Two on a Tower
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 'twas _it_,' 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.'