‘No hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on.’
To-day is Sunday—the first Sunday since that eventful day when Susan had
tackled and disarmed the thief, and certainly the warmest day that has
come this season. In here in the church the heat is almost intolerable;
and Susan, when the Litany begins, feels her devotion growing faint.
She has, indeed, up to this had a good deal of troublous excitement. To
keep one eye on Jacky, who had left home in a distinctly resentful mood,
and the other on Tommy, who doesn’t believe in churches as a
satisfactory playground, is a task to which few would be equal; and even
now, when Tommy has been reduced to silence by Betty and lemon-drops,
the excessive warmth of the day leaves Susan too tired to follow the
beautiful service.
Mechanically she says, ‘We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord’; but her
mind is wandering, and presently her eyes begin to wander too.
The curate, how hideous he is, poor little man! and what a pity he is so
painfully conscious of the loss of his front tooth! and what a lovely
light that is from the window falling on his gown! It must be nice
outside now. How the flies are buzzing on the panes, just like the
organ! Maria Tanner should not be laughing like that; if father saw her
he would be so angry, and Maria is such a nice girl, and so clever—took
all the prizes at the diocesan examination last year—and her sister is
considered quite an excellent housemaid by Lady Millbank. What a pretty
bonnet Lady Millbank has on! Those violets suit her. Who is the man in
the pew behind her? Why, that is the Crosby pew, and——
For one awful minute Susan feels the walls of the church closing in upon
her; a sensation of faintness, a trembling of the knees, oppress her.
She is conscious of all this, and then the mist fades away.
No, no; of course it is not true. It is impossible. A remarkable
likeness, no more. She could laugh almost at her own folly, and very
nearly does so in her nervous state; but providentially the sight of a
gloomy black and white tablet, erected to the memory of a dead and gone
Crosby, that stands out from the wall right before her, prevents this
act of desecration.
She—she will look again, if only to assure herself of her own folly.
Slowly, slowly she lifts her eyes—the eyes that now are standing in a
very white face—and looks with a desperate courage at the Crosby pew.
Her eyes meet full the eyes of its one occupant, and then Susan tells
herself that it is all over, and death alone is to be looked for.
For the eyes of the Crosby pew man are the eyes of Susan’s thief. There
can be no mistake about it any longer. The man who sits in Mr. Crosby’s
pew and Susan’s repentant thief are one and the same.
Her eyes seem to cling to his. In the fever of horror that has overtaken
her, she feels as if she could never remove them. For a full minute the
man in the Crosby pew and Susan kneel, staring at each other; and then
suddenly something happens. Lady Millbank, who is sitting in the pew
before that of the Crosbys, turns round and hands Susan’s thief a
Prayer-book. That in itself would be very well—everyone should give a
thief a Prayer-book—but Lady Millbank has accompanied her gift with a
friendly nod of recognition, a charming smile—the smile that Susan so
well knows, the smile that is only given to those whom Lady Millbank
desires to honour or to be in with.
It is all quite plain now. The thief is Mr. Crosby, and Susan with a
groan lets her face fall upon her clasped hands, and hopes vainly for
the earth to open and swallow her up quick.
But the earth is a stupid thing, and never does anything nowadays. Not a
single earthquake appears for Susan’s accommodation, and the good old
church is not conscious of even a quiver. The service goes on. The
Litany is done. They all rise from their knees, and the curate gives out
a hymn:
‘“O Paradise! O Paradise!”’
Poor Susan feels as if ‘O Purgatory!’ would be much nearer it, so far as
she is concerned. She would have stopped the hymn there and then if she
could, feeling utterly upset and nervous. But it would take a great many
feelings to stop a church service when it is once in full swing; and the
hymn goes on gaily in spite of Susan’s despair. It reaches, indeed, a
most satisfactory ending, in spite of a slight contretemps occasioned by
the one unlucky Protestant maid belonging to the Rectory, called Sarah.
Poor Sarah has this day for the first time put on a hat of which a
brilliant magenta feather is the principal feature. Hitherto it has not
caught Miss Barry’s eye—a wonder in itself even greater than the magenta
feather, as this estimable spinster, with a view to keeping the
servants’ moral conduct perfect, has elected that they shall sit on a
bench in the big square Rectory pew right before her and her nephew and
nieces.
It is at the beginning of the first verse that Miss Barry’s eye lights
on the monstrosity in Sarah’s hat. Feathers and flowers are abominations
in Miss Barry’s eyes when worn by the ‘common people,’ as she calls
those beneath her in the social scale. How dare that impertinent girl
come to church with such an immodest ornament on her head! What on earth
is the world coming to? She must, she will, speak to her; impossible to
let her enjoy that feather another second.
If she can’t speak, she can at all events sing at her.
She darts across the pew, and, leaning over Sarah’s shoulder, sings
piercingly into her ear:
“‘O Paradise! O Paradise.” Sarah, what do you mean?’ (Rising note.) ‘How
dare’ (prolonged shriek on top note) ‘you wear that feather, girl! Where
did you get that hat?’
