The clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at the
further end, and Swithin and Viviette were left to themselves. The
imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman's forethought is so
assumptive, that the clerk's departure had no sooner doomed them to
inaction than it was borne in upon Lady Constantine's mind that she would
not become the wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, either to-day or on any other
day. Her divinations were continually misleading her, she knew: but a
hitch at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in it.
'Ah,--the marriage is not to be!' she said to herself. 'This is a
fatality.' It was twenty minutes past, and no parson had arrived. Swithin took her
hand.
'If it cannot be to-day, it can be to-morrow,' he whispered.
'I cannot say,' she answered. 'Something tells me _no_.' It was almost impossible that she could know anything of the deterrent
force exercised on Swithin by his dead uncle that morning. Yet her
manner tallied so curiously well with such knowledge that he was struck
by it, and remained silent.
'You have a black tie,' she continued, looking at him.
'Yes,' replied Swithin. 'I bought it on my way here.' 'Why could it not have been less sombre in colour?' 'My great-uncle is dead.' 'You had a great-uncle? You never told me.' 'I never saw him in my life. I have only heard about him since his
death.' He spoke in as quiet and measured a way as he could, but his heart was
sinking. She would go on questioning; he could not tell her an untruth.
She would discover particulars of that great-uncle's provision for him,
which he, Swithin, was throwing away for her sake, and she would refuse
to be his for his own sake. His conclusion at this moment was precisely
what hers had been five minutes sooner: they were never to be husband and
wife.
But she did not continue her questions, for the simplest of all reasons:
hasty footsteps were audible in the entrance, and the parson was seen
coming up the aisle, the clerk behind him wiping the beads of
perspiration from his face. The somewhat sorry clerical specimen shook
hands with them, and entered the vestry; and the clerk came up and opened
the book.
'The poor gentleman's memory is a bit topsy-turvy,' whispered the latter.
'He had got it in his mind that 'twere a funeral, and I found him
wandering about the cemetery a-looking for us. However, all's well as
ends well.' And the clerk wiped his forehead again.