"Shall I slip away?" she thought, looking round her.
But at that moment Mr. Helbeck lifted the heavy latch of the chapel door; and her young curiosity was too strong for her. She followed the others.
Mr. Helbeck held the door open for her.
"You will perhaps care to look at the frescoes," he said to her as she hurried past him. She nodded, and walked quickly away to the left, by herself. Then she turned and looked about her.
It was the first time that she had entered a Catholic church, and every detail was new to her. She watched the other three sign themselves with holy water and drop low on one knee before the altar. So that was the altar. She stared at it with a scornful repugnance; yet her pulse quickened as though what she saw excited her. What was that erection above it, with a veil of red silk drawn round it—and why was that lamp burning in front of it?
She recalled Mr. Helbeck's words—"permission to reserve the Blessed Sacrament." Then, in a flash, a hundred vague memories, the deposit of a hearsay knowledge, enlightened her. She knew and remembered much less than any ordinary girl would have done. But still, in the main, she guessed at what was passing. That of course was the Sacrament, before which Mr. Helbeck and the others were kneeling!—for instinctively she felt that it was to no empty shrine the adoration of those silent figures was being offered.
Fragments from Augustina's talk at Folkestone came back to her. Once she had overheard some half-whispered conversation between her stepmother and a Catholic friend, from which she had vaguely understood that the "Blessed Sacrament" was kept in the Catholic churches, was always there, and that the faithful "visited" it—that these "visits" were indeed specially recommended as a means to holiness. And she recalled how, as they came home from their daily walk to the beach, Mrs. Fountain would disappear from her, through the shadowy door of a Catholic church that stood in the same street as their lodgings—how she would come home half an hour afterwards, shaken with fresh ardours, fresh remorse.
But how could such a thing be allowed, be possible, in a private chapel—in a room that was really part of a private house? GOD—the Christ of Calvary—in that gilt box, upon that altar!
The young girl's arms fell by her side in a sudden rigidity. A wave of the most passionate repulsion swept through her. What a gross, what an intolerable superstition!—how was she to live with it, beside it? The next instant it was as though her hand clasped her father's—clinging to him proudly, against this alien world. Why should she feel lonely?—the little heretic, left standing there alone in her distant corner. Let her rather rejoice that she was her father's daughter!
She drew herself up, and coolly looked about her. The worshippers had risen; long as the time had seemed to Laura, they had only been two or three minutes on their knees; and she could see that Augustina was talking eagerly to her brother, pointing now to the walls, now to the altar.