Prayers in a voice that was not his natural voice, but
something far more poignant and impressive.

There were no boys in the choir, and the singing, that lacked their
purifying and clarifying treble, had a strange effect, somber yet
disturbing. It acted on Ranny like an incantation.

Of course, if he had known what it was going to do to him, he would have
kept away.

For though there was nothing in his flesh and blood and muscle that
suggested an inebriate father, yet in his profounder and obscurer being
he was Fulleymore Ransome's son. The secret instability that made
Fulleymore Ransome drink had had its effect on Ranny's nervous system.
His nerves, though he was not aware of it, were finely woven and highly
strung. He had a tendency to be carried away and to be excited, exalted,
and upset. Since Saturday afternoon Ranny had remained more or less in a
state of tension induced by the hurdle race, by the shock of seeing
Violet Usher, and by the dinner at the "Golden Eagle." And, coming
straight from Violet, he had entered St. Matthias's Mission Church keyed
up to his highest pitch. So that the Service for Men which subdued
Wauchope and made him humble and ashamed and sent him away trying to be
a better man, that very same Service worked Ranny up to a point when
anything became possible to him.

First of all, then, the intoning and the chanting acted on him exactly
like an incantation. Ranny's will, the spiritual part of him, was lulled
to sleep by the rhythmic voices, and as his sense of decency had no
reason whatever to expect an outrage, it was also off its guard,
quiescent, passive to the charm. The rest of Ranny was exposed,
piteously, to the rhythm that swelled, that accentuated, accelerated the
vibration of his inner tumult.

Then the obvious safety-valve was closed to him. A sense of strangeness
and of sudden shyness prevented him from joining as he should have
joined in the Service. Ranny could not take it out all at once in
singing. That silence and passivity of his left him open at every pore
to the invasion of the powers of sound. These young, intensely vibrant
bass and tenor voices sang all round him, they sang at him and into him
and through him. There was a young man close behind him with a tenor
voice that pierced him like a pain. There was Wauchope at his right ear
thundering in a tremendous barytone.

First of all it was a trumpet call that shook him.

/P
"Sold-ier-ers o-of Christ! a-arise,