Marian went with the rest of the party to church, and sat with them immediately opposite the head-master's seat, where she had sat for so many years, and which, was directly in front of the big school pew. What memories came over her as she looked across the aisle! Her eyes rested on the manly figure and the M.B. waistcoat of Mr. Benthall, who sat in the place of honour; but after an instant he seemed to disappear as in a dissolving view, and there came in his place a bowed and shrunken elderly man, with small white hands nestling under his ample cuffs, all his clothes seemingly too large for him, big lustrous eyes, pale complexion, and iron-gray hair. No other change in the whole church, save in that pew. The lame man who acted as a kind of verger still stumped up the pulpit-stairs, and arranged the cushion, greatly to the horror of the preacher of the day, Mr. Trollope, who, being a little man, could hardly be seen in the deep pulpit, and whose soft little voice could scarcely be heard out of the mass of wood and cotton velvet in which he was steeped to the ears. The butcher, who was also churchwarden and a leading member of the congregation, still applied to himself all the self-accusatory passages in the responses in the Psalms, and gave them out, looking round at his fellow-parishioners, in a tone of voice which seemed to say, "See what an infernal scoundrel I am, and how I delight in letting you know it!" The boys in the school were in the same places--many of them were the same boys; and the bigger ones, who had been in love with Marian when she lived among them, nudged each other as she came in, and then became scarlet from their clean collars to the roots of their freshly pomatumed hair. Fresh faces nowhere but there. Change in no life but hers. Yes, as her eye rested on Mr. Creswell's solemn suit of black she remembered that life had changed also for him. And somehow, she could scarcely tell how, she felt comforted by the thought.
They left the church when the service was ended, but it was some time before they were able to start on their way home. Mr. Creswell came so seldom into Helmingham, that many of his old acquaintances saw him there for the first time since his wife's death, and came to offer their long-deferred condolence, and to chat over matters of local gossip. Marian, too, was always a welcome sight to the Helmingham people, and the women gathered round her and asked her about her mother's health, and of their prospects, and when they were going to leave Woolgreaves; to all of which questions Marian replied with perfect self-possession and without giving her querists any real information.
At last they set out homeward. Maude and Gertrude started off at a rapid rate, and were soon out of sight. Mr. Creswell and Marian walked quietly on together, talking on various subjects. Mr. Creswell was the principal speaker, Marian merely answering or commenting on what he said, and, contrary to her usual custom, never originating a subject. Her companion looked at her curiously two or three times during their walk; her eyes were downcast, her forehead knit, and there was a generally troubled expression in her face. At length, when they had nearly reached their destination, and had turned from the high-road into the Woolgreaves grounds through a private gate, he said----
"You are strangely silent to-day, missy. Has anything happened to vex you?"
"To vex me? Nothing in the world. And it had not even struck me that I was particularly silent. It seems to me as though we had been talking ever since we left Helmingham."
"We? I, you mean. You have been almost monosyllabic in your replies."
"Have I? That was scarcely polite when you take the trouble to talk to me, my kind friend. The fact is that I have been in a kind of day-dream, I believe."
"About the future, Marian?" Mr. Creswell said this so earnestly that the girl looked up into his face. His eyes fell before hers as she said, steadily----
"No; about the past. The sight of the school pew, and of another person there in papa's place, called up all sorts of recollections, which I was revolving instead of listening to you. Oh no!" she added, after a pause; "I love dreaming of the past, because, though it has here and there its dim hues and its one great and ineffaceable shadow of papa's loss, it was, on the whole, a happy time. But the future----" and she stopped suddenly, and shuddered.
"You have no pleasant anticipations of the future, Marian?" asked Mr. Creswell in a lower tone than he had hitherto spoken in.