“How I wish you were here, in the midst of it all! And—who knows?—perhaps you will be some day yet. Do not trouble to answer this—I will write again soon, and may then have something practical to say to you. Au revoir!”
XI.
On the day of the drawing-room meeting a large company gathered in the hall at Belgrave Square. Lady Robert Ure, back from the honeymoon, received the guests for her mother, whose weak heart and a headache kept her upstairs. Her husband stood aside, chewing the end of his mustache and looking through his eyeglass with a gleam of amused interest in his glittering eye. There were many ladies, all fashionably dressed, and one of them wore a seagull's wing in her hat, with part of the root left visible and painted red to show that it had been torn out of the living bird. The men were nearly all clergymen, and the cut of their cloth and the fashions of their ties indicated the various complexions of their creeds. They glanced at each other with looks of embarrassment, and Mrs. Callender, who came in like a breeze off a Scottish moor, said audibly that she had never seen “sae many craws on one tree before.” The Archdeacon was there with his head up, talking loudly to Lady Robert. She stood motionless in her place, never turning her head toward John Storm, though it was plain that she was looking at him constantly. More than once he caught an expression of pain in her face, and felt pity for her as one of the brides who had acted the lie of marrying without love. But his spirits were high. He welcomed everybody, and even bantered Mrs. Callender when she told him she “objected to the hale thing,” and said, “Weel, weel, wait a wee.”
The Archdeacon gave the signal and led the way with Lady Robert to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Macrae, redolent of perfume, was reclining on a sofa with the “lady poodle” by her side. As soon as the company were seated the Archdeacon rose and coughed loudly.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we have no assurance of a blessing except 'Ask and ye shall receive.' Therefore, before we go further, it is our duty, as brethren of a common family in Christ, to ask the blessing of Almighty God on this enterprise.”
There was a subdued rustle of drooping hats and bonnets, when suddenly a thin voice was heard to say, “Mr. Archdeacon, may I inquire first who is to ask the blessing?”
“I thought of doing so myself,” said the Archdeacon with a meek smile.
“In that case, as a Unitarian, I must object to an invocation in which I do not believe.”