Lady Constantine flung down the old-fashioned lacework, whose beauties she had been pointing out to Swithin, and exclaimed, ‘Who can it be? Not Louis, surely?’
They listened. An arrival was such a phenomenon at this unfrequented mansion, and particularly a late arrival, that no servant was on the alert to respond to the call; and the visitor rang again, more loudly than before. Sounds of the tardy opening and shutting of a passage-door from the kitchen quarter then reached their ears, and Viviette went into the corridor to hearken more attentively. In a few minutes she returned to the wardrobe-room in which she had left Swithin.
‘Yes; it is my brother!’ she said with difficult composure. ‘I just caught his voice. He has no doubt come back from Paris to stay. This is a rather vexatious, indolent way he has, never to write to prepare me!’
‘I can easily go away,’ said Swithin.
By this time, however, her brother had been shown into the house, and the footsteps of the page were audible, coming in search of Lady Constantine.
‘If you will wait there a moment,’ she said, directing St. Cleeve into a bedchamber which adjoined; ‘you will be quite safe from interruption, and I will quickly come back.’ Taking the light she left him.
Swithin waited in darkness. Not more than ten minutes had passed when a whisper in her voice came through the keyhole. He opened the door.
‘Yes; he is come to stay!’ she said. ‘He is at supper now.’
‘Very well; don’t be flurried, dearest. Shall I stay too, as we planned?’
‘O, Swithin, I fear not!’ she replied anxiously. ‘You see how it is. To-night we have broken the arrangement that you should never come here; and this is the result. Will it offend you if—I ask you to leave?’
‘Not in the least. Upon the whole, I prefer the comfort of my little cabin and homestead to the gauntness and alarms of this place.’
‘There, now, I fear you are offended!’ she said, a tear collecting in her eye. ‘I wish I was going back with you to the cabin! How happy we were, those three days of our stay there! But it is better, perhaps, just now, that you should leave me. Yes, these rooms are oppressive. They require a large household to make them cheerful. . . . Yet, Swithin,’ she added, after reflection, ‘I will not request you to go. Do as you think best. I will light a night-light, and leave you here to consider. For myself, I must go downstairs to my brother at once, or he’ll wonder what I am doing.’
She kindled the little light, and again retreated, closing the door upon him.
Swithin stood and waited some time; till he considered that upon the whole it would be preferable to leave. With this intention he emerged and went softly along the dark passage towards the extreme end, where there was a little crooked staircase that would conduct him down to a disused side door. Descending this stair he duly arrived at the other side of the house, facing the quarter whence the wind blew, and here he was surprised to catch the noise of rain beating against the windows. It was a state of weather which fully accounted for the visitor’s impatient ringing.
St. Cleeve was in a minor kind of dilemma. The rain reminded him that his hat and great-coat had been left downstairs, in the front part of the house; and though he might have gone home without either in ordinary weather it was not a pleasant feat in the pelting winter rain. Retracing his steps to Viviette’s room he took the light, and opened a closet-door that he had seen ajar on his way down. Within the closet hung various articles of apparel, upholstery lumber of all kinds filling the back part. Swithin thought he might find here a cloak of hers to throw round him, but finally took down from a peg a more suitable garment, the only one of the sort that was there. It was an old moth-eaten great-coat, heavily trimmed with fur; and in removing it a companion cap of sealskin was disclosed.
‘Whose can they be?’ he thought, and a gloomy answer suggested itself. ‘Pooh,’ he then said (summoning the scientific side of his nature), ‘matter is matter, and mental association only a delusion.’ Putting on the garments he returned the light to Lady Constantine’s bedroom, and again prepared to depart as before.
Scarcely, however, had he regained the corridor a second time, when he heard a light footstep—seemingly Viviette’s—again on the front landing. Wondering what she wanted with him further he waited, taking the precaution to step into the closet till sure it was she.
The figure came onward, bent to the keyhole of the bedroom door, and whispered (supposing him still inside), ‘Swithin, on second thoughts I think you may stay with safety.’
Having no further doubt of her personality he came out with thoughtless abruptness from the closet behind her, and looking round suddenly she beheld his shadowy fur-clad outline. At once she raised her hands in horror, as if to protect herself from him; she uttered a shriek, and turned shudderingly to the wall, covering her face.
Swithin would have picked her up in a moment, but by this time he could hear footsteps rushing upstairs, in response to her cry. In consternation, and with a view of not compromising her, he effected his retreat as fast as possible, reaching the bend of the corridor just as her brother Louis appeared with a light at the other extremity.
‘What’s the matter, for heaven’s sake, Viviette?’ said Louis.
‘My husband!’ she involuntarily exclaimed.
‘What nonsense!’
‘O yes, it is nonsense,’ she added, with an effort. ‘It was nothing.’
‘But what was the cause of your cry?’
She had by this time recovered her reason and judgment. ‘O, it was a trick of the imagination,’ she said, with a faint laugh. ‘I live so much alone that I get superstitious—and—I thought for the moment I saw an apparition.’
‘Of your late husband?’
‘Yes. But it was nothing; it was the outline of the—tall clock and the chair behind. Would you mind going down, and leaving me to go into my room for a moment?’
She entered the bedroom, and her brother went downstairs. Swithin thought it best to leave well alone, and going noiselessly out of the house plodded through the rain homeward. It was plain that agitations of one sort and another had so weakened Viviette’s nerves as to lay her open to every impression. That the clothes he had borrowed were some cast-off garments of the late Sir Blount had occurred to St. Cleeve in taking them; but in the moment of returning to her side he had forgotten this, and the shape they gave to his figure had obviously been a reminder of too sudden a sort for her. Musing thus he walked along as if he were still, as before, the lonely student, dissociated from all mankind, and with no shadow of right or interest in Welland House or its mistress.
The great-coat and cap were unpleasant companions; but Swithin having been reared, or having reared himself, in the scientific school of thought, would not give way to his sense of their weirdness. To do so would have been treason to his own beliefs and aims.
When nearly home, at a point where his track converged on another path, there approached him from the latter a group of indistinct forms. The tones of their speech revealed them to be Hezzy Biles, Nat Chapman, Fry, and other labourers. Swithin was about to say a word to them, till recollecting his disguise he deemed it advisable to hold his tongue, lest his attire should tell a too dangerous tale as to where he had come from. By degrees they drew closer, their walk being in the same direction.
‘Good-night, strainger,’ said Nat.
The stranger did not reply.
All of them paced on abreast of him, and he could perceive in the gloom that their faces were turned inquiringly upon his form. Then a whisper passed from one to another of them; then Chapman, who was the boldest, dropped immediately behind his heels, and followed there for some distance, taking close observations of his outline, after which the men grouped again and whispered. Thinking it best to let them pass on Swithin slackened his pace, and they went ahead of him, apparently without much reluctance.
There was no doubt that they had been impressed by the clothes he wore; and having no wish to provoke similar comments from his grandmother and Hannah, Swithin took the precaution, on arriving at Welland Bottom, to enter the homestead by the outhouse. Here he deposited the cap and coat in secure hiding, afterwards going round to the front and opening the door in the usual way.
