The conversation at dinner, however, was a complete change. Count Litvinoff appeared to feel no interest in life, save in the question of athletics at the English universities; but on this topic he managed to be so entertaining that his guests quite forgot, in his charm as talker, the irritation he had caused them to feel when he was merely the subject of someone else's talk. When dinner was over, and the three started to walk to Soho, they were all on the very best of terms with themselves and each other.
Would one of them have been quite so much at ease if he had known that the announcement of the coming lecture had been seen in the paper by Alice Hatfield, and that she—not being much by way of going to church—had made up her mind to be there?
SUNDAY EVENING IN SOHO.
HE average English citizen and his wife have a certain method of spending Sunday which admits of no variation, and is as essential to their religion as any doctrine which that religion inculcates. Indeed, it is very often the only tribute which they pay to those supernatural powers who are supposed to smile upon virtue and to frown upon vice.
When church and chapel—St Waltheof's and Little Bethel—unite in teaching that ceremonial observance is at least as important as moral practice, is it to be wondered at that their congregations, feeling that it would be more than human to combine the two, choose to move along the line of least resistance? It is comparatively easy, though perhaps somewhat tiresome, especially in hot weather, to get up only a little late on Sunday mornings, instead of a good deal late, as the 'natural man' would prefer to do; to assume a more or less solemn aspect at the breakfast-table; to wear garments of unusual splendour, which do not see daylight during the week, and in assuming them to feel tremors of uneasiness lest they should be outshone by Mr Jones' wife, Mr Smith's daughter, Mr Brown's sister, or Mr Robinson's maiden aunt. It is not quite so easy, but still possible, to sit for two hours on a narrow seat, evidently made by someone who knew he would never have to sit on it, and to keep awake (in the old pews this was not imperative), while a preacher, whom one does not care for, talks, in language one does not understand, on subjects in which one takes not the slightest interest. And then, as a compensation, one has the heavy early dinner and the afternoon sleep, in itself almost a religious exercise. Perhaps one's ungodly neighbours curse the day they were born as they hear one, after tea, playing long-drawn hymn tunes on a harmonium, till the bells begin to go for evening 'worship'; then one's wife goes to put on her bonnet (which has been lying in state all day on the best bed, covered with a white handkerchief), and one goes to one's 'sitting' again with a delicious sense that the worse of it is over. All this is not so difficult, and an eternity of bliss is cheap at the price—distinctly.
But to refrain from sanding the sugar or watering the milk—especially for a 'family man,' who has 'others to think of besides himself'—to keep one's hand from this, and one's tongue from evil-speaking, lying and slandering, to keep one's body in temperance and soberness, to be true and just in all one's dealings—this would be not only difficult but absurd, nowadays.