Next day was Sunday, the last day that Margaret was to spend at home; not like the brilliant Sunday on which old Sir Ludovic, for the last time, attended “a diet of worship” in the parish church, and was reminded of his latter end by good Dr. Burnside; but gray, and dull, and cloudy, with no light on the horizon, and the whole landscape, hill and valley and sea, all expressed in different tones of a flat lead color, the change of all others which most affects the landscape. In Fife, as has been candidly allowed, the features of the country have no splendor or native nobleness; and accordingly there is no power in them to resist this invasion of grayness. Mr. Aubrey Bellingham, though he did pretend to “go in” for the beauties of nature, intimated very plainly his discontent with the scene before him.
“Anything poorer in the way of landscape I don’t know that I ever saw,” he said, and sighed, when he was made to take his place in the old carriage to be driven to Fifeton, to the “English Chapel.” It was six miles off; whereas the parish church, with the Norman chancel, was scarcely one. But, as Mrs. Bellingham said, if you do not hold by your church, what is to become of you?
“Only the common people go there,” she said--“the farmers, and so forth. The gentry are _all_ Episcopalian. My brother, Sir Ludovic, may go now and then for the sake of example, and because Dr. Burnside is an old family friend; but Sir Claude, and everybody of importance, you will find at our church. All the _elite_ go there. I can’t think what the gentry were thinking of, to allow the Presbyterians to seize the endowments. It is quite the other way in England, where it is the common people who are dissenters, and _we_ have a church which is really fit for ladies and gentlemen to go to. But things are all very queer in Scotland, Aubrey. That is one thing, I suppose, that gives the common people such very independent ways.”
“Well, Aunt Jean, let us be thankful we were not born to set it right,” said Aubrey, reconciled to see that his six-miles’ drive was to be in company with Margaret. But she, in her deep mourning, did not afford much good diversion during the drive. The fact that it was the last day--the last day! had at length penetrated her mind; and a vague horror of what might happen, of something hanging over her which she did not understand, of leave-takings, and engagements to be entered into and promises to be made, had come over Margaret like a cloud. She had passively obeyed her sisters’ orders, and followed them into the carriage, though not without an acute recollection of her last drive in that carriage by her father’s side at a time when she was not passive at all, but liked her own way and had it, and was not aware how happy she was.