In the entry he met Hannah, who said—
‘Only to hear what have been seed to-night, Mr. Swithin! The work-folk have dropped in to tell us!’
In the kitchen were the men who had outstripped him on the road. Their countenances, instead of wearing the usual knotty irregularities, had a smoothed-out expression of blank concern. Swithin’s entrance was unobtrusive and quiet, as if he had merely come down from his study upstairs, and they only noticed him by enlarging their gaze, so as to include him in the audience.
‘We was in a deep talk at the moment,’ continued Blore, ‘and Natty had just brought up that story about old Jeremiah Paddock’s crossing the park one night at one o’clock in the morning, and seeing Sir Blount a-shutting my lady out-o’-doors; and we was saying that it seemed a true return that he should perish in a foreign land; when we happened to look up, and there was Sir Blount a-walking along.’
‘Did it overtake you, or did you overtake it?’ whispered Hannah sepulchrally.
‘I don’t say ’twasit,’ returned Sammy. ‘God forbid that I should drag in a resurrection word about what perhaps was still solid manhood, and has to die! But he, or it, closed in upon us, as ’twere.’
‘Yes, closed in upon us!’ said Haymoss.
‘And I said “Good-night, strainger,”’ added Chapman.
‘Yes, “Good-night, strainger,”—that wez yer words, Natty. I support ye in it.’
‘And then he closed in upon us still more.’
‘We closed in upon he, rather,’ said Chapman.
‘Well, well; ’tis the same thing in such matters! And the form was Sir Blount’s. My nostrils told me, for—there, ’a smelled. Yes, I could smell’n, being to leeward.’
‘Lord, lord, what unwholesome scandal’s this about the ghost of a respectable gentleman?’ said Mrs. Martin, who had entered from the sitting-room.
‘Now, wait, ma’am. I don’t say ’twere a low smell, mind ye. ’Twere a high smell, a sort of gamey flaviour, calling to mind venison and hare, just as you’d expect of a great squire,—not like a poor man’s ’natomy, at all; and that was what strengthened my faith that ’twas Sir Blount.’
(‘The skins that old coat was made of,’ ruminated Swithin.)
‘Well, well; I’ve not held out against the figure o’ starvation these five-and-twenty year, on nine shillings a week, to be afeard of a walking vapour, sweet or savoury,’ said Hezzy. ‘So here’s home-along.’
‘Bide a bit longer, and I’m going too,’ continued Fry. ‘Well, when I found ’twas Sir Blount my spet dried up within my mouth; for neither hedge nor bush were there for refuge against any foul spring ’a might have made at us.’
‘’Twas very curious; but we had likewise a-mentioned his name just afore, in talking of the confirmation that’s shortly coming on,’ said Hezzy.
‘Is there soon to be a confirmation?’
‘Yes. In this parish—the first time in Welland church for twenty years. As I say, I had told ’em that he was confirmed the same year that I went up to have it done, as I have very good cause to mind. When we went to be examined, the pa’son said to me, “Rehearse the articles of thy belief.” Mr. Blount (as he was then) was nighest me, and he whispered, “Women and wine.” “Women and wine,” says I to the pa’son: and for that I was sent back till next confirmation, Sir Blount never owning that he was the rascal.’
‘Confirmation was a sight different at that time,’ mused Biles. ‘The Bishops didn’t lay it on so strong then as they do now. Now-a-days, yer Bishop gies both hands to every Jack-rag and Tom-straw that drops the knee afore him; but ’twas six chaps to one blessing when we was boys. The Bishop o’ that time would stretch out his palms and run his fingers over our row of crowns as off-hand as a bank gentleman telling money. The great lords of the Church in them days wasn’t particular to a soul or two more or less; and, for my part, I think living was easier for ’t.’
‘The new Bishop, I hear, is a bachelor-man; or a widow gentleman is it?’ asked Mrs. Martin.
‘Bachelor, I believe, ma’am. Mr. San Cleeve, making so bold, you’ve never faced him yet, I think?’
Mrs. Martin shook her head.
‘No; it was a piece of neglect. I hardly know how it happened,’ she said.
‘I am going to, this time,’ said Swithin, and turned the chat to other matters.
Swithin could not sleep that night for thinking of his Viviette. Nothing told so significantly of the conduct of her first husband towards the poor lady as the abiding dread of him which was revealed in her by any sudden revival of his image or memory. But for that consideration her almost childlike terror at Swithin’s inadvertent disguise would have been ludicrous.
He waited anxiously through several following days for an opportunity of seeing her, but none was afforded. Her brother’s presence in the house sufficiently accounted for this. At length he ventured to write a note, requesting her to signal to him in a way she had done once or twice before,—by pulling down a blind in a particular window of the house, one of the few visible from the top of the Rings-Hill column; this to be done on any evening when she could see him after dinner on the terrace.
When he had levelled the glass at that window for five successive nights he beheld the blind in the position suggested. Three hours later, quite in the dusk, he repaired to the place of appointment.
‘My brother is away this evening,’ she explained, ‘and that’s why I can come out. He is only gone for a few hours, nor is he likely to go for longer just yet. He keeps himself a good deal in my company, which has made it unsafe for me to venture near you.’
‘Has he any suspicion?’
‘None, apparently. But he rather depresses me.’
‘How, Viviette?’ Swithin feared, from her manner, that this was something serious.
‘I would rather not tell.’
‘But—Well, never mind.’
‘Yes, Swithin, I will tell you. There should be no secrets between us. He urges upon me the necessity of marrying, day after day.’
‘For money and position, of course.’
‘Yes. But I take no notice. I let him go on.’
‘Really, this is sad!’ said the young man. ‘I must work harder than ever, or you will never be able to own me.’
‘O yes, in good time!’ she cheeringly replied.
‘I shall be very glad to have you always near me. I felt the gloom of our position keenly when I was obliged to disappear that night, without assuring you it was only I who stood there. Why were you so frightened at those old clothes I borrowed?’
‘Don’t ask,—don’t ask!’ she said, burying her face on his shoulder. ‘I don’t want to speak of that. There was something so ghastly and so uncanny in your putting on such garments that I wish you had been more thoughtful, and had left them alone.’
He assured her that he did not stop to consider whose they were. ‘By the way, they must be sent back,’ he said.
‘No; I never wish to see them again! I cannot help feeling that your putting them on was ominous.’
‘Nothing is ominous in serene philosophy,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Things are either causes, or they are not causes. When can you see me again?’
In such wise the hour passed away. The evening was typical of others which followed it at irregular intervals through the winter. And during the intenser months of the season frequent falls of snow lengthened, even more than other difficulties had done, the periods of isolation between the pair. Swithin adhered with all the more strictness to the letter of his promise not to intrude into the house, from his sense of her powerlessness to compel him to keep out should he choose to rebel. A student of the greatest forces in nature, he had, like many others of his sort, no personal force to speak of in a social point of view, mainly because he took no interest in human ranks and formulas; and hence he was as docile as a child in her hands wherever matters of that kind were concerned.
