“What’s all this? What’s this? What is it?” he asked sharply. “Hello! What? Mr Shushions!” He bent down and looked close at the old man. “Where you been, old gentleman?” He spoke loud in his ear. “Everybody’s been asking for you. Service is well-nigh over, but ye must come up.”
The old man did not appear to grasp the significance of Albert’s patronage. Albert turned to Edwin and winked, not only for Edwin’s benefit but for that of the policeman, who smiled in a manner that infuriated Edwin.
“Queer old stick!” Albert murmured. “No doing anything with him. He’s quarrelled with everybody at Turnhill. That’s why he wanted to come to us. And of course we weren’t going to refuse the oldest Sunday school teacher in th’ Five Towns. He’s a catch... Come along, old gentleman!”
Mr Shushions did not stir.
“Now, Mr Shushions,” Hilda persuaded him in a voice exquisitely mild, and with a lovely gesture she bent over him. “Let these gentlemen take you up to the platform. That’s what you’ve come for, you know.”
The transformation in her amazed Edwin, who could see the tears in her eyes. The tableau of the little, silly old man looking up, and Hilda looking down at him, with her lips parted in a heavenly invitation, and one gloved hand caressing his greenish-black shoulder and the other mechanically holding the parasol aloft,—this tableau was imprinted for ever on Edwin’s mind. It was a vision blended in an instant and in an instant dissolved, but for Edwin it remained one of the epochal things of his experience.
Hilda gave Edwin her parasol and quickly fastened Mr Shushions’s collar, and the old man consented to be led off between the two rosettes. The bands were playing the Austrian hymn.
“Like to come up with your young lady friend?” Albert whispered to Edwin importantly as he went.
“Oh no, thanks.” Edwin hurriedly smiled.
“Now, old gentleman,” he could hear Albert adjuring Mr Shushions, and he could see him broadly winking to the other rosettes and embracing the yielding crowd in his wink.