Under the Mendips Part 11

"It is a pity mother did not come," Joyce said. "What a lovely old lady Mrs. More is."

"Yes," and the squire sighed. "You have got a Bible, Joyce."

"An old one, not like this," Joyce said, "with gilt edges and such a nice purple binding; and I like to have it from Mrs. More. See, father, there are pencil marks in it."

The squire looked over Joyce's shoulder at the page on which she had opened. It was the last chapter of Proverbs, and the words were underlined: "Her price is above rubies."

"Carry the book upstairs, Joyce; you had better not display it at present. Then come back to the hay-field as fast as you can. Mother will be expecting you."

Joyce did as she was told, and hastened away with her precious book. As she turned over the pages she saw the pencil marks were frequent. It was evidently Mrs. More's way of silent instruction; and for the first time in her young life, Joyce seemed to find in the Bible, words which applied to herself.

"Be not overcome of evil," was underlined; "but overcome evil with good."

"That means I am not to let Melville's ways get the better of me, and make me cross to him and contemptuous. I must try and overcome by being kind; and then----"

She was startled by her mother's voice:

"Joyce, what are you about? come down at once. The men want some more cakes, and you may as well trudge down to the field, as I----"

Joyce ran down immediately, first hiding her Bible in the small drawer of the high chest in her room.

"I wish you had come sooner, mother, and seen Mrs. More."

"Do you? I waited till I heard the wheels in the road before I came; but now I am here, I mean to stay. I want to make some custards for supper, and whip the cream for a syllabub. Mr. Arundel shan't grumble at his fare."

"Mrs. More is a beautiful old lady," Joyce said.

"She did not give you any tracts, I hope," Mrs. Falconer said. "I won't have any cant, and rank Methodism here. You know my mind, Joyce."

"Yes, mother," Joyce said, gently. "But I should like to pay a visit to Barley Wood. Do you think, when the boys return to school, I _may_ go."

"Well, we will see about it. If you want to gad about you must go, I suppose. You all seem alike now; no rest and no peace unless you are scouring the country like so many wild things. It was very different in my young days. I don't know that I ever slept a night from under my father's roof till I married. I don't mind your going to Barley Wood at the proper time, but I'll have no tracts and no nonsense here, or setting up servant-girls to be wiser than their betters; for all this talk, and preaching, and reading, and writing, the Mendip folk are as bad, as bad can be. Mrs. More has not done much there, anyhow. That was plain enough the other day, when the man was brought before the justices, and they were a pack of chicken-hearts, and dare not commit him for fear of getting their heads broken as they rode home; your father was the only brave man amongst them, and held out that the rascal should be committed for trial."

All this was said in Mrs. Falconer's voluble fashion, while she was engaged in piling up a basket full of harvest cakes, which Joyce soon bore off to the field, where her brothers, and Nip and Pip were still tossing about the sweet hay, and burying themselves and everyone else under it. Piers threw a wisp with the end of his crutch at Joyce as she came, and Bunny rushed to possess himself of the basket and scatter the cakes about, which the younger part of the haymakers scrambled for, head foremost, burrowing in the tussocks of hay, like so many young ferrets, while Nip and Pip barked and danced about in the extremity of their excitement.

The fair weather lasted all through the week, and Sunday dawned in cloudless beauty. Fair Acres did not have the services of one clergyman, but shared the ministrations of the vicar, with another small parish.

The cracked bell began to ring in a querulous, uncertain fashion on Sunday morning, and punctually at half-past ten Mrs. Falconer marshalled her flock down the road to the church.

The church, though small, was architecturally a fine specimen of Early English, and raised a n.o.ble tower to the sky; but the interior was dilapidated, and the pillars were covered with many coats of yellow wash, and the pews were hung with moth-eaten cloth. The squire's pew was like a square room, with a fire-place and cushioned seats, and a high desk for the books ran round it.

Mrs. Falconer and her husband sat facing each other on either side of the door of the pew, and the boys were ranged round, while at the further end Joyce sat with Mr. Arundel, a place being left for Melville.

Just as the clergyman had hurried on his very crumpled surplice, and the band in the gallery struck up the familiar air to which the morning hymn was sung, Melville, dressed in his best, came up the uneven pavement of the aisle with the proud consciousness of superiority to the rest of the world. His father threw back the door, and he pa.s.sed up to the further end of the seat, nodding carelessly to Mr. Arundel, who made no sign in return. Chatting and making engagements for the week was at this time very common in church. There was scant reverence shown for the house of G.o.d. He was a G.o.d afar off, and the formal recognition of some sort of allegiance to Him being respectable and necessary for the maintenance of social position, brought people like Mrs. Falconer to church Sunday after Sunday.

Mrs. Falconer and the squire, with their family, were never absent from their places, and Mr. Watson, the squire's agent, acting as sidesman, was also regular in his attendance.