Her brother wintered at Welland; but whether because his experience of tropic climes had unfitted him for the brumal rigours of Britain, or for some other reason, he seldom showed himself out of doors, and Swithin caught but passing glimpses of him. Now and then Viviette’s impulsive affection would overcome her sense of risk, and she would press Swithin to call on her at all costs. This he would by no means do. It was obvious to his more logical mind that the secrecy to which they had bound themselves must be kept in its fulness, or might as well be abandoned altogether.
He was now sadly exercised on the subject of his uncle’s will. There had as yet been no pressing reasons for a full and candid reply to the solicitor who had communicated with him, owing to the fact that the payments were not to begin till Swithin was one-and-twenty; but time was going on, and something definite would have to be done soon. To own to his marriage and consequent disqualification for the bequest was easy in itself; but it involved telling at least one man what both Viviette and himself had great reluctance in telling anybody. Moreover he wished Viviette to know nothing of his loss in making her his wife. All he could think of doing for the present was to write a postponing letter to his uncle’s lawyer, and wait events.
The one comfort of this dreary winter-time was his perception of a returning ability to work with the regularity and much of the spirit of earlier days.
* * * * *
One bright night in April there was an eclipse of the moon, and Mr. Torkingham, by arrangement, brought to the observatory several labouring men and boys, to whom he had promised a sight of the phenomenon through the telescope. The coming confirmation, fixed for May, was again talked of; and St. Cleeve learnt from the parson that the Bishop had arranged to stay the night at the vicarage, and was to be invited to a grand luncheon at Welland House immediately after the ordinance.
This seemed like a going back into life again as regarded the mistress of that house; and St. Cleeve was a little surprised that, in his communications with Viviette, she had mentioned no such probability. The next day he walked round the mansion, wondering how in its present state any entertainment could be given therein.
He found that the shutters had been opened, which had restored an unexpected liveliness to the aspect of the windows. Two men were putting a chimney-pot on one of the chimney-stacks, and two more were scraping green mould from the front wall. He made no inquiries on that occasion. Three days later he strolled thitherward again. Now a great cleaning of window-panes was going on, Hezzy Biles and Sammy Blore being the operators, for which purpose their services must have been borrowed from the neighbouring farmer. Hezzy dashed water at the glass with a force that threatened to break it in, the broad face of Sammy being discernible inside, smiling at the onset. In addition to these, Anthony Green and another were weeding the gravel walks, and putting fresh plants into the flower-beds. Neither of these reasonable operations was a great undertaking, singly looked at; but the life Viviette had latterly led and the mood in which she had hitherto regarded the premises, rendered it somewhat significant. Swithin, however, was rather curious than concerned at the proceedings, and returned to his tower with feelings of interest not entirely confined to the worlds overhead.
Lady Constantine may or may not have seen him from the house; but the same evening, which was fine and dry, while he was occupying himself in the observatory with cleaning the eye-pieces of the equatorial, skull-cap on head, observing-jacket on, and in other ways primed for sweeping, the customary stealthy step on the winding staircase brought her form in due course into the rays of the bull’s-eye lantern. The meeting was all the more pleasant to him from being unexpected, and he at once lit up a larger lamp in honour of the occasion.
‘It is but a hasty visit,’ she said when, after putting up her mouth to be kissed, she had seated herself in the low chair used for observations, panting a little with the labour of ascent. ‘But I hope to be able to come more freely soon. My brother is still living on with me. Yes, he is going to stay until the confirmation is over. After the confirmation he will certainly leave. So good it is of you, dear, to please me by agreeing to the ceremony. The Bishop, you know, is going to lunch with us. It is a wonder he has promised to come, for he is a man averse to society, and mostly keeps entirely with the clergy on these confirmation tours, or circuits, or whatever they call them. But Mr. Torkingham’s house is so very small, and mine is so close at hand, that this arrangement to relieve him of the fuss of one meal, at least, naturally suggested itself; and the Bishop has fallen in with it very readily. How are you getting on with your observations? Have you not wanted me dreadfully, to write down notes?’
‘Well, I have been obliged to do without you, whether or no. See here,—how much I have done.’ And he showed her a book ruled in columns, headed ‘Object,’ ‘Right Ascension,’ ‘Declination,’ ‘Features,’ ‘Remarks,’ and so on.
She looked over this and other things, but her mind speedily winged its way back to the confirmation. ‘It is so new to me,’ she said, ‘to have persons coming to the house, that I feel rather anxious. I hope the luncheon will be a success.’
‘You know the Bishop?’ said Swithin.
‘I have not seen him for many years. I knew him when I was quite a girl, and he held the little living of Puddle-sub-Mixen, near us; but after that time, and ever since I have lived here, I have seen nothing of him. There has been no confirmation in this village, they say, for twenty years. The other bishop used to make the young men and women go to Warborne; he wouldn’t take the trouble to come to such an out-of-the-way parish as ours.’
‘This cleaning and preparation that I observe going on must be rather a tax upon you?’
‘My brother Louis sees to it, and, what is more, bears the expense.’
‘Your brother?’ said Swithin, with surprise.
‘Well, he insisted on doing so,’ she replied, in a hesitating, despondent tone. ‘He has been active in the whole matter, and was the first to suggest the invitation. I should not have thought of it.’
‘Well, I will hold aloof till it is all over.’
‘Thanks, dearest, for your considerateness. I wish it was not still advisable! But I shall see you on the day, and watch my own philosopher all through the service from the corner of my pew! . . . I hope you are well prepared for the rite, Swithin?’ she added, turning tenderly to him. ‘It would perhaps be advisable for you to give up this astronomy till the confirmation is over, in order to devote your attention exclusively to that more serious matter.’
‘More serious! Well, I will do the best I can. I am sorry to see that you are less interested in astronomy than you used to be, Viviette.’
‘No; it is only that these preparations for the Bishop unsettle my mind from study. Now put on your other coat and hat, and come with me a little way.’
The morning of the confirmation was come. It was mid-May time, bringing with it weather not, perhaps, quite so blooming as that assumed to be natural to the month by the joyous poets of three hundred years ago; but a very tolerable, well-wearing May, that the average rustic would willingly have compounded for in lieu of Mays occasionally fairer, but usually more foul.
Among the larger shrubs and flowers which composed the outworks of the Welland gardens, the lilac, the laburnum, and the guelder-rose hung out their respective colours of purple, yellow, and white; whilst within these, belted round from every disturbing gale, rose the columbine, the peony, the larkspur, and the Solomon’s seal. The animate things that moved amid this scene of colour were plodding bees, gadding butterflies, and numerous sauntering young feminine candidates for the impending confirmation, who, having gaily bedecked themselves for the ceremony, were enjoying their own appearance by walking about in twos and threes till it was time to start.
Swithin St. Cleeve, whose preparations were somewhat simpler than those of the village belles, waited till his grandmother and Hannah had set out, and then, locking the door, followed towards the distant church. On reaching the churchyard gate he met Mr. Torkingham, who shook hands with him in the manner of a man with several irons in the fire, and telling Swithin where to sit, disappeared to hunt up some candidates who had not yet made themselves visible.
