Old Trinity rests on the hillside, serene in the afterglow of its one hundred and eighty-four years. The spotless white walls, the green blinds, the graceful Colonial spire, are meetly set in an environment which strikes no note of dissonance. On either side are quaint, narrow streets, lined with decent door-yards and houses almost as old as the church. Within the cool interior the cottagers, and representatives of a native aristocracy—direct descendants of the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who are so conservative, so proudly, scornfully aloof, that one would doubt they existed at all, were it not for their stately homes in the older sections of the city, where giant elms keep watch and ward over eave and column and dormer window, where hydrangeas sweep the doorstep, and faun and satyr, rough hewn, peer through the shrubbery—sit primly in the box-like pews with the preacher towering above them under the white sounding board.
The church was not half filled when Armitage and Thornton arrived, but a double line of visitors were standing in the rear aisle. Armitage caught the eye of one of the ushers and beckoned to him. But that frock-coated, austere personage coldly turned his glance elsewhere and Armitage had started forward to enlist his attention in a manner that would admit of no evasion when his companion caught him by the sleeve, chuckling.
"Look here, old chap," he whispered, "you have to wait until they know how many pew-holders are going to be absent. This is n't a theatre."
Armitage turned his head to reply, when a rustling of skirts sounded behind him and Thornton punched him in the ribs.
"The Wellington bunch," he whispered, "and the Russian they have captured."
It was a fine entry, as circus folks say. First came Mrs. Wellington in a simple but wonderfully effective embroidered linen gown, then her two sons, likely enough boys, and then Anne Wellington with Prince Koltsoff. She almost touched Armitage as she passed; the skirt of her lingerie frock swished against his ankles and behind she left, not perfume, but an intangible essence suggestive, somehow, of the very personality of the cool, beautiful, lithe young woman. As Armitage turned in response to Thornton's prod in the ribs, he met her eyes in full. But she gave no sign of recognition, and of course Armitage did not.
The Wellingtons had two pews, according to the diagram on the rear seats, and as Armitage followed the party with his eyes, he saw the mother, her daughter, and the Prince enter one, the boys seating themselves in the stall ahead.
In the meantime the congregation had assembled in large numbers and the body of the church as well as the side aisles were comfortably filled. From time to time the ushers, with machine-like precision, took one or two persons from the patiently waiting line of non-pew-holders and escorted them to seats, a proceeding which began to irritate Armitage, seeing which Thornton grinned and observed, sotto voce, that one might worship here only at the price of patience.
"It's the sheep and the goats, Jack," he whispered.
"I don't know about the sheep, but we 're the goats, all right," replied Armitage, "and I for one am going to beat it right now."