“No,” said Cicely, “I don’t; but I don’t think I should dread being poor so very much.”
“That is because you do not know,” replied her cousin sagely; and Cicely, owning to herself that the remark might be true, did not contradict her. She felt the less inclined to discuss the point that a certain selfishness in Geneviève’s allusions to her life at home diminished the sympathy she had felt anxious to express.
They were in good time at church, after all; they were almost the first-comers, and, considerably to Geneviève’s disappointment, when she followed her cousin to the Greystone pew, she found that it was in an extreme corner of the church, commanding no view of the rest of the congregation. It was very vexatious; she had set her heart on observing the Fawcett family, on being—not impossibly—observed and recognized by them, and, full of these hopes, she had put on her very best bonnet—for nothing, as it turned out, but a walk with Cicely through the woods, and the feeble admiration of a row of old women in poke bonnets and scarlet cloaks.
It was not an impressive or picturesque little church inside by any means, though outside, its ivy-grown old walls looked respectably venerable, if nothing more. It had never, however, occurred to Cicely Methvyn to remark its ugliness; it had been familiar to her since earliest childhood, the high dark pews, the top-heavy pulpit, and sentry-box reading-desk, even the very stains on the plaster had been a part of Sunday to her ever since she could remember, and had they been suddenly removed, their absence would have pained her, for, like most sensitive children, she shrank curiously from change. But on this particular Sunday, the bareness and general unattractiveness of the little building struck her as they had never done before; it had been shut up for several weeks during the clerical interregnum, and the superiority of Haverstock church had unconsciously impressed her; then, too, the unusual brightness and radiance of the morning outside rendered the contrast with the chill dinginess of the drab-coloured walls the more striking. Cicely could not restrain a passing feeling of pity for the new clergyman.
“How ugly he will think it, especially if he has been accustomed to any of those beautiful new churches,” she thought to herself, recalling what she had heard of Mr. Hayle, and she watched with some interest for his appearance.
He was not the least like what she had expected; he was a small, boyish-looking man—boyish-looking in a way which advancing years would not affect. He read well, and without hesitation, and his voice, though low, was not weak; the only nervousness he betrayed was at the beginning of his sermon, but he quickly recovered his self-possession as he went on. There was nothing remarkable about the sermon; it was not in itself strikingly original, nor expressed in particularly good English, yet Miss Methvyn found herself compelled to listen to it with attention, and though it contained quite the average amount of faulty logic and sweeping denunciation, it failed to irritate or even to annoy her. The gentleness and earnestness of the preacher’s manner disarmed her latent antagonism, the matter-of-fact conviction with which he uttered such of the dogmas of his school as his subject trenched upon, impressed her, in spite of herself, while the evident goodness of the man, the single-minded restrained fervour with which he spoke, aroused her admiration. Once or twice during the service, Cicely glanced at her cousin in some curiosity as to how she was affected by this, her first experience of English church-going. Geneviève’s face looked sad; once, it seemed to Cicely, its expression was troubled and bewildered as well. “Poor girl!” she thought, “I wonder if it all seems very strange to her. I dare say she is thinking about her Sundays at home, when her own father is the preacher.”
Her pity was misplaced; at that moment, home and friends, Monsieur Casalis and his sermons, were far enough from Geneviève’s thoughts. She was looking sad, because there was no Mr. Fawcett to be seen to admire the effect of her pretty bonnet; the distressed expression arose from the furtive efforts she made from time to time to obtain a view of that part of the church behind where she sat, in hopes of catching sight of the tall, fair-haired figure of the young milord.
Coming out of church, Miss Methvyn was waylaid by one of the scarlet cloaks with a string of inquiries and confidences; Geneviève was not partial to poor old women, and was just now too cross and disappointed to simulate an interest she did not feel, so she walked on slowly across the churchyard and a little way down the road by no means in a happy or hopeful frame of mind. This was her first Sunday in England, and already she was half inclined to wish herself back at Hivèritz again; she was beginning to think life at the Abbey triste in the extreme, and to feel provoked with her placid cousin’s content therewith. She certainly liked the sensation of ease and plenty, the comforts and luxuries and absence of the incessant small economies of her home, but this measure of enjoyment was far from being all that she had looked for in her new circumstances; she wanted to be féted and admired and amused; she wanted to see something of English society; she wanted Mr. Fawcett to fall desperately in love with her, and he had not even been at church.
Suddenly there came a quick step behind her,—in her preoccupation of mind she had wandered further than she had imagined; now she turned round with a start at the sound of her own name, and found herself face to face with Mr. Fawcett.
“Miss Casalis,” he exclaimed, “where in the world are you going? Cicely sent me after you, and it is a very hot day for May, let me remind you, and I haven’t a parasol.”