A vagrant wife

The country town of Beckham was astir. It was a cloudy, changeful May afternoon, and the white-capped country lasses who were alighting from all sorts of strange vehicles at the churchyard gate had to hold up their clean cotton frocks with what untutored grace they might, as they trod the worn, wet flagstones that led up to the church door. Three or four hundred lads and lasses of Beckham and the neighborhood were collecting at the sound of the church-bells for the bishop to lay his hands on their empty heads and confirm them in the faith in which they were baptized.

The big bare building filled quickly, the vicar on Sunday never gathered such a congregation. The candidates filled the two middle aisles, the girls occupying the whole of one and the front benches of the other, the boys the rest. The latter looked shame-faced, the former self-conscious but content.

Long before the bishop’s appearance the church was full in every part, for it was a pretty sight even to those who had no personal interest in any of the candidates.

When from time to time the sun burst through the swift-flying clouds and shone through the long windows full upon the young faces crowned with the demure little white caps, women whispered to each other softly that it looked like heaven. There were thoughts not unworthy of this simile in some of the young minds, especially in those of the girls; others, while trying to fix their thoughts--as they had been told to do--upon the Catechism, could not help wishing they could renounce the pomps and vanities in white cashmere with pretty frills of lace at throat and wrists, like Miss Mainwaring of Garstone Vicarage, who looked so like a picture of some fair-haired saint, as she sat with her starry blue eyes fixed steadily on the communion table in front of her, that it was impossible to guess that she was thinking more of her new ivory-bound church-service than of the ceremony she was about to go through. She and the girl by her side attracted more attention than any others. There were a few of their class present, but of types as commonplace and faces as vacuous as those of the village-girls.

Betty Mainwaring was sixteen. Her fresh young face was sweet and silly, charming by the look of modest purity which passed so easily under the tulle cap and veil for the expression of pious devotion; but in truth Betty’s very innocence, and the fact that she had passed her whole life in an atmosphere of the simplest, strictest religion, had made it impossible for her to concentrate much earnest thought upon this important step in the Christian life. She had read through the devotional works prescribed for her as attentively as she could, and had accepted all the formulas and dogmas of the Church with the unshrinking faith of the most complete ignorance of their meaning. She had been taught that confirmation is one of the most serious events of life, and she believed it and let the fact rest, while her innocent thoughts wandered to a consideration of the backs of the row of girls in front of her, and to the reflection how strange it seemed to be confirmed with one’s own governess.

For the girl beside her, with the passionate dark eyes and set, serious face, only eighteen herself, and already carrying on her young shoulders the responsibility of directing the minds of girls of her own age, was Miss Lane, who taught “advanced” English, French, German, Italian, music, and singing to the two grown-up Misses Mainwaring, and the earlier stages of the same to their two younger sisters and their seven-year-old brother. To her life was a serious hard-working affair enough, and her tardy confirmation an event of quite desperate importance, involving much doubt and anxious self-examining. She had even thought of asking the vicar, her pupils’ father, for a private interview, of laying bare the bewildered state of her mind, and of asking him whether he thought her fit for confirmation. The papers on the subject which he had given her to read had proved but dry bones to the eager, earnest girl; but she had a strong conviction that confession would procure little more. The Reverend John Mainwaring’s religion was not of the hysterical, but of the independent sort; and the girl felt that all he could do would be to throw her back on prayer and her own conscience for an answer to her doubts. What was certain was that he would unhesitatingly have pronounced the conscientious little worker, striving hard to live up to an ideal standard of excellence in her dull profession, as fitter for confirmation than almost any member of his flock.

So she sat by her pupil’s side, with downcast eyes and mind fixed on the service she was about to hear, curiously conscious at the same time--being keenly alive to outward things and not without a young girl’s vanity--of the interest her pretty, modest appearance was exciting.

But, just before the entrance of the bishop, three persons came in to whom all eyes turned at once, and there was almost a murmur of admiration even in the hush of the sacred building at sight of the girl who, at the foot of the middle aisle, stopped for her mother and brother to take off the long white mantle which was wrapped round her, and then followed the Reverend John Mainwaring up the aisle to the seat he had kept for her in the pew with his own daughter and the governess, Annie Lane.

Lilian Braithwaite came of a handsome race. Tall, with a well-molded figure, gray eyes, brown hair, and complexion rich enough in its tints to promise something more lovely still when a season or two in town should have toned down its coloring, she gave promise of beauty distinguished enough to hold its own amongst the fairest women she might meet. The plain white cashmere which looked so simple on Betty Mainwaring had quite a different effect upon her handsome figure, and the tulle headdress, half cap, half veil, which she wore in common with the other candidates of her own class, had as much of the veil and as little of the cap about it as possible. Already, at seventeen, she walked through the crowd of admiring faces with a bearing which showed more of the dignity of an acknowledged beauty than of the modesty of a young girl. She smiled at the young governess good-humoredly enough, however, and would even have entered into a whispered conversation, with scornfully critical remarks upon the rest of the candidates, if Miss Lane had not received her overtures shyly and with all the primness of her profession. Miss Braithwaite, who was not easily repulsed, gave a little amused shrug of the shoulders, and said, in a loud whisper:

“Are you afraid the vicar is looking at you?”

