Two on a Tower
wez gnawing, every now and then. When a feller's young he's too small in
the brain to see how soon a constitution can be squandered, worse luck!'
'True,' said Biles, to fill the time while the parson was engaged in
finding the Psalms. 'A man's a fool till he's forty. Often have I
thought, when hay-pitching, and the small of my back seeming no stouter
than a harnet's, "The devil send that I had but the making of labouring
men for a twelvemonth!" I'd gie every man jack two good backbones, even
if the alteration was as wrong as forgery.'
'Four,--four backbones,' said Haymoss, decisively.
'Yes, four,' threw in Sammy Blore, with additional weight of experience.
'For you want one in front for breast-ploughing and such like, one at the
right side for ground-dressing, and one at the left side for turning
mixens.'
'Well; then next I'd move every man's wyndpipe a good span away from his
glutchpipe, so that at harvest time he could fetch breath in 's drinking,
without being choked and strangled as he is now. Thinks I, when I feel
the victuals going--'
'Now, we'll begin,' interrupted Mr. Torkingham, his mind returning to
this world again on concluding his search for a hymn.
Thereupon the racket of chair-legs on the floor signified that they were
settling into their seats,--a disturbance which Swithin took advantage of
by going on tiptoe across the floor above, and putting sheets of paper
over knot-holes in the boarding at points where carpet was lacking, that
his lamp-light might not shine down. The absence of a ceiling beneath
rendered his position virtually that of one suspended in the same
apartment.
The parson announced the tune, and his voice burst forth with 'Onward,
Christian soldiers!' in notes of rigid cheerfulness.
In this start, however, he was joined only by the girls and boys, the men
furnishing but an accompaniment of ahas and hems. Mr. Torkingham
stopped, and Sammy Blore spoke,--
'Beg your pardon, sir,--if you'll deal mild with us a moment. What with
the wind and walking, my throat's as rough as a grater; and not knowing
you were going to hit up that minute, I hadn't hawked, and I don't think
Hezzy and Nat had, either,--had ye, souls?'
'I hadn't got thorough ready, that's true,' said Hezekiah.
'Quite right of you, then, to speak,' said Mr. Torkingham. 'Don't mind
explaining; we are here for practice. Now clear your throats, then, and
at it again.'
There was a noise as of atmospheric hoes and scrapers, and the bass
contingent at last got under way with a time of its own:
'Honwerd, Christen sojers!'
'Ah, that's where we are so defective--the pronunciation,' interrupted
the parson. 'Now repeat after me: "On-ward, Christ-ian, sol-diers."'
The choir repeated like an exaggerative echo: 'On-wed, Chris-ting, sol-
jaws!'
'Better!' said the parson, in the strenuously sanguine tones of a man who
got his living by discovering a bright side in things where it was not
very perceptible to other people. 'But it should not be given with quite
so extreme an accent; or we may be called affected by other parishes.
And, Nathaniel Chapman, there's a jauntiness in your manner of singing
which is not quite becoming. Why don't you sing more earnestly?'
'My conscience won't let me, sir. They say every man for himself: but,
thank God, I'm not so mean as to lessen old fokes' chances by being
earnest at my time o' life, and they so much nearer the need o't.'
'It's bad reasoning, Nat, I fear. Now, perhaps we had better sol-fa the
tune. Eyes on your books, please. Sol-sol! fa-fa! mi--'
'I can't sing like that, not I!' said Sammy Blore, with condemnatory
astonishment. 'I can sing genuine music, like F and G; but not anything
so much out of the order of nater as that.'
'Perhaps you've brought the wrong book, sir?' chimed in Haymoss, kindly.
'I've knowed music early in life and late,--in short, ever since Luke
Sneap broke his new fiddle-bow in the wedding psalm, when Pa'son Wilton
brought home his bride (you can mind the time, Sammy?--when we sung "His
wife, like a fair fertile vine, her lovely fruit shall bring," when the
young woman turned as red as a rose, not knowing 'twas coming). I've
knowed music ever since then, I say, sir, and never heard the like o'
that. Every martel note had his name of A, B, C, at that time.'
'Yes, yes, men; but this is a more recent system!'
'Still, you can't alter a old-established note that's A or B by nater,'
rejoined Haymoss, with yet deeper conviction that Mr. Torkingham was
getting off his head. 'Now sound A, neighbour Sammy, and let's have a
slap at Christen sojers again, and show the Pa'son the true way!'