Casting his eyes round for Viviette, and seeing nothing of her, Swithin went on to the church porch, and looked in. From the north side of the nave smiled a host of girls, gaily uniform in dress, age, and a temporary repression of their natural tendency to ‘skip like a hare over the meshes of good counsel.’ Their white muslin dresses, their round white caps, from beneath whose borders hair-knots and curls of various shades of brown escaped upon their low shoulders, as if against their will, lighted up the dark pews and grey stone-work to an unwonted warmth and life. On the south side were the young men and boys,—heavy, angular, and massive, as indeed was rather necessary, considering what they would have to bear at the hands of wind and weather before they returned to that mouldy nave for the last time.
Over the heads of all these he could see into the chancel to the square pew on the north side, which was attached to Welland House. There he discerned Lady Constantine already arrived, her brother Louis sitting by her side.
Swithin entered and seated himself at the end of a bench, and she, who had been on the watch, at once showed by subtle signs her consciousness of the presence of the young man who had reversed the ordained sequence of the Church services on her account. She appeared in black attire, though not strictly in mourning, a touch of red in her bonnet setting off the richness of her complexion without making her gay. Handsomest woman in the church she decidedly was; and yet a disinterested spectator who had known all the circumstances would probably have felt that, the future considered, Swithin’s more natural mate would have been one of the muslin-clad maidens who were to be presented to the Bishop with him that day.
When the Bishop had arrived and gone into the chancel, and blown his nose, the congregation were sufficiently impressed by his presence to leave off looking at one another.
The Right Reverend Cuthbert Helmsdale, D.D., ninety-fourth occupant of the episcopal throne of the diocese, revealed himself to be a personage of dark complexion, whose darkness was thrown still further into prominence by the lawn protuberances that now rose upon his two shoulders like the Eastern and Western hemispheres. In stature he seemed to be tall and imposing, but something of this aspect may have been derived from his robes.
The service was, as usual, of a length which severely tried the tarrying powers of the young people assembled; and it was not till the youth of all the other parishes had gone up that the turn came for the Welland bevy. Swithin and some older ones were nearly the last. When, at the heels of Mr. Torkingham, he passed Lady Constantine’s pew, he lifted his eyes from the red lining of that gentleman’s hood sufficiently high to catch hers. She was abstracted, tearful, regarding him with all the rapt mingling of religion, love, fervour, and hope which such women can feel at such times, and which men know nothing of. How fervidly she watched the Bishop place his hand on her beloved youth’s head; how she saw the great episcopal ring glistening in the sun among Swithin’s brown curls; how she waited to hear if Dr. Helmsdale uttered the form ‘this thy child’ which he used for the younger ones, or ‘this thy servant’ which he used for those older; and how, when he said, ‘this thychild,’ she felt a prick of conscience, like a person who had entrapped an innocent youth into marriage for her own gratification, till she remembered that she had raised his social position thereby,—all this could only have been told in its entirety by herself.
As for Swithin, he felt ashamed of his own utter lack of the high enthusiasm which beamed so eloquently from her eyes. When he passed her again, on the return journey from the Bishop to his seat, her face was warm with a blush which her brother might have observed had he regarded her.
Whether he had observed it or not, as soon as St. Cleeve had sat himself down again Louis Glanville turned and looked hard at the young astronomer. This was the first time that St. Cleeve and Viviette’s brother had been face to face in a distinct light, their first meeting having occurred in the dusk of a railway-station. Swithin was not in the habit of noticing people’s features; he scarcely ever observed any detail of physiognomy in his friends, a generalization from their whole aspect forming his idea of them; and he now only noted a young man of perhaps thirty, who lolled a good deal, and in whose small dark eyes seemed to be concentrated the activity that the rest of his frame decidedly lacked. This gentleman’s eyes were henceforward, to the end of the service, continually fixed upon Swithin; but as this was their natural direction, from the position of his seat, there was no great strangeness in the circumstance.
Swithin wanted to say to Viviette, ‘Now I hope you are pleased; I have conformed to your ideas of my duty, leaving my fitness out of consideration;’ but as he could only see her bonnet and forehead it was not possible even to look the intelligence. He turned to his left hand, where the organ stood, with Miss Tabitha Lark seated behind it.
It being now sermon-time the youthful blower had fallen asleep over the handle of his bellows, and Tabitha pulled out her handkerchief intending to flap him awake with it. With the handkerchief tumbled out a whole family of unexpected articles: a silver thimble; a photograph; a little purse; a scent-bottle; some loose halfpence; nine green gooseberries; a key. They rolled to Swithin’s feet, and, passively obeying his first instinct, he picked up as many of the articles as he could find, and handed them to her amid the smiles of the neighbours.
Tabitha was half-dead with humiliation at such an event, happening under the very eyes of the Bishop on this glorious occasion; she turned pale as a sheet, and could hardly keep her seat. Fearing she might faint, Swithin, who had genuinely sympathized, bent over and whispered encouragingly, ‘Don’t mind it, Tabitha. Shall I take you out into the air?’ She declined his offer, and presently the sermon came to an end.
Swithin lingered behind the rest of the congregation sufficiently long to see Lady Constantine, accompanied by her brother, the Bishop, the Bishop’s chaplain, Mr. Torkingham, and several other clergy and ladies, enter to the grand luncheon by the door which admitted from the churchyard to the lawn of Welland House; the whole group talking with a vivacity all the more intense, as it seemed, from the recent two hours’ enforced repression of their social qualities within the adjoining building.
The young man stood till he was left quite alone in the churchyard, and then went slowly homeward over the hill, perhaps a trifle depressed at the impossibility of being near Viviette in this her one day of gaiety, and joining in the conversation of those who surrounded her.
Not that he felt much jealousy of her situation, as his wife, in comparison with his own. He had so clearly understood from the beginning that, in the event of marriage, their outward lives were to run on as before, that to rebel now would have been unmanly in himself and cruel to her, by adding to embarrassments that were great enough already. His momentary doubt was of his own strength to achieve sufficiently high things to render him, in relation to her, other than a patronized young favourite, whom she had married at an immense sacrifice of position. Now, at twenty, he was doomed to isolation even from a wife; could it be that at, say thirty, he would be welcomed everywhere?
But with motion through the sun and air his mood assumed a lighter complexion, and on reaching home he remembered with interest that Venus was in a favourable aspect for observation that afternoon.
Meanwhile the interior of Welland House was rattling with the progress of the ecclesiastical luncheon.
The Bishop, who sat at Lady Constantine’s side, seemed enchanted with her company, and from the beginning she engrossed his attention almost entirely. The truth was that the circumstance of her not having her whole soul centred on the success of the repast and the pleasure of Bishop Helmsdale, imparted to her, in a great measure, the mood to ensure both. Her brother Louis it was who had laid out the plan of entertaining the Bishop, to which she had assented but indifferently. She was secretly bound to another, on whose career she had staked all her happiness. Having thus other interests she evinced to-day the ease of one who hazards nothing, and there was no sign of that preoccupation with housewifely contingencies which so often makes the hostess hardly recognizable as the charming woman who graced a friend’s home the day before. In marrying Swithin Lady Constantine had played her card,—recklessly, impulsively, ruinously, perhaps; but she had played it; it could not be withdrawn; and she took this morning’s luncheon as an episode that could result in nothing to her beyond the day’s entertainment.
