It was pleasant to wake to bright sunshine the next morning, and to hear the sparrows twittering in the ivy.
It had been my intention to set apart Sunday as much as possible as a day of rest and refreshment. Of course I could not expect always to control the various appeals for my help or to be free from my patients, but by management I hoped to secure the greater part of the day for myself.
I had told Peggy not to expect me at the cottage until the afternoon; everything was in such order that there was no necessity for me to forgo the morning service. My promise to Phoebe Locke would keep me a prisoner for the evening, but I determined that her sister and Kitty should be set free to go to church, so my loss would be their gain.
I thought of Jill as I dressed myself. She had often owned to me that the Sundays at Hyde Park Gate were not to her taste. Visitors thronged the house in the afternoon; Sara discussed her week's amusements with her friends or yawned over a novel; the morning's sermon was followed as a matter of course by a gay luncheon party. 'What does it mean, Ursula?' Jill would say, opening her big black eyes as widely as possible: 'I do not understand. Mr. Erskine has been telling us that we ought to renounce the world and our own wills, and not to follow the multitude to do foolishness, and all the afternoon mother and Sara having been talking about dresses for the fancy-ball. Is there one religion for church and another for home? Do we fold it up and put it away with our prayer-books in the little book-cupboard that father locks so carefully?' finished Jill, with girlish scorn.
Poor Jill! she had a wide, generous nature, with great capabilities, but she was growing up in a chilling atmosphere. Young girls are terribly honest; they dig down to the very root of things; they drag off the swathing cloths from the mummy face of conventionality. What does it mean? they ask. Is there truth anywhere? Endless shams surround them; people listen to sermons, then they shake off the dust of the holy place carefully from the very hem of their garments; their religion, as Jill expressed it, is left beside their prayer-books. Ah! if one could but see clearly, with eyes purged from every remnant of earthliness,—see as the angels do,—the thick fog of unrisen and unprayed prayers clinging to the rafters of every empty church, we might well shudder in the clogging heavy atmosphere.
Jill had not more religion than many other girls, but she wanted to be true; the inconsistency of human nature baffled and perplexed her; she was not more ready to renounce the world than Sara was, but she wished to know the inner meaning of things, and in this I longed to help her. I could not help thinking of her tenderly and pitifully as I walked down the road leading to the little Norman church. I was early, and the building was nearly empty when I entered the porch; but it was quiet and restful to sit there and review the past week, and watch the sunshine lighting up the red brick walls and touching the rood-screen, while a faint purple gleam fell on the chancel pavement.
Two ladies entered the seat before me, and I looked at them a little curiously.
They were both very handsomely dressed, but it was not their fashionable appearance that attracted me. I had caught sight of a most beautiful and striking face belonging to one of them that somehow riveted my attention.
The lady was apparently very young, and had a tall graceful figure, and strange colourless hair that looked as though it ought to have been golden, only the gloss had faded out of it; but it was lovely hair, fine and soft as a baby's.
As she rose she slightly turned round, and our eyes met for a moment; they were large, melancholy eyes, and the face, beautiful as it was, was very worn and thin, and absolutely without colour. I could see her profile plainly all through the service, but the dull impassive expression of the countenance that she had turned upon me gave me a sensation of pain; she looked like a person who had experienced some great trouble or undergone some terrible illness. I could not make up my mind which it could be.