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Sturton and his congregation would have to wait ten minutes or so in patient expectation before they could begin their devotions. And I would gladly have effaced myself if only to save the Jervaises the vexation of a still further delay. But I was too near the line of their approach. Any attempt at retreat would have been a positive rudeness.
"Oh! thank you, it's hardly worth while, is it?" Mrs. Sturton answered effusively, but she loosened the shawl that muffled her throat as if she were preparing for a longer wait. "I'm so sorry," she apologised for the seventh time. "So very unfortunate after such a really delightful evening."
Sturton and her husband were coming back, with an appearance of unwillingness, into the warmth and light of the Hall. The dear lady was still at her congratulations on the delightfulness of the evening, but they were tempered, now, by a hint of apology for "spoiling it to a certain extent I hope I haven't by this unfortunate contretemps."
"I told him to come round at a quarter to twelve, so that there shouldn't be any mistake. It's very tiresome." She paused on that and Jervaise was inspired to the statement that the fly came from the Royal Oak, didn't it, a fact that Mrs. Sturton had already affirmed more than once.
She had made all the difference between an ordinarily successful dance and what Mrs. Sturton at the open door continually described as "a really delightful evening." She had to repeat the phrase, because with the first stroke of midnight ringing out from the big clock over the stables, came also the first intimation of the new movement. Mrs.
"Interrupting the service," I put in with the usual inanity that is essential to the maintenance of this kind of conversation. "It's worse than that," Miss Tattersall explained gaily; "because Mr. Sturton waits for the Jervaises, to begin. When we're late we hold up the devotions of the whole parish." "Good Lord!" I commented; sincerely, this time; and with a thought of my socialist friend Banks.
"Yes, isn't it?" she said, and then the horrible striking ceased, and we heard little Nora Bailey across the Hall excitedly claiming that the clock had struck thirteen. "I counted most carefully," she was insisting. "I can't think why that man doesn't come," Mrs. Sturton repeated in a raised voice, as if she wanted to still the superstitious qualms that Miss Bailey had started.
She ignored my opening entirely, and looking down the table towards her husband said, "Mr. Sturton preached from the tenth of Hebrews, 'Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. Quite a coincidence, wasn't it?" "Indeed? Yes, quite a coincidence," Mr. Jervaise replied without enthusiasm.
There is excellent fun in his posing as 'Charles Carisforth, Esq., of Sturton, Yorkshire, and Banda, Waroona and Ebor Downs, N.S.W., while awaiting the arrival at Adelaide of the 1,100 head of stolen cattle, or as the 'Hon. Frank Haughton, one of 'the three honourables' on the Turon gold-field.
The last dance had been stopped at ten minutes to twelve, in order that the local parson and his wife their name was Sturton might be out of the house of entertainment before the first stroke of Sunday morning. Every one was wound up to a pitch of satisfied excitement. The Cinderella had been a success. The floor and the music and the supper had been good, Mrs.
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