Country life -- Fiction; Vicars, Parochial -- England -- Fiction
Before going on to speak of another of the most remarkable of my
parishioners, whom I have just once mentioned I believe already, I
should like to say that on three several occasions before Christmas I
had seen Judy look grave. She was always quite well-behaved in church,
though restless, as one might expect. But on these occasions she was
not only attentive, but grave, as if she felt something or other. I
will not mention what subjects I was upon at those times, because the
mention of them would not, in the minds of my readers, at all harmonise
with the only notion of Judy they can yet by possibility have.
For Mrs Oldcastle, I never saw her change countenance or even
expression at anything—I mean in church.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ORGANIST.
On the afternoon of my second Sunday at Marshmallows, I was standing in
the churchyard, casting a long shadow in the light of the declining
sun. I was reading the inscription upon an old headstone, for I thought
everybody was gone; when I heard a door open, and shut again before I
could turn. I saw at once that it must have been a little door in the
tower, almost concealed from where I stood by a deep buttress. I had
never seen the door open, and I had never inquired anything about it,
supposing it led merely into the tower.
After a moment it opened again, and, to my surprise, out came, stooping
his tall form to get his gray head clear of the low archway, a man whom
no one could pass without looking after him. Tall, and strongly built,
he had the carriage of a military man, without an atom of that
sternness which one generally finds in the faces of those accustomed to
command. He had a large face, with large regular features, and large
clear gray eyes, all of which united to express an exceeding placidity
or repose. It shone with intelligence—a mild intelligence—no way
suggestive of profundity, although of geniality. Indeed, there was a
little too much expression. The face seemed to express ALL that lay
beneath it.
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