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He did a certain amount of serious reading every year.
On Sunday mornings, during the service, Elizabeth earnestly tried to
banish all worldly thoughts. In spite of this resolve, however, she was
always conscious of a certain regret that the choir seats necessitated
turning her profile to the congregation. At the age of twelve she had
decided that her nose was too short, and nothing had happened since
to change her conviction. She seldom so much as glanced at the
congregation. During her slow progress up and down the main aisle behind
the Courtney boy, who was still a soprano and who carried the great gold
cross, she always looked straight ahead. Or rather, although she was
unconscious of this, slightly up. She always looked up when she sang,
for she had commenced to take singing lessons when the piano music rack
was high above her head.
So she still lifted her eyes as she went up the aisle, and was extremely
serious over the whole thing. Because it is a solemn matter to take a
number of people who have been up to that moment engrossed in thoughts
of food or golf or servants or business, and in the twinkling of an eye,
as the prayer book said about death, turn their minds to worship.
Nevertheless, although she never looked at the pews, she was always
conscious of two of them. The one near the pulpit was the Sayres' and it
was the social calendar of the town. When Mrs. Sayre was in it, it was
the social season. One never knew when Mrs. Sayre's butler would call up
and say: "I am speaking for Mrs. Sayre. Mrs. Sayre would like to have the
pleasure of Miss Wheeler's company on Thursday to luncheon, at
one-thirty."
When the Sayre pew was empty, the town knew, if it happened to be
winter, that the Florida or Santa Barbara season was on; or in summer
the Maine coast.
The other pew was at the back of the church. Always it had one occupant;
sometimes it had three. But the behavior of this pew was very erratic.
Sometimes an elderly and portly gentleman with white hair and fierce
eyebrows would come in when the sermon was almost over. Again, a hand
would reach through the grill behind it, and a tall young man who
had had his eyes fixed in the proper direction, but not always on
the rector, would reach for his hat, get up and slip out. On these
occasions, however, he would first identify the owner of the hand and
then bend over the one permanent occupant of the pew, a little old lady.
His speech was as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, for he either said, "I'll be
back for dinner," or "Don't look for me until you see me."