The Rail

The rail was oak, black with two hundred years of hands, and it was cool.

He knelt at the north end of it, at the place nearest the pulpit, because the verger had touched his elbow and shown him where, and he put his hands on the rail, one over the other, and felt the coolness of the old wood go into his palms. The kneeler under him was red velvet worn to the canvas in two round hollows where two centuries of knees had gone. There was a smell of brass polish and candle wax and the white linen cloth that lay along the top of the rail, starched and folded. The altar was in front of him, very close, up its one step, with its white cloth and its two candles and the silver vessels on it shining in the sun from the east window.

He was alone at the rail for a moment. He was first. It was the programme. It was the order of precedence. Behind him he could hear the congregation beginning to come out of the pews and up the aisle, the shuffle of a great many feet on stone and the creak of pew doors and the rustle of skirts and somebody’s child asking a question in a loud whisper and being hushed; and at his left side, a little behind, he heard his son kneel down beside him, carefully, because of his neck, and fold his arms across his chest, the way the unconfirmed did, to ask only for a blessing.

The Rector came down the step with the paten.

He was very old and very slow and his hands were perfectly steady. He came to the north end of the rail and stood in front of the Governor-General of the Realm and looked down at him with his faded eyes, and Pershing opened his hands on the rail, the right over the left, as he had been taught, and the Rector laid the bread in them.

“The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving.”

Pershing ate the bread.

The Rector moved on, one step, to Warren, and laid his hand on the boy’s head, lightly, above the white silk scarf, and said a blessing that Pershing did not hear the words of, and moved on along the rail to whoever was next.

And a curate came down the step with the cup.

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It was a plain cup. That was the first thing he noticed. He had expected, somehow, in a parish as old as this, in the King’s church, in the capital of a province, something enormous in silver gilt with jewels on it, and it was a plain silver cup on a short stem, quite small, worn smooth at the lip, with a little engraving round the bowl that he could not read, and it was being carried in both hands by a young curate with a pale serious face who had not been at the dinner and had not been on the dock and had not been on the State House lawn and had no idea, Pershing understood at once, of anything at all.

The curate came to the north end of the rail. He held out the cup.

And in the time it took him to do it, which was perhaps three seconds, the whole of the card went through the Governor-General’s head, clause by clause, in his own hand, in Bramwell’s ink, exactly as he had written it at the Lieutenant-Governor’s table on Friday night with the whole of Annapolis watching.

One. Served: handed to the party by another person, and drunk.

Two. A drink: intoxicating liquor within the meaning of the Act. Lawful or unlawful.

Three. Within sight of Government House on State Circle, in the City of Annapolis: at a place from which Government House can be seen by the naked eye, without glass, in the light then prevailing.

Four. Before Monday.

Five. The referee is not a party. Should the referee himself be served, the wager is void.

He had not thought of it.

That was the extraordinary thing, afterwards, when he went over it, lying awake in the room on the garden, and the thing that he never told anybody, not Warren, not Bramwell, not the King: that he had not thought of it. He had heard the Rector at five o’clock on Saturday morning say nobody serves liquor within sight of his house except me, and he had heard his son at five o’clock this morning tell him that La Guardia was coming to the rail, and he had sat in his pew with the note in his pocket while three men stood in the door with their hands on one another’s shoulders asking him whether it was a drink, and in all that time he had thought about it only as La Guardia’s drink. He had said he would not rule on sacraments, and he had meant it, and he had not, it seemed, ruled on this one even in the privacy of his own head; because it was not a drink to him; because he had knelt at rails like this one since he was a lieutenant, at Fort Stanton and Fort Assinniboine and in a tin chapel at Zamboanga and in a cathedral full of the dead in a city he would not name; because it was not a thing he did, it was a thing that was done for him, and he had never once in forty years thought of it as being served.

He thought of it now.

He thought, quite clearly, with the curate standing in front of him holding out the cup: If I drink this, it is void.

And then, a quarter of a second later, very much more clearly: If it is void, nobody loses.

He saw it whole. He saw it as he had once seen the whole of a battlefield in a single moment from a hill, the roads and the woods and the river and where everybody was and where everybody would be. La Guardia was at the door with Voss’s hand on his shoulder, and he would not reach the rail; Voss would not let go, and Spratt would not let go of Voss, and the sidesmen could not get past them, and the service would end, and the congregation would go out past them down the steps, and at midnight by the State House clock La Guardia would have lost, and on Tuesday he would stand up in the Commons in front of the gallery and say that Maryland kept the law, and the Courier would put it on the front page, and Tull would read it at breakfast over his porridge and be happy, and nine cannery hands at Cambridge would go on not being mentioned to him, and the class of 1926 would have run a cup of punch up Maryland Avenue by hand for nothing.

Unless the referee was served.

He could decline. That was the other thing he saw, in the same quarter-second, quite as clearly. He could lift his hand from the rail, very slightly, palm down, as men did who for some reason of their own did not take the cup, and the curate would understand and move on, and nobody in the church would notice except the Rector, and the card would stand, and Tull would win.

