The Willing Horse: A Novel
9781465666413
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
A Sunday at Baronrigg is a chastening experience. It is not exactly a day of wrath—though one feels that it might easily become one—but it is a time of tribulation for people who do not want to go to church—or, if the worst happens, prefer their religious exercises to be brief and dilute. But neither brevity nor dilution makes any appeal to my friend Tom Birnie. "I am a member," he announces, as soon as a quorum has assembled at Sunday breakfast, "of the old Kirk of Scotland; and I propose to attend service at Doctor Chirnside's at eleven o'clock. If any of you would care"—he addresses a suddenly presented perspective of immaculate partings, bald spots and permanent waves—"to accompany me, a conveyance will leave here at ten-forty." "Well, we can't all get in, that's plain," chirps Miss Joan Dexter hopefully. (The table is laid for fourteen.) "The conveyance," continues the inexorable Tom, "holds twelve inside and four out, not counting the coachman." "It's no good, Joan, old fruit," observes Master Roy Birnie. "We keep a pantechnicon!" "I suppose there's not a Church of England service within reach?" asks little Mrs. Pomeroy, rather ingeniously. "One's own Church makes an appeal to one which no other denomination cannot—can—adequately—doesn't it?" she concludes, a little uncertain both of her syntax and her host. This is her first visit to Baronrigg. "Now she's done for herself!" whispers Master Roy into my left ear. "I agree with you. There is an Episcopal Church—Scottish Episcopal, of course—at Fiddrie, three miles from here. I shall be happy to send you over there this evening at half-past six. This morning, I know, you will put up with our barbaric Northern rites!" replies Tom, with what he imagines to be an indulgent smile. "I like to see the Baronrigg pew full."
