With a sigh of relief—“He talks a great deal, and it is very late,” said Cecil Tresilyan.
CHAPTER IX.
From his “coign of vantage” in the reading-desk the next morning, Mr. Fullarton surveyed a crowded congregation, serenely complacent and hopeful, as a farmer in August looking down from the hill-side on golden billows of waving grain. Visitors had been pouring in rather fast during the week; and there was a vague, general impression, which no individual would have owned, that they were to hear something unusually good. For once expectation was not to be disappointed—a remarkable fact, when one considers how much dissatisfaction is created, as 23 a rule, in the popular mind, by the shortcomings of eclipses, processions, Vesuvian eruptions, new operas, and other advertised attractions, natural and artificial. The singing was really a success. Miss Tresilyan’s magnificent voice did its duty nobly, and did no more. Without overpowering or singling itself out from the others, it lured them on to follow where they could never have gone alone: the choir was kept in perfect order without even knowing that it was disciplined.
There was an elderly Englishman who had resided at Dorade ever since he had a slight difference of opinion with the Bankruptcy Court a quarter of a century back. Drifting helplessly and aimlessly about Europe in search of employment, he had taken root where he came ashore, and vegetated, as floating weeds will do. He picked up rather a precarious livelihood by acting as a species of factotum to his countrymen in the season, ministering, not injudiciously, to their myriad whims and necessities. Among his multifarious functions, perhaps the most respectable and permanent was that of clerk to the English chapel. He was by no means a very religious man, nor were his morals quite unexceptionable, but he had completely identified himself with the fortunes and interests of that modest building. A sneer at its capabilities or a doubt as to its prospects would exasperate him at any time far more than a direct insult to himself (to be sure there was little self-respect left to be offended). When disguised in drink, which was the case tolerably often, he generally proposed to settle the question by the ordeal of battle, and was only to be appeased by an apology or a great deal more liquor.
On this occasion the success and the singing combined—for excess and hardship had not quite deadened a good ear for music—moved the old castaway strangely. His thoughts wandered back to the misused days when he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder and vestryman, and even dreamt ambitiously of a churchwardenship. He could see distinctly his own pew, with the gray, worm-eaten panels, where he had sat many and many a warm afternoon, resisting sternly, as became a man of mark in the parish, treacherous inclinations to slumber. He saw the ponderous brown gallery—eyesore to archæologists—which held the village choir: there they were, with the sun streaming in on their heads through the western window, till even the faded red cushion in front deepened into rich crimson, chanting their quaint old anthems with right good courage, though every one got lost in the second line, and, after much independent exertion of the lungs, just came up in time to join in the grand final rally. He saw the mild-faced, gray-haired parson mounting slowly the pulpit stairs, adjusting and manœuvring the refractory gown that would come off his shoulders with the nervous gesture which, beginning in timidity, had grown into a habit that was part of the man. More plainly than all—he saw a low, green mound, just beyond the chancel walls, where one was sleeping who had lavished on him all the treasures of a rare, unselfish, trusting love; the dear, meek, little wife, who was so proud of her husband’s few poor talents, so indulgent to his many failings, who ever had an excuse ready to answer his self-reproaches, whose weak, thin hand was always strong enough to pluck him back from ruin and dishonor, till it grew stiff and cold. She knew it, too, for he remembered the wail that burst from her lips when she thought she was alone, the night before she died—“Ah! who will save him now that I am gone?” How miserable and lonely he was long after they buried her! How incessantly he used to repeat those last words, meant to be comforting, that she spoke, with her arm wound round his neck, “Darling, you have been so very, very kind to me!” So it went on, till the devil of drink, choosing his time cunningly, entered into him, and battled with and drove out the angel. A strange resurrection! Memories that had died years ago, withering from very shame, began to curl and twine themselves round the hard, battered heart as tenderly as ever. These pictures of the past were still vivid and clear, when he became aware of a dimness in his eyes that blinded them to all real surrounding objects; he felt so surprised that it broke the spell; tears had almost forgotten the way to his eyes.
Not very probable, is it, that a prosaic elderly clerk should dream of all this during the three last verses of a hymn? Well, the steadiest imagination is apt to disregard sometimes the proprieties of place; and as for space—of course the visions of the night are quicker on the wing than their rivals of the day; yet there must be some analogy, and, they say, we pass through the vicissitudes of half a lifetime in the few seconds before we wake.
Cecil was really pleased with the result of the singing. She would have been even more so had it not been for the marked expression of approval on the face of Royston Keene. It was evident she had been on her trial. The cool, tranquil, appreciative smile was very provoking. It made her feel for the moment like a prima donna on her first appearance at a new theatre.
Unusually eloquent and verbose was the sermon that day, for not only was the preacher aware that bright eyes looked upon his deeds, but he saw his enemies in the front of the battle. Surely all extemporaneous speakers, in court, pulpit, or senate, must be accessible to such external influences. It ought not to be so, of course, but I fancy it is. Would John Knox have been so fiery in denunciation if those wicked maids of honor had not derided him? I doubt if a discourse delivered in a Union would ever soar to sublimity, even if the excellent paupers could be supposed to understand it. So, with every sentence more plaintive grew Mr. Fullarton’s lamentations over worldlings and their vanities, more bitter his invectives against those who, having themselves broken out of the fold, seek to lead others astray. An occasional gesture—something too expressive—was not needed to point his animadversions. The object of them sat with his head slightly bent, neither by frown nor smile betraying that a single allusion had gone home. The simple truth was, that he scarcely caught one word. The last cadence of sweeter tones was still lingering in his ears, and had locked them fast against all other sounds. The energetic divine might have poured out upon his guilty head yet stormier vials, and he would never have heard one roll of the thunder. However, the dearest friends must part, and all orations must come to an end, except those of the 24 much-desiderated Chisholm Anstey, of whom an old-world parliament was not worthy; so, after “a burst of forty-five minutes without a check,” the chaplain dismissed his beloved hearers to their digestion.
The stream, as it flowed out, divided, and broke up into small pools of conversation. Miss Tresilyan and her chaperone joined the Molyneux party, just as Fanny was saying to Keene that “she hoped he would profit by much in the sermon that was evidently meant for him.”