‘One never knows how that may be. I don’t imagine there’s much church-going among young professional men in London.’
‘I used to escort my mother to church every Sunday morning when I was a little boy, and those were my happiest days. If I didn’t like the Sunday morning service for its own sake, I should like it because it puts me in mind of her.’
‘Ah,’ sighed Edward, ‘I dare say when a fellow loses his mother early in life he feels sentimental about her ever afterwards. But when a mother gets to the elderly and twaddly age, one may be fond of her, but one can’t feel poetical about her. I’ll tell you why I want you to go to church with us, Gerard. John Treverton is sure to be there. It will be a capital opportunity for you to take stock of him. Our pew is just opposite the Manor House pew. You’ll have him in full view all through the service.’
‘Very good,’ assented Gerard. ‘If this Mr. Treverton and Jack Chicot are the same, I shall know him wherever I see him.’
Celia was in excellent spirits all breakfast-time, and poured out tea and coffee with a vivacity and a grace worthy of French comedy. The presence of a strange young man had a wonderfully brightening influence. Celia felt grateful to her brother for having afforded this unaccustomed variety in the monotonous course of rural life. She took more pains than usual in putting on her bonnet for church, though that was an operation which she always performed carefully; and she happened somehow to be walking by Mr. Gerard’s side for the few hundred yards between the Vicarage and the lych-gate.
The Vicarage party were amongst the first arrivals. There were only the charity children in the gallery, and a few gaffers and goodies in the free seats. The gentry dropped in slowly. Here was Mr. Sampson, the lawyer, looking his sandiest, accompanied by Miss Sampson, in a distinctly new bonnet. Here was Lady Barker, short and fat and puffy, in an ancient velvet mantle, bordered with brown fur, like a common councillor’s cloak on Lord Mayor’s Day, and with a bonnet that reached the climax of dowdiness—but when one is Lady Barker, and has lived in the same house for five-and-thirty years, it matters very little what one wears.
Here came the Pugsleys, the retired ironmonger and his wife, from Beechampton, Mrs. Pugsley positively gorgeous in velvet and sable, and with a bird of many colours in her bonnet. Next arrived Mrs. Daracott, the rich widow, whose husband was the largest tenant farmer in the district, and who looked as if all Hazlehurst belonged to her; and here, after a sprinkling of nobodies, came John Treverton and his wife.
The Vicar gave out a New Year’s hymn two minutes after this last arrival, and the congregation rose.
‘The man is marvellously changed,’ George Gerard said to himself as he stood face to face with John Treverton, ‘but he is the man I knew in Cibber Street, and no other.’
Yes, it was Jack Chicot. Happiness had given new life and colour to the face, prosperity had softened the harshness of its outline. The hollow cheeks had filled, the haggard eyes had recovered the glory and gladness of youth. But the man was there—the same man in whose face Gerard had looked a year and a half ago, reading the secret of his loveless marriage.