Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [53]
The roads are muddy, and the journey is slow going. The cold seeps in at the sides, and the four of them sit huddled, heads bent, against the unseasonable elements. They enter the church and move to their customary pew. All about them is the smell of wet wool, the sound of cloaks being snapped to shake off the damp. The windows are arched and leaded and stained a dark red and a brownish gold. The gloom they create is dispelled only by the candles in the sconces on the walls. It is as if it were already night in the church, the faces and forms of the parishioners at first hard to discern. The pulpit, of carved cherry, is suspended from a chain in the vaulted ceiling. More than once, as a child, Olympia imagined the links of the chain giving way and crashing the pulpit and its minister to the floor, these unkind fantasies more a result of childish restlessness than a comment upon the quality of the sermons.
They sit quietly, none of them speaking, each engaged in separate reveries. Olympia thinks neither of her parents particularly devout as well, but who can ever truly know the extent of faith in another, she thinks, faith being among the most intimate and well guarded of possessions? Thus, it is not until the choir begins the processional that Olympia happens to glance to her right, past the straight-backed and uncurious form of her father, and sees who is sitting in the pew opposite theirs. Perhaps a small sound escapes her then and penetrates her father’s composure, for he glances quickly at her. But she is saved from a question by the need to rise for the hymn.
It has been only a glance: a hat with a brim that all but hides a mass of silvery blond hair; a kid glove with a pearl button; a child’s small boot swinging back and forth; the strain in the fabric of a blue cotton smock as a shoulder is turned to the side; the cuff of a trouser leg, wet at its hem; and above that a perfect masculine profile with no beard or mustache. He must have seen her, she thinks at once. He must know that she is there. It must have been Catherine, then, who quite innocently allowed herself to be led by the usher to the seat opposite Olympia’s father, whom she doubtless plans to greet when the service is over.
Olympia sits as still as wood, determined to give nothing away. The excessive stiffness of her posture must in some small measure betray her, however, for her father glances at her again and again. But he does not speak, church etiquette requiring his silence.
If ever Olympia is conscious of another person in a room, aware only of another’s physical presence — though there are at least a hundred other people in the congregation — it is that morning, during that hour and a half when she might pray, might ask for guidance, might vow to banish Haskell from her thoughts. But though she makes an attempt to speak to God, she cannot, not for the white noise inside her head, nor for the unwillingness of her soul to relinquish what it has so recently gained. And though she yearns for a glimpse of the man, it is enough just to see, from the corner of her eye, the cloth that drapes his leg, the movement of his foot.
Later, Olympia will believe that it was during that hour and a half, in that brown and ochre church, with all their families around them, with a congregation of witnesses, that she came to understand that she and Haskell would one day have a future. And that she would not put up any impediment to its unfolding.
• • •
Catherine invites them to lunch at the Highland, an invitation