The cottage was full of the curious suppressed rustling that seems to be
inseparable from church-going in England. Good people invariably rustle,
and so bad people, trying to be good, are inclined to rustle too. At
least that was what Madame Valtesi said as she stood in the tiny,
sage-green hall hung with fans, and finished buttoning her long Suede
gloves. She still wore her big and shady hat. She declared it made her
feel religious, and nobody was prepared to dispute the assertion. Tommy
was clamouring for his promised green carnation; but Lord Reggie, in
obedience to Lady Locke's request, told him that the one he had intended
for him had faded away in the night, had faded exquisitely, as the
wicked fade after flourishing like green bay trees; and Tommy, though
inclined to tears, was soothed by a promise that he should sit on the
organ seat and turn over in the anthem. Lady Locke looked rather
serious, and Mrs. Windsor strangely dissipated. She always did look
particularly dissipated on Sunday mornings, although she was not aware
of it; and to-day she was intent on being decisively rustic, and as
countrified in her piety as possible. She wore an innocent gown powdered
with pimpernels, and a little bonnet that she thought holiness itself,
consisting as it did of a very small bow and a very large spike. Lord
Reggie and Esmé Amarinth honoured the day with frock coats and tall
hats; and the former was in a state of considerable excitement about his
anthem.
Through the drowsy summer air the five bells of Chenecote Church chimed
delicately, and prayer-books were at a premium. Everybody except Lady
Locke had come down without one, and Mrs. Windsor was in despair.
"We must have them," she said piteously, "or the congregation will be
dreadfully shocked. Congregations are so easily shocked in the country.
I wonder if the servants have any? Servants always have prayer-books and
that kind of thing, don't they? I will ask."
She rang the bell, and one of the tall footmen appeared.
"Simpson, we want four prayer-books," she said. "Are there any in the
house?"
Simpson looked exceedingly doubtful, but said he would go and see.
Eventually he returned with three.
"There is one more, ma'am--the upper housemaid's," he said, handing them
on a salver. "But she wrote comments in it when she belonged to the
Salvation Army, and she can't rub them out, ma'am, so she don't like to
show it."
"Really!" said Mrs. Windsor, looking mystified. "Well, never mind, we
must try and manage with these. Oh! Lord Reggie, you won't want one, of
course, because you will be behind the curtain. I forgot that. We are
going to walk. It is only ten minutes or so, and I thought it would be
more rustic, especially as the roads are dusty. Now, I think we ought to
start. If we are late it will create a scandal, and Mr. Smith will be
horrified."
"How dutiful the atmosphere is!" Madame Valtesi said to Amarinth as they
set forth. "We are so frightfully punctual that I feel quite like an
early Christian. I wonder why the Christians were always so early before
we were born? They are generally very late now."
"I suppose they have grown tired," he answered, arranging the carnation
in his buttonhole meditatively. "Probably we suffer from the activity of
our forefathers. When I feel fatigued I always think that my
grandfather must have been what is called an excellent walker. How very
Sabbath the morning is!"
There was, in fact, a Sunday air in the quiet country road. The geese
had ceased from their mundane proceedings in the pond, and were
meditating over their sins in some cloistered nook of the farmyard. The
fields looked greenly pious, emptied as they were of labourers. In the
flowery hedgerows the birds chirped with a chastened note; and even the
summer wind touched the walkers as a bishop touches the heads of
kneeling candidates at Confirmation. Or so, at least, Lady Locke thought
with a pleasant fancifulness that she kept entirely to herself. The
bells chimed on monotonously; and now and then, as they walked, they
caught sight of neatly-dressed rustics in front of them, strolling
mildly to the church, tricked out in all the black bravery of
broadcloth, or decked in sprigged muslins and chip hats.
Mrs. Windsor was quite delighted.
"Is not this novel?" she exclaimed, setting her white veil straight, and
spreading a huge parasol to the sun. "I feel so righteous. It is
pleasant to feel righteous, isn't it? So much pleasanter than to be
good. I hope Mr. Smith will not preach a long sermon; but he looks
rather like a man who would. People who have nothing to say always do
preach long sermons, don't they? They keep hoping they will have
something to say presently, I suppose."
"And they hope out loud," said Madame Valtesi. "People who hope out loud
are very trying. I know so many. Dear me, how dusty it is! I feel as if
I were drowning. Are we nearly there?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Windsor; "there is the common--that is the common where
Mr. Smith has checked the rowdyism. I wish he had not broken up all the
idle comers before we came. I should so like to have met one."
"Mr. Smith has decidedly been premature," Amarinth said gravely.
"Clergymen often are. They take away our sins before we have had time to
sit down with them. There go the school children, I suppose. They look
intensely clean. So many people look intensely clean, and nothing else.
That is all one can say about them. Half the men I know have absolutely
no other characteristic. Their only talent is that they know how to
wash. Perhaps that is why men of genius so seldom wash. They are afraid
of being mistaken for men of talent. What will happen when we come into
church. Will everybody stand up?"
"I hope you will all sit down to hear my anthem," Lord Reggie said
rather nervously. "It will be much better. Please, do! Lady Locke, will
you promise to sit down? People attend so much more closely when they
are sitting. If they stand up they always look about and think all the
time about sitting down."
"Just as when people are asking you to stay they are always wondering if
you will go," said Madame Valtesi, casting a vicious glance at Tommy,
who was delightedly stirring up the dust.
"I will sit down certainly," said Lady Locke, "if you wish it; but I
could listen equally well standing. I do hope Jimmy Sands will sing his
little bit of solo correctly; I shall feel quite nervous till it is
over."
