In one of the upper rooms his eyes were attracted by an old chamber organ, which had once been lent for use in the church. He mentioned his recollection of the same, which led her to say, ‘That reminds me of something. There is to be a confirmation in our parish in the spring, and you once told me that you had never been confirmed. What shocking neglect! Why was it?’
‘I hardly know. The confusion resulting from my father’s death caused it to be forgotten, I suppose.’
‘Now, dear Swithin, you will do this to please me,—be confirmed on the present occasion?’
‘Since I have done without the virtue of it so long, might I not do without it altogether?’
‘No, no!’ she said earnestly. ‘I do wish it, indeed. I am made unhappy when I think you don’t care about such serious matters. Without the Church to cling to, what have we?’
‘Each other. But seriously, I should be inverting the established order of spiritual things; people ought to be confirmed before they are married.’
‘That’s really of minor consequence. Now, don’t think slightingly of what so many good men have laid down as necessary to be done. And, dear Swithin, I somehow feel that a certain levity which has perhaps shown itself in our treatment of the sacrament of marriage—by making a clandestine adventure of what is, after all, a solemn rite—would be well atoned for by a due seriousness in other points of religious observance. This opportunity should therefore not be passed over. I thought of it all last night; and you are a parson’s son, remember, and he would have insisted on it if he had been alive. In short, Swithin, do be a good boy, and observe the Church’s ordinances.’
Lady Constantine, by virtue of her temperament, was necessarily either lover or dévote, and she vibrated so gracefully between these two conditions that nobody who had known the circumstances could have condemned her inconsistencies. To be led into difficulties by those mastering emotions of hers, to aim at escape by turning round and seizing the apparatus of religion—which could only rightly be worked by the very emotions already bestowed elsewhere—it was, after all, but Nature’s well-meaning attempt to preserve the honour of her daughter’s conscience in the trying quandary to which the conditions of sex had given rise. As Viviette could not be confirmed herself, and as Communion Sunday was a long way off, she urged Swithin thus.
‘And the new bishop is such a good man,’ she continued. ‘I used to have a slight acquaintance with him when he was a parish priest.’
‘Very well, dearest. To please you I’ll be confirmed. My grandmother, too, will be delighted, no doubt.’