The
Beechcote pew was at the back of the church, and as the new mistress of
the old house entered and walked down the aisle, she drew the eyes of a
large congregation of rustics and small shopkeepers. Diana moved in a
kind of happy absorption, glancing gently from side to side. This
gathering of villagers was to her representative of a spiritual and
national fellowship to which she came now to be joined. The old church,
wreathed in ivy and holly; the tombs in the southern aisle; the loaves
standing near the porch for distribution after service, in accordance
with an old benefaction; the fragments of fifteenth-century glass in the
windows; the school-children to her left; the singing, the prayers, the
sermon--found her in a welcoming, a child-like mood. She knelt, she
sang, she listened, like one undergoing initiation, with a tender
aspiring light in her eyes, and an eager mobility of expression.
Mrs. Colwood was more critical. The clergyman who preached the sermon
did not, in fact, please her at all. He was a thin High Churchman, with
an oblong face and head, narrow shoulders, and a spare frame. He wore
spectacles, and his voice was disagreeably pitched.
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