Hence, by that power of indirectness to accomplish in an hour what strenuous aiming will not effect in a life-time, she fascinated the Bishop to an unprecedented degree. A bachelor, he rejoiced in the commanding period of life that stretches between the time of waning impulse and the time of incipient dotage, when a woman can reach the male heart neither by awakening a young man’s passion nor an old man’s infatuation. He must be made to admire, or he can be made to do nothing. Unintentionally that is how Viviette operated on her guest.
Lady Constantine, to external view, was in a position to desire many things, and of a sort to desire them. She was obviously, by nature, impulsive to indiscretion. But instead of exhibiting activities to correspond, recently gratified affection lent to her manner just now a sweet serenity, a truly Christian contentment, which it puzzled the learned Bishop exceedingly to find in a warm young widow, and increased his interest in her every moment. Thus matters stood when the conversation veered round to the morning’s confirmation.
‘That was a singularly engaging young man who came up among Mr. Torkingham’s candidates,’ said the Bishop to her somewhat abruptly.
But abruptness does not catch a woman without her wit. ‘Which one?’ she said innocently.
‘That youth with the “corn-coloured” hair, as a poet of the new school would call it, who sat just at the side of the organ. Do you know who he is?’
In answering Viviette showed a little nervousness, for the first time that day.
‘O yes. He is the son of an unfortunate gentleman who was formerly curate here,—a Mr. St. Cleeve.’
‘I never saw a handsomer young man in my life,’ said the Bishop. Lady Constantine blushed. ‘There was a lack of self-consciousness, too, in his manner of presenting himself, which very much won me. A Mr. St. Cleeve, do you say? A curate’s son? His father must have been St. Cleeve of All Angels, whom I knew. How comes he to be staying on here? What is he doing?’
Mr. Torkingham, who kept one ear on the Bishop all the lunch-time, finding that Lady Constantine was not ready with an answer, hastened to reply: ‘Your lordship is right. His father was an All Angels’ man. The youth is rather to be pitied.’
‘He was a man of talent,’ affirmed the Bishop. ‘But I quite lost sight of him.’
‘He was curate to the late vicar,’ resumed the parson, ‘and was much liked by the parish: but, being erratic in his tastes and tendencies, he rashly contracted a marriage with the daughter of a farmer, and then quarrelled with the local gentry for not taking up his wife. This lad was an only child. There was enough money to educate him, and he is sufficiently well provided for to be independent of the world so long as he is content to live here with great economy. But of course this gives him few opportunities of bettering himself.’
‘Yes, naturally,’ replied the Bishop of Melchester. ‘Better have been left entirely dependent on himself. These half-incomes do men little good, unless they happen to be either weaklings or geniuses.’
Lady Constantine would have given the world to say, ‘He is a genius, and the hope of my life;’ but it would have been decidedly risky, and in another moment was unnecessary, for Mr. Torkingham said, ‘There is a certain genius in this young man, I sometimes think.’
‘Well, he really looks quite out of the common,’ said the Bishop.
‘Youthful genius is sometimes disappointing,’ observed Viviette, not believing it in the least.
‘Yes,’ said the Bishop. ‘Though it depends, Lady Constantine, on what you understand by disappointing. It may produce nothing visible to the world’s eye, and yet may complete its development within to a very perfect degree. Objective achievements, though the only ones which are counted, are not the only ones that exist and have value; and I for one should be sorry to assert that, because a man of genius dies as unknown to the world as when he was born, he therefore was an instance of wasted material.’
Objective achievements were, however, those that Lady Constantine had a weakness for in the present case, and she asked her more experienced guest if he thought early development of a special talent a good sign in youth.
The Bishop thought it well that a particular bent should not show itself too early, lest disgust should result.
‘Still,’ argued Lady Constantine rather firmly (for she felt this opinion of the Bishop’s to be one throwing doubt on Swithin), ‘sustained fruition is compatible with early bias. Tycho Brahe showed quite a passion for the solar system when he was but a youth, and so did Kepler; and James Ferguson had a surprising knowledge of the stars by the time he was eleven or twelve.’
‘Yes; sustained fruition,’ conceded the Bishop (rather liking the words), ‘is certainly compatible with early bias. Fenelon preached at fourteen.’
‘He—Mr. St. Cleeve—is not in the church,’ said Lady Constantine.
‘He is a scientific young man, my lord,’ explained Mr. Torkingham.
‘An astronomer,’ she added, with suppressed pride.
‘An astronomer! Really, that makes him still more interesting than being handsome and the son of a man I knew. How and where does he study astronomy?’
‘He has a beautiful observatory. He has made use of an old column that was erected on this manor to the memory of one of the Constantines. It has been very ingeniously adapted for his purpose, and he does very good work there. I believe he occasionally sends up a paper to the Royal Society, or Greenwich, or somewhere, and to astronomical periodicals.’
‘I should have had no idea, from his boyish look, that he had advanced so far,’ the Bishop answered. ‘And yet I saw on his face that within there was a book worth studying. His is a career I should very much like to watch.’
A thrill of pleasure chased through Lady Constantine’s heart at this praise of her chosen one. It was an unwitting compliment to her taste and discernment in singling him out for her own, despite its temporary inexpediency.
Her brother Louis now spoke. ‘I fancy he is as interested in one of his fellow-creatures as in the science of astronomy,’ observed the cynic dryly.
‘In whom?’ said Lady Constantine quickly.
‘In the fair maiden who sat at the organ,—a pretty girl, rather. I noticed a sort of by-play going on between them occasionally, during the sermon, which meant mating, if I am not mistaken.’
‘She!’ said Lady Constantine. ‘She is only a village girl, a dairyman’s daughter,—Tabitha Lark, who used to come to read to me.’
‘She may be a savage, for all that I know: but there is something between those two young people, nevertheless.’
The Bishop looked as if he had allowed his interest in a stranger to carry him too far, and Mr. Torkingham was horrified at the irreverent and easy familiarity of Louis Glanville’s talk in the presence of a consecrated bishop. As for Viviette, her tongue lost all its volubility. She felt quite faint at heart, and hardly knew how to control herself.
‘I have never noticed anything of the sort,’ said Mr. Torkingham.
‘It would be a matter for regret,’ said the Bishop, ‘if he should follow his father in forming an attachment that would be a hindrance to him in any honourable career; though perhaps an early marriage, intrinsically considered, would not be bad for him. A youth who looks as if he had come straight from old Greece may be exposed to many temptations, should he go out into the world without a friend or counsellor to guide him.’
Despite her sudden jealousy Viviette’s eyes grew moist at the picture of her innocent Swithin going into the world without a friend or counsellor. But she was sick in soul and disquieted still by Louis’s dreadful remarks, who, unbeliever as he was in human virtue, could have no reason whatever for representing Swithin as engaged in a private love affair if such were not his honest impression.
She was so absorbed during the remainder of the luncheon that she did not even observe the kindly light that her presence was shedding on the right reverend ecclesiastic by her side. He reflected it back in tones duly mellowed by his position; the minor clergy caught up the rays thereof, and so the gentle influence played down the table.
