Two on a Tower
It being a fine evening Louis went out of the house to enjoy his cigar in
the shrubbery. On reaching his favourite seat he found he had left his
cigar-case behind him; he immediately returned for it. When he
approached the window by which he had emerged he saw Swithin St. Cleeve
standing there in the dusk, talking to Viviette inside.
St. Cleeve's back was towards Louis, but, whether at a signal from her or
by accident, he quickly turned and recognized Glanville; whereupon
raising his hat to Lady Constantine the young man passed along the
terrace-walk and out by the churchyard door.
Louis rejoined his sister. 'I didn't know you allowed your lawn to be a
public thoroughfare for the parish,' he said.
'I am not exclusive, especially since I have been so poor,' replied she.
'Then do you let everybody pass this way, or only that illustrious youth
because he is so good-looking?'
'I have no strict rule in the case. Mr. St. Cleeve is an acquaintance of
mine, and he can certainly come here if he chooses.' Her colour rose
somewhat, and she spoke warmly.
Louis was too cautious a bird to reveal to her what had suddenly dawned
upon his mind--that his sister, in common with the (to his thinking)
unhappy Tabitha Lark, had been foolish enough to get interested in this
phenomenon of the parish, this scientific Adonis. But he resolved to
cure at once her tender feeling, if it existed, by letting out a secret
which would inflame her dignity against the weakness.
'A good-looking young man,' he said, with his eyes where Swithin had
vanished. 'But not so good as he looks. In fact a regular young
sinner.'
'What do you mean?'
'Oh, only a little feature I discovered in St. Cleeve's history. But I
suppose he has a right to sow his wild oats as well as other young men.'
'Tell me what you allude to,--do, Louis.'
'It is hardly fit that I should. However, the case is amusing enough. I
was sitting in the arbour to-day, and was an unwilling listener to the
oddest interview I ever heard of. Our friend the Bishop discovered, when
we visited the observatory last night, that our astronomer was not alone
in his seclusion. A lady shared his romantic cabin with him; and finding
this, the Bishop naturally enough felt that the ordinance of confirmation
had been profaned. So his lordship sent for Master Swithin this morning,
and meeting him in the churchyard read him such an excommunicating
lecture as I warrant he won't forget in his lifetime. Ha-ha-ha! 'Twas
very good,--very.'
He watched her face narrowly while he spoke with such seeming
carelessness. Instead of the agitation of jealousy that he had expected
to be aroused by this hint of another woman in the case, there was a
curious expression, more like embarrassment than anything else which
might have been fairly attributed to the subject. 'Can it be that I am
mistaken?' he asked himself.
The possibility that he might be mistaken restored Louis to good-humour,
and lights having been brought he sat with his sister for some time,
talking with purpose of Swithin's low rank on one side, and the sordid
struggles that might be in store for him. St. Cleeve being in the
unhappy case of deriving his existence through two channels of society,
it resulted that he seemed to belong to either this or that according to
the altitude of the beholder. Louis threw the light entirely on
Swithin's agricultural side, bringing out old Mrs. Martin and her
connexions and her ways of life with luminous distinctness, till Lady
Constantine became greatly depressed. She, in her hopefulness, had
almost forgotten, latterly, that the bucolic element, so incisively
represented by Messrs. Hezzy Biles, Haymoss Fry, Sammy Blore, and the
rest entered into his condition at all; to her he had been the son of his
academic father alone.
But she would not reveal the depression to which she had been subjected
by this resuscitation of the homely half of poor Swithin, presently
putting an end to the subject by walking hither and thither about the
room.
'What have you lost?' said Louis, observing her movements.
'Nothing of consequence,--a bracelet.'
'Coral?' he inquired calmly.
'Yes. How did you know it was coral? You have never seen it, have you?'
He was about to make answer; but the amazed enlightenment which her
announcement had produced in him through knowing where the Bishop had
found such an article, led him to reconsider himself. Then, like an
astute man, by no means sure of the dimensions of the intrigue he might
be uncovering, he said carelessly, 'I found such a one in the churchyard
to-day. But I thought it appeared to be of no great rarity, and I gave
it to one of the village girls who was passing by.'
'Did she take it? Who was she?' said the unsuspecting Viviette.
'Really, I don't remember. I suppose it is of no consequence?'
'O no; its value is nothing, comparatively. It was only one of a pair
such as young girls wear.' Lady Constantine could not add that, in spite
of this, she herself valued it as being Swithin's present, and the best
he could afford.
Panic-struck by his ruminations, although revealing nothing by his
manner, Louis soon after went up to his room, professedly to write
letters. He gave vent to a low whistle when he was out of hearing. He
of course remembered perfectly well to whom he had given the corals, and
resolved to seek out Tabitha the next morning to ascertain whether she
could possibly have owned such a trinket as well as his sister,--which at
present he very greatly doubted, though fervently hoping that she might.
