Two on a Tower
reasonable halt of two people going in opposite directions. He turned,
and walked with her along the laurel-screened lane that bordered the
churchyard, till their voices died away in the distance. Swithin then
aroused himself from his thoughtful regard of them, and went out of the
churchyard by another gate.
Seeing himself now to be left alone on the scene, Louis Glanville
descended from his post of observation in the arbour. He came through
the private doorway, and on to that spot among the graves where the
Bishop and St. Cleeve had conversed. On the tombstone still lay the
coral bracelet which Dr. Helmsdale had flung down there in his
indignation; for the agitated, introspective mood into which Swithin had
been thrown had banished from his mind all thought of securing the
trinket and putting it in his pocket.
Louis picked up the little red scandal-breeding thing, and while walking
on with it in his hand he observed Tabitha Lark approaching the church,
in company with the young blower whom she had gone in search of to
inspire her organ-practising within. Louis immediately put together,
with that rare diplomatic keenness of which he was proud, the little
scene he had witnessed between Tabitha and Swithin during the
confirmation, and the Bishop's stern statement as to where he had found
the bracelet. He had no longer any doubt that it belonged to her.
'Poor girl!' he said to himself, and sang in an undertone--
'Tra deri, dera,
L'histoire n'est pas nouvelle!'
When she drew nearer Louis called her by name. She sent the boy into the
church, and came forward, blushing at having been called by so fine a
gentleman. Louis held out the bracelet.
'Here is something I have found, or somebody else has found,' he said to
her. 'I won't state where. Put it away, and say no more about it. I
will not mention it either. Now go on into the church where you are
going, and may Heaven have mercy on your soul, my dear.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Tabitha, with some perplexity, yet inclined to be
pleased, and only recognizing in the situation the fact that Lady
Constantine's humorous brother was making her a present.
'You are much obliged to me?'
'O yes!'
'Well, Miss Lark, I've discovered a secret, you see.'
'What may that be, Mr. Glanville?'
'That you are in love.'
'I don't admit it, sir. Who told you so?'
'Nobody. Only I put two and two together. Now take my advice. Beware
of lovers! They are a bad lot, and bring young women to tears.'
'Some do, I dare say. But some don't.'
'And you think that in your particular case the latter alternative will
hold good? We generally think we shall be lucky ourselves, though all
the world before us, in the same situation, have been otherwise.'
'O yes, or we should die outright of despair.'
'Well, I don't think you will be lucky in your case.'
'Please how do you know so much, since my case has not yet arrived?'
asked Tabitha, tossing her head a little disdainfully, but less than she
might have done if he had not obtained a charter for his discourse by
giving her the bracelet.
'Fie, Tabitha!'
'I tell you it has not arrived!' she said, with some anger. 'I have not
got a lover, and everybody knows I haven't, and it's an insinuating thing
for you to say so!'
Louis laughed, thinking how natural it was that a girl should so
emphatically deny circumstances that would not bear curious inquiry.
'Why, of course I meant myself,' he said soothingly. 'So, then, you will
not accept me?'
'I didn't know you meant yourself,' she replied. 'But I won't accept
you. And I think you ought not to jest on such subjects.'
'Well, perhaps not. However, don't let the Bishop see your bracelet, and
all will be well. But mind, lovers are deceivers.'
Tabitha laughed, and they parted, the girl entering the church. She had
been feeling almost certain that, having accidentally found the bracelet
somewhere, he had presented it in a whim to her as the first girl he met.
Yet now she began to have momentary doubts whether he had not been
labouring under a mistake, and had imagined her to be the owner. The
bracelet was not valuable; it was, in fact, a mere toy,--the pair of
which this was one being a little present made to Lady Constantine by
Swithin on the day of their marriage; and she had not worn them with
sufficient frequency out of doors for Tabitha to recognize either as
positively her ladyship's. But when, out of sight of the blower, the
girl momentarily tried it on, in a corner by the organ, it seemed to her
that the ornament was possibly Lady Constantine's. Now that the pink
beads shone before her eyes on her own arm she remembered having seen a
bracelet with just such an effect gracing the wrist of Lady Constantine
upon one occasion. A temporary self-surrender to the sophism that if Mr.
Louis Glanville chose to give away anything belonging to his sister, she,
Tabitha, had a right to take it without question, was soon checked by a
resolve to carry the tempting strings of coral to her ladyship that
evening, and inquire the truth about them. This decided on she slipped
the bracelet into her pocket, and played her voluntaries with a light
heart.
* * * * *
Bishop Helmsdale did not tear himself away from Welland till about two
o'clock that afternoon, which was three hours later than he had intended
to leave. It was with a feeling of relief that Swithin, looking from the
top of the tower, saw the carriage drive out from the vicarage into the
turnpike road, and whirl the right reverend gentleman again towards
Warborne. The coast being now clear of him Swithin meditated how to see
Viviette, and explain what had happened. With this in view he waited
where he was till evening came on.
