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.