Two on a Tower
from study. Now put on your other coat and hat, and come with me a
little way.'
XXIV
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 thy _child_,' 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.
XXV
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.