“Observe, gentlemen,” continued Richard Tremaine, smiling as he looked about him. “It is much to have such a spirit in our lads, but far more such a spirit in their mothers, as Mrs. Charteris has shown. That alone will make us invincible.”
CHAPTER IX
SPARTANS ALL!
THE next day was Sunday, and half the county, that as to say, the aristocratic moiety, had assembled at Petworth Church for the morning service. The great wave of dissent which swept over Virginia after the Revolution, and which was powerfully reënforced by the eloquence of John Wesley and George Whitfield and other Methodist and Baptist divines, had very much reduced the congregation of Petworth Church.
If, however, the vacant pews had been filled by the descendants of those who had left it, these who had remained stanch to Anglicanism would have resented it deeply. With the loss of numbers and of political power, the social influence of the remnant remained unimpaired and was even enhanced. The spirit of resentment which had originally caused those who had remained true to the traditions of Petworth and set a social ban upon those who had seceded into the newer communions was added to the force of long custom and the indifference of the dissenters.
Occasionally, a Baptist or Methodist family would appear in a shamefaced way at Petworth Church, but in that age and time proselytes were not welcomed or even desired.
The old church, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was a bit of the seventeenth-century architecture, standing serene and undismayed in the nineteenth century, which in that part of Virginia yet lagged a hundred years behind the age. The church was overgrown with ivy, in which innumerable birds nested. In summer, when the diamond-paned windows were opened to let in the blue and limpid air, the voice of the clergyman was almost drowned in the splendid improvisations of the larks and blackbirds that thronged about the old, ivy-covered walls. The dead and gone vicars were buried under the main aisle, while in the churchyard outside were ancient tombstones covered with long inscriptions, moss-grown like everything else about the church.
Usually, the place was as placid as peaceful Stoke Pogis at evening time, but on this April Sunday it was alive with people all throbbing with excitement and on fire with enthusiasm. Besides the great event which had stirred them all, the secession of Virginia, and the sending forth to war of all the men capable of bearing arms, was the local tragedy—Neville Tremaine turning traitor. The Tremaines were, taken all in all, the greatest people in the county. Their wealth was considerable, and their heritage of brains larger still. They had always given the county something to talk about and did not fail in this emergency.
In the minds of the people assembled at Petworth Church on that Sunday morning was the species of curiosity, which is miscalled sympathy, to see how the Tremaines bore the first disgrace in their family. Colonel Tremaine was a stanch churchman, and Mrs. Tremaine never failed, rain or shine, on Sunday morning to walk into church upon Colonel Tremaine’s arm and to marshal her flock before her, a flock which for many years past had consisted only of Angela and Archie.
There was no pretense in the community of sympathy with Angela, only inquisitiveness mixed with scorn and contempt. Many doubted whether she would have the assurance to present herself at church after her late disgraceful alliance, for so her marriage with Neville Tremaine was reckoned. But Angela, surmising this and with the hot courage of youth, would not remain away.
The Tremaines were always prompt in arriving, and on this Sunday morning, punctually at a quarter before eleven, the great lumbering Harrowby coach, with the big bay horses, drew up before the iron gate of the churchyard. It was Hector’s privilege to drive the carriage on Sundays according to the peculiar custom by which the regular coachman was superseded whenever there seemed any real occasion for his services. The Sunday arrangement was of Mrs. Tremaine’s making, who, regularly on Sunday morning, directed Hector after leaving his horses in charge of Tasso, who was on the box, to come into church and pray to be delivered from the devil of drink. This invariably gave great offense to Hector, but he could not forego the honor and glory of driving the Harrowby carriage on Sunday and the pleasure of a weekly gossip with his colleagues who drove other big lumbering coaches.