CHAPTER XVII.
‘No hinge nor loopTo hang a doubt on.’
‘No hinge nor loopTo hang a doubt on.’
‘No hinge nor loopTo hang a doubt on.’
‘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 Bettyand 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 nomistake 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!”’
‘“O Paradise! O Paradise!”’
‘“O Paradise! O Paradise!”’
‘“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 ithas 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 Jackyhas 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 thoroughlybon 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 innocentthat 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 leaningforward, 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—consideringits 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.