The Challoners. E. F. Benson
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lad, thank you. Ah, what a lovely morning! Look at the hills. ‘I will lift up mine eyes to the hills.’ How wonderful the appreciation of natural beauty in the Psalms is—‘Sweeter also than honey,’—so many of David’s similes are drawn from ordinary, every-day sensations, but lifted up, ennobled, dedicated. But how was it you were nearly late? I looked into your room before I started for church and found you had already gone!”
“I went down to bathe,” said Martin; “in fact, it was only the bell beginning that reminded me there was service at eight.”
Mr. Challoner looked at him a moment with a sort of appeal.
“But, dear Martin,” he said, “you did not come without preparation?”
“I am afraid I did,” said Martin, and the joy of his waking hours dropped utterly dead, while the hopelessness of the compact of the evening before rose close in front of him.
They took a turn up and down the lawn before going in, and his father very gently, but very firmly impressed on him the positive sin of his omission. His voice trembled with the earnestness of his feeling, for to him the danger of coming to the Communion unprepared was as vital as the need for coming. He hated to say what he felt he must say; it was so soon after their compact to try to understand one another, to get on without perpetual correction and admonishment. But this could not be left unsaid. Once it occurred to Martin to tell him the truth, to say, “I came in order to please you; otherwise I should not,” but the impulse passed. There was no need to give his father such pain as that; and he merely assented dully where assent was needed, said, “Yes, I see,” at intervals, and gave the promise required. But it was a dreary beginning to the day.
The Chartries pew, the only family pew remaining in the church, was well attended at the eleven o’clock service, Lady Sunningdale being, as usual, the brightest object present; indeed, among the rest of the congregation she resembled a bird of paradise which had by mistake found its way into a colony of sparrows. But what this violation of her habits in appearing so long before lunch had cost her none but her maid knew. However, there she was, and the colours of the spectroscope blossomed together in her hat, and in a fit of absence of mind, to which she was prone, she as nearly as possible put up a pink sunshade, forgetting where she was, to shield her from the sun which was shining through a mauve-coloured saint on to the middle of her face in a manner which she felt to be aggressive and probably unbecoming. So she moved to behind the shadow of a neighbouring pillar, from where, looking at the organ, she could see who sat there.
“Too heavenly,” she said in a shrill whisper to Stella Plympton. “Martin is at the organ. I’m afraid he won’t play the Brahms, though. What a pity it is not Good Friday; he would be sure to give us the Charfreitag music.”
That, however, was not to be, and instead the familiar strains of “O Rest in the Lord” were the prelude to which six choir-boys, four choir men, including the carpenter, who in a fluty falsetto sang a steady third below the trebles and believed it to be alto, advanced to their places. But Martin, in Lady Sunningdale’s opinion, could do no wrong, and again she whispered shrilly to Stella—
“Is he not wonderful? That tune is exactly like the stained glass. It is absolutely the ‘air’ of the place. Look, there is Helen Challoner sitting with the choir. Is she not a dream? Tell Frank to look at her.”
But this was unnecessary, as Frank Yorkshire was already looking. He was a rather stout, very pleasant-faced young man of about thirty, with smooth flaxen hair, rather prominent blue eyes, and an expression of extraordinary amiability, which his character fully endorsed. He was remarkably adaptable, and while he would willingly talk flippancies with Lady Sunningdale, his tenantry adored him for his friendliness and his great common sense if the baby was ill or the pig would not put on flesh. In other respects he was a Baron of the realm, immensely wealthy, and unmarried, so that he was perpetually drenched by showers of eligible girls, whom aspiring mothers hurled at his head. These he returned with thanks, uninjured.
He had, in fact, many pleasant qualities and one notable one, which Lady Sunningdale had already mentioned as being characteristic of him, namely, his undeviating pursuit of the first-rate. It was this which turned a character that would otherwise have been rather materialistic into something of an idealist, and supplied a sort of religion to a mind which otherwise, an extremely rare phenomenon, was completely atheistic, not with an atheism into which he had drifted from carelessness or insouciance, but with one that sprang from a reasoned and clear conviction that there could not possibly be any God whatever. On all other matters he had an open mind and was extremely willing to adopt any opinion that seemed to him reasonable, but on this one point he was hopelessly bigoted. This reasonableness and willingness to be convinced had led people to suppose that he was weak. But this was not in the least true, he was only fair. Another quality, and a fine one, was his also: he was practically unacquainted with fear, either physical or moral, and would, had he lived in those uncongenial times, have gone as cheerfully to the stake for his entire absence of religious beliefs as he would now blandly uphold his abhorrence of sport on the ground of cruelty to animals in a roomful of hunting-men. His faculty of reverence finally, of which he possessed a considerable measure, he exercised entirely over the talents of other people, on whatever line they ran. He knelt, for instance, at the shrine of Lady Sunningdale’s acute perceptions, he hung up votive offerings to Martin’s music, he even, at this moment, bowed the knee before the village carpenter, whose talent for singing the wrong note was of that instinctive and unerring quality which approaches genius.
He was a great friend of Martin’s. Helen he only knew slightly. And, after service, desultory conversation in the church-yard ended in the twins going back to lunch at Chartries. Though Mr. Challoner was opposed on principle to anything, however remote, connected with festivity taking place on Sunday, he raised no objection, merely reminded Helen that her Sunday-school class met at three. Lord Yorkshire, strolling by her, thought he heard a nuance of impatience in her assent, and his question had a touch of insincerity about it.
“Don’t you find that charming?” he asked. “I think there can be nothing so interesting as helping to form a child’s mind. It is so plastic—like modelling clay. You can mould it into any shape you choose!”
Helen glanced quickly at him.
“Do you really want to know if I find it charming?” she asked.
“Immensely.”
“I detest it. I don’t think they have any minds to mould. Why should one think they have? But they have shiny faces, and they fidget. And I point out Ur of the Chaldees on the map.”
He laughed.
“I suppose the chances are in favour of their not having minds, as you say,” he remarked. “But I had to allow for your delighting in it, when I started the subject. What do they think about then? Do they just chew their way through life like cows? You know some people don’t chew enough. I expect Martin doesn’t. But that is why he is so extraordinary.” There was intention in this, and it succeeded. Any one who admired Martin had found a short cut to his sister’s favour.
“Ah, Martin never chews,” she said. “I don’t think he ever thinks; he just—just blazes. Now, do tell me, Lord Yorkshire, because you know him well. He isn’t stupid, is he, because he can’t or doesn’t pass examinations?”
“He couldn’t conceivably be stupid, any more than I could be a Red Indian. But it is by a misguided ingenuity that he contrives not to pass examinations. It is hardly worth while doing it.”
“Ah, do tell him that,” said Helen. “I think you have influence with him.”
“What on earth makes you think that?”
“He quotes you.”
“Are you sure you do not mean he mimics me? He does it to my face, too, so why not behind my back. It is quite admirable. Ah, I see he has shown you a specimen. Don’t I talk wonderfully like him? But influence—one might as well sit down and think how to influence a flash of lightning.”
Helen considered this a moment.