An Autumn Sowing

by E. F. Benson

‘Have you been thinking about that all this time?’ he asked.

‘I suppose I must have been. Let’s think about something else.’

CHAPTER IV

Alice Keeling was sitting close to the window of her mother’s room making the most of the fading light of a gray afternoon at the end of October, and busily fashioning leaves of gold thread to be the sumptuous foliage of no less sumptuous purple pomegranates, among which sat curious ecclesiastical fowls, resembling parrots. The gold thread had to be tacked into its place with stitches of gold silk, and this strip of gorgeous embroidery would form when completed part of the decoration of an altar-cloth for the church which till but a few weeks ago, had not even had an altar at all, but only a table. Many other changes had occurred in that hitherto uncompromising edifice. The tables of commandments had vanished utterly; a faint smell of incense hung permanently about the church, copiously renewed every Sunday, candles blazed, vestments flashed, and a confessional, undoubtedly Roman in origin, blocked up a considerable part of the vestry. But chief of all the changes was that of the personality of the vicar, and second to that the state of mind of the parish in general to which, taking it collectively, the word Christian could not properly be applied. But taking the parish in sections, it would not be in the least improper to apply the word ecstatic to that section of it to which Alice Keeling belonged, and the embroidery on which she, like many other young ladies, was employed was not less a work of love than a work of piety. As the blear autumnal light faded, and her mother dozed quietly in her chair, having let her book fall from her lap for the third time, Alice, short-sightedly peering at the almost completed leaf, would have suffered her eyes to drop out of her head rather than relinquish her work. She was sewing little fibres and shreds of her heart into that pomegranate leaf, and it gave her the most exquisite satisfaction to do so.

It would have been easy, so the simple and obviously-minded person would think, for her to have turned on the electric light, and have saved her eyes. But there were subtler and more compelling reasons which stood in the way of doing that. The first was that the light would almost certainly awaken her mother, who, by beginning to talk again, as she always did when a nap had refreshed her, would put an end to Alice’s private reflections which flourished best in dusk and in silence. A second reason was that it was more than likely that Mr Silverdale would presently drop in for tea, and it was decidedly more interesting to be found sitting at work, with her profile outlined against the smouldering glow of sunset, than to be sitting under the less becoming glare of an electric lamp. For the same reason she did not put on the spectacles which she would otherwise have worn.

The leaf was all but finished when her mother began to talk with such suddenness that Alice wondered for the moment whether she was but talking in her sleep. But the gist of her remarks was slightly too consecutive to admit of that supposition.

‘Though it looks very odd,’ she said, beginning to give utterance to her reflections in the middle of a sentence, ‘that your father and Hugh should go to Cathedral, while you and I go to St Thomas’s. But the Cathedral is very draughty, that’s what I always say, and with my autumn cold due, if not overdue, it would be flying in the face of Providence to encourage it by sitting in draughts. As for incense and confession and——’

Her voice suddenly ceased again, as if a tap been turned off by some external agency, and Alice wisely made no reply of any kind, feeling sure that in a minute or two her mother would begin to give vent to that faint snoring which betokened that she had gone to sleep again. That did not interrupt the flow of her ecstatic musings, whereas her mother’s general attitude to all the novel institutions which were so precious to her gave her a tendency to strong shudderings. Only half an hour ago Mrs Keeling had said that she was sure she saw nothing wrong in confession and would not mind going herself if she could think of anything worth telling Mr Silverdale about.... Alice had drawn in her breath sharply when her mother said that, as if with a pang of spiritual toothache.

There came a slight sound from the drawing-room next door which would have been inaudible to any but expectant ears, and Alice bent over her work with more intense industry. Then the door opened very softly, and Mr Silverdale looked in. He was dressed in a black cassock and had a long wooden shepherd’s crook in his hand. He saw Alice seated in the window, he saw Mrs Keeling with her mouth slightly open and her eyes completely shut in a corner of the sofa, and rose to his happiest level.

‘Hush!’ he said, very gently, and tiptoed across the room to where Alice sat. He took her hand in his, pressing it, and spoke in the golden whisper which she was getting to know so well in the vestry.