And then she met his rather uneasy glance in her own direction with a bland smile.

It had been rather a difficult matter for him to bring himself to believe that Miss Braithwaite was in all respects fit for confirmation; but, as no scruple had ever entered her own head, and as, moreover, she was technically prepared for the rite, being able to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Catechism with perfect fluency, he had no choice but to bring her to the bishop with the rest of the candidates.

When the service was over, and she rejoined her mother and brother, a young man with a rather handsome face, but deformed and resting on crutches, came up to her and stood silently by while her brother wrapped her again in the long, white mantle she had come in.

“You here, Stephen! How did you come? The doctor said you were not to go out until your cough was better,” said Miss Braithwaite, in a voice scarcely as low as it ought to have been.

“I wanted to see you--all in white like a bride, making all the other girls look ugly and clumsy,” whispered the cripple, with his face flushing; “so I got Thompson to get the pony-carriage ready, and followed you as fast as I could.”

Stephen Lawler’s contempt for the appearance of the rest of the candidates was not shared by his cousin, Harry Braithwaite, who turned to watch one of the girls admiringly, and whispered:

“I say, Lilian, how awfully fetching little ‘Miss Prim’ looks in that get-up!” “Little Miss Prim” was Annie Lane, the governess.

“Yes, she is a pretty girl,” answered his sister, who was handsome enough to be able to afford to acknowledge beauty in others.

Meanwhile the crowd was surging toward the door, and Harry Braithwaite kept his mother and sister as near the Vicarage party as he could. At the church door they discovered that a heavy shower of rain was coming down, and Mrs. Mainwaring was lamenting piteously that her husband, who had come on the box of the brougham beside the coachman, would lose his voice entirely if he were to return in the same way through the rain. Harry Braithwaite whispered a few words into his mother’s ear, and, raising his hat, stepped forward and placed a seat in their own carriage at the disposal of the vicar’s wife, in his mother’s name.

“If Miss Lane will come with us, there will be lots of room in the brougham for you and your two daughters and the vicar too,” said he.

And before Mrs. Mainwaring could say more than “Oh, thank you, but,” he had severed Miss Lane from her pupils and was escorting her under an umbrella to the big Braithwaite barouche.

Mrs. Mainwaring looked uneasy; her two daughters, Joan and Betty, looked displeased.

“I am sure papa will not approve of that arrangement, mamma,” said Joan, the eldest of the family, who had come to see her sister confirmed.

“Well, what could I do, Joan? He meant to be good-natured; and it would not do for the wife of the vicar of the parish to show any prejudice. Of course I should not have allowed you or Betty to go, but with Miss Lane it is different; she can take care of herself.”

“I should think so!” said Joan, sharply.

And then the vicar came up, and his wife hurried him into the brougham, saying there was plenty of room; and it was not until they were on the point of stating that she confessed, in answer to his inquiries, that Miss Lane was going home in the Braithwaites’ carriage.

“That was Master Harry’s doing, I suppose?” said the vicar, with a very grave face.

“It was all done so quickly, it was impossible for me to stop him,” said his wife, deprecatingly. “You know you would not have minded if it had been anybody else’s carriage; and, if they are rather a wild set, we cannot reform them by holding aloof from them. And it is not as if I had let one of the girls go,” said she, hurriedly, lowering her voice.

“But you have let ‘one of the girls’ go. Miss Lane is only a few months older than Joan,” he answered, more gravely than ever.

And she, being a wise woman, dropped the conversation, to take it up again when they two should be alone together.

This little incident and the discussion it had caused disturbed the peace of all the occupants of the carriage. The vicar was annoyed that a member of his household should be thrown into such very uncongenial and perhaps dangerous society on the very day of her confirmation. His wife was uneasy on account of his annoyance. Joan and Betty were somewhat agitated, too; but they gave no vent to their feelings except in a little soft-toned wrangle about the amount of space each was authorized to take on the rather small front seat of the brougham. When the Braithwaite carriage passed them they became suddenly silent, both gazing eagerly out until it had passed out of sight. They had time to see the portly Lady Braithwaite and her handsome daughter leaning back comfortably on one seat, while Miss Lane and Harry Braithwaite sat opposite; he was talking to her, and did not notice the brougham.