr Seyton as a monster of wickedness, because he dawdled away his time over his sherry, and knew no excitement but an occasional game of cards at not very high stakes. There was many another youth in Westmoreland who gambled and played billiards in low company like Dick, and some ladies perhaps who found all their excitement in the memory of other times, and troubled themselves as little over any question of conscience as Miss Seyton.
But it was not all at once that this absence of all that makes life worth living could be apparent, and Virginia found her first confirmation of Harry’s words as she walked through the village on Christmas morning, and noted the wild, untidy look of the people, and the wretched state of their houses, and observed the sullen look of their faces as her father passed. Dick did not appear at all; Harry audibly “supposed the governor was going to church because Virginia was there,” and certainly church-going did not appear to be a fashion of the village.
Neither her childish recollections, nor Harry’s remarks, had prepared her, as they came into the small, ivy-grown church, for broken floors, cracked windows, and damp fustiness; still less for the very scantiest of congregations, and a rustling silence where responses should have been. Her uncle read the service rapidly, with the broad northern accent now strange to her ears. The old clerk trotted about whenever his services were not required, and did a little sweeping. Her uncle paused as he began the Litany, and called to him in a loud and cheerful voice to shut the door.
Virginia peeped out between the faded green-baize curtains that, hanging round the great square pew, represented to her every Church principle she had been taught to condemn; and found her view obstructed by a large cobweb. Harry poked at the spider, and Virginia recalling her own attention from her despairing visions of having no better church than this, perceived that her father was leaning idly back in his corner. All her standards of right and wrong seemed confused and shocked; so much so that, at the moment, she hardly distinguished the pain of finding herself left alone after the sermon, and seeing her father turn away, from her horror at her uncle’s dirty surplice, and the dreary degradation of the whole place. When the parson came after her after service, and loudly told her she was the prettiest lass he’d seen for long enough, kissing her under the church porch, she still felt as if the typical bad parish priest of her imagination had come to life, and behold he was her own uncle!
Since this comprehensible form of evil was so plain to her eyes, what terrible secrets might not lurk behind it! Virginia felt as if she would never be light-hearted again.