Meanwhile Lady Constantine and her brother dined by themselves at Welland
House. They had not met since the morning, and as soon as they were left
alone Louis said, 'You have done very well so far; but you might have
been a little warmer.'
'Done well?' she asked, with surprise.
'Yes, with the Bishop. The difficult question is how to follow up our
advantage. How are you to keep yourself in sight of him?'
'Heavens, Louis! You don't seriously mean that the Bishop of Melchester
has any feelings for me other than friendly?'
'Viviette, this is affectation. You know he has as well as I do.'
She sighed. 'Yes,' she said. 'I own I had a suspicion of the same
thing. What a misfortune!'
'A misfortune? Surely the world is turned upside down! You will drive
me to despair about our future if you see things so awry. Exert yourself
to do something, so as to make of this accident a stepping-stone to
higher things. The gentleman will give us the slip if we don't pursue
the friendship at once.'
'I cannot have you talk like this,' she cried impatiently. 'I have no
more thought of the Bishop than I have of the Pope. I would much rather
not have had him here to lunch at all. You said it would be necessary to
do it, and an opportunity, and I thought it my duty to show some
hospitality when he was coming so near, Mr. Torkingham's house being so
small. But of course I understood that the opportunity would be one for
you in getting to know him, your prospects being so indefinite at
present; not one for me.'
'If you don't follow up this chance of being spiritual queen of
Melchester, you will never have another of being anything. Mind this,
Viviette: you are not so young as you were. You are getting on to be a
middle-aged woman, and your black hair is precisely of the sort which
time quickly turns grey. You must make up your mind to grizzled
bachelors or widowers. Young marriageable men won't look at you; or if
they do just now, in a year or two more they'll despise you as an
antiquated party.'
Lady Constantine perceptibly paled. 'Young men what?' she asked. 'Say
that again.'
'I said it was no use to think of young men; they won't look at you much
longer; or if they do, it will be to look away again very quickly.'
'You imply that if I were to marry a man younger than myself he would
speedily acquire a contempt for me? How much younger must a man be than
his wife--to get that feeling for her?' She was resting her elbow on the
chair as she faintly spoke the words, and covered her eyes with her hand.
'An exceedingly small number of years,' said Louis drily. 'Now the
Bishop is at least fifteen years older than you, and on that account, no
less than on others, is an excellent match. You would be head of the
church in this diocese: what more can you require after these years of
miserable obscurity? In addition, you would escape that minor thorn in
the flesh of bishops' wives, of being only "Mrs." while their husbands
are peers.'
She was not listening; his previous observation still detained her
thoughts.
'Louis,' she said, 'in the case of a woman marrying a man much younger
than herself, does he get to dislike her, even if there has been a social
advantage to him in the union?'
'Yes,--not a whit less. Ask any person of experience. But what of that?
Let's talk of our own affairs. You say you have no thought of the
Bishop. And yet if he had stayed here another day or two he would have
proposed to you straight off.'
'Seriously, Louis, I could not accept him.'
'Why not?'
'I don't love him.'
'Oh, oh, I like those words!' cried Louis, throwing himself back in his
chair and looking at the ceiling in satirical enjoyment. 'A woman who at
two-and-twenty married for convenience, at thirty talks of not marrying
without love; the rule of inverse, that is, in which more requires less,
and less requires more. As your only brother, older than yourself, and
more experienced, I insist that you encourage the Bishop.'
'Don't quarrel with me, Louis!' she said piteously. 'We don't know that
he thinks anything of me,--we only guess.'
'I know it,--and you shall hear how I know. I am of a curious and
conjectural nature, as you are aware. Last night, when everybody had
gone to bed, I stepped out for a five minutes' smoke on the lawn, and
walked down to where you get near the vicarage windows. While I was
there in the dark one of them opened, and Bishop Helmsdale leant out. The
illuminated oblong of your window shone him full in the face between the
trees, and presently your shadow crossed it. He waved his hand, and
murmured some tender words, though what they were exactly I could not
hear.'
'What a vague, imaginary story,--as if he could know my shadow! Besides,
a man of the Bishop's dignity wouldn't have done such a thing. When I
knew him as a younger man he was not at all romantic, and he's not likely
to have grown so now.'
'That's just what he is likely to have done. No lover is so extreme a
specimen of the species as an old lover. Come, Viviette, no more of this
fencing. I have entered into the project heart and soul--so much that I
have postponed my departure till the matter is well under way.'
'Louis--my dear Louis--you will bring me into some disagreeable
position!' said she, clasping her hands. 'I do entreat you not to
interfere or do anything rash about me. The step is impossible. I have
something to tell you some day. I must live on, and endure--'
'Everything except this penury,' replied Louis, unmoved. 'Come, I have
begun the campaign by inviting Bishop Helmsdale, and I'll take the
responsibility of carrying it on. All I ask of you is not to make a
ninny of yourself. Come, give me your promise!'
'No, I cannot,--I don't know how to! I only know one thing,--that I am
in no hurry--'
'"No hurry" be hanged! Agree, like a good sister, to charm the Bishop.'
'I must consider!' she replied, with perturbed evasiveness.