CHAPTER XIII

THE OLD VILLAGE CHURCH

NEXT day, being Sunday, brought to light fresh aspects of the new world in which Phyllys was plunged.

To her the change had come as a veritable plunge, involving such sensations of shock and breathlessness as a dip in the sea will produce. The novelty of it all gripped her imagination. After years of repression, of squeezing in a Procrustean bed, she found herself in an atmosphere of ease and refinement, in a house where beauty was valued, contrasting with the home where only abstract principle was exalted, and things lovely were eschewed as evil. Something of intoxication was the outcome.

Her hour in the studio had awakened new thought, new feeling. The masterpieces shown by Colin had touched her more deeply than might be understood by one possessing no love of art. In Phyllys this love was inherited, and in childhood it had received careful cultivation.

All the ten years at Midfell, though trained to outward submission, she had fought against the dictums which went in the teeth of her parents' teaching. To some extent she had been moulded by persistent pressure, had taken shape and colour, as a plant under training can be educated into new forms. But, like such a plant, she had a strong tendency to "revert" on the first chance; and here was her chance. The spell of present surroundings was great, and she "reverted" quickly to experiences of earlier days, never forgotten, though of late pushed out of her mind.

Colin fascinated her. His personal beauty—a type of beauty due less to outline of feature, though that outline was fine, than to expression—and his "apartness" from common life were both so unlike aught she had ever come across that she could not dismiss him from her thoughts. And even though she had not quite approved of his manner to his mother, yet his serenity under that mother's resistance to his cherished aim won her admiration.

"I like him," she said to herself more than once. He was different from Giles; and Giles was her friend. Colin might in time become her friend; but this she doubted. She could not got to know him so quickly as she had got to know Giles.

As they walked to church on Sunday morning following the private short-cut, where sunbeams made a swaying pattern of leaf-shadows on a mossy carpet, her attention wandered to him much. She listened for what he might say; she watched for what he might do. Each word and action on his part, though subdued, had in it something suggestive. Giles had not affected her thus. When with Giles she was mainly conscious of her own power over him. When with Colin she was mainly conscious of his power over her.

Midfell Church and its services were plain, almost with an excess of simplicity; less from any wish on the part of Mr. Hazel than from a need to avoid startling the unsophisticated Midfell intellect by "innovations," a word which held terror for the Wyvernes and their coterie. Had such simplicity not been maintained, Phyllys would not have been allowed to enter the porch.

Here things were otherwise, and she was carried back to childhood's days—to her father's church. Here was precisely what old Mrs. Wyverne had dreaded for her grandchild, and had condemned in her son. Not only an aged historic building, great in architectural beauty; but also more of completeness, more of cultivated perfection of form and sound, more of that which for years had been decried in the hearing of Phyllys as unsound, unspiritual, a form of godliness without life, perilous to true religion.

Did it indeed mean peril? Was it perforce mere form, without life? Did no reality underlie the beauty of structure and of sound?

Beauty there was; a perfection of rendering seldom reached in a country village; a well-trained choir; an organ of mellow tone, finely handled. There was, too, the outward seeming of deep reverence, in hushed stillness, in heads bowed reverently during prayers, in low voices joining in the responses. No hurried slurring on the part of Vicar or congregation, no shrill shouting on the part of the choir. All was controlled and appropriate, a worthy expression of the Church's adoration of her Divine Master. The Vicar, a college friend of Giles Randolph, seemed to be a man of unusual intensity of feeling, if the bent head and earnest face spoke truly.

Who would venture to say that in the plain services of Midfell Church, love and devotion and reverence were less than here, though differently shown? But also, who should dare to assert that love and devotion and reverence here were less, because allowed fuller expression? Only, surely, a Barbara Wyverne or one like-minded would roughly thus tread on holy ground, would carelessly so condemn. The Father of all, looking into each heart, reads and values at their true worth the love, the devotion, the reverence, whether uttered in this manner or expressed in that manner before His footstool.

To Phyllys, the surroundings, the spiritual atmosphere, the solemn hush, the stirring music, appealing to her impressionable nature, meant joy and comfort and a new realization of the Divine Presence. That Presence is made known to men through many different channels and by various modes. For years Phyllys had not felt her father and mother so near, because for years she had not felt God so near. Their nearness was involved in His; for they were in Him, with Him. Tears filled her eyes as she knelt. She knew that this Church might be to her as a gate of heaven.

Her late terrible experience on the moor had deepened the sense of spiritual need, and here might be what would satisfy that need. "O I am glad to have come," she whispered.

Presently, standing up, she noted Mrs. Keith's manner as peculiar. Those fine eyes, troubled and restless, were gazing at the east window, as if in protest, and the lips moved beseechingly.

Did this mean prayer? Something had stirred the elder woman, as she had been stirred; only in Mrs. Keith it looked like sorrow, not joy. But what could Mrs. Keith have to grieve her, in her beautiful home, with the most winning of sons, with Giles as a second son ready to give all she wished?—Except indeed in so insignificant a desire as related to Colin's modelling.

Phyllys floated into a train of thought, which landed her beside a chestnut-tinted stream, with golden glimmers in white wavelets, and Giles by her side. Thence by a transition she was in the bog, sinking, horror-stricken, in black slime, and once more she felt the grip of his hand. "But for him—!" she whispered.

Twenty minutes later she and Mrs. Keith stood in the empty church, Colin having gone home.

Architecture claimed attention, and Mrs. Keith pointed out the Norman arches, the solid columns, the stalls and their carved canopies, the aged rood-screen, the new seats of dark oak throughout the building.

"Giles had it restored as soon as he came of age," she said. "It was his first thought. Before that we had a three-decker, and hideous galleries, and pews one could hardly see over, and whitewash everywhere. He had the roof opened out as you see it now, and everything put right. His whole heart was in the work. No, there is very little old glass. The east window had been added early in the century, and it was too frightful for words. So Giles gave this and one other. Lovely, is it not?"

They passed to the "one other" in the north aisle; a memorial window, exquisite in design, the central figure that of a child borne up on angels' wings. The child's face drew from Phyllys an exclamation.

Mrs. Keith made a sound of inquiry, but Phyllys drew in. It might be that Colin would not wish his mother, any more than Giles, to know what he was doing. She went near, and read, "In Memory of E. W."

"Dr. Wallace's child. She died when the boys were sixteen. An occasional playmate." Mrs. Keith spoke coldly.

"And she was—how old?"

"About thirteen. When the church was restored, Giles put this to her memory. Unnecessarily, I thought."

"She must have been lovely. Was Giles fond of her?"

"She was pretty. Both boys liked her. She died very suddenly."

"And her father is your doctor?"

"He is everybody's doctor. I do not care for him. I am afraid my dislikes are as pronounced as my likes."

"So many years ago?" thought Phyllys. And an "occasional playmate" only! Both Giles and Colin must be very unforgetting. She decided that a friendship with the former might last a lifetime.