“Oh, no,” answered Bride, with a quick earnestness and energy, “that will certainly not be. Poor Mr. Tremodart, he knows no better perhaps; but it is very, very sad. I suppose it was only found out last night or this morning. There was no sermon last Sunday, so I suppose the eggs collecting in the pulpit were not noticed. Of course they should have been taken away at once. But Mr. Tremodart is very fond of his animals, and he does not think of sacred things quite as—as—others do. Of course it will be done before next Sunday. Oh, I am sorry it has happened. I am sorry for the poor people.”
Eustace could not understand her mood. He saw only the humorous side of the incident, but he would not say so to her. He was very anxious to approach nearer in thought and feeling to his beautiful cousin, who was as yet almost as much of a stranger to him as she had been upon the day of his arrival. Although he saw her daily, sat at table with her, and sometimes spent an hour over the piano with her in the evening (for both were good musicians, as things went in those days), he still felt as though she were a thing apart from him, wrapped in a world of her own of which he knew nothing. The barrier which divided them was at once impenetrable and invisible, yet he had never succeeded in discovering wherein its power lay, and what might be done to break it down and bring them together.
“You will go to St. Erme’s Church to-day, I suppose?” he said next, without trying to solve the problem suggested by her speech. “I have never attended St. Erme for a service, although I have met Mr. St. Aubyn. Will you let me be your escort there? I suppose your father will hardly walk as far.”
“No, I think not. He seldom goes out when there is no service at St. Bride. He does not care for Mr. St. Aubyn’s preaching as I do: he prefers that of Mr. Tremodart.”
Eustace secretly thought it must be a queer sort of preaching that could be inferior to that of the parson of St. Bride’s; but he made no remark, and merely asked—
“Then you will let me be your escort?”
“Thank you,” answered Bride quietly; “if you wish to go, I think you will be rewarded.”
Eustace felt that his reward would be in the pleasure of the walk to and fro with his cousin; but he did not say so, even though rather exaggerated and high-flown compliments were then the fashion of the day more than they have since become. Something in Bride’s aspect and manner always withheld him from uttering words of that kind, and his own honesty and common-sense kept him at all times within bounds, so that he had never acquired the foolish foppery that was fashionable amongst the gilded youth of the aristocracy. In one thing at least he and Bride were agreed—that life was given for something more than mere idle amusement and pleasure-seeking. And when they started off together for their two miles’ walk across cliff and down for the little church of St. Erme, Eustace began to ask questions of her as to the condition of the people, their ignorance, their poverty, their state of apathy and neglect, which all at once aroused her interest and sympathy, and caused her to open out towards him as she had never done before.
Bride loved the people—that was the first fact he gathered from the answers she made him. She loved them—and he loved them too. He was conscious that they loved them with a difference—that when they spoke of raising them and making them better and happier, she was thinking of one thing and he of another. He was conscious of this, but he did not think she was; and he was very careful to say no word to check the impulse of confidence which had arisen between them. Bride was grieved for the state of things about her: she mourned over the degradation, the apathy, the almost bestial indifference to higher things that reigned amongst the humble folks about her home. She spoke with a glimmer as of tears in her eyes of their absolute indifference to all that was high and noble and true; of the deep superstitions, which stultified their spiritual aspirations, and the blind error and folly of those who, turning away from God, sought wisdom and help from those calling themselves witches—many of whom did possess, or appear to possess, occult powers that it was impossible altogether to explain away or disbelieve.
“Yes, Bride, it is very sad to hear of,” said Eustace gravely, “and it all points to the same thing. We must teach the people. We must raise them. We must feed them with wholesome food, and then they will turn away in disgust from these effete superstitions, which are only the outcome of ignorance and degraded minds.”