The company soon departed when luncheon was over, and the remainder of the day passed in quietness, the Bishop being occupied in his room at the vicarage with writing letters or a sermon. Having a long journey before him the next day he had expressed a wish to be housed for the night without ceremony, and would have dined alone with Mr. Torkingham but that, by a happy thought, Lady Constantine and her brother were asked to join them.
However, when Louis crossed the churchyard and entered the vicarage drawing-room at seven o’clock, his sister was not in his company. She was, he said, suffering from a slight headache, and much regretted that she was on that account unable to come. At this intelligence the social sparkle disappeared from the Bishop’s eye, and he sat down to table, endeavouring to mould into the form of episcopal serenity an expression which was really one of common human disappointment.
In his simple statement Louis Glanville had by no means expressed all the circumstances which accompanied his sister’s refusal, at the last moment, to dine at her neighbour’s house. Louis had strongly urged her to bear up against her slight indisposition—if it were that, and not disinclination—and come along with him on just this one occasion, perhaps a more important episode in her life than she was aware of. Viviette thereupon knew quite well that he alluded to the favourable impression she was producing on the Bishop, notwithstanding that neither of them mentioned the Bishop’s name. But she did not give way, though the argument waxed strong between them; and Louis left her in no very amiable mood, saying, ‘I don’t believe you have any more headache than I have, Viviette. It is some provoking whim of yours—nothing more.’
In this there was a substratum of truth. When her brother had left her, and she had seen him from the window entering the vicarage gate, Viviette seemed to be much relieved, and sat down in her bedroom till the evening grew dark, and only the lights shining through the trees from the parsonage dining-room revealed to the eye where that dwelling stood. Then she arose, and putting on the cloak she had used so many times before for the same purpose, she locked her bedroom door (to be supposed within, in case of the accidental approach of a servant), and let herself privately out of the house.
Lady Constantine paused for a moment under the vicarage windows, till she could sufficiently well hear the voices of the diners to be sure that they were actually within, and then went on her way, which was towards the Rings-Hill column. She appeared a mere spot, hardly distinguishable from the grass, as she crossed the open ground, and soon became absorbed in the black mass of the fir plantation.
Meanwhile the conversation at Mr. Torkingham’s dinner-table was not of a highly exhilarating quality. The parson, in long self-communing during the afternoon, had decided that the Diocesan Synod, whose annual session at Melchester had occurred in the month previous, would afford a solid and unimpeachable subject to launch during the meal, whenever conversation flagged; and that it would be one likely to win the respect of his spiritual chieftain for himself as the introducer. Accordingly, in the further belief that you could not have too much of a good thing, Mr. Torkingham not only acted upon his idea, but at every pause rallied to the synod point with unbroken firmness. Everything which had been discussed at that last session—such as the introduction of the lay element into the councils of the church, the reconstitution of the ecclesiastical courts, church patronage, the tithe question—was revived by Mr. Torkingham, and the excellent remarks which the Bishop had made in his addresses on those subjects were quoted back to him.
As for Bishop Helmsdale himself, his instincts seemed to be to allude in a debonair spirit to the incidents of the past day—to the flowers in Lady Constantine’s beds, the date of her house—perhaps with a view of hearing a little more about their owner from Louis, who would very readily have followed the Bishop’s lead had the parson allowed him room. But this Mr. Torkingham seldom did, and about half-past nine they prepared to separate.
Louis Glanville had risen from the table, and was standing by the window, looking out upon the sky, and privately yawning, the topics discussed having been hardly in his line.
‘A fine night,’ he said at last.
‘I suppose our young astronomer is hard at work now,’ said the Bishop, following the direction of Louis’s glance towards the clear sky.
‘Yes,’ said the parson; ‘he is very assiduous whenever the nights are good for observation. I have occasionally joined him in his tower, and looked through his telescope with great benefit to my ideas of celestial phenomena. I have not seen what he has been doing lately.’
‘Suppose we stroll that way?’ said Louis. ‘Would you be interested in seeing the observatory, Bishop?’
‘I am quite willing to go,’ said the Bishop, ‘if the distance is not too great. I should not be at all averse to making the acquaintance of so exceptional a young man as this Mr. St. Cleeve seems to be; and I have never seen the inside of an observatory in my life.’
The intention was no sooner formed than it was carried out, Mr. Torkingham leading the way.
Half an hour before this time Swithin St. Cleeve had been sitting in his cabin at the base of the column, working out some figures from observations taken on preceding nights, with a view to a theory that he had in his head on the motions of certain so-called fixed stars.
The evening being a little chilly a small fire was burning in the stove, and this and the shaded lamp before him lent a remarkably cosy air to the chamber. He was awakened from his reveries by a scratching at the window-pane like that of the point of an ivy leaf, which he knew to be really caused by the tip of his sweetheart-wife’s forefinger. He rose and opened the door to admit her, not without astonishment as to how she had been able to get away from her friends.
‘Dearest Viv, why, what’s the matter?’ he said, perceiving that her face, as the lamplight fell on it, was sad, and even stormy.
‘I thought I would run across to see you. I have heard something so—so—to your discredit, and I know it can’t be true! I know you are constancy itself; but your constancy produces strange effects in people’s eyes!’
‘Good heavens! Nobody has found us out—’
‘No, no—it is not that. You know, Swithin, that I am always sincere, and willing to own if I am to blame in anything. Now will you prove to me that you are the same by owning some fault to me?’
‘Yes, dear, indeed; directly I can think of one worth owning.’
‘I wonder one does not rush upon your tongue in a moment!’
‘I confess that I am sufficiently a Pharisee not to experience that spontaneity.’
‘Swithin, don’t speak so affectedly, when you know so well what I mean! Is it nothing to you that, after all our vows for life, you have thought it right to—flirt with a village girl?’
‘O Viviette!’ interrupted Swithin, taking her hand, which was hot and trembling. ‘You who are full of noble and generous feelings, and regard me with devoted tenderness that has never been surpassed by woman,—how can you be so greatly at fault?Iflirt, Viviette? By thinking that you injure yourself in my eyes. Why, I am so far from doing so that I continually pull myself up for watching you too jealously, as to-day, when I have been dreading the effect upon you of other company in my absence, and thinking that you rather shut the gates against me when you have big-wigs to entertain.’
‘Do you, Swithin?’ she cried. It was evident that the honest tone of his words was having a great effect in clearing away the clouds. She added with an uncertain smile, ‘But how can I believe that, after what was seen to-day? My brother, not knowing in the least that I had an iota of interest in you, told me that he witnessed the signs of an attachment between you and Tabitha Lark in church, this morning.’
‘Ah!’ cried Swithin, with a burst of laughter. ‘Now I know what you mean, and what has caused this misunderstanding! How good of you, Viviette, to come at once and have it out with me, instead of brooding over it with dark imaginings, and thinking bitter things of me, as many women would have done!’ He succinctly told the whole story of his little adventure with Tabitha that morning; and the sky was clear on both sides. ‘When shall I be able to claim you,’ he added, ‘and put an end to all such painful accidents as these?’
