He went up the aisle reverently, and took his place in the pew with
lowered eyes, for he feared he had already offended the kind old
gentleman in the pulpit, and was sedulous to offend no further. He
could not follow the prayer, not even the heads of it. Brightnesses
of azure, clouds of fragrance, a tinkle of falling water and singing
birds, rose like exhalations from some deeper, aboriginal memory, that
was not his, but belonged to the flesh on his bones. His body
remembered; and it seemed to him that his body was in no way gross,
but ethereal and perishable like a strain of music; and he felt for it
an exquisite tenderness as for a child, an innocent, full of beautiful
instincts and destined to an early death. And he felt for old Torrance
- of the many supplications, of the few days - a pity that was near to
tears. The prayer ended. Right over him was a tablet in the wall, the
only ornament in the roughly masoned chapel - for it was no more; the
tablet commemorated, I was about to say the virtues, but rather the
existence of a former Rutherford of Hermiston; and Archie, under that
trophy of his long descent and local greatness, leaned back in the pew
and contemplated vacancy with the shadow of a smile between playful and
sad, that became him strangely.
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