Cross. "Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament"
Under were lists of names, all male, ranged alphabetically. Her quick eye dropped to the initial S. and found Sherbrand there. But when she looked for her companion, he was waiting hat in hand, at a door some distance beyond them.
"You will come in and wait for me?" he whispered as she came towards him.
"Why not? As well here as anywhere!" He opened the door and she passed in.
To Patrine's left hand, close to the door by which they had entered, was a small unpretending altar supporting the tinted image of an emaciated, bearded monk in a black robe girdled with a white cord. A clustered pillar of red and white marble supported a shallow basin containing a little water. Patrine shrugged as Sherbrand dipped his fingers and made upon brow and breast the sacred Sign. Then he seemed to hesitate—dipped again and held the wetted finger tips towards her, evidently courting her touch. She shook her head hastily. Her eyes swept purposely past his, scanning the vast interior. They were standing in the shorter southern transept of what was some church.
The vast nave was dark and cool, full of silence and shadow and the perfume of flowers and incense, mingled with a fragrance far subtler than these. Pillars of richest Modern Gothic design supported the roof, whose forest of rich dark timbers showed little adornment, except at the Sanctuary end. Here coffering, diapering, and gilding made for splendour; rich marble cased the pillars and floored the stately choir with its rows of stalls, wrought in dark wood, elaborately carved. The north transept housed the organ, a towering instrument of many pipes. The scarlet cushion on the vacant organ-bench, the book of chants left upon the rack, the black and yellow-white of the well-used keys, the numbered heads of the stops, showed through the lattice-work of a high wrought-iron screen, wonderfully painted and gilt. Between Patrine and the nave was a pulpit of red and white marble like the pillars, with a carved sounding-board of obviously ancient work. Rows of pews flanked the wide central aisle and the two smaller, and on the right of a lofty oaken screen that masked the west door, with the mellow light of a great rose-window falling on it, towered a huge Crucifix in black marble, upholding a white tortured Figure whose drooping thorn-crowned Head, like His hands and feet and side, dripped with crimson.... Patrine winced at the sight, and turned hastily away.
Now she was looking over the head of Sherbrand, who knelt before her upright and motionless,—at the High Altar, backed with a noble triptych, its three panels displaying the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Nativity. A silver lamp depending by chains from the centre of the Sanctuary roof burned with a small steady flame before the Tabernacle—standing between tall tapers burning in gleaming candlesticks, and vases of huge white golden-anthered August lilies—hiding behind its broidered curtains and golden doors, the Ineffable Mystery.
"Come!" Sherbrand's whisper said, close at her ear as he rose up. She turned and followed him down a side-aisle. "Sit here!" he signed to her, pointing to a narrow bench. He waited until she was seated, laid his hat and stick beside her, gave her a grave smile, bent his knees once more, looking towards the High Altar and moved noiselessly away.
Turning her head to follow him with her eyes, Patrine saw that the large dark church was not as empty as she had supposed. Kneeling or seated figures of men and women were scattered here and there amongst the wilderness of empty pews. The serried rows of rush-bottomed kneeling-chairs in either side-aisle showed aggregations of people, ten or a dozen together, chiefly in the neighbourhood of certain narrow wooden doors appertaining to small structures that might be little chapels or vestries, set between groups of pillars in regular sequence down the length of the side-walls. Still following Sherbrand's figure with her eyes she saw him knock at one of the doors, wait as though for an answer, and enter. As the door swung towards her, she saw that it bore a name in gilt letters within an oval on the upper panel. Each of the doors, a questing glance satisfied her, bore a name.
Of course the little wooden chapels were confessionals. Was Confession the important business that necessitated Sherbrand's losing a train and foregoing the company of Patrine to the station, a favour so eagerly sought and so ardently received? Her red lips curled a little at the corners as she turned her face back towards the High Altar, rising within the low barrier of the red and white marble Communion-rail. So remote and pure and set apart with its tall, shining lights and gleaming vases of pure white lilies, its snow-white silk frontal embroidered with a golden ray-surrounded Chalice, its fair white linen Altar-cloth, with a running border of Old English lettering in dark rusty red: