CHAPTER X

 St. Hilda’s chapel

“Here we are now,” said Maggie Oliphant, touching her young companion; “we are in good time; this is the outer chapel.  Yes, I know all that you are thinking, but you need not speak; I did not want to speak the first time I came to St. Hilda’s.  Just follow me quickly.  I know this verger; he will put us into two stalls; then it will be perfect.”

“Yes,” answered Priscilla.  She spoke in an awed kind of voice.  The cool effect of the dark oak, combined with the richness of the many shafts of colored light coming from the magnificent windows, gave her own face a curious expression.  Was it caused by emotion or by the strange lights in the chapel?

Maggie glanced at her, touched her hand for a moment and then hurried forward to her seat.

The girls were accommodated with stalls just above the choir.  They could read out of the college prayer-books and had a fine view of the church.

The congregation streamed in, the choir followed; the doors between the chapel and ante-chapel were shut, the curtains were dropped and the service began.

There is no better musical service in England than that which Sunday after Sunday is conducted at St. Hilda’s Chapel at Kingsdene.  The harmony and the richness of the sounds which fill that old chapel can scarcely be surpassed.  The boys send up notes clear and sweet as nightingales into the fretted arches of the roof; the men’s deeper notes swell the music until it breaks on the ears in a full tide of perfect harmony; the great organ fills in the breaks and pauses.  This splendid service of song seems to reach perfection.  In its way earth cannot give anything more perfect.

Maggie Oliphant did not come very often to St. Hilda’s.  At one time she was a constant worshiper there, but that was a year ago, before something happened which changed her.  Then Sunday after Sunday two lovely girls used to walk up the aisle side by side.  The verger knew them and reserved their favorite stalls for them.  They used to kneel together and listen to the service, and, what is more, take part in it.

But a time came when one of the girls could never return to St. Hilda’s and the other, people said, did not care to sit in the old seat without her.  They said she missed her friend and was more cut up than any one else at the sudden death of one so fair and lovely.

When Maggie took her place in the old stall to-day more than one person turned to look at her with interest.

Maggie always made a picturesque effect; she wore a large hat, with a drooping plume of feathers; her dress was very rich and dark; her fair face shone in the midst of these surroundings like an exquisite flower.

The service went on.  During the prayers Maggie wept, but, when a great wave of song filled the vast building, she forgot all her sorrow; her voice rose with the other singers, clear, sweet and high.  Her soul seemed to go up on her voice, for all the sadness left her face; her eyes looked jubilant.