To Harvey's astonishment the service was at an end, and only the sermon remained. He had scarcely heard a word of the whole. As for any amount of prayer, praise, or adoration on his part, the less said the better, perhaps.
The sermon following was good, forcible, and well worked out. Harvey was not much in the habit, however, of listening to sermons. He sat through them as a kind of duty—whether a duty to himself, to the clergyman, or to society, he would have been at a loss to specify— but he did not commonly take in their sense. Listening means trouble, and Harvey disliked trouble. His attitude of polite endurance was a contrast to the earnest attention of the two seated opposite. Harvey did not even notice the text.
That window, how well he remembered it! The green ivy-leaves clustered around it outside still as of yore, and a gleam of sunshine came filtering softly through the leaves and the tinted panes. The vivid fancy of his childhood came back too, and once more in imagination he seemed to see his mother, clothed in white, mounting upwards by a pathway of wreathed leaves and glowing light— upwards to a far-off land of joy.
Only a child's fancy, of course; but Marjory had declared that children "see farther" sometimes than grown people. After all, why not? A child's picturing may well approach nearer to some grand reality than a man's forgetfulness of it.
Had Harvey any belief in such a land now? Well, yes, after a fashion, no doubt. Practically he knew that this little life may not go on for ever, and he hoped for something agreeable beyond when that beyond had to be reached. He was in no hurry at all to go to heaven; still he did not, of course, wish to go anywhere else after death except to heaven.
"But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy!"
Marjory's quotation flashed up suddenly; he had heard the words years before, and had forgotten their existence till Marjory recalled them. Now they obtruded themselves persistently, not to say impertinently. He could shut off the sermon, but he could not shut off Marjory's quotation. It haunted him, buzzed about him, so to speak, drowning the quiet voice of Mr. Fitzalan, winding in and out of the green ivy which circled the window, saying itself over and over, dying away and reviving again.
"But now, 'tis little joy—little joy—now—now—now—'tis little joy— to know I'm farther off—farther off from heaven—farther off from heaven—than when I was a boy—a boy—than when I was a boy!"