Lord Reggie looked at her with earnest pleasure, and even with a
momentary affection. He had never liked her so much before.
"Don't any of you stare at him while he is singing," he said, "or he
will get sharp. He always does; I have noticed it."
"What a pity staring does not have that effect upon all of us," said
Madame Valtesi. "London would be quite brilliant. I have looked at
people for hours, but they have never got sharp."
"There goes the five minutes' bell," said Lady Locke; "we are just in
time."
When they reached the churchyard Lord Reggie and Tommy went round to the
vestry, and the rest of the party made their way to a front pew, amid
the suppressed excitement of the rest of the congregation. Mr. Amarinth
especially created a sensation; but he always expected to do that. Ever
since he had made a name for himself by declaring that he was pleased
with the Equator, and desired its further acquaintance, he had been
talked about. Whenever the public interest in him showed signs of
flagging he wrote an improper story, or published an epigram in one
volume, on hand-made paper, with immense margins, or produced a play
full of other people's wit, or said something scandalous about the North
Pole. He had ruined the reputation of more than one eminently
respectable ocean which had previously been received everywhere, and had
covered Nature with confusion by his open attacks upon her. Just now he
was living upon his green carnation, which had been freely paragraphed
in all the papers; and when that went out of vogue he had some intention
of producing a revised version of the Bible, with all the inartistic
passages cut out, and a rhymed dedication to Mr. Stead, whose _Review
of Reviews_ always struck him as only a degree less comic than the
books of that arch-humorist Miss Edna Lyall, or the bedroom imaginings
of Miss Olive Schreiner. The villagers of Chenecote gaped open-mouthed
at his green carnation and crimped hair; and the exhortation as
delivered in a _presto_ mumble by Mr. Smith was received with general
apathy, as the opera of "Faust" is received on an off night in the opera
season.
Lord Reggie and Tommy were completely hidden behind the curtain that
shielded the organ seat; but the presence and agitation of the former
were indicated by the confused perambulations of Jimmie Sands, who was
perpetually dodging to and fro in a flushed manner between his place and
the organ, receiving instructions, and conveying whispered directions to
his youthful colleagues in the choir. The village organist had been
deposed from his high estate for the time being, and Lord Reggie
commanded the organ entirely--this fact becoming apparent during the
service in the abrupt alternations of loud and soft, the general absence
of pedal notes, and the continued employment of the _vox humana_ as
a solo stop during the singing of the psalms, to the undoing of the men
in the choir, and the extreme astonishment of the unused congregation.
At the beginning of the second lesson, too, Lord Reggie made his
presence known by the performance of a tumultuous and unexpected
obligato, which completely drowned the opening verses of the fourth
chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and caused the painted
windows at the extreme end of the church to crackle in a manner that
suggested earthquakes and the last great day.
"What is he doing?" whispered Madame Valtesi to Amarinth. "Is it in the
thirty-nine articles?"
"No," replied Esmé; "he is only getting up from his seat. How wonderful
he is! I never heard anything more impressive in my life. After all,
unpremeditated art is the greatest art. Such an effect as that could
never have been produced except impromptu."
The anthem passed off fairly well, although Jimmy Sands went rather
flat, perhaps owing to the fact that none of the party from the cottage
so much as glanced at him during his performance.
"He evidently made allowance for our staring," Madame Valtesi said
afterwards. "However, it can't be helped; we shall know better another
time. I thought his singing flat gave a touch of real character to the
anthem."
Mrs. Windsor was congratulating Mr. Smith on his charming little
service, and condoling with him on having been unable to pronounce the
blessing. This formality had been rendered impossible by the ingenious
action of Lord Reggie, who had forgotten about it, and evoked continuous
music from the organ ever since the amen of the prayer preceding it,
finally bursting into a loud fugue by Bach, played without the pedal
part, just when the curate was venturing to meekly insert it into a
second's interstice of comparative silence, brought about by the solo
employment of the _vox humana_ without accompaniment.
"However," said Mrs. Windsor, "I daresay it won't much matter for once
in a way, will it? It is no good making ourselves miserable about
comparative trifles."
"He might leave out a curse or two when he next reads the Commination
Service, and balance matters in that way," said Madame Valtesi, aside to
Amarinth.
"The rusticity of the service was quite delicious," Mrs. Windsor went on
graciously. "So appropriate! Everything was so well chosen and in
character! Ah, Mr. Smith, although you are a clergyman, I am certain
you must have the artistic temperament."
"I trust not," Mr. Smith said very gravely--"I earnestly trust not. The
artistic temperament is a sin that should be sternly struggled against,
and, if possible, eliminated. In these modern days I notice that every
wickedness that is committed is excused on the ground of temperament."
They were walking home across the common as he said this, and Lady Locke
turned to Lord Reggie, who was by her side, still rather flushed by his
exertions.
"Are you one of those who make a god of their temperament?" she said.
"What Mr. Smith says seems to me rather true."
"I think one's temperament should be one's leader in life, certainly,"
he answered.
"The blind leading the blind."
"It is beautiful to be blind. Those who can see are always avoiding just
the very things that would give them most pleasure. Esmé says that to
know how to be led is a much greater art than to know how to lead."
"I don't care to hear the opinions of Mr. Amarinth," she answered in a
low voice. "His epigrams are his opinions. His actions are performed
vicariously in conversation. If he were to be silent he would cease to
live."
"You don't know Esmé at all, really," Reggie said.
"And you know him far too well," she answered.
He looked at her for a moment rather curiously.