“Come to our pew, Lanty,” whispered Mabella, softly.
“Yes, dear,” he answered, and both blushed; and thus they entered the church.
Vashti walked slowly up the aisle, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, but seeing all. How white and calm she was, Sidney thought—but often lava lies beneath the snow.
The deacons entered; tall, spare men, stern-faced and unsympathetic they seemed, yet in their hearts they thought of the one of their number who was journeying through the night to where his son lay dead. White haired Mr. Didymus rose in his place and stretched out his tremulous hands above his congregation.
“Let us pray,” he said, and after a solemn pause addressed himself to the unseen.
The greater part of the congregation knelt, the deacons stood erect, as did Lanty and Sidney, although a thought crossed the mind of each of the young men that it would have been sweet to kneel beside the woman he loved.
As Sidney looked about him a great pity for these people filled his heart; the kneeling figures appealed to him poignantly; from his point of view they were less like children gathered about a father, than serfs bending beneath a yoke, which was none the less heavy because it was the creation of their own imagination. The shoulders of the kneeling figures had involuntarily fallen into the pose of their daily toil; there was the droop of the ploughman over his plough; of the tiller over the hoe; of the carpenter over his plane. It was as if, even in prayer, they wrought at a hard furrow. And the women’s shoulders! What woeful eloquence in these bent forms bowed beneath the dual burden of motherhood and toil. What patient endurance was manifest beneath the uncouth lines of their alpaca and calico dresses!
From the shoulders his gaze fastened upon the pairs of hands clasped upon the pew backs. Such toil-worn hands. It seemed to him the fingers were great in proportion to the palm, as if they wrought always, and received never. Surely he was growing morbid? And then all the latent pathos in the scene gathered in his heart. All the dumb half unconscious endurance about him pleaded to be made articulate; and as one with unbelieving heart may join in a litany with fervent lips, so Sidney strove to second each petition of the long prayer.
Old Mr. Didymus had long been a spiritual ambassador and he was not unskilled in diplomacy. His prayer was a skilful and not inartistic mingling of adoration, petition, compliment and thanks, adroitly expressed in the words of the Sovereign he addressed, or in phrases filched from His inspired ones. And mid their burning sands, and under their blazing skies, these Eastern followers had not failed to appreciate the blessings of rain.