For though there was nothing in his flesh and blood and muscle that suggested an inebriate father, yet in his profounder and obscurer being he was Fulleymore Ransome's son. The secret instability that made Fulleymore Ransome drink had had its effect on Ranny's nervous system. His nerves, though he was not aware of it, were finely woven and highly strung. He had a tendency to be carried away and to be excited, exalted, and upset. Since Saturday afternoon Ranny had remained more or less in a state of tension induced by the hurdle race, by the shock of seeing Violet Usher, and by the dinner at the "Golden Eagle." And, coming straight from Violet, he had entered St. Matthias's Mission Church keyed up to his highest pitch. So that the Service for Men which subdued Wauchope and made him humble and ashamed and sent him away trying to be a better man, that very same Service worked Ranny up to a point when anything became possible to him.
First of all, then, the intoning and the chanting acted on him exactly like an incantation. Ranny's will, the spiritual part of him, was lulled to sleep by the rhythmic voices, and as his sense of decency had no reason whatever to expect an outrage, it was also off its guard, quiescent, passive to the charm. The rest of Ranny was exposed, piteously, to the rhythm that swelled, that accentuated, accelerated the vibration of his inner tumult.
Then the obvious safety-valve was closed to him. A sense of strangeness and of sudden shyness prevented him from joining as he should have joined in the Service. Ranny could not take it out all at once in singing. That silence and passivity of his left him open at every pore to the invasion of the powers of sound. These young, intensely vibrant bass and tenor voices sang all round him, they sang at him and into him and through him. There was a young man close behind him with a tenor voice that pierced him like a pain. There was Wauchope at his right ear thundering in a tremendous barytone.
First of all it was a trumpet call that shook him.
"Sold-ier-ers o-of Christ! a-arise,
And put your armor on,"
sang Wauchope. The sound of that singing made Ransome feel noble; and there is nothing more insidiously destructive than feeling noble.
And then, later on, it was a strange and a more poignant cry that melted him, so that his very soul dissolved in tenderness and yearning.
"Jesu, Lover o-of my soul,"
sang the young man with the tenor.
"Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the gathering wa-ters roll.
While the tempest sti-ill is high."