“Nothing on earth.”
“Then come and see them.”
So they walked off, and he, at any rate, on that occasion was a happy lover. For a few minutes—perhaps for an hour—he did allow himself to believe that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she was learning to regard his interests as her own. He stopped her at the gate leading into the vicarage garden, and once more made to her an assurance of his regard.
“Mary,” he said, “if love will beget love, I think that you must love me at last.”
“I will love you,” she said, pressing his arm still more closely. But even then she could not bring herself to tell him that she did love him.
LV
Glebe Land
The fifteenth of July was a Sunday, and it had been settled for some time past that on this day Mr. Puddleham would preach for the first time in his new chapel. The building had been hurried on through the early summer in order that this might be achieved; and although the fittings were not completed, and the outward signs of the masons and labourers had not been removed—although the heaps of mortar were still there, and time had not yet sufficed to have the chips cleared away—on Sunday the fifteenth of July the chapel was opened. Great efforts were made to have it filled on the occasion. The builder from Salisbury came over with all his family, not deterred by the consideration that whereas the Puddlehamites of Bullhampton were Primitive Methodists, he was a regular Wesleyan. And many in the parish were got to visit the chapel on this the day of its glory, who had less business there than even the builder from Salisbury. In most parishes there are some who think it well to let the parson know that they are independent and do not care for him, though they profess to be of his flock; and then, too, the novelty of the thing had its attraction, and the well-known fact that the site chosen for the building had been as gall and wormwood to the parson and his family. These causes together brought a crowd to the vicarage-gate on that Sunday morning, and it was quite clear that the new chapel would be full, and that Mr. Puddleham’s first Sunday would be a success. And the chapel, of course, had a bell—a bell which was declared by Mrs. Fenwick to be the hoarsest, loudest, most unmusical, and ill-founded miscreant of a bell that was ever suspended over a building for the torture of delicate ears. It certainly was a loud and brazen bell; but Mr. Fenwick expressed his opinion that there was nothing amiss with it. When his wife declared that it sounded as though it came from the midst of the shrubs at their own front gate, he reminded her that their own church bells sounded as though they came from the lower garden. That one sound should be held by them to be musical and the other abominable, he declared to be a prejudice. Then there was a great argument about the bells, in which Mrs. Fenwick, and Mary Lowther, and Harry Gilmore were all against the Vicar. And, throughout the discussion, it was known to them all that there were no ears in the parish to which the bells were so really odious as they were to the ears of the Vicar himself. In his heart of hearts he hated the chapel, and, in spite of all his endeavours to the contrary, his feelings towards Mr. Puddleham were not those which the Christian religion requires one neighbour to bear to another. But he made the struggle, and for some weeks past had not said a word against Mr. Puddleham. In regard to the Marquis the thing was different. The Marquis should have known better, and against the Marquis he did say a great many words.
They began to ring the bell on that Sunday morning before ten o’clock. Mrs. Fenwick was still sitting at the breakfast-table, with the windows open, when the sound was first heard—first heard, that is, on that morning. She looked at Mary, groaned, and put her hands to her ears. The Vicar laughed, and walked about the room.
“At what time do they begin?” said Mary.
“Not till eleven,” said Mrs. Fenwick. “There, it wants a quarter to ten now, and they mean to go on with that music for an hour and a quarter.”
“We shall be keeping them company by-and-by,” said the Vicar.
“The poor old church bells won’t be heard through it,” said Mrs. Fenwick.
Mrs. Fenwick was in the habit of going to the village school for half an hour before the service on Sunday mornings, and on this morning she started from the house according to her custom at a little after ten. Mary Lowther went with her, and as the school was in the village and could be reached much more shortly by the front gate than by the path round by the church, the two ladies walked out boldly before the new chapel. The reader may perhaps remember that Mrs. Fenwick had promised her husband to withdraw that outward animosity to the chapel which she had evinced by not using the vicarage entrance. As they went there was a crowd collected, and they found that after the manner of the Primitive Methodists in their more enthusiastic days, a procession of worshippers had been formed in the village, which at this very moment was making its way to the chapel. Mrs. Fenwick, as she stood aside to make way for them, declared that the bell sounded as though it