She partially sighed. Her perception of what the outside world was made of, latterly somewhat obscured by solitude and her lover’s company, had been revived to-day by her entertainment of the Bishop, clergymen, and, more particularly, clergymen’s wives; and it did not diminish her sense of the difficulties in Swithin’s path to see anew how little was thought of the greatest gifts, mental and spiritual, if they were not backed up by substantial temporalities. However, the pair made the best of their future that circumstances permitted, and the interview was at length drawing to a close when there came, without the slightest forewarning, a smart rat-tat-tat upon the little door.
‘O I am lost!’ said Viviette, seizing his arm. ‘Why was I so incautious?’
‘It is nobody of consequence,’ whispered Swithin assuringly. ‘Somebody from my grandmother, probably, to know when I am coming home.’
They were unperceived so far, for the only window which gave light to the hut was screened by a curtain. At that moment they heard the sound of their visitors’ voices, and, with a consternation as great as her own, Swithin discerned the tones of Mr. Torkingham and the Bishop of Melchester.
‘Where shall I get? What shall I do?’ said the poor lady, clasping her hands.
Swithin looked around the cabin, and a very little look was required to take in all its resources. At one end, as previously explained, were a table, stove, chair, cupboard, and so on; while the other was completely occupied by a diminutive Arabian bedstead, hung with curtains of pink-and-white chintz. On the inside of the bed there was a narrow channel, about a foot wide, between it and the wall of the hut. Into this cramped retreat Viviette slid herself, and stood trembling behind the curtains.
By this time the knock had been repeated more loudly, the light through the window-blind unhappily revealing the presence of some inmate. Swithin threw open the door, and Mr. Torkingham introduced his visitors.
The Bishop shook hands with the young man, told him he had known his father, and at Swithin’s invitation, weak as it was, entered the cabin, the vicar and Louis Glanville remaining on the threshold, not to inconveniently crowd the limited space within.
Bishop Helmsdale looked benignantly around the apartment, and said, ‘Quite a settlement in the backwoods—quite: far enough from the world to afford the votary of science the seclusion he needs, and not so far as to limit his resources. A hermit might apparently live here in as much solitude as in a primeval forest.’
‘His lordship has been good enough to express an interest in your studies,’ said Mr. Torkingham to St. Cleeve. ‘And we have come to ask you to let us see the observatory.’
‘With great pleasure,’ stammered Swithin.
‘Where is the observatory?’ inquired the Bishop, peering round again.
‘The staircase is just outside this door,’ Swithin answered. ‘I am at your lordship’s service, and will show you up at once.’
‘And this is your little bed, for use when you work late,’ said the Bishop.
‘Yes; I am afraid it is rather untidy,’ Swithin apologized.
‘And here are your books,’ the Bishop continued, turning to the table and the shaded lamp. ‘You take an observation at the top, I presume, and come down here to record your observations.’
The young man explained his precise processes as well as his state of mind would let him, and while he was doing so Mr. Torkingham and Louis waited patiently without, looking sometimes into the night, and sometimes through the door at the interlocutors, and listening to their scientific converse. When all had been exhibited here below, Swithin lit his lantern, and, inviting his visitors to follow, led the way up the column, experiencing no small sense of relief as soon as he heard the footsteps of all three tramping on the stairs behind him. He knew very well that, once they were inside the spiral, Viviette was out of danger, her knowledge of the locality enabling her to find her way with perfect safety through the plantation, and into the park home.
At the top he uncovered his equatorial, and, for the first time at ease, explained to them its beauties, and revealed by its help the glories of those stars that were eligible for inspection. The Bishop spoke as intelligently as could be expected on a topic not peculiarly his own; but, somehow, he seemed rather more abstracted in manner now than when he had arrived. Swithin thought that perhaps the long clamber up the stairs, coming after a hard day’s work, had taken his spontaneity out of him, and Mr. Torkingham was afraid that his lordship was getting bored. But this did not appear to be the case; for though he said little he stayed on some time longer, examining the construction of the dome after relinquishing the telescope; while occasionally Swithin caught the eyes of the Bishop fixed hard on him.
‘Perhaps he sees some likeness of my father in me,’ the young man thought; and the party making ready to leave at this time he conducted them to the bottom of the tower.
Swithin was not prepared for what followed their descent. All were standing at the foot of the staircase. The astronomer, lantern in hand, offered to show them the way out of the plantation, to which Mr. Torkingham replied that he knew the way very well, and would not trouble his young friend. He strode forward with the words, and Louis followed him, after waiting a moment and finding that the Bishop would not take the precedence. The latter and Swithin were thus left together for one moment, whereupon the Bishop turned.
‘Mr. St. Cleeve,’ he said in a strange voice, ‘I should like to speak to you privately, before I leave, to-morrow morning. Can you meet me—let me see—in the churchyard, at half-past ten o’clock?’
‘O yes, my lord, certainly,’ said Swithin. And before he had recovered from his surprise the Bishop had joined the others in the shades of the plantation.
Swithin immediately opened the door of the hut, and scanned the nook behind the bed. As he had expected his bird had flown.
All night the astronomer’s mind was on the stretch with curiosity as to what the Bishop could wish to say to him. A dozen conjectures entered his brain, to be abandoned in turn as unlikely. That which finally seemed the most plausible was that the Bishop, having become interested in his pursuits, and entertaining friendly recollections of his father, was going to ask if he could do anything to help him on in the profession he had chosen. Should this be the case, thought the suddenly sanguine youth, it would seem like an encouragement to that spirit of firmness which had led him to reject his late uncle’s offer because it involved the renunciation of Lady Constantine.
At last he fell asleep; and when he awoke it was so late that the hour was ready to solve what conjecture could not. After a hurried breakfast he paced across the fields, entering the churchyard by the south gate precisely at the appointed minute.
The inclosure was well adapted for a private interview, being bounded by bushes of laurel and alder nearly on all sides. He looked round; the Bishop was not there, nor any living creature save himself. Swithin sat down upon a tombstone to await Bishop Helmsdale’s arrival.
While he sat he fancied he could hear voices in conversation not far off, and further attention convinced him that they came from Lady Constantine’s lawn, which was divided from the churchyard by a high wall and shrubbery only. As the Bishop still delayed his coming, though the time was nearly eleven, and as the lady whose sweet voice mingled with those heard from the lawn was his personal property, Swithin became exceedingly curious to learn what was going on within that screened promenade. A way of doing so occurred to him. The key was in the church door; he opened it, entered, and ascended to the ringers’ loft in the west tower. At the back of this was a window commanding a full view of Viviette’s garden front.
The flowers were all in gayest bloom, and the creepers on the walls of the house were bursting into tufts of young green. A broad gravel-walk ran from end to end of the facade, terminating in a large conservatory. In the walk were three people pacing up and down. Lady Constantine’s was the central figure, her brother being on one side of her, and on the other a stately form in a corded shovel-hat of glossy beaver and black breeches. This was the Bishop. Viviette carried over her shoulder a sunshade lined with red, which she twirled idly. They were laughing and chatting gaily, and when the group approached the churchyard many of their remarks entered the silence of the church tower through the ventilator of the window.
The conversation was general, yet interesting enough to Swithin. At length Louis stepped upon the grass and picked up something that had lain there, which turned out to be a bowl: throwing it forward he took a second, and bowled it towards the first, or jack. The Bishop, who seemed to be in a sprightly mood, followed suit, and bowled one in a curve towards the jack, turning and speaking to Lady Constantine as he concluded the feat. As she had not left the gravelled terrace he raised his voice, so that the words reached Swithin distinctly.