But it was a lifeless mechanical service on the part of both minister and people; and the loud Amens of the old clerk were the only responses to be heard. The Psalms at the end of the book of Common Prayer were used, accompanied by a strangely-a.s.sorted band in the worm-eaten gallery, and two or three men and boys supplemented the sc.r.a.ping of the fiddle and ba.s.soon with singing, which might well be called bawling.

Nor was Fair Acres an isolated instance of country parish churches; and city churches, too, at this date. The great tide of the evangelical movement had, it is true, set steadily in, and was soon to cover the kingdom with its healing and reviving waters; but its streams did not penetrate into the heart of the hills, and small outlying villages went on, with no schools and no resident clergymen, and were contented because they were asleep.

Of course the sound of "the waters of Siloah" were heard in Somersetshire as, one by one, Hannah More's schools grew and flourished, and, one by one, her enemies became her friends. But the apathy at Fair Acres on the part of the clergyman, and the determination of Mrs.

Falconer to set her face like a flint against all innovations, was thought to be praiseworthy, and to show a laudable desire to resist methodism in whatever form it took.

Gilbert Arundel's home-training had been very different from that of his friend. His mother had early in life been brought in contact with several of the fathers of the evangelical school, and the spirit had quickened her faith into living heart service.

"How my mother would admire her!" Gilbert thought, as he carried away with him from the church the picture, in his mind, of the squire's young daughter, as she followed the Psalms in the big prayer-book on the desk, and with her arm round Piers to steady him, pointed with her finger to the words, reading the alternate verse with old Simkins, the clerk, in a voice which Gilbert could barely catch, though he strained his ears to do so.

There was an entire absence of self-consciousness in Joyce; and if the undulations of the small mirror over her high chest of drawers, permitted her to discern anything like the real reflection of her lovely face, she did not give it much thought.

Brothers are not wont to admire their sisters or to tell them they are fair to look upon, and Joyce would have been very much surprised if she had heard that her brother Melville said, she only wanted the accessories of fashionable dress to be accounted a belle at Bath or Clifton, nay, even likely to make a sensation in the great world of London life.

She was a hopeless rustic now, but he saw in her capabilities which few girls possessed.

He had said nothing about Joyce's beauty to Mr. Arundel, because he was, in his folly, ashamed to confess how devoid Joyce was of the ornaments which went so far to form his own estimate of a woman, and Mr. Arundel's silence about Joyce, since that first day at the cathedral, seemed to him to show that he only praised her at first, because she was his sister out of courtesy, and that he was, as every man of taste must be, disappointed with her on nearer acquaintance. Superficial and foolish himself, he was almost unable to appreciate the earnest sincerity of his friend, and on this particular Sunday his temper had been tried by the arrival of a letter from the Palace at Wells, brought over on the previous evening by a special messenger, in which the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells requested the pleasure of Mr. Arundel's company at dinner on the following Monday, but made no mention of him. He inwardly voted the bishop "a stupid old bat," as every one _must_ be who was blind to his perfections!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER V.

SUNDAY AT FAIR ACRES.

The boys, perhaps excepting Ralph and Piers, were invariably more turbulent on Sunday than any other day of the week. There was an attempt made by their mother to enforce discipline on Sunday, from the same reason which made her scrupulous in attending church regularly. Besides, the boys' best Sunday jackets and long tight trousers were in peril, if their usual habits of tree-climbing and birds' egg hunting were not laid aside with their week-day garments.

The large Sunday dinner at one o'clock was always lengthened out to its utmost limit, but when that was over, the time hung heavy on hand.

A smart box on Bunny's ear, administered by Melville, with a hand on which a huge ring glistened, and which left a pretty deep triangular cut on the boy's ear, roused Piers' indignation.

"You coward," he said; "just because he trod on your smart shoe. I would not wear such a shoe for a hundred pounds."

"You are not very likely to be tried," was Melville's rejoinder. "Your feet are not made for shoes with buckles."

"Oh! Melville," Joyce exclaimed, "how can you be so unkind?" while his father said, in a stern voice, "If you have no brains, sir, I always thought you had a heart."

Mrs. Falconer was rising to follow Bunny, whose loud crying was heard in the hall; but Joyce said:

"Mother, let me go. I had better take all the boys away, mother, and amuse them, if I can. I don't think Bunny need cry like that, though it was too bad to hit him."

"It was indeed," Gilbert Arundel could not help exclaiming fervently, though like all guests in a house, when family disputes are going on, he felt it difficult to know whether to speak or be silent.

"I hate Melville," Piers said fiercely, as he swung himself out of the room after his sister.

Joyce soon persuaded Bunny that he was not much hurt, and said if they would all come up to the seat under the fir-tree she would read to them.

The boys willingly consented, and Joyce ran upstairs and fetched the pretty Bible, bound in purple, with its gilt leaves, which she displayed to her admiring brothers.