Swithin wanted to say to Viviette, 'Now I hope you are pleased; I have
conformed to your ideas of my duty, leaving my fitness out of
consideration;' but as he could only see her bonnet and forehead it was
not possible even to look the intelligence. He turned to his left hand,
where the organ stood, with Miss Tabitha Lark seated behind it.
It being now sermon-time the youthful blower had fallen asleep over the
handle of his bellows, and Tabitha pulled out her handkerchief intending
to flap him awake with it. With the handkerchief tumbled out a whole
family of unexpected articles: a silver thimble; a photograph; a little
purse; a scent-bottle; some loose halfpence; nine green gooseberries; a
key. They rolled to Swithin's feet, and, passively obeying his first
instinct, he picked up as many of the articles as he could find, and
handed them to her amid the smiles of the neighbours.
Tabitha was half-dead with humiliation at such an event, happening under
the very eyes of the Bishop on this glorious occasion; she turned pale as
a sheet, and could hardly keep her seat. Fearing she might faint,
Swithin, who had genuinely sympathized, bent over and whispered
encouragingly, 'Don't mind it, Tabitha. Shall I take you out into the
air?' She declined his offer, and presently the sermon came to an end.
Swithin lingered behind the rest of the congregation sufficiently long to
see Lady Constantine, accompanied by her brother, the Bishop, the
Bishop's chaplain, Mr. Torkingham, and several other clergy and ladies,
enter to the grand luncheon by the door which admitted from the
churchyard to the lawn of Welland House; the whole group talking with a
vivacity all the more intense, as it seemed, from the recent two hours'
enforced repression of their social qualities within the adjoining
building.
The young man stood till he was left quite alone in the churchyard, and
then went slowly homeward over the hill, perhaps a trifle depressed at
the impossibility of being near Viviette in this her one day of gaiety,
and joining in the conversation of those who surrounded her.
Not that he felt much jealousy of her situation, as his wife, in
comparison with his own. He had so clearly understood from the beginning
that, in the event of marriage, their outward lives were to run on as
before, that to rebel now would have been unmanly in himself and cruel to
her, by adding to embarrassments that were great enough already. His
momentary doubt was of his own strength to achieve sufficiently high
things to render him, in relation to her, other than a patronized young
favourite, whom she had married at an immense sacrifice of position.