Mrs. Ranger sat in the body of the church, with the expression of one who perceives an evil odour. This expression was assumed with her Sunday bonnet and laid aside with it. Indeed, Mrs. Ranger thought too much both of her Sunday bonnet and her religious principles to use either of them on week days.
Temperance and Nathan sat alone in a pew well back. It was reported in Dole that they had been seen to look at each other in church, but that was doubtless one of Mrs. Ranger’s slanders. Temperance would have been the last to do anything scandalous.
The whole congregation waited.
Sidney was finding his places in the books. This was always an irritating spectacle in Dole, but was forgiven like Sidney’s other delinquencies. Dole liked to see the preacher open his Bible with the abrupt air of one seeking a sign from whence to draw his inspiration for the forthcoming sermon. The Dole children had been used to have animated arguments as to whether old Mr. Didymus knew where he was about to open the book or whether his text came to him in the nature of a surprise. If so, then they marvelled that he should so readily find “the bit.” Young Tom Shinar had once declared that Mr. Didymus found the place beforehand and substantiated his evidence by saying he had seen little ends of white paper sticking out of the big Bible on the pulpit. But this was coming it too strong for even the most hardened of his adherents, and until Tom rehabilitated himself by thrashing a Brixton boy who said the Brixton church was bigger than the Dole tabernacle, he ran a great risk of finding himself isolated, as sacrilegious people have often been before his time.
To see their preacher searching for his places before their eyes was a most trying spectacle, and no preacher save one of extraordinary confidence in himself and his vocation would have risked bringing himself thus near the level of mortal man. Sidney surmounted this danger nobly, but Dole gave a sigh of relief, as much perhaps for its preacher as itself, when Sidney, after a final flutter of the pages, laid down his books, and rising looked down lovingly upon them; and just as this crisis was reached the door moved a little, wavered on its double hinges, closed, opened again, and finally admitted Ann Serrup, holding her baby in her arms and cowering behind his little form as though it were protection instead of a disgrace. Poor Ann! her bravado vanished at the critical moment and left her dazed, frightened, shamed, given into the hands of her enemies, or so it seemed to her. Now the curiosity of Dole over Ann’s appearance had been such that there was not one single seat, so far, at least, as she could see, but what held someone. And to advance under the fire of those curious eyes into any of these seats uninvited was more than Ann dare do. Sidney, with the lack of affectation which characterized him, looked about to see the cause of the concentrated gaze of his congregation, and saw a slim, frightened-looking woman standing just within the church door, holding a baby to her breast so tightly that the bewildered child was beginning to rebel against the restraint of the embrace.
Sidney’s swift intuitions grasped at once that this was a new comer, a stranger within their gates. He looked towards Vashti—Vashti was looking at the congregation as if expecting one or other of them to do something. Sidney reflected swiftly that it might not be Dole etiquette for the minister’s wife to move in such a matter, then he turned to his congregation and said in a voice suggestive of disappointment, “Will not one of you offer a seat to our new sister?”
The effect was electrical.
The Rangers, Smilies, Simpsons, and all their ilk rose at the summons. Ann followed Mr. Simpson up the aisle, but just as she nearly reached the Simpson pew she gave an imploring look at Mabella. Mabella returned an encouraging smile, and Ann darted to Mabella’s pew like a rabbit flying to cover. Mr. Simpson felt the defection and resumed his seat feeling he had been “done,” and inclined to think Lanty and Mabella had usurped the privileges of the deaconship.
Nathan and Temperance gave a sigh of relief. The moment Ann entered the church each had longed to bring the forlorn girl to their seat, but a kind of shyness had fallen upon these two elderly lovers since their marriage; retracing the steps of their love dream, they were overtaken now and then by the awkward hesitancies of youth.
Ann put the neatly dressed child down on the seat by Dorothy, and the two babies eyed each other in the frankly questioning manner of innocence.