In a moment Charlotte would be gone and there would be nothing for Anne to do but sit as she had sat for the last hour, staring out into the deserted street, listening to the wind and the heavy breathing of her father asleep.
"Perhaps you would take me, instead," Anne said in a sudden need to escape from this stillness that had no force or peace in it. "Papa will be all right and mamma won't be long now."
"Certainly. Could you be ready in ten minutes? There's sure to be a crowd and I like to walk. It gets me in the mood more than riding in a crowded car."
Anne went quickly from the room and was back again in five minutes. "I'll just leave a note for moms or she'll wonder what's happened."
She scribbled, "Gone with Mrs. Welles," and pinned the paper on the wall.
They walked quickly in a silence that rested, so that, by the time they reached the church, Anne no longer felt the need of this escape and wished she had not come. But as she had herself suggested it, she did not know how to retreat now and followed Charlotte through the iron gate and up the wide graveled path, with reluctant curiosity and a hope that the service would not be long.
The church was a low, gray stone building, covered with ivy, standing back from the street on a lawn, undisturbed by shrubs or flowers. Its leaded casement windows and outer door of heavy oak studded with nails, gave a feeling of age and great strength. Silently swinging doors led from the wide vestibule into the body of the building, which was covered with thick soft carpet that deadened all sound. Across the foot of the platform, stretching the width of the room, great branches of oak and huckleberry broke the hardness of line and filled the room with a faint odor of living greenness. Half-way down the aisle, they stopped and then, with no rustle of disturbance, Anne found herself seated in the center of the row. Mrs. Welles took a leaflet from the rack before her and Anne looked about.
She had had no clear idea of what such a gathering would be like, but now, as she studied the faces of those within her range, she marveled at their likeness. There were old and young, men and women, but they all looked to have gone through a process that had dissolved their personal differences. They all sat quietly, their bodies in repose, their faces calm. They were neither eager nor indifferent. No doubt or uncertainty disturbed them. Anne could conceive of no opposition that would sweep them to anger. No power could force from these well-dressed, cultured bodies the cry of rage that lashed the audiences of Black Tom O'Connell.
Here there were no slovenly clothes, no stunted bodies, no stormy, foreign eyes. They had found their Peace and held it with well-bred restraint. They were sure, not waiting; positive, not patient. Before this sureness, Katya's was the certainty of an elemental force striving through obstacles to prove itself in creation. This surety was the after-calm, when God, having labored to create a world, stood back satisfied and said: "It is good." It was restful in a way but had something of the same supreme aloofness.
The side doors of the platform opened. Two men and a woman, dressed in white, took the three vacant chairs behind the hedge of green. A hymn was announced and the audience rose. Verse after verse they sang of gloating peace and furious good-will. Protected by the music, their calm at last broke through restraint, and flung itself aloft in an abandon their composed bodies never would have allowed. Anne felt the peace about her crack like thin ice and disappear.