“And you’ll be sure and give it all wot I said—about feeling the saum myself?”
“Oh, sartain.”
Thyrza walked off. Her face was very white and wooden. Mrs. Hubble stared after her.
“Middling pretty as golden-haired women look in them weeds.... Feels the saum as Mus’ Sumption, does she? That’s queer, seeing as Tom died lik Onward Christian Soldiers, and Jerry lik a dog. Howsumdever, I mun give her words ... maybe he’ll be fool enough to believe them.”
The day was warm and misty, without much sun. The sky above the woods was yellowish, like milk, and the air smelt of rain. But the rain did not come till evening. Mr. Poullett-Smith’s congregation assembled dry, and nobody’s black was spoiled on the way home. In spite of this, the service was not thickly attended. The advertisement which Jerry Sumption’s death had given the Bethel made those who had time or inclination for only one church-going decide to put it off until the evening. Only a few assembled to hear the curate pray that the souls they commemorated—among which he was not afraid to include Jerry—might be brought by Saint Michael, the standard-bearer, into the holy light.
On the other hand, the Bethel was crowded, and by this time it was raining hard. The air was thick with the steaming of damp clothes. The lamps shuddered and smoked in the draught of the rising wind, and the big, blinded windows were running down with rain, as if they wept for the destruction of the chapel weed....
Never had the Rev. Mr. Sumption such a congregation. Nearly the whole of Sunday Street jostled in the pews. Instead of the meagre peppering of heads, there were tight rows of them, like peas in pods. All the Beatups were there, except Nell, who had stayed at home to look after the house; even Mus’ Beatup had hobbled over on his stick. The Putlands were there, and Mrs. Bill Putland, and the Sindens and the Bourners and the Hubbles. Thyrza had come, with little Will asleep in her arms—she sat near the back, in case she should have to take him out. The Hollowbones had come from the Foul Mile and the Kadwells from Stilliands Tower; there were Collbrans from Satanstown, Viners from Puddledock, Ades from Bodle Street, and even stragglers from Brownbread Street and Dallington. Most of them had never been in the Bethel before, and it struck them as unaccountable mean, with its smoking lamps and windows flapping with dingy blinds, its pews that smelled of wood-rot, and its walls all peeled and scarred with moisture and decay.
There was a rustle and scrape as Mr. Sumption came in, through the little door behind the pulpit. Then there was silence as he stood looking down, apparently unmoved, on what must have been to him an extraordinary sight—his church crowded, full to the doors, as he had so often dreamed, but never seen. He looked pale and languid, and his eyes were like smoky lanterns. His voice also seemed to have lost its ring as he gave out the number of the psalm, and then in the prayer which followed it. Moreover, though the congregation, being mostly new, shuffled and kicked its heels disgracefully, he thumped at no one.
“Pore soul, he shudn’t ought to have tried it,” thought Thyrza to herself in her corner. “He’ll never get through.”