Haward waited, leaning against a tomb deep graven with a coat of arms and much stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when he entered the building, and passed down the aisle to his own pew, the chiefest in the place. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on either hand,—perhaps he did not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have carried his lantern not merely to find a man, but to show one as well, and a philosopher in a pale gray riding dress, cut after the latest mode, with silver lace and a fall of Mechlin, may be trusted to know the value as well as the vanity of sublunary things.
Of the gathering, which was not large, two thirds, perhaps, were people of condition; and in the country, where occasions for display did not present themselves uncalled, it was highly becoming to worship the Lord in fine clothes. So there were broken rainbows in the tall pews, with a soft waving of fans to and fro in the essenced air, and a low rustle of silk. The men went as fine as the women, and the June sunshine, pouring in upon all this lustre and color, made a flower-bed of the assemblage. Being of the country, it was vastly better behaved than would have been a fashionable London congregation; but it certainly saw no reason why Mr. Marmaduke Haward should not, during the anthem, turn his back upon altar, minister, and clerk, and employ himself in recognizing with a smile and an inclination of his head his friends and acquaintances. They smiled back,—the gentlemen bowing slightly, the ladies making a sketch of a curtsy. All were glad that Fair View house was open once more, and were kindly disposed toward the master thereof.
The eyes of that gentleman were no longer for the gay parterre. Between it and the door, in uncushioned pews or on rude benches, were to be found the plainer sort of Darden's parishioners, and in this territory, that was like a border of sober foliage to the flower-bed in front, he discovered whom he sought.
Her gaze had been upon him since he passed the minister's pew, where she stood between my Lady Squander's ex-waiting-woman and the branded schoolmaster, but now their eyes came full together. She was dressed in some coarse dark stuff, above which rose the brown pillar of her throat and the elusive, singular beauty of her face. There was a flower in her hair, placed as he had placed the rosebuds. A splendor leaped into her eyes, but her cheek did not redden; it was to his face that the color rushed. They had but a moment in which to gaze at each other, for the singing, which to her, at least, had seemed suddenly to swell into a great ascending tide of sound, with somewhere, far away, the silver calling of a trumpet, now came to an end, and with another silken rustle and murmur the congregation sat down.
Haward did not turn again, and the service went drowsily on. Darden was bleared of eye and somewhat thick of voice; the clerk's whine was as sleepy a sound as the buzzing of the bees in and out of window, or the soft, incessant stir of painted fans. A churchwarden in the next pew nodded and nodded, until he nodded his peruke awry, and a child went fast asleep, with its head in its mother's lap. One and all worshiped somewhat languidly, with frequent glances at the hourglass upon the pulpit. They prayed for King George the First, not knowing that he was dead, and for the Prince, not knowing that he was King. The minister preached against Quakers and witchcraft, and shook the rafters with his fulminations. Finally came the benediction and a sigh of relief.
In that country and time there was no unsociable and undignified scurrying homeward after church. Decorous silence prevailed until the house was exchanged for the green and shady churchyard: but then tongues were loosened, and the flower-bed broken into clusters. One must greet one's neighbors; present or be presented to what company might be staying at the various great houses within the parish; talk, laugh, coquet, and ogle; make appointments for business or for pleasure; speak of the last horse-race, the condition of wheat and tobacco, and the news brought in by the Valour, man-of-war, that the King was gone to Hanover. In short, for the nonce, the churchyard became a drawing-room, with the sun for candles, with no painted images of the past and gone upon the walls, but with the dead themselves beneath the floor.
The minister, having questions to settle with clerk and sexton, tarried in the vestry room; but his wife, with Audrey and the schoolmaster, waited for him outside, in the shade of an oak-tree that was just without the pale of the drawing-room. Mistress Deborah, in her tarnished amber satin and ribbons that had outworn their youth, bit her lip and tapped her foot upon the ground. Audrey watched her apprehensively. She knew the signs, and that when they reached home a storm might break that would leave its mark upon her shoulders. The minister's wife was not approved of by the ladies of Fair View parish, but had they seen how wistful was the face of the brown girl with her, they might have turned aside, spoken, and let the storm go by. The girl herself was scarcely noticed. Few had ever heard her story, or, hearing it, had remembered; the careless many thought her an orphan, bound to Darden and his wife,—in effect their servant. If she had beauty, the ladies and gentlemen who saw her, Sunday after Sunday, in the minister's pew, had scarce discovered it. She was too dark, too slim, too shy and strange of look, with her great brown eyes and that startled turn of her head. Their taste was for lilies and roses, and it was not an age that counted shyness a grace.
Mr. Marmaduke Haward was not likely to be accused of diffidence. He had come out of church with the sleepy-headed churchwarden, who was now wide awake and mightily concerned to know what horse Mr. Haward meant to enter for the great race at Mulberry Island, while at the foot of the steps he was seized upon by another portly vestryman, and borne off to be presented to three blooming young ladies, quick to second their papa's invitation home to dinner. Mr. Haward was ready to curse his luck that he was engaged elsewhere; but were not these Graces the children to whom he had used to send sugar-plums from Williamsburgh, years and years ago? He vowed that the payment, which he had never received, he would take now with usury, and proceeded to salute the cheek of each protesting fair. The ladies found him vastly agreeable; old and new friends crowded around him; he put forth his powers and charmed all hearts,—and all the while inwardly cursed the length of way to the gates, and the tardy progress thereto of his friends and neighbors.
But however slow in ebbing, the tide was really set toward home and dinner. Darden, coming out of the vestry room, found the churchyard almost cleared, and the road in a cloud of dust. The greater number of those who came a-horseback were gone, and there had also departed both berlins, the calash, and two chaises. Mr. Haward was handing the three Graces into the coach with the chained coachman, Juba standing by, holding his master's horse. Darden grew something purpler in the face, and, rumbling oaths, went over to the three beneath the oak. "How many spoke to you to-day?" he asked roughly of his wife. "Did he come and speak?"
"No, he didn't!" cried Mistress Deborah tartly. "And all the gentry went by; only Mr. Bray stopped to say that everybody knew of your fight with Mr. Bailey at the French ordinary, and that the Commissary had sent for Bailey, and was going to suspend him. I wish to Heaven I knew why I married you, to be looked down upon by every Jill, when I might have had his Lordship's own man! Of all the fools"—