THE OLD VILLAGE CHURCH
NEXT day, being Sunday, brought to light fresh aspects of the new world
in which Phyllys was plunged.
To her the change had come as a veritable plunge, involving such
sensations of shock and breathlessness as a dip in the sea will
produce. The novelty of it all gripped her imagination. After years of
repression, of squeezing in a Procrustean bed, she found herself in an
atmosphere of ease and refinement, in a house where beauty was valued,
contrasting with the home where only abstract principle was exalted,
and things lovely were eschewed as evil. Something of intoxication was
the outcome.
Her hour in the studio had awakened new thought, new feeling. The
masterpieces shown by Colin had touched her more deeply than might be
understood by one possessing no love of art. In Phyllys this love was
inherited, and in childhood it had received careful cultivation.
All the ten years at Midfell, though trained to outward submission,
she had fought against the dictums which went in the teeth of her
parents' teaching. To some extent she had been moulded by persistent
pressure, had taken shape and colour, as a plant under training can
be educated into new forms. But, like such a plant, she had a strong
tendency to "revert" on the first chance; and here was her chance. The
spell of present surroundings was great, and she "reverted" quickly to
experiences of earlier days, never forgotten, though of late pushed out
of her mind.
Colin fascinated her. His personal beauty—a type of beauty due
less to outline of feature, though that outline was fine, than to
expression—and his "apartness" from common life were both so unlike
aught she had ever come across that she could not dismiss him from her
thoughts. And even though she had not quite approved of his manner to
his mother, yet his serenity under that mother's resistance to his
cherished aim won her admiration.
"I like him," she said to herself more than once. He was different from
Giles; and Giles was her friend. Colin might in time become her friend;
but this she doubted. She could not got to know him so quickly as she
had got to know Giles.
As they walked to church on Sunday morning following the private
short-cut, where sunbeams made a swaying pattern of leaf-shadows on a
mossy carpet, her attention wandered to him much. She listened for what
he might say; she watched for what he might do. Each word and action on
his part, though subdued, had in it something suggestive. Giles had not
affected her thus. When with Giles she was mainly conscious of her own
power over him. When with Colin she was mainly conscious of his power
over her.
Midfell Church and its services were plain, almost with an excess of
simplicity; less from any wish on the part of Mr. Hazel than from
a need to avoid startling the unsophisticated Midfell intellect by
"innovations," a word which held terror for the Wyvernes and their
coterie. Had such simplicity not been maintained, Phyllys would not
have been allowed to enter the porch.
Here things were otherwise, and she was carried back to childhood's
days—to her father's church. Here was precisely what old Mrs. Wyverne
had dreaded for her grandchild, and had condemned in her son. Not only
an aged historic building, great in architectural beauty; but also more
of completeness, more of cultivated perfection of form and sound, more
of that which for years had been decried in the hearing of Phyllys as
unsound, unspiritual, a form of godliness without life, perilous to
true religion.
Did it indeed mean peril? Was it perforce mere form, without life? Did
no reality underlie the beauty of structure and of sound?
Beauty there was; a perfection of rendering seldom reached in a
country village; a well-trained choir; an organ of mellow tone, finely
handled. There was, too, the outward seeming of deep reverence, in
hushed stillness, in heads bowed reverently during prayers, in low
voices joining in the responses. No hurried slurring on the part of
Vicar or congregation, no shrill shouting on the part of the choir. All
was controlled and appropriate, a worthy expression of the Church's
adoration of her Divine Master. The Vicar, a college friend of Giles
Randolph, seemed to be a man of unusual intensity of feeling, if the
bent head and earnest face spoke truly.
Who would venture to say that in the plain services of Midfell Church,
love and devotion and reverence were less than here, though differently
shown? But also, who should dare to assert that love and devotion and
reverence here were less, because allowed fuller expression? Only,
surely, a Barbara Wyverne or one like-minded would roughly thus tread
on holy ground, would carelessly so condemn. The Father of all, looking
into each heart, reads and values at their true worth the love, the
devotion, the reverence, whether uttered in this manner or expressed in
that manner before His footstool.
To Phyllys, the surroundings, the spiritual atmosphere, the solemn
hush, the stirring music, appealing to her impressionable nature, meant
joy and comfort and a new realization of the Divine Presence. That
Presence is made known to men through many different channels and by
various modes. For years Phyllys had not felt her father and mother so
near, because for years she had not felt God so near. Their nearness
was involved in His; for they were in Him, with Him. Tears filled her
eyes as she knelt. She knew that this Church might be to her as a gate
of heaven.
Her late terrible experience on the moor had deepened the sense of
spiritual need, and here might be what would satisfy that need. "O I am
glad to have come," she whispered.
Presently, standing up, she noted Mrs. Keith's manner as peculiar.
Those fine eyes, troubled and restless, were gazing at the east window,
as if in protest, and the lips moved beseechingly.
Did this mean prayer? Something had stirred the elder woman, as she had
been stirred; only in Mrs. Keith it looked like sorrow, not joy. But
what could Mrs. Keith have to grieve her, in her beautiful home, with
the most winning of sons, with Giles as a second son ready to give all
she wished?—Except indeed in so insignificant a desire as related to
Colin's modelling.
Phyllys floated into a train of thought, which landed her beside a
chestnut-tinted stream, with golden glimmers in white wavelets, and
Giles by her side. Thence by a transition she was in the bog, sinking,
horror-stricken, in black slime, and once more she felt the grip of his
hand. "But for him—!" she whispered.
Twenty minutes later she and Mrs. Keith stood in the empty church,
Colin having gone home.
Architecture claimed attention, and Mrs. Keith pointed out the Norman
arches, the solid columns, the stalls and their carved canopies, the
aged rood-screen, the new seats of dark oak throughout the building.
"Giles had it restored as soon as he came of age," she said. "It
was his first thought. Before that we had a three-decker, and
hideous galleries, and pews one could hardly see over, and whitewash
everywhere. He had the roof opened out as you see it now, and
everything put right. His whole heart was in the work. No, there is
very little old glass. The east window had been added early in the
century, and it was too frightful for words. So Giles gave this and one
other. Lovely, is it not?"
They passed to the "one other" in the north aisle; a memorial window,
exquisite in design, the central figure that of a child borne up on
angels' wings. The child's face drew from Phyllys an exclamation.
Mrs. Keith made a sound of inquiry, but Phyllys drew in. It might be
that Colin would not wish his mother, any more than Giles, to know what
he was doing. She went near, and read, "In Memory of E. W."
"Dr. Wallace's child. She died when the boys were sixteen. An
occasional playmate." Mrs. Keith spoke coldly.
"And she was—how old?"
"About thirteen. When the church was restored, Giles put this to her
memory. Unnecessarily, I thought."
"She must have been lovely. Was Giles fond of her?"
"She was pretty. Both boys liked her. She died very suddenly."
"And her father is your doctor?"
"He is everybody's doctor. I do not care for him. I am afraid my
dislikes are as pronounced as my likes."
"So many years ago?" thought Phyllys. And an "occasional playmate"
only! Both Giles and Colin must be very unforgetting. She decided that
a friendship with the former might last a lifetime.