Christmas at Candleshoe Read Online Free PDF Page B

immemorial charities. And the poor old almoners – isn’t that the word…?’
    ‘It certainly is not. Inmates – or beadsmen.’
    ‘The poor old beadsmen have to attend chapel twice a day and pray for the soul of the founder.’
    ‘Would they be allowed to do that in an Anglican church?’ Grant is interested. ‘I mean, if it had been laid down when the charity started in Catholic times?’
    ‘We can go in and find out. The old people must be there now.’
    ‘Say – we can’t do that!’ Grant is horrified. ‘It’s no business of ours.’
    ‘Public and corporate worship is anybody’s business.’ As Mrs Feather delivers herself of this pious if convenient sentiment she is already on the march again. ‘I expect there are old women too. And no doubt strangers may attend and contribute. There will be a box. Now, what did I do with that half-crown?’
    Recollection comes to Grant. ‘It can’t be almshouses. The map says–’
    He is too late. Mrs Feather, whom he still follows obediently, has reached the little chapel, found an open door, and marched in. Some sort of service is indubitably going forward. Grant is aware that his mother, with unusual precipitancy, has sat down, and that he himself is perched beside her on a hard bench of quite inadequate breadth. He is aware too of a high quavering voice speaking of the absolution and remission of sins. He knows that he is attending Evening Prayer according to the form of the Church of England. He takes a deep breath and looks about him for the almsfolk of his mother’s imagining, although with small hope of finding them. And of course he is right. It is a private chapel. He has never been in such a place before. But he recognizes it in an instant.
    At Benison the chapel is by Wren and there is a statuary group by Roubiliac. This is different. It is like the smallest and most unassuming parish church in a Decorated style – ‘Decorated’ only in the technical sense, since the actual effect is bare enough. There is a single monument – and at a first glance it appears to be of the order described in Mrs Feather’s guidebooks as ‘rude’. Grant studies it; he has a hunch that it is the least embarrassing thing available for study. A gentleman with flowing locks and a completely composed demeanour is raising himself from a stony ocean and grasping the prows of a vessel which appears to be in the act of foundering. Upon this watery scene two younger gentlemen standing on either hand are about to lower a pair of marble curtains. Crowning this is a coat of arms, decorated in faded gold and colour – and this Grant, although without much learning in such matters, feels to be obscurely familiar.
    And now he lets his glance stray further afield. Along one wall the chapel contains two benches such as one might find in a village school, and it is on one of these that he and his mother are sitting. The rest of the furnishing consists of the altar, a lectern, and three mouldering upright chairs upholstered in ragged leather. Before each chair is an ancient and crumpled hassock upon which either long practice or an abnormally good sense of balance might make it possible to kneel. Only one of the chairs is occupied – by a diminutive lady of great age. Dressed in black silks of an answering antiquity, and with a black lace cap set upon snow-white hair, she is delivering herself of responses in what Grant supposes to be a provincial accent. Mrs Feather, who has been exposed to intermittent contact with the English since childhood, knows that it belongs not to any specific region but to the past – to a past, she further guesses, quite surprisingly remote. The officiating clergyman, too, suggests an earlier time – but this less by his voice than by his attire. Memories of some illustrated edition of Jane Austen float through her head; as she listens to the Collect for Aid against all Perils she finds herself surprised that the person offering this petition wears his