In Silk Attire: A Novel

by William Black

A quarter of an hour afterwards Mr. Anerley rose, and also walked along to the little grey building. All the people by this time were inside; and as he entered the churchyard the choir was singing. He sate down on one of the gravestones that were placed among the long, green, rank grass; and having pulled his straw hat over his forehead, to shelter his eyes and face from the strong sunlight, he listened, in a dreamy way, to the sweet singing of the children and the solemn and soft intoning of the organ.

It was his favourite method of going to church.

"You get all the emotional exaltation of the service," he used to say, "without having your intellect ruffled. And when the children have done their singing, instead of listening to a feeble sermon, you sit out in the clear sunlight and look down on the quiet valley, and the river, and the trees."

So he sate, and listened and dreamed, while the softened music played upon his fancies, and produced a moving panorama of pious scenes—of the old Jew-life, the early Christian wanderings, the mediæval mysteries, and superstitions, and heroisms.

"How fortunate religion has been," he thought, "to secure the exclusive aid of music and architecture! Philosophy and science have had to fight their way single-handed; but she has come armed with weapons of emotional coercion to over-awe and convince the intellectually unimpressionable. In a great cathedral, with slow, sonorous chanting reverberating through the long stone galleries, and tapers lit in the mysterious twilight, every man thinks it is religion, not art, which almost forces him down upon his knees."

Here the music ceased abruptly, and presently there was a confused murmur of syllables—the clergyman either preaching or reading.

"Sermons are like Scotch bagpipes," said Mr. Anerley to himself, as he rose and left the churchyard to wander down to the riverside. "They sound very well when one doesn't hear them."

That very day there was a conspiracy formed against the carnal peace of mind of this aimlessly speculating philosopher. Mr. Bexley's sermon had been specially touching to the few ladies who attended the little church; and the tender, conjugal soul of Mrs. Anerley was grieved beyond measure as she thought of the outcast whom she had left behind. Rhetorical threats of damnation passed lightly over her; indeed, you cannot easily persuade a woman that the lover of her youth has any cause to fear eternal punishment; but a far less sensitive woman than Mrs. Anerley might well have been saddened by that incomprehensible barrier which existed between her and her husband.

"And it is only on this one point," she thought to herself, bitterly. "Was there ever such a husband as he is—so forbearing, and kind, and generous? Was there ever such a father as he has shown himself to be, both to Will and to this poor Dove? And yet they talk of him as if he were a great sinner; and I know that Mrs. Bexley said she feared he was among the lost."

Be sure Mrs. Bexley did not gain in Mrs. Anerley's esteem by that unhappy conjecture. From the moment of its utterance, the two women, though they outwardly met with cold courtesy, were sworn enemies; and a feud which owed its origin to the question of the eternal destiny of a human soul, condescended to exhibit itself in a bitter rivalry as to which of the two disputants should be able to wear the most stylish bonnet. Was it the righteousness of her cause, or her husband's longer purse, which generally gave Mrs. Anerley the victory over the chagrined and mortified wife of the pastor?