"O me, O me, what frugal cheer

My love doth feed upon!

A touch, a ray, that is not here,

A shadow that is gone:

"A dream of breath that might be near,

An inly-echoed tone,

The thought that one may think me dear,

The place where one was known,

"The tremor of a banished fear,

An ill that was not done--

O me, O me, what frugal cheer

My love doth feed upon!"

Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward, and

showing his delicate throat as he sang, he looked like an incarnation

of the spring whose spirit filled the air--a bright creature, abundant

in uncertain promises.

The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into

the curate's pew before any one else arrived there. But he was still

left alone in it when the congregation had assembled. The curate's pew

was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel, and

Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while he looked

round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation from year

to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews, hardly with

more change than we see in the boughs of a tree which breaks here and

there with age, but yet has young shoots. Mr. Rigg's frog-face was

something alien and unaccountable, but notwithstanding this shock to

the order of things, there were still the Waules and the rural stock of

the Powderells in their pews side by side; brother Samuel's cheek had

the same purple round as ever, and the three generations of decent

cottagers came as of old with a sense of duty to their betters

generally--the smaller children regarding Mr. Casaubon, who wore the

black gown and mounted to the highest box, as probably the chief of all

betters, and the one most awful if offended. Even in 1831 Lowick was

at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the

Sunday sermon. The congregation had been used to seeing Will at church

in former days, and no one took much note of him except the choir, who

expected him to make a figure in the singing.

Dorothea did at last appear on this quaint background, walking up the

short aisle in her white beaver bonnet and gray cloak--the same she had

worn in the Vatican. Her face being, from her entrance, towards the

chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will, but there was

no outward show of her feeling except a slight paleness and a grave bow

as she passed him. To his own surprise Will felt suddenly

uncomfortable, and dared not look at her after they had bowed to each

other. Two minutes later, when Mr. Casaubon came out of the vestry,

and, entering the pew, seated himself in face of Dorothea, Will felt

his paralysis more complete. He could look nowhere except at the choir

in the little gallery over the vestry-door: Dorothea was perhaps

pained, and he had made a wretched blunder. It was no longer amusing

to vex Mr. Casaubon, who had the advantage probably of watching him and

seeing that he dared not turn his head. Why had he not imagined this

beforehand?--but he could not expect that he should sit in that square

pew alone, unrelieved by any Tuckers, who had apparently departed from

Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk. Still he

called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would be

impossible for him to look towards Dorothea--nay, that she might feel

his coming an impertinence. There was no delivering himself from his

cage, however; and Will found his places and looked at his book as if

he had been a school-mistress, feeling that the morning service had

never been so immeasurably long before, that he was utterly ridiculous,

out of temper, and miserable. This was what a man got by worshipping

the sight of a woman! The clerk observed with surprise that Mr.

Ladislaw did not join in the tune of Hanover, and reflected that he

might have a cold.




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