XXIX
The effect upon Swithin of the interview with the Bishop had been a very
marked one. He felt that he had good ground for resenting that
dignitary's tone in haughtily assuming that all must be sinful which at
the first blush appeared to be so, and in narrowly refusing a young man
the benefit of a single doubt. Swithin's assurance that he would be able
to explain all some day had been taken in contemptuous incredulity.
'He may be as virtuous as his prototype Timothy; but he's an opinionated
old fogey all the same,' said St. Cleeve petulantly.
Yet, on the other hand, Swithin's nature was so fresh and ingenuous,
notwithstanding that recent affairs had somewhat denaturalized him, that
for a man in the Bishop's position to think him immoral was almost as
overwhelming as if he had actually been so, and at moments he could
scarcely bear existence under so gross a suspicion. What was his union
with Lady Constantine worth to him when, by reason of it, he was thought
a reprobate by almost the only man who had professed to take an interest
in him?
Certainly, by contrast with his air-built image of himself as a worthy
astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied husband of
Viviette, the present imputation was humiliating. The glorious light of
this tender and refined passion seemed to have become debased to
burlesque hues by pure accident, and his aesthetic no less than his ethic
taste was offended by such an anti-climax. He who had soared amid the
remotest grandeurs of nature had been taken to task on a rudimentary
question of morals, which had never been a question with him at all. This
was what the exigencies of an awkward attachment had brought him to; but
he blamed the circumstances, and not for one moment Lady Constantine.
Having now set his heart against a longer concealment he was disposed to
think that an excellent way of beginning a revelation of their marriage
would be by writing a confidential letter to the Bishop, detailing the
whole case. But it was impossible to do this on his own responsibility.
He still recognized the understanding entered into with Viviette, before
the marriage, to be as binding as ever,--that the initiative in
disclosing their union should come from her. Yet he hardly doubted that
she would take that initiative when he told her of his extraordinary
reprimand in the churchyard.
This was what he had come to do when Louis saw him standing at the
window. But before he had said half-a-dozen words to Viviette she
motioned him to go on, which he mechanically did, ere he could
sufficiently collect his thoughts on its advisability or otherwise. He
did not, however, go far. While Louis and his sister were discussing him
in the drawing-room he lingered musing in the churchyard, hoping that she
might be able to escape and join him in the consultation he so earnestly
desired.
She at last found opportunity to do this. As soon as Louis had left the
room and shut himself in upstairs she ran out by the window in the
direction Swithin had taken. When her footsteps began crunching on the
gravel he came forward from the churchyard door.
They embraced each other in haste, and then, in a few short panting
words, she explained to him that her brother had heard and witnessed the
interview on that spot between himself and the Bishop, and had told her
the substance of the Bishop's accusation, not knowing she was the woman
in the cabin.
'And what I cannot understand is this,' she added; 'how did the Bishop
discover that the person behind the bed-curtains was a woman and not a
man?'
Swithin explained that the Bishop had found the bracelet on the bed, and
had brought it to him in the churchyard.
'O Swithin, what do you say? Found the coral bracelet? What did you do
with it?'
Swithin clapped his hand to his pocket.
'Dear me! I recollect--I left it where it lay on Reuben Heath's
tombstone.'
'Oh, my dear, dear Swithin!' she cried miserably. 'You have compromised
me by your forgetfulness. I have claimed the article as mine. My
brother did not tell me that the Bishop brought it from the cabin. What
can I, can I do, that neither the Bishop nor my brother may conclude _I_
was the woman there?'
'But if we announce our marriage--'
'Even as your wife, the position was too undignified--too I don't know
what--for me ever to admit that I was there! Right or wrong, I must
declare the bracelet was not mine. Such an escapade--why, it would make
me ridiculous in the county; and anything rather than that!'
'I was in hope that you would agree to let our marriage be known,' said
Swithin, with some disappointment. 'I thought that these circumstances
would make the reason for doing so doubly strong.'
'Yes. But there are, alas, reasons against it still stronger! Let me
have my way.'
'Certainly, dearest. I promised that before you agreed to be mine. My
reputation--what is it! Perhaps I shall be dead and forgotten before the
next transit of Venus!'
She soothed him tenderly, but could not tell him why she felt the reasons
against any announcement as yet to be stronger than those in favour of
it. How could she, when her feeling had been cautiously fed and
developed by her brother Louis's unvarnished exhibition of Swithin's
material position in the eyes of the world?--that of a young man, the
scion of a family of farmers recently her tenants, living at the
homestead with his grandmother, Mrs. Martin.
To soften her refusal she said in declaring it, 'One concession, Swithin,
I certainly will make. I will see you oftener. I will come to the cabin
and tower frequently; and will contrive, too, that you come to the house
occasionally. During the last winter we passed whole weeks without
meeting; don't let us allow that to happen again.'
'Very well, dearest,' said Swithin good-humouredly. 'I don't care so
terribly much for the old man's opinion of me, after all. For the
present, then, let things be as they are.'
Nevertheless, the youth felt her refusal more than he owned; but the
unequal temperament of Swithin's age, so soon depressed on his own
account, was also soon to recover on hers, and it was with almost a