“No, I don’t.”
“I think the thick ones are better. They don’t feel quite so comfortable perhaps.... Ah! there’s the bell stopping. We shall be late.”
In church, influenced by the flickering candles, the familiar chants, the sense of a cosy and intimate trust in a Power who would see one safely through the night, just as one’s burning night-light had guarded one when one had been very small, Henry became sentimental and happy. He looked out of the corner of his eye at his mother, at the so familiar wave of her hair, the colour and shape of her cheek, the solid comfort of her figure, and suddenly thought how old she was looking. This came as a revelation to him: he fancied that even in the last week there had been a little change. He moved closer to her: then he saw that her eye was fixed upon a small choir-boy who had been eating sweets. The eye was stern and so full of command and assurance that Henry’s sentiment suddenly shrivelled into nothing. His mother wanted nobody’s help—he sighed and thought about other things. Soon he was singing “Abide with me” in his ugly, untuneful voice, pleased that the choir lingered over it in an abominable fashion, trying now and then to sing ‘second’, and miserably failing.
But, although he did not know it, Mrs. Trenchard had realised her son’s mood....
So, at last, tired, a little hysterical, feeling as though heavy steam rollers had, during the day, passed over their bodies, they were all assembled for supper. Sunday supper should be surely a meal very hot and very quickly over: instead it is, in all really proper English families, very cold and quite interminable. There were, to-night, seated round the enormous table Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Betty, Aunt Aggie, Katherine, Millie and Henry. George Trenchard and Rachel Seddon were spending the evening with Timothy Faunder: Philip had not yet returned from his walk. A tremendous piece of cold roast beef was in front of Mrs. Trenchard; in front of Henry were two cold chickens. There was a salad in a huge glass dish, it looked very cold indeed. There was a smaller glass dish with beetroot. There was a large apple-tart, a white blancmange, with little “dobs” of raspberry jam round the side of the dish. There was a plate of stiff and unfriendly celery—item a gorgonzola cheese, item a family of little woolly biscuits, clustered together for warmth, item a large “bought” cake that had not been cut yet and was grimly determined that it never should be, item what was known as “Toasted Water” (a grim family mixture of no colour and a faded, melancholy taste) in a vast jug, item, silver, white table-cloth, napkin-rings quite without end. Everything seemed to shiver as they sat down.
Aunt Aggie, as she saw the blancmange shaking its sides at her, thought that she would have been wiser to have gone straight upstairs instead of coming in to supper. She knew that her tooth would begin again as soon as she saw this food. She had had a wretched day. Katherine, before luncheon, had been utterly unsympathetic, Henry at tea-time had laughed at her.... At any rate, in a minute, there would be soup. On Sunday evening, in order to give the servants freedom, they waited upon themselves, but soup was the one concession to comfort. Aunt Aggie thought she would have her soup and then go up quietly to bed. One eye was upon the door, looking for Rocket. Her tooth seemed to promise her: “If you give me soup I won’t ache.”
“Beef, Aggie—or chicken,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “No soup to-night, I’m afraid. They’ve all got leave to-night, even Rocket and Rebekah. There’s a meeting at the Chapel that seemed important ... yes ... beef or chicken, Aggie?”
Aunt Aggie, pulling all her self-control together, said: “Beef, please.” Her tooth, savage at so direct an insult, leapt upon her.
Aunt Betty, in her pleasant voice, began a story. “I must say I call it strange. In the ‘Church Times’ for this week there’s a letter about ‘Church-Kneelers’ by ‘A Vicar’—complaining, you know ... Well—”