"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.