He had thought himself in good time, but he must have loitered more than he had been aware of, as the bell is silent and the porch closed. He enters as quietly as may be, and takes his place near the door. The building strikes damp and chilly, despite the warming presence of the whole English colony, emptied out of the four hotels sacred to Anglo-Saxons, and out of many an ilex-shaded orange-groved campagne besides. The building is quite full, which is, no doubt, the reason why Jim fails to catch any glimpse of the Wilson family throughout the service. He has plenty of time to interrogate with his eye the numerous rows of backs before him, as the sermon is long. Jim had known that it would be so from the moment when the clergyman entered the pulpit with an open Bible—no written sermon—in his hand. The sound of a brogue, piercing, even through the giving out of the text, soon puts him in possession of the further fact that he is in the clutches, and at the mercy, of an entirely uneducated yet curiously fluent Irishman.
Is Elizabeth writhing under the infliction too? Never, in the Moat days, was she very patient under prolonged pulpit eloquence. He can see her with his memory's eye not very covertly reading her hymn-book—can hear her foot tapping. Several people around him now are, not very covertly, reading their hymn-books, but she is not among them. He has no more sight of her than he has of Cecilia; but in neither case—such are the disadvantages of his position—does his failure to see prove the absence of the object he seeks. He is one of the first persons to be out of church when at length set free, and stands just outside the porch while the long stream of worshippers defiles before him. It takes some time to empty itself into the sunshine, and nearly as long before he catches sight of any member of either of the families he is on the look-out for. Of the Le Marchants, indeed, he never catches sight, for the excellent reason that they are not to be caught sight of, not being there. In the case of the Wilsons he is more fortunate, though here, too, a sort of surprise is in store for him. He has involuntarily been scanning, in his search for them, only those of the congregation who are dressed in mourning. The picture that the retina of his eye has kept of Cecilia is of one tear-swollen and crape-swaddled; and though, if he had thought of it, his reason would have told him that, after seven months, she is probably no longer sobbing and sabled, yet even then the impression that he would expect to receive from her would be a grave and a black one. This is why, although he is on the look-out for her, she yet comes upon him at last as a surprise.
"Jim!" cries a voice, pitched a good deal higher than is wont to make itself heard within the precincts of a church—a female voice of delighted surprise and cheerful welcome; "father, here is Jim!"
Burgoyne turns, and sees a lady in a very smart bonnet, full of spring flowers, and with a red en tout cas—for they have now issued into the day's potent beam—shading her rosy face; a lady whose appearance presents about as wide a contrast to the serious and inky figure he had expected to see as it is well possible to imagine.
Cecilia, indeed, is looking, what her maid admiringly pronounced her before sending her forth to triumph, "very dressy." Mr. Wilson is black, certainly—but, then, clergymen always are black—and he still has a band upon his hat; but it is a very narrow one—sorrow nearing its vanishing-point. In answer to his daughter's joyous apostrophe, he answers:
"'Sh, Cecilia! do not talk so loud. How are you, Jim?"
And then the meeting is over—that first meeting which Jim had shrunk from with such inexpressible apprehension—as certain to be so fraught with intolerable emotion; with calls upon him that he would not be able to answer; with baring of incurable wounds. The contrast with the reality is so startling that at first it makes him almost dizzy. Can the showy creature beside him, preening herself under her gay sunshade, be the same overwhelmed, shrunk, tear-drenched Cecilia whom at their last meeting he had folded in so solemn an embrace? Her cheerful voice answers for herself:
"It is so nice to see you again! When did you come? We did not expect you quite so soon; in your last letter you were rather vague as to dates; I can't say that you shine as a correspondent. You will come back to luncheon with us, of course, will not you? déjeûner, as they call it here; I always thought déjeûner meant breakfast. You will come, will not you? Sybilla will be so glad to see you—glad, that is to say, in her dismal way."
She ends with a laugh, which he listens to in a silence that is almost stunned. The sound of her voice, though set to so different a tune from what he had anticipated, has brought back the past with such astonishing vividness to him; her very fleer at Sybilla seems so much a part of the old life that he half turns his head, expecting once more to see Amelia's deprecating face, to hear her peace-making voice put in a plea, as it has done so many hundred times, for the peevish malade imaginaire.
They have been strolling towards the carriages waiting outside, and have now reached one, driven by an indigène, a Moor, dusky as Othello, solemn as Rhadamanthus, and with his serious charms set off by a striped yellow and white jacket and a red sash.