She is simply screaming this to the hymn-tune. You all know the hymn, of
course, and can understand how Miss Barry’s voice rose to a shrill yell
in the ‘dare.’ Sarah, with a convulsive start, turns round. It seems to
her that this loud voice shouting in her ear must be heard by every
other soul in the church; and frightened, ashamed, she sinks down into
her seat, and prepares to hide herself and the magenta feather behind
her Prayer-book. But at this breach of church etiquette Miss Barry grows
even more incensed, and proceeds to rouse the wretched girl to a sense
of her further iniquity by well-directed and vigorous punches and prods
of her Prayer-book on her back. Whereon Sarah, dissolved in tears, rises
to her feet once more. She is evidently on the verge of hysterics, and
would have undoubtedly given way to them, but that at this moment Betty,
who is afraid of nothing under heaven, lays her hand on Miss Barry’s
arm, and forcibly pulls her back to her accustomed place.
The hymn has now come to an end, and only Sarah’s stifled groanings are
heard upon the air. Most people take these to be the buzzing of the
innumerable bluebottles collected in the window-panes, so that the whole
affair goes off better than might have been expected.
Slowly, slowly, go the minutes; slower and slower still is the voice of
the curate, as he intones the Commandments. The bluebottles, as if
invigorated by it, buzz louder than ever, until poor Sarah’s sobs are
completely drowned.
The heat grows more and more intense. Jacky, beneath its pressure, has
fallen sound asleep, and is now giving forth loud and handsome snorings.
Miss Barry, horrified, makes frantic signs to Dominick, who is next to
the culprit, to stop this unsolicited addition to the church music that
Jacky has so ‘kindly consented’ to give, and Dom waves back at her
wildly. No, no, of course. He quite understands; he will see that no one
interferes with the dear boy’s slumbers on any account whatever. The
wavings backwards and forwards grow fast and furious—furious on the part
of Miss Barry, and really as fast as lightning on the part of Mr.
Fitzgerald, who is having a thoroughly _bon quart d’heure_; but Carew
ends it.
He has been trying mentally to get through one of his papers for his
next examination, and finding Jacky’s snores a deadly interruption to
his thoughts, he fetches that resounding hero a telling kick on a part
that shall be nameless, which brings him not only to his senses, but the
floor.
There is a momentary confusion in the Rectory pew; but as every member
of the congregation is more or less drowsing, Jacky is picked up and
restored to his seat before the real meaning of the confusion is known.
And, indeed, when anyone does look, all the Barrys are sitting so demure
and innocent that no one could connect them with anything out of the
way. Susan, alone flushed and unnerved, in spite of her determination
not to do it, looks quickly at the Crosby pew, to find the thief looking
at her with a singular intensity of regard. It is at this moment that
Susan, for the first time in her young, happy life, wakes to sympathy
with those unfortunate people who sometimes wish that they were dead.
The curate, a short, squat little man—a man so short, indeed, that a
footstool has had to be placed in the pulpit for him to let the
congregation see him as he preaches—is now droning away like the flies,
‘shooting out shafts of eloquence to the bucolic mind’ is how he puts it
when writing to his people; but even his people, if here, could hardly
catch the shafts to-day. The fact is, he has not yet had time to get in
the teeth he lost by his fall last week; and, however admirable his
discourse may be, the beauties of it are known to him alone.
The farmers who are awake are leaning forward, their hands to their ears
to catch the Gospel words that never reach them. Lady Millbank has
fallen gracefully asleep. Sarah is still weeping copiously, but now,
thank Heaven, quietly. The curate, vainly striving to pronounce his
‘this’ and his ‘that,’ grows more and more nervous. He leans over the
pulpit, and thunders at the sleeping farmers and at the leading families
around, in whose pews, too, Somnus is holding a full court. Farther and
farther he leans, striving with his parishioners as much as with his
teeth; a very passion of anxiety grows upon him. He lifts his arms from
the desk before him—the desk that is supporting him—and waves them
frantically.
‘Hear—hear, my brethren,’ cries he. ‘Hear and see——’
His cry, like the ‘Excelsior’ young man’s clarion, rings loud and clear.
It wakes some of the sleepy members, who look up to see what it is all
about. But when they do look up there is nothing to see.
Most unexpectedly and disgracefully—considering its relation to the
Church—the footstool has given way with a crash, and Mr. Haldane, the
curate, has given way with it, and disappeared, holus bolus, into the
big old pulpit.
For quite a minute, though no doubt ‘to memory dear,’ the curate is
certainly ‘lost to sight;’ and when at last he ventures once more to
mount the offending stool, and look down at his parishioners, it is to
find that the far larger half of them are gladly streaming down the
aisle to the fresh air outside, under the fond delusion that ‘church is
over.’
These are the specially drowsy ones. The crash caused by the curate’s
unpremeditated descent had roused them from their happy dreams, and, on
opening their eyes, seeing no preacher in the pulpit, they had naturally
come to the conclusion that the performance was at an end.
Vain to call them back. Mr. Haldane spreads out his arms to heaven in a
mournful appeal, but, hearing some unmistakable tittering to his left,
turns, and incontinently flies.