When the hymn was finished, the blessing spoken, and Mr. Glenning gone into the vestry behind the organ, this traditional distinction between the classes was emphasized by the behaviour of the little congregation. Nobody of the meaner sort moved towards the sunlit doorway until Jim, looking extraordinarily embarrassed, had marched down the aisle and had passed out into the autumnal scurry of falling leaves, followed closely by Mrs. and Miss Darling, Mr. Merrivall of Rose Cottage, Dr. and Mrs. Spooner, and old Miss Proudfoote of the Grange; and, when these were gone, way had still to be made for young Farmer Hopkins and his wife, Farmer Cartwright and his idiot son, and the other families of local standing.
Outside, in the keen October air, Jim paused under the ancient ilex-tree, and turned to bid good-morning to the Darlings. Dolly had interested and attracted him during these three months since he took up his residence at the manor; but he had been so much occupied in settling himself into his new home that he had not given her all the attention he felt was her due, now that the shaft of sunlight in the church had revealed her to him in the palpable charm of her maidenhood.
He greeted her, therefore, with cheery ardour, as though she were a new discovery, and walked beside her and her mother down the path which wound between the moss-covered gravestones, and out into the lane under the rustling elms. A great change had come over him since he had returned to England: he had become in some ways more normal, and the quiet, simple life of an English village had, as it were, taken much of the exotic colour out of his thoughts. In the romantic East he had looked for romance, but here in the domestic West his mind had turned towards domesticity. His poetic imagination was temporarily blunted; and whereas in Alexandria he had responded eagerly to the enchantments of hour and place, in Eversfield he was readily satisfied with a more rational aspect of life.
He turned to the mother. “What a little picture your daughter looked, singing that hymn in the sunlight,” he remarked, with enthusiasm.
Mrs. Darling sighed. Twenty years ago she, too, had been a little picture; but, so she thought to herself, she had had more character in her face than Dolly, and less softness. Outwardly her little girl took after that scamp of a father of hers, whose innocent blue eyes and boyish face had won him more frequent successes than his continence could handle.
“Yes,” she replied, evasively, “that is Dolly’s favourite hymn.... She has a nice little voice.”
“Delightful!” said Jim. “I didn’t know hymns could sound so beautiful!”
Dolly looked at him as our great-grandmothers must have looked when they said, “Fie!”
“Aren’t you a regular church-goer?” she asked, gazing up at him with childlike eyes.
“Can’t say I am,” he answered, with a quick laugh. “I’m new to all this, you know. I’ve knocked about all over the world since I left school. But, I say!—that family pew, and the respectful villagers!—they give me the hump!”