Although Geldham church was only a short distance from the Alders, Mrs. Rayner was not strong enough to walk; so she and her husband drove there in the brougham, while Haidee and I went on foot. We started before them, and Mr. Rayner was carefully helping his wife out of the carriage as we got to the gate. There was nothing noticeable in the way in which they bowed to one person, shook hands with another, exchanged a few words with a third; then we all went into the little church, which had been erected but a few years, and of which one aisle was still unbuilt.
There was a square family-pew just in front of ours, which was empty when we took our seats; but, when I rose from my knees, I found fixed upon me, with a straightforward and not very friendly stare, the round gray eyes of a girl two or three years older than myself, whom I recognized as the owner of the voice which had said of me, “Don’t you know she comes from the house on the marsh?” By her side, therefore also facing me, was the younger sister, with whom I had talked; she avoided meeting my eyes, and looked rather uncomfortable. As for me, I felt that I hated them both, and was glad when the gentleman who was evidently their father changed his position so that he almost hid them from my sight. Next to him sat a stout lady, who wore a black silk mantle covered with lace and beads and a white bonnet trimmed with yellow bows and unlikely clusters of roses. My heart sank curiously when I caught sight of the third person in the row, at the farther end of the pew. It was Mr. Laurence Reade, my friend of the dog-cart; and I felt as if a trusted ally had suddenly proved to be an officer in the enemy’s camp. Having found myself in an uncongenial household, I had unconsciously looked forward to seeing again, at some time or other, the only person I had met since I came to Norfolk to whom no associations of mystery or melancholy were attached. And now to meet him with those horrid girls! He was their brother evidently, for the elder harpooned him sharply with her sunshade several times for dozing during the service; but, when the sermon began and he had settled himself sideways in the corner with the plain intention of sleeping through the entire discourse, and the devout girl made a desperate lunge at him to rouse him once for all, he quietly took the weapon from her and kicked it under the seat. I rejoiced at this, and so missed the text, which was given out during the struggle. And then I missed a great deal of the sermon, for I was growing unhappy in my new home, and, as the preaching of one clergyman, especially if you are not listening particularly, sounds much like the preaching of another, it was easy to shut my eyes and fancy myself sitting with my mother in church at home in London. Presently, happening to glance round me, I caught sight of Mr. Laurence Reade in the corner of the next pew, with his arms folded, his legs crossed, and his head thrown back; and, if it had not been so very unlikely, I should have thought that he was not really asleep, but that through his half-shut eyelids he was looking at me.
When the sermon was over, and we filed out of church, I noticed that old Mr. Reade exchanged a few words with Mr. Rayner rather stiffly, while the two girls deliberately turned their heads away from us. But Mr. Laurence Reade hung back behind the rest of his family, and stooped to speak to Haidee, who was holding my hand. He asked her to give him a kiss, and she refused—and I was very glad. Of course it was my duty to rebuke her for rudeness, and to tell her to accept the attention with gratitude; but, instead, I looked carefully the other way and pretended not to be aware of the little comedy.
“Oh, Haidee, you shouldn’t turn away from your friends!” said he, in his musical voice, with rather more of grave reproach than the occasion required—to a child.
Mr. Rayner was on the churchyard path a little way in front of us, talking to the schoolmaster, the clergyman, and two or three of the gentlemen of the parish. He was trying to persuade them to start a penny bank, and was pointing out to them the encouragement it would give to habits of thrift, and offering to take most of the trouble of starting it into his own hands.
The spirit of inactivity ruled at Geldham; there was no energetic curate to scandalize people by insisting that to doze through one sermon a week was but a negligent way of caring for their souls; the last vestry-meeting had dwindled into a spelling-bee, at which the doctor had been ruled out for putting only one “t” in “committee,” and gone home vehemently affirming that his was the right way, and that of the schoolmaster, his colleagues, and the dictionary, the wrong.
It was curious to note now how they all listened coldly at first, with an aversion to the proposal, strengthened by their dislike to the man who proposed it, and how, overcome by an irresistible charm in his manner of arguing as much as by the arguments themselves, they one by one from listless became interested, and not only agreed to the scheme being started, but to taking each some small share in setting it on foot. Then, parting cordially from the man they had greeted so coldly, they all dispersed; and Mr. Rayner, handsome, bright, pleased with his little triumph, turned to his wife and led her to the carriage, while Haidee and I returned as we came—on foot.
He was very severe indeed upon rustic wits and rustic governors during dinner, calling them sheep and donkeys and other things. Then he grew merry and made jokes about them, and I laughed; and, finding in me an appreciative listener, his spirits rose still higher, and I thought before dinner was over that I had never heard any one talk more amusingly. I think Mrs. Rayner made only one remark, and that was when I was furtively wiping some tears of laughter from my eyes; she asked me—
“Do you care to go to church this afternoon, Miss Christie?”
I suppose I looked rather snubbed, for Mr. Rayner broke in—