"I shall look forward to your sermon," he concluded. "I am sure it will be worthy of this place"—he spoke with solemnity—"and"—his voice changed—"and of—you. You have the gift of eloquence: the lips, the eyes, the brow. I hope we shall meet again soon."
He passed on, smiling genially, leaving the gratified Archie alone with his thoughts. Lord Randolph might have told him that the speaker scattered seed of kindly words wherever he went, and who shall say—even now—what they brought forth? A kindly word lingers in the ear when a kind action may be lost to sight.
The party from Birr Wood entered the cathedral some five minutes before the time when service began. Betty knelt down to repeat the prayer which she had learnt when a child from Mrs. Corrance. She was about to rise, when she happened to steal a glance at Mark kneeling beside her. At that moment she became sensible of what may be termed spiritual giddiness. She seemed to be transported to heights where head and heart failed. A glimpse of the world unseen was vouchsafed her: an empyrean in which she and Mark moved alone amongst the hosts of Heaven. The vision was so vivid, so seizing (to use the word in its French significance) that she felt herself trembling beneath the awe and mystery of it. And then an impulse, which, in its material aspect, had assailed her once before when attempting to scale a certain peak in the Alps, constrained her to look down into what seemed a fathomless abyss. In the mist and shadows of this vast gulf a dull, opaque object challenged attention, and she knew this was the earth: a pin's point in the celestial horizon, borrowing aught it possessed of light and heat from the place wherein she stood. And with this knowledge fear became articulate. The horror of giddiness which paralysed her was not due to the fact that she had been whirled to heights, but to the sense that she might fall headlong from them!
The deep notes of the organ put to flight the vision. Still kneeling, she looked upward into the roof of the chancel, with its delicately carved and gilded ornaments, thence passing to the radiance and simplicity of the nave beyond. Above her head, upon the stone partitions on each side of the sanctuary, stood six carved and gilded mortuary chests, surmounted by the crowns and inscribed with the names of the Saxon princes whose crumbling bones they contain; at her feet almost was the tomb of a great king, slain in the plentitude of his strength and power; hard by were the magnificent chantries of the prelates who sanctified their time, their talents, and their money to the embellishment of this house of God. In one of the chantries, where during his lifetime he spent, daily, many hours of devotion, lies the figure of a man, represented as an emaciated corpse wrapped in a winding-sheet. He it was who caused to be carved on the soaring roof of the choir the sorrowful emblems of our Lord's Passion: the crown of thorns, the nails, the hammer, the scourge, the reed and sponge, the lance, the cross. And who can doubt that he was inspired to so exalt these symbols of the suffering which redeemed mankind? Who can doubt, gazing at the shrunken limbs and careworn features of the prelate, that his untiring labour had caused him innumerable hours of pain serenely endured because he knew that by pain alone Man is purified. He and his successors and predecessors, and the armies of masons they employed, had lived and died that this, the work of their heads and hands, might endure for generations, a monument of the faith which can move mountains of stone and change them into forms of surpassing loveliness. Had they laboured in vain?
Betty rose from her knees as the choir entered the sanctuary. At the same moment Mark touched her arm and glanced across the chancel. Following his eyes, she saw the familiar face of the Prime Minister. Other eyes lingered upon that notable head, now bent in meditation upon the tomb of the king. Mark touched her again. Archibald Samphire was passing by, stately in surplice and hood. The statesman raised his head, and stared keenly at the priest. A half-smile of recognition and encouragement curved his thin lips. Archie, conscious, perhaps, that the eyes of the mighty were on him, looked neither to right nor left. His face was as that of a graven image. "He is cold," thought Betty. "Does he expect, I wonder, to warm others?"
The service began. At that time a certain boy was singing in the Westchester choir who became famous afterwards as the finest treble of his day, combining, till his voice broke, the freshness of youth with the art which crowns a long and patient apprenticeship. Already musical folk were talking of the lad and coming from far to hear him. The choir sang in unison the first verse of the Venite, but above their voices, above the sonorous peal of the organ, floated the aerial notes of the boy. So sublimated was the quality of this child's voice that Betty—and many another—looked up, believing for the moment that these flakes of melody were dropping from heaven. The joyousness which informed each crystalline phrase electrified the ear. This indeed was a clarion call to rejoice! The pain and perplexity in Betty's soul fled, exorcised by this glad spirit, blythe as a skylark carolling in the skies. She glanced at Mark. His eyes were shining, his face aglow with pleasure. Farther down stood Harry Kirtling, unmoved; and on each side were rows of men and women, some perfunctorily praising God, others gazing with lacklustre eyes into the past or future, a few touched to the quick by the message and the instrument by which it was conveyed. Amongst these, one face stood out of the crowd, conspicuous by its pallor and the lines of suffering which scored cheek and mouth and brow. Unmistakably, Death had marked this victim of an incurable malady for his own. Yet, excepting Mark's, no countenance in that great congregation revealed more clearly the happiness and contentment which proclaim success. Here was the vitality of the life immortal flaming upon the ashes of the dead; here was one rejoicing in the salvation of a soul, caring nothing because the body was about to be destroyed!
The choir sang on together till the eighth verse was reached:
"To-day, if ye will hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts!"
These lines were delivered in recitativo by the basses, and then repeated by the choir. "Harden not your hearts!" The injunction rolled down the aisles and transepts; it broke in thunder against the hoary walls, as it has broken for two thousand years against the faithless generations; and then, in the silence which followed, there descended a flute-like echo, emphasising the opportunity and reimposing the condition. To-day, this moment, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts!
Psalms and Lessons succeeded. Archie read the latter. Betty, who had not heard him read since his appointment as minor canon, amended her conviction that he could not warm others. He had that persuasiveness of diction which drapes even the crude and commonplace with samite, and, so garbed, passes like an angel through all doors.