Two on a Tower
He mopes about--sometimes here, and sometimes there; nobody troubles
about en.'
Lady Constantine thanked her informant, and proceeded onward. To her, as
a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's incident was that
this lad, of striking beauty, scientific attainments, and cultivated
bearing, should be linked, on the maternal side, with a local
agricultural family through his father's matrimonial eccentricity. A
more attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capable
of being ruined by flattery, blandishment, pleasure, even gross
prosperity, should be at present living on in a primitive Eden of
unconsciousness, with aims towards whose accomplishment a Caliban shape
would have been as effective as his own.
II
Swithin St. Cleeve lingered on at his post, until the more sanguine birds
of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter anxieties,
piped a short evening hymn to the vanishing sun.
The landscape was gently concave; with the exception of tower and hill
there were no points on which late rays might linger; and hence the dish-
shaped ninety acres of tilled land assumed a uniform hue of shade quite
suddenly. The one or two stars that appeared were quickly clouded over,
and it was soon obvious that there would be no sweeping the heavens that
night. After tying a piece of tarpaulin, which had once seen service on
his maternal grandfather's farm, over all the apparatus around him, he
went down the stairs in the dark, and locked the door.
With the key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the side
of the slope opposite to that trodden by Lady Constantine, and crossed
the field in a line mathematically straight, and in a manner that left no
traces, by keeping in the same furrow all the way on tiptoe. In a few
minutes he reached a little dell, which occurred quite unexpectedly on
the other side of the field-fence, and descended to a venerable thatched
house, whose enormous roof, broken up by dormers as big as haycocks,
could be seen even in the twilight. Over the white walls, built of chalk
in the lump, outlines of creepers formed dark patterns, as if drawn in
charcoal.
Inside the house his maternal grandmother was sitting by a wood fire.
Before it stood a pipkin, in which something was evidently kept warm. An
eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was laid for a meal.
This woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under which she wore a little
cap to keep the other clean, retained faculties but little blunted. She
was gazing into the flames, with her hands upon her knees, quietly re-
enacting in her brain certain of the long chain of episodes, pathetic,
tragical, and humorous, which had constituted the parish history for the
last sixty years. On Swithin's entry she looked up at him in a sideway
direction.
'You should not have waited for me, granny,' he said.
''Tis of no account, my child. I've had a nap while sitting here. Yes,
I've had a nap, and went straight up into my old country again, as usual.
The place was as natural as when I left it,--e'en just threescore years
ago! All the folks and my old aunt were there, as when I was a
child,--yet I suppose if I were really to set out and go there, hardly a
soul would be left alive to say to me, dog how art! But tell Hannah to
stir her stumps and serve supper--though I'd fain do it myself, the poor
old soul is getting so unhandy!'
Hannah revealed herself to be much nimbler and several years younger than
granny, though of this the latter seemed to be oblivious. When the meal
was nearly over Mrs. Martin produced the contents of the mysterious
vessel by the fire, saying that she had caused it to be brought in from
the back kitchen, because Hannah was hardly to be trusted with such
things, she was becoming so childish.
'What is it, then?' said Swithin. 'Oh, one of your special puddings.' At
sight of it, however, he added reproachfully, 'Now, granny!'
Instead of being round, it was in shape an irregular boulder that had
been exposed to the weather for centuries--a little scrap pared off here,
and a little piece broken away there; the general aim being,
nevertheless, to avoid destroying the symmetry of the pudding while
taking as much as possible of its substance.
'The fact is,' added Swithin, 'the pudding is half gone!'
'I've only sliced off the merest paring once or twice, to taste if it was
well done!' pleaded granny Martin, with wounded feelings. 'I said to
Hannah when she took it up, "Put it here to keep it warm, as there's a
better fire than in the back kitchen."'
'Well, I am not going to eat any of it!' said Swithin decisively, as he
rose from the table, pushed away his chair, and went up-stairs; the
'other station of life that was in his blood,' and which had been brought
out by the grammar school, probably stimulating him.
'Ah, the world is an ungrateful place! 'Twas a pity I didn't take my
poor name off this earthly calendar and creep under ground sixty long
years ago, instead of leaving my own county to come here!' mourned old
Mrs. Martin. 'But I told his mother how 'twould be--marrying so many
notches above her. The child was sure to chaw high, like his father!'
When Swithin had been up-stairs a minute or two however, he altered his
mind, and coming down again ate all the pudding, with the aspect of a
person undertaking a deed of great magnanimity. The relish with which he
did so restored the unison that knew no more serious interruptions than
such as this.
'Mr. Torkingham has been here this afternoon,' said his grandmother; 'and
he wants me to let him meet some of the choir here to-night for practice.
They who live at this end of the parish won't go to his house to try over
the tunes, because 'tis so far, they say, and so 'tis, poor men. So he's
going to see what coming to them will do. He asks if you would like to
join.'
'I would if I had not so much to do.'
'But it is cloudy to-night.'
'Yes; but I have calculations without end, granny. Now, don't you tell
him I'm in the house, will you? and then he'll not ask for me.'
'But if he should, must I then tell a lie, Lord forgive me?'
