The morning of the confirmation was come. It was mid-May time, bringing
with it weather not, perhaps, quite so blooming as that assumed to be
natural to the month by the joyous poets of three hundred years ago; but
a very tolerable, well-wearing May, that the average rustic would
willingly have compounded for in lieu of Mays occasionally fairer, but
usually more foul.
Among the larger shrubs and flowers which composed the outworks of the
Welland gardens, the lilac, the laburnum, and the guelder-rose hung out
their respective colours of purple, yellow, and white; whilst within
these, belted round from every disturbing gale, rose the columbine, the
peony, the larkspur, and the Solomon's seal. The animate things that
moved amid this scene of colour were plodding bees, gadding butterflies,
and numerous sauntering young feminine candidates for the impending
confirmation, who, having gaily bedecked themselves for the ceremony,
were enjoying their own appearance by walking about in twos and threes
till it was time to start.
Swithin St. Cleeve, whose preparations were somewhat simpler than those
of the village belles, waited till his grandmother and Hannah had set
out, and then, locking the door, followed towards the distant church.
On reaching the churchyard gate he met Mr. Torkingham, who shook hands with
him in the manner of a man with several irons in the fire, and telling
Swithin where to sit, disappeared to hunt up some candidates who had not
yet made themselves visible.
Casting his eyes round for Viviette, and seeing nothing of her, Swithin
went on to the church porch, and looked in. From the north side of the
nave smiled a host of girls, gaily uniform in dress, age, and a temporary
repression of their natural tendency to 'skip like a hare over the meshes
of good counsel.' Their white muslin dresses, their round white caps,
from beneath whose borders hair-knots and curls of various shades of
brown escaped upon their low shoulders, as if against their will, lighted
up the dark pews and grey stone-work to an unwonted warmth and life.
On the south side were the young men and boys,--heavy, angular, and massive,
as indeed was rather necessary, considering what they would have to bear
at the hands of wind and weather before they returned to that mouldy nave
for the last time.
Over the heads of all these he could see into the chancel to the square
pew on the north side, which was attached to Welland House. There he
discerned Lady Constantine already arrived, her brother Louis sitting by
her side.
Swithin entered and seated himself at the end of a bench, and she, who
had been on the watch, at once showed by subtle signs her consciousness
of the presence of the young man who had reversed the ordained sequence
of the Church services on her account. She appeared in black attire,
though not strictly in mourning, a touch of red in her bonnet setting off
the richness of her complexion without making her gay. Handsomest woman
in the church she decidedly was; and yet a disinterested spectator who
had known all the circumstances would probably have felt that, the future
considered, Swithin's more natural mate would have been one of the muslin-
clad maidens who were to be presented to the Bishop with him that day.