XXX
THE WOMAN'S HOUR
All Souls' was dark and hazy with its share of the ubiquitous fog, here a little aggravated by the subtle fumes of incense newly burnt. In the haze hung quivering constellations of sallow gaslight, and through it gleamed an embroidered frontal, and the silken backs of praying priests, lit by candles four. Delicate strains came from an invisible organ; a light patter and a rich rustling from the feet and garments of some departing after matins, some taking their places for choral eucharist, women to the left, men to the right. Men and women, goers and comers alike, with few exceptions, bowed the knee with Romish humility at the first or the last glimpse of that shimmering frontal with the four candles above and the motionless vestments below.
The congregation was one of well-dressed women and well-to-do men; their quiet devotion was not the less noteworthy on that account. A fine reverence animated every face: the stray observer would have missed the passive countenance of the merely pious, as Gwynneth did, and discovered in its stead the happy ardour of those whose religion was a delight rather than a duty. Yet the congregation took scarcely any part in the actual service. Few untrained voices joined in the exquisite singing; few, in the body of the church, left their places to take part in the sacred climax. The congregation might have been only an audience; yet somehow it was not. Somehow also there was nothing spectacular in an office of equal dignity, distinction, and fervour.
Yet the yellow lights in a yellow fog, the perfect organ, trained voices, rich embroideries, incense, genuflexions, all these seemed at one religious pole; and Long Stow church on a summer's day, with the sky above and the birds singing, and Mr. Carlton in his surplice in the sun, surely that was at the other! It was Gwynneth's fate, at all events, to carry that single service in her heart and mind for ever, and to put every other one against it. She did so now, involuntarily at first, and then unwillingly, as she knelt or stood at the end of her row—her cambric cuffs and fine lawn streamers in high relief against the rich furs and the sombre feathers of those about her.
On the other side of the nave, far back and close to the wall, a grizzled gentleman stood and knelt by turns, in much obscurity; and his attention never flagged. No detail of the elaborate ritual appeared unfamiliar to this worshipper, and yet for a time his expression was rather that of the alien critic. Gradually, however, the lines disappeared from his forehead, his eyes opened wider, and brightened with the peaceful ardour which he himself had already remarked in the eyes of others. He was a tall thin man, very weather-beaten and rather bent, wearing a new overcoat and a soft muffler; there was nothing in his appearance to declare him of the cloth himself. His grey beard was close trimmed. He wore gloves and carried a tall hat shoulder high in the press going out. He was no more readily recognisable as the lonely builder of Long Stow church, than Gwynneth in her nurse's garb as the niece of Sir Wilton Gleed. But their separate fates brought them face to face in the porch, and recognition was immediate on both sides.
"Miss Gleed?" said Robert Carlton, raising his hat before it covered his grey hairs.
"Mr. Carlton!" she exclaimed in turn. There had been no time to think, and her voice told only of her surprise; her own ear noticed it, and she had time to marvel at herself.
"I thought I could not be mistaken," Carlton was saying. And they were shaking hands.
"I never expected to see you here," said Gwynneth, with a strange emphasis, as though the declaration were due to herself.