The final blessing had been pronounced, the last paraphrase sung, and Lady Eliza, with Cecilia, sat in the Morphie pew in the first row of the gallery. Beside them was Fullarton’s nephew, Crauford Fordyce, busily engaged in locking the bibles and psalm-books into their box under the seat with a key which Lady Eliza had passed to him for the purpose. His manipulation of the peculiarly-constructed thing showed that this was by no means the first time he had handled it.
The beadle and an elder were going their rounds with the long-handled wooden collecting-shovels, which they thrust into the pews as they passed; the sound of dropping pennies pervaded the place, and the party in the Morphie seat having made their contributions, that hush set in which reigned in the kirk before the shovel was handed into the pulpit, and the ring of the minister’s money gave the signal for a general departure not unlike a stampede. Lady Eliza leaned, unabashed, over the gallery to see who was present.
When the expected sound had sent the male half of the congregation like a loosed torrent to the door, and the female remainder had departed more peacefully, the two women went out followed by Fordyce.
Lady Eliza was in high good temper. Though content to let all theological questions rest fundamentally, she had scented controversy in some detail of the sermon, and was minded to attack the minister upon them when next he came in her way. Fordyce, who was apt to take things literally, was rash enough to be decoyed into argument on the way home, and not adroit enough to come out of it successfully.
Robert Fullarton’s nephew—to give him the character in which he seemed most important to Lady Eliza—belonged to the fresh-faced, thickset type of which a loss of figure in later life may be predicted. Heavily built, mentally and physically, he had been too well brought up to possess anything of the bumpkin, or, rather, he had been too much brought up in complicated surroundings to indulge in low tastes, even if he had them. He took considerable interest in his own appearance, though he was not, perhaps, invariably right in his estimate of it, and his clothes were always good and frequently unsuitable. He was the eldest son of an indulgent father, who had so multiplied his possessions as to become their adjunct more than their owner; to his mother and his two thick-ankled, elementary sisters he suggested Adonis; and he looked to politics as a future career. Owing to some slight natural defect, he was inclined to hang his under-lip and breathe heavily through his nose. Though he was of middle height, his width made him look short of it, and the impression he produced on a stranger was one of phenomenal cleanliness and immobility.
The way from the kirk to Morphie house lay through the fields, past the home farm, and Lady Eliza stopped as she went by to inquire for the health of a young cart-horse which had lamed itself. Cecilia and Crauford waited for her at the gate of the farmyard. A string of ducks was waddling towards a ditch with that mixture of caution and buffoonery in their appearance which makes them irresistible to look at, and a hen’s discordant Magnificat informed the surrounding world that she had done her best for it; otherwise everything was still.
‘We shall have to wait some time, I expect, if it is question of a horse,’ observed Cecilia, sitting down upon a log just outside the gate.
‘I shall not be impatient,’ responded Fordyce, showing two very large, very white front teeth as he smiled.
‘I was thinking that Mr. Fullarton might get tired of waiting for you and drive home. The mails will have been given out long ago, and he is probably at Morphie by this time.’
‘Come now, Miss Raeburn; I am afraid you think me incapable of walking to Fullarton, when, in reality, I should find it a small thing to do for the pleasure of sitting here with you. Confess it: you imagine me a poor sort of fellow—one who, through the custom of being well served, can do little for himself. I have seen it in your expression.’