He would not decline. He knew it before he had finished seeing it. He would not decline the cup at the King’s altar on the first Sunday of June for a wager made over grape juice at a Methodist’s dinner table, not for Tull and not for La Guardia and not for the class of 1926 and not for nine cannery hands at Cambridge; not for anything; not if it voided every wager ever made in Maryland. It was not his to decline. It was not a thing he did. It was a thing that was done for him.

And he was glad.

He was glad, kneeling at the rail of St Anne’s with his hands open on the black oak and the cup coming toward him, with a gladness so sudden and so complete that it frightened him; and he understood that he was not glad because it would be void, though it would be, and not because nobody would lose, though nobody would. He was glad because there was, after all, at the very end of the whole of the weekend, one thing that he did not have to decide.

“The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,” said the curate, “which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.”

He took the cup in his hands. It was cool, and heavier than it looked.

“Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s Blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.”

He drank.

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It was wine. It was a sweet, heavy, dark wine, port-like, the kind that came in large stone jars from a supplier in Baltimore with a permit from the Treasury and a seal from the Bishop; it was perhaps a tablespoon; it was warm from the church and tasted, faintly, of the silver. It was the first wine he had tasted since Easter, at the cathedral in New Westminster, and in six years he had tasted no other kind.

He gave the cup back to the curate. The curate wiped the lip with a white linen cloth and turned it a little in his hands and moved on along the rail to the next communicant, who was Bramwell.

Pershing stayed on his knees a moment longer, with his face in his hands, as was proper.

Then he rose, and turned, to go back down to his pew.

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He had been turning to go back down to a pew from an altar rail for forty years, and he had never once, in all those years, looked at anything in particular while he did it. You looked at the floor. You looked at the pew you were going back to. You did not look at the congregation coming up the aisle toward you, because they were not there to be looked at, and you did not look up the aisle past them to the back of the church, because there was nothing there.

He looked.

He stood at the top of the three steps below the rail, in the sun from the east window, with his hands at his sides, and looked straight down the length of the aisle of St Anne’s: past the line of communicants coming up it two by two, the families in white and the midshipmen in white and an old woman on a stick; past the box pews on either side with their doors open and their occupants waiting; under the gallery with the choir leaning over the front of it; to the west door, sixty feet away, open, propped with a brick, and full of light.

There were three men in it, in a line, black against the brightness. A short wide one in a black suit with his hat in his hand. A thin one in grey with rimless spectacles, with his hand on the short one’s shoulder. A long pale one in brown, with his hand on the thin one’s. They were standing on the top step, exactly where Bramwell’s note had said, and they were all three looking up the aisle, at the rail, at him.

And beyond them, through the door, over their heads, framed in the gap between the two old roofs at the top of School Street, a hundred and fifty yards away, at the top of the green rise on State Circle, in the full white light of a June noon, by the naked eye, without glass, in the light then prevailing, he could see the porch of Government House, and its four white columns, and above them the flag of the Province of Maryland, black and gold, hanging quite still.

Disputes to be settled by the referee standing at that place.

He was standing at that place.

He looked at the house for perhaps two seconds. Then he looked at the short man in the door.

La Guardia was looking back at him. He was looking at him with his round face perfectly still for once and his mouth a little open, and Pershing saw it arrive in his face, exactly as he had seen the idea of the bet arrive there at the Lieutenant-Governor’s table on Friday night: a small widening of the eyes, a pause, and then something that was not at first pleasure, that was something else first, astonishment, and something like grief, and then, slowly, spreading from the eyes downward until it reached the wide mouth and split it, the purest delight that Pershing had ever seen on a human face. La Guardia lifted his hat, very slowly, in the doorway of St Anne’s, with Voss’s hand on his shoulder and Spratt’s hand on Voss’s, as he had lifted it at the top of the mast; and held it there.

Pershing inclined his head about an inch.

Then he went down the three steps and along the front of the church to the pew on the left, and went in, and knelt, and put his face in his hands; and his son came in from the rail after him and knelt beside him, carefully, because of his neck, and did not say anything; and at the end of the pew Bramwell came in and knelt too, and after a moment, without lifting his head, took out his notebook and his pencil and wrote something in it, very small, and closed it again.

Pershing knelt with his face in his hands and did not pray. He knew what he had done. He had known it before he was back in the pew. He had known it, if he was honest, and kneeling there he found he could not be anything else, from the moment the curate came down the step with the cup and he did not lift his hand.

The congregation went up to the rail, and came back. The Rector said the Lord’s Prayer, and the prayer of thanksgiving, and the choir in the gallery sang the Gloria in excelsis, and the old man turned round at the altar and lifted his hand and gave the blessing, and looked, as he gave it, down the whole length of his church, over all their heads, to the open door.

The organ began the last hymn.

It was the one Tull’s chapel would be singing too, round on the other circle, at that moment, with the wrong tune, because Mr Asbury Cooper always chose the wrong tune; and everybody in St Anne’s stood up to sing it; and the Governor-General of the Realm stood up with them in the front pew on the left with his mother’s prayer book open in his hands and his son on one side of him and his secretary on the other, and sang it, badly, and knew it, all four verses, all the way through to the end, and did not once look round.