They arrived late, having lingered in the woods because Dolly said, and Bernard agreed, that Mrs. Merton and the lady in the black frills had never entered the church till after the bells stopped ringing. Such is the force of bad example. Bernard held the door open for his sister, and followed her in, according to instructions which he had received from her, and she from Noel Farquhar. The aisles were crossed by dim sunbeams swimming with drowsy motes, the people were sleepy, the priest was monotoning monotonously out of tune; and Dolly’s entrance, in company with a beam of pure sunshine and a gust of wind which set the Christmas wreaths rustling all round the church, electrified everybody. Heads turned to stare; the choristers, ever the devotees of inattention, nudged and whispered. Up the aisle came Dolly, a glowing piece of colour in her rich dress and richer hair, with the immaculate whiteness of her brow and the deepening carmine of her cheeks, her eyes shining like brown diamonds. She walked steadily, carrying her head high, up to the big square pew assigned by tradition to the house of Fanes, unlatched the door, and took her seat. Bernard followed, his height and his patent unconcern making his figure quite as imposing as hers.
For a space Dolly knelt, as she saw others doing, and hid her hot face; but when the time came she rose, and pinched Bernard, who had sat down and stayed there. He got up slowly, plunged his hands into his pockets, and looked round him. Dolly was convinced that his behaviour was improper; she also looked round her, but without moving her head, and found her exemplar in the person of Noel Farquhar, who was attentively following the service in a large prayer-book. Three volumes lay on the shelf of their pew; Dolly opened one and handed another to her brother, signing to him to do his duty. He looked into it helplessly; it was a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and it is not surprising that he could not find the place. Dolly was no better off, but she had a model to imitate; she turned over the pages as though they were perfectly familiar, found her place near the beginning of the volume, and devoutly studied the evening hymns while the choristers chanted the Venite.
The recollection of that morning always brought a smile to Dolly’s lips. Occupied by her culte of deportment, and still more by her culte of Bernard’s deportment, she missed the humours at the moment, but found them all the more amusing under the enchantment lent by distance. Bernard, who was not thinking about himself, was not amused. Music at chapel had been bad enough, but this, more ambitious, was really horrible. The choir sang neither better nor worse than most village performers; there was a preponderance of trebles out of tune and raucous, an absence of altos, two tenors who sang wrong, and three basses who sang treble. When they should have monotoned they climbed unevenly and one by one in linked sweetness long drawn out down a chromatic scale, until Bernard suddenly launched the true note at them in a voice of startling richness and power, which would have made his fortune had he taken it to market in town. It had the true bass quality, but an unusually extensive compass, ranging from the C below the bass clef up to the octave of middle C.
After he began to sing, most of the curious eyes were diverted from Dolly to him, and she regained her composure. Farquhar had not looked at her; it was not his cue to let his eye wander during service. But Dolly was sure, from the dark flush which overspread his face, that he had seen her enter. She designed this meeting as a test. If he refused to acknowledge her before his friends, Dolly vowed that she would never speak to him again. Her pride of birth was keen; she went to the length of thinking her brother the only gentleman present, inasmuch as he alone, so far as she knew, had the right to bear arms. She took little part in the religious ceremonies. Dolly had her creed, and held to it in practice, but at this time she was too intent on this world to think much of the next.
She got up with alacrity after the benediction, and marshalled out Bernard, glad to go. The organist was now playing music soft and slow, and tenderly touching the pedals with boots so large that he frequently put down two notes at once by accident. Music was really the only subject about which Bernard was sensitive; as a false quantity to a Latinist, as a curse to a Quaker, as a red rag to a bull, so was a wrong note to Bernard Fane.
Outside shone the sun and breathed the wind and danced the grasses over the graves of women as young and beautiful as Dolly; but she was not thinking of them. The stream of people began to condense into groups of two and three, who gave each other the accustomed greetings and echoed cheerful wishes at cross purpose in a babel of inanity. Farquhar was shaking hands with Mrs. Merton, a fragile little lady with dark eyes, frileuse, as Dolly christened her, who dressed very well and talked plaintive nonsense in an erratic fashion. Dolly knew by instinct that they were speaking of her. She went on at an even pace. Farquhar broke from his friends and followed, and Dolly, with true Christmas good-will in her heart, found herself shaking his hand in the overhand style, according to the custom of the lady in black frills.
“I wish I could walk home your way; I’ve a hundred things to say about that Burnt House business, and one never has a chance of seeing Mr. Fane. But I’ve an invalid at home who’s to take his first airing to-day, and I know he’ll go too far if I don’t look after him.”
“Is that the chap you picked up on the road?” asked Bernard, who had heard the story from the men, with romantic embellishments.
“Oh, I didn’t pick him up; don’t think it; he was planted on me by Providence. I say, Fane, if you’ve nothing better to do, I wish you’d come in to-night and have a knock-up at billiards. It would be a Christian act, for I’ve not a soul in the house except the invalid, who toddles off to bye-bye at seven.”
“I can’t play billiards,” was Bernard’s reply, rather proudly spoken.