She went in and saw whitewashed
walls; thick round pillars between the nave and aisles; deep-sunken
windows dim with fragmentary pieces of colored glass, and all more or
less out of the perpendicular; a worm-eaten oak-screen separating the
chancel and a solemn enclosure, erst a chapel, now the Fairfax pew; a
loft where the choir sat in front for divine service, with fiddle and
bassoon, and the school-children sat behind, all under the eye of the
parson and his clerk, who was also the school-master.
In the chancel were several monuments to the memory of defunct pastors.
The oldest was very old, and the inscription in Latin on brass; the
newest was to Bessie's grandfather--the "Reverend Thomas Bulmer, for
forty-six years vicar of this parish." From the dates he had married
late, for he had died in a good old age in the same year as his daughter
Elizabeth, and only two months before her. In smaller letters below the
inscription-in-chief it was recorded that his wife Letitia was buried at
Torquay in Cornwall, and that this monument was erected to their pious
memory by their only child--"Elizabeth, the wife of the Reverend Geoffry
Fairfax, rector of Beechhurst in the county of Hants."
All gone--not one left! Bessie pondered over this epitome of family
history, and thought within herself that it was not without cause she
felt alone here. With a shiver she returned into the sunshine and
proceeded up the public road.
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