“I say, Miss Matterson, and you, Holt. Come in front, will you, and help to make a choir. I’m rounding up as many as I can.”
“Not going to have Christmas over again, eh, Trask?” I said maliciously, the point of which being that Trask, who really did know something about music, and was ex officio organist, or to be more accurate, harmoniumist, had on the occasion referred to undertaken to launch out into anthems and carols and all sorts of things unknown to the multitude: such ambitious soarings, and the letting off of wholly extemporised and weird harmonic fireworks on the instrument, which he called “accompaniment” resulting in the silence, by relays, of the whole body of singers; though not before the latter had ingeniously if unconsciously blended the “Adeste fideles,” the “Old Hundredth,” “Coming through the Rye,” and other historic and popular melodies into one inspiring whole. It may be readily imagined that of this fiasco Trask did not quickly hear the end, wherefore he liked not my present reference.
“Oh, go to blazes, Holt,” he retorted pepperily. “I’d like to know what you’d have done in my place with such a lot of—of—” and here he was obliged to stop short, remembering that Beryl had been one of the offenders. She, catching my eye, was thoroughly enjoying the situation.
“All right, Mr Trask,” she answered. “We’ll do what we can. Only you mustn’t try and make us do what we can’t.”
The little plain, whitewashed building—which Stacey had erected on his farm, and was inordinately proud of, and fond of alluding to as “my church”—was nearly full, a thoroughly representative congregation of stock farmers, and their families. Many, like ourselves, had ridden over, and there was a sprinkling of habits among the feminine section of the gathering, eke a proportion of pretty faces. But, great Hercules! there was nothing here to come near Beryl. Looking round, I realised with a glow of pride that, compared with these, she was as a lily among daisies and—she was with me, standing by me, sitting by me, kneeling by me. It seemed—or I wanted it to seem—as though I had a kind of proprietary interest in her.
Frankly, I own to not being much of a church-goer; far indeed be it from me to cast a slight on those who are. It is sad, though a fact, but the process—especially in the morning—has a soporific effect. Yet here, in this little whitewashed building, with the blue sky glimpsed through the open windows, the hum of bees and the strange call of birds in the bush without, wafting in to mingle with the parson’s voice and the murmurs of the congregation, I did not feel drowsy in the least. The graceful habit-clad figure beside me, the profile at which I stole more than one side glance, the sweet true voice, the mere delight of listening to which constituted, I fear, the sole assistance on my part towards Trask’s choral aspirations—there was no room for boredom or drowsiness in such proximity; and if this be objected to as a substituting of the creature for the Creator, well, still in my blundering untheological mind I have an idea, which I couldn’t express intelligibly to save my life, that on this occasion the influence was something more than a mere earthly one. But let that pass.
After the service we streamed out into the sunlight, and tongues began to wag on all sides.
“Do persuade your brother to stay and have dinner with us, Miss Matterson,” said a voice on the other side of Beryl. “We can’t; and it’s much too long for poor little Iris to wait if he persists in taking her back at once. Of course you’ll stay—and Mr Holt.”
The speaker was one of the two girls who had made their appearance what time I had got Iris out of the sea at East London, and we had often laughed over it together, and the figure I must have cut. Then old Stacey came up and seconded the invite so heartily that Beryl gave way. But Brian was as adamant. He wanted to get back, for several reasons, he said. Beryl and I knew more than one of them at any rate. As a matter of fact, Brian was a bit of a misogynist. He detested fooling around among a pack of women, he used to say; and the Stacey girls he held in particular aversion, which was ungrateful of him, as they happened to cherish a scarcely disguised admiration for his unappreciative self. So George and poor little Iris were carried summarily off, greatly to the disgust of the latter.
We who remained made ourselves festive enough. Old Stacey, though somewhat shaky over his aspirates, was not half a bad old sort, and the girls showed to far the best advantage in their own home. They made themselves exceedingly pleasant to Beryl and myself, and if they had a way of bracketing us together, so to say, it was by no means displeasing to me, for I had got into a way myself of feeling a sort of proprietary right in her, when we were among other people. If she noticed this, assuredly she could not have resented it; at times I would even let myself think she unconsciously reciprocated it. She would often refer to me upon some debated matter, for instance, as if mine was the opinion which rendered it final.