'No, you can say I'm up-stairs; he must think what he likes. Not a word
about the astronomy to any of them, whatever you do. I should be called
a visionary, and all sorts.'
'So thou beest, child. Why can't ye do something that's of use?'
At the sound of footsteps Swithin beat a hasty retreat up-stairs, where
he struck a light, and revealed a table covered with books and papers,
while round the walls hung star-maps, and other diagrams illustrative of
celestial phenomena. In a corner stood a huge pasteboard tube, which a
close inspection would have shown to be intended for a telescope. Swithin
hung a thick cloth over the window, in addition to the curtains, and sat
down to his papers. On the ceiling was a black stain of smoke, and under
this he placed his lamp, evidencing that the midnight oil was consumed on
that precise spot very often.
Meanwhile there had entered to the room below a personage who, to judge
from her voice and the quick pit-pat of her feet, was a maiden young and
blithe. Mrs. Martin welcomed her by the title of Miss Tabitha Lark, and
inquired what wind had brought her that way; to which the visitor replied
that she had come for the singing.
'Sit ye down, then,' said granny. 'And do you still go to the House to
read to my lady?'
'Yes, I go and read, Mrs. Martin; but as to getting my lady to hearken,
that's more than a team of six horses could force her to do.'
The girl had a remarkably smart and fluent utterance, which was probably
a cause, or a consequence, of her vocation.
''Tis the same story, then?' said grandmother Martin.
'Yes. Eaten out with listlessness. She's neither sick nor sorry, but
how dull and dreary she is, only herself can tell. When I get there in
the morning, there she is sitting up in bed, for my lady don't care to
get up; and then she makes me bring this book and that book, till the bed
is heaped up with immense volumes that half bury her, making her look, as
she leans upon her elbow, like the stoning of Stephen. She yawns; then
she looks towards the tall glass; then she looks out at the weather,
mooning her great black eyes, and fixing them on the sky as if they stuck
there, while my tongue goes flick-flack along, a hundred and fifty words
a minute; then she looks at the clock; then she asks me what I've been
reading.'
'Ah, poor soul!' said granny. 'No doubt she says in the morning, "Would
God it were evening," and in the evening, "Would God it were morning,"
like the disobedient woman in Deuteronomy.'
Swithin, in the room overhead, had suspended his calculations, for the
duologue interested him. There now crunched heavier steps outside the
door, and his grandmother could be heard greeting sundry local
representatives of the bass and tenor voice, who lent a cheerful and well-
known personality to the names Sammy Blore, Nat Chapman, Hezekiah Biles,
and Haymoss Fry (the latter being one with whom the reader has already a
distant acquaintance); besides these came small producers of treble, who
had not yet developed into such distinctive units of society as to
require particularizing.
'Is the good man come?' asked Nat Chapman. 'No,--I see we be here afore
him. And how is it with aged women to-night, Mrs. Martin?'
'Tedious traipsing enough with this one, Nat. Sit ye down. Well, little
Freddy, you don't wish in the morning that 'twere evening, and at evening
that 'twere morning again, do you, Freddy, trust ye for it?'
'Now, who might wish such a thing as that, Mrs Martin?--nobody in this
parish?' asked Sammy Blore curiously.
'My lady is always wishing it,' spoke up Miss Tabitha Lark.
'Oh, she! Nobody can be answerable for the wishes of that onnatural
tribe of mankind. Not but that the woman's heart-strings is tried in
many aggravating ways.'
'Ah, poor woman!' said granny. 'The state she finds herself in--neither
maid, wife, nor widow, as you may say--is not the primest form of life
for keeping in good spirits. How long is it since she has heard from Sir
Blount, Tabitha?'
'Two years and more,' said the young woman. 'He went into one side of
Africa, as it might be, three St. Martin's days back. I can mind it,
because 'twas my birthday. And he meant to come out the other side. But
he didn't. He has never come out at all.'
'For all the world like losing a rat in a barley-mow,' said Hezekiah.
'He's lost, though you know where he is.'
His comrades nodded.
'Ay, my lady is a walking weariness. I seed her yawn just at the very
moment when the fox was halloaed away by Lornton Copse, and the hounds
runned en all but past her carriage wheels. If I were she I'd see a
little life; though there's no fair, club-walking, nor feast to speak of,
till Easter week,--that's true.'
'She dares not. She's under solemn oath to do no such thing.'
'Be cust if I would keep any such oath! But here's the pa'son, if my
ears don't deceive me.'
There was a noise of horse's hoofs without, a stumbling against the door-
scraper, a tethering to the window-shutter, a creaking of the door on its
hinges, and a voice which Swithin recognized as Mr. Torkingham's. He
greeted each of the previous arrivals by name, and stated that he was
glad to see them all so punctually assembled.
'Ay, sir,' said Haymoss Fry. ''Tis only my jints that have kept me from
assembling myself long ago. I'd assemble upon the top of Welland
Steeple, if 'tweren't for my jints. I assure ye, Pa'son Tarkenham, that
in the clitch o' my knees, where the rain used to come through when I was
cutting clots for the new lawn, in old my lady's time, 'tis as if rats