Percy Guest breathed more freely as he stepped into the gloom of the silent church, but was again disconcerted by the beadle in his best gold-braided coat, holding open a green baize door and two pew openers stepping forward apparently bent upon showing him the way up to the chancel.
“Thanks: I’ll just look round,” he said carelessly; but the words did not convey his meaning, and as he walked slowly into one of the side aisles to study tablets and monuments, he could not read a word for thinking that the two pew openers had seen through him.
“What a fool I am!” he muttered. “Of course they know. Even smell me. Wish I hadn’t used that scent.”
An archaeologist could not have taken more apparent interest than he in that tablet covered with lines of all lengths, setting forth the good qualities of Robert Smith, “late of this parish,” but the study was accompanied by furtive glances at a watch during the longest quarter of an hour the young man ever remembered to have spent.
But it ended at last.
“He’ll soon be here now,” he said to himself as, carrying his new hat behind him, he made for another tablet nearer the chancel, while divers whispers behind him told of pews being filled by those who wished to have good places, and so another five minutes passed.
“Time he was here,” thought the early arrival; and summoning his fortitude ready for being stared at and commented upon, he walked quietly toward the chancel, faced round, and waited, staring blankly at the three or four score of faces watching him eagerly.
“Pleasant!” he said to himself. “Must be some of the friends here, but how confoundedly awkward I do feel. I hate these quiet weddings. Company’s good, even if you’re going to be hanged. Why isn’t Stratton here?”
There were fresh arrivals every minute, and Guest gazed anxiously now toward the door, but the arrivals were all female; and save that the clerk or verger was arranging cushions and books up by the communion table, he was alone, and the centre upon which all eyes were fixed.
“I’ve done wrong,” muttered Guest as he mastered a strong desire to look at his watch, which he knew must now be within five minutes of the time. “I ought to have gone back and brought him on. It’s too bad to leave me here like this.”