"And now--I dare say--you'll go to church?"
She had asked it, with her good intention, rather in the air and by way
of sketching for him, in the line of support, something a little more
to the purpose than what she had been giving him. He felt it as
finishing off their intensities of expression that he found himself to
all appearance receiving her hint as happy. "Why yes--I think I will":
after which, as the door of the brougham, at her approach, had opened
from within, he was free to turn his back. He heard the door, behind
him, sharply close again and the vehicle move off in another direction
than his own.
He had in fact for the time no direction; in spite of which indeed he
was at the end of ten minutes aware of having walked straight to the
south. That, he afterwards recognised, was, very sufficiently, because
there had formed itself in his mind, even while Aunt Maud finally
talked, an instant recognition of his necessary course. Nothing was
open to him but to follow Kate, nor was anything more marked than the
influence of the step she had taken on the emotion itself that
possessed him. Her complications, which had fairly, with everything
else, an awful sound--what were they, a thousand times over, but his
own? His present business was to see that they didn't escape an hour
longer taking their proper place in his life. He accordingly would have
held his course hadn't it suddenly come over him that he had just lied
to Mrs. Lowder--a term it perversely eased him to keep using--even more
than was necessary. To what church was he going, to what church, in
such a state of his nerves, _could_ he go?--he pulled up short again,
as he had pulled up in sight of Mrs. Lowder's carriage, to ask it. And
yet the desire queerly stirred in him not to have wasted his word. He
was just then however by a happy chance in the Brompton Road, and he
bethought himself with a sudden light that the Oratory was at hand. He
had but to turn the other way and he should find himself soon before
it. At the door then, in a few minutes, his idea was really--as it
struck him--consecrated: he was, pushing in, on the edge of a splendid
service--the flocking crowd told of it--which glittered and resounded,
from distant depths, in the blaze of altar-lights and the swell of
organ and choir. It didn't match his own day, but it was much less of a
discord than some other things actual and possible. The Oratory in
short, to make him right, would do.