Chapter 3

THE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

On Sunday it was Lewisham's duty to accompany the boarders twice to
church. The boys sat in the gallery above the choirs facing the organ
loft and at right angles to the general congregation. It was a
prominent position, and made him feel painfully conspicuous, except in
moods of exceptional vanity, when he used to imagine that all these
people were thinking how his forehead and his certificates
accorded. He thought a lot in those days of his certificates and
forehead, but little of his honest, healthy face beneath it. (To tell
the truth there was nothing very wonderful about his forehead.) He
rarely looked down the church, as he fancied to do so would be to meet
the collective eye of the congregation regarding him. So that in the
morning he was not able to see that the Frobishers' pew was empty
until the litany.

But in the evening, on the way to church, the Frobishers and their
guest crossed the market-square as his string of boys marched along
the west side. And the guest was arrayed in a gay new dress, as if it
was already Easter, and her face set in its dark hair came with a
strange effect of mingled freshness and familiarity. She looked at him
calmly! He felt very awkward, and was for cutting his new
acquaintance. Then hesitated, and raised his hat with a jerk as if to
Mrs. Frobisher. Neither lady acknowledged his salute, which may
possibly have been a little unexpected. Then young Siddons dropped his
hymn-book; stooped to pick it up, and Lewisham almost fell over
him.... He entered church in a mood of black despair.

But consolation of a sort came soon enough. As _she_ took her seat she
distinctly glanced up at the gallery, and afterwards as he knelt to
pray he peeped between his fingers and saw her looking up again. She
was certainly not laughing at him.

In those days much of Lewisham's mind was still an unknown land to
him. He believed among other things that he was always the same
consistent intelligent human being, whereas under certain stimuli he
became no longer reasonable and disciplined but a purely imaginative
and emotional person. Music, for instance, carried him away, and
particularly the effect of many voices in unison whirled him off from
almost any state of mind to a fine massive emotionality. And the
evening service at Whortley church--at the evening service surplices
were worn--the chanting and singing, the vague brilliance of the
numerous candle flames, the multitudinous unanimity of the
congregation down there, kneeling, rising, thunderously responding,
invariably inebriated him. Inspired him, if you will, and turned the
prose of his life into poetry. And Chance, coming to the aid of Dame
Nature, dropped just the apt suggestion