‘Do you follow us?’ he asked gaily.
‘I am not skilful,’ she said. ‘I always bowl narrow.’
The Bishop meditatively paused.
‘This moment reminds one of the scene inRichard the Second,’ he said. ‘I mean the Duke of York’s garden, where the queen and her two ladies play, and the queen says—
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden,To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden,To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
To which her lady answers, “Madam, we’ll play at bowls.”’
‘That’s an unfortunate quotation for you,’ said Lady Constantine; ‘for if I don’t forget, the queen declines, saying, “Twill make me think the world is full of rubs, and that my fortune runs against the bias.”’
‘Then I citemal à propos. But it is an interesting old game, and might have been played at that very date on this very green.’
The Bishop lazily bowled another, and while he was doing it Viviette’s glance rose by accident to the church tower window, where she recognized Swithin’s face. Her surprise was only momentary; and waiting till both her companions’ backs were turned she smiled and blew him a kiss. In another minute she had another opportunity, and blew him another; afterwards blowing him one a third time.
Her blowings were put a stop to by the Bishop and Louis throwing down the bowls and rejoining her in the path, the house clock at the moment striking half-past eleven.
‘This is a fine way of keeping an engagement,’ said Swithin to himself. ‘I have waited an hour while you indulge in those trifles!’
He fumed, turned, and behold somebody was at his elbow: Tabitha Lark. Swithin started, and said, ‘How did you come here, Tabitha?’
‘In the course of my calling, Mr. St. Cleeve,’ said the smiling girl. ‘I come to practise on the organ. When I entered I saw you up here through the tower arch, and I crept up to see what you were looking at. The Bishop is a striking man, is he not?’
‘Yes, rather,’ said Swithin.
‘I think he is much devoted to Lady Constantine, and I am glad of it. Aren’t you?’
‘O yes—very,’ said Swithin, wondering if Tabitha had seen the tender little salutes between Lady Constantine and himself.
‘I don’t think she cares much for him,’ added Tabitha judicially. ‘Or, even if she does, she could be got away from him in no time by a younger man.’
‘Pooh, that’s nothing,’ said Swithin impatiently.
Tabitha then remarked that her blower had not come to time, and that she must go to look for him; upon which she descended the stairs, and left Swithin again alone.
A few minutes later the Bishop suddenly looked at his watch, Lady Constantine having withdrawn towards the house. Apparently apologizing to Louis the Bishop came down the terrace, and through the door into the churchyard. Swithin hastened downstairs and joined him in the path under the sunny wall of the aisle.
Their glances met, and it was with some consternation that Swithin beheld the change that a few short minutes had wrought in that episcopal countenance. On the lawn with Lady Constantine the rays of an almost perpetual smile had brightened his dark aspect like flowers in a shady place: now the smile was gone as completely as yesterday; the lines of his face were firm; his dark eyes and whiskers were overspread with gravity; and, as he gazed upon Swithin from the repose of his stable figure it was like an evangelized King of Spades come to have it out with the Knave of Hearts.
* * * * *
To return for a moment to Louis Glanville. He had been somewhat struck with the abruptness of the Bishop’s departure, and more particularly by the circumstance that he had gone away by the private door into the churchyard instead of by the regular exit on the other side. True, great men were known to suffer from absence of mind, and Bishop Helmsdale, having a dim sense that he had entered by that door yesterday, might have unconsciously turned thitherward now. Louis, upon the whole, thought little of the matter, and being now left quite alone on the lawn, he seated himself in an arbour and began smoking.
The arbour was situated against the churchyard wall. The atmosphere was as still as the air of a hot-house; only fourteen inches of brickwork divided Louis from the scene of the Bishop’s interview with St. Cleeve, and as voices on the lawn had been audible to Swithin in the churchyard, voices in the churchyard could be heard without difficulty from that close corner of the lawn. No sooner had Louis lit a cigar than the dialogue began.
‘Ah, you are here, St. Cleeve,’ said the Bishop, hardly replying to Swithin’s good morning. ‘I fear I am a little late. Well, my request to you to meet me may have seemed somewhat unusual, seeing that we were strangers till a few hours ago.’
‘I don’t mind that, if your lordship wishes to see me.’
‘I thought it best to see you regarding your confirmation yesterday; and my reason for taking a more active step with you than I should otherwise have done is that I have some interest in you through having known your father when we were undergraduates. His rooms were on the same staircase with mine at All Angels, and we were friendly till time and affairs separated us even more completely than usually happens. However, about your presenting yourself for confirmation.’ (The Bishop’s voice grew stern.) ‘If I had known yesterday morning what I knew twelve hours later, I wouldn’t have confirmed you at all.’
‘Indeed, my lord!’
‘Yes, I say it, and I mean it. I visited your observatory last night.’
‘You did, my lord.’
‘In inspecting it I noticed something which I may truly describe as extraordinary. I have had young men present themselves to me who turned out to be notoriously unfit, either from giddiness, from being profane or intemperate, or from some bad quality or other. But I never remember a case which equalled the cool culpability of this. While infringing the first principles of social decorum you might at least have respected the ordinance sufficiently to have stayed away from it altogether. Now I have sent for you here to see if a last entreaty and a direct appeal to your sense of manly uprightness will have any effect in inducing you to change your course of life.’
The voice of Swithin in his next remark showed how tremendously this attack of the Bishop had told upon his feelings. Louis, of course, did not know the reason why the words should have affected him precisely as they did; to any one in the secret the double embarrassment arising from misapprehended ethics and inability to set matters right, because his word of secrecy to another was inviolable, would have accounted for the young man’s emotion sufficiently well.
‘I am very sorry your lordship should have seen anything objectionable,’ said Swithin. ‘May I ask what it was?’
‘You know what it was. Something in your chamber, which forced me to the above conclusions. I disguised my feelings of sorrow at the time for obvious reasons, but I never in my whole life was so shocked!’
‘At what, my lord?’
‘At what I saw.’
‘Pardon me, Bishop Helmsdale, but you said just now that we are strangers; so what you saw in my cabin concerns me only.’
‘There I contradict you. Twenty-four hours ago that remark would have been plausible enough; but by presenting yourself for confirmation at my hands you have invited my investigation into your principles.’
Swithin sighed. ‘I admit it,’ he said.
‘And what do I find them?’
‘You say reprehensible. But you might at least let me hear the proof!’
‘I can do more, sir. I can let you see it!’
There was a pause. Louis Glanville was so highly interested that he stood upon the seat of the arbour, and looked through the leafage over the wall. The Bishop had produced an article from his pocket.
‘What is it?’ said Swithin, laboriously scrutinizing the thing.
‘Why, don’t you see?’ said the Bishop, holding it out between his finger and thumb in Swithin’s face. ‘A bracelet,—a coral bracelet. I found the wanton object on the bed in your cabin! And of the sex of the owner there can be no doubt. More than that, she was concealed behind the curtains, for I saw them move.’ In the decision of his opinion the Bishop threw the coral bracelet down on a tombstone.