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 Jacky has 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 thoroughly bon 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 innocent that 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 leaning forward, 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.