Sammy produced a private tuning-fork, black and grimy, which, being about
seventy years of age, and wrought before pianoforte builders had sent up
the pitch to make their instruments brilliant, was nearly a note flatter
than the parson's. While an argument as to the true pitch was in
progress, there came a knocking without.
'Somebody's at the door!' said a little treble girl.
'Thought I heard a knock before!' said the relieved choir.
The latch was lifted, and a man asked from the darkness, 'Is Mr.
Torkingham here?'
'Yes, Mills. What do you want?'
It was the parson's man.
'Oh, if you please,' said Mills, showing an advanced margin of himself
round the door, 'Lady Constantine wants to see you very particular, sir,
and could you call on her after dinner, if you ben't engaged with poor
fokes? She's just had a letter,--so they say,--and it's about that, I
believe.'
Finding, on looking at his watch, that it was necessary to start at once
if he meant to see her that night, the parson cut short the practising,
and, naming another night for meeting, he withdrew. All the singers
assisted him on to his cob, and watched him till he disappeared over the
edge of the Bottom.
III
Mr. Torkingham trotted briskly onward to his house, a distance of about a
mile, each cottage, as it revealed its half-buried position by its single
light, appearing like a one-eyed night creature watching him from an
ambush. Leaving his horse at the parsonage he performed the remainder of
the journey on foot, crossing the park towards Welland House by a stile
and path, till he struck into the drive near the north door of the
mansion.
This drive, it may be remarked, was also the common highway to the lower
village, and hence Lady Constantine's residence and park, as is
occasionally the case with old-fashioned manors, possessed none of the
exclusiveness found in some aristocratic settlements. The parishioners
looked upon the park avenue as their natural thoroughfare, particularly
for christenings, weddings, and funerals, which passed the squire's
mansion with due considerations as to the scenic effect of the same from
the manor windows. Hence the house of Constantine, when going out from
its breakfast, had been continually crossed on the doorstep for the last
two hundred years by the houses of Hodge and Giles in full cry to dinner.
At present these collisions were but too infrequent, for though the
villagers passed the north front door as regularly as ever, they seldom
met a Constantine. Only one was there to be met, and she had no zest for
outings before noon.
The long, low front of the Great House, as it was called by the parish,
stretching from end to end of the terrace, was in darkness as the vicar
slackened his pace before it, and only the distant fall of water
disturbed the stillness of the manorial precincts.
On gaining admittance he found Lady Constantine waiting to receive him.
She wore a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and being the only person in
the spacious apartment she looked small and isolated. In her left hand
she held a letter and a couple of at-home cards. The soft dark eyes
which she raised to him as he entered--large, and melancholy by
circumstance far more than by quality--were the natural indices of a warm
and affectionate, perhaps slightly voluptuous temperament, languishing
for want of something to do, cherish, or suffer for.
Mr. Torkingham seated himself. His boots, which had seemed elegant in
the farm-house, appeared rather clumsy here, and his coat, that was a
model of tailoring when he stood amid the choir, now exhibited decidedly
strained relations with his limbs. Three years had passed since his
induction to the living of Welland, but he had never as yet found means
to establish that reciprocity with Lady Constantine which usually grows
up, in the course of time, between parsonage and manor-house,--unless,
indeed, either side should surprise the other by showing respectively a
weakness for awkward modern ideas on landownership, or on church
formulas, which had not been the case here. The present meeting,
however, seemed likely to initiate such a reciprocity.
There was an appearance of confidence on Lady Constantine's face; she
said she was so very glad that he had come, and looking down at the
letter in her hand was on the point of pulling it from its envelope; but
she did not. After a moment she went on more quickly: 'I wanted your
advice, or rather your opinion, on a serious matter,--on a point of
conscience.' Saying which she laid down the letter and looked at the
cards.
It might have been apparent to a more penetrating eye than the vicar's
that Lady Constantine, either from timidity, misgiving, or reconviction,
had swerved from her intended communication, or perhaps decided to begin
at the other end.
The parson, who had been expecting a question on some local business or
intelligence, at the tenor of her words altered his face to the higher
branch of his profession.
'I hope I may find myself of service, on that or any other question,' he
said gently.
'I hope so. You may possibly be aware, Mr. Torkingham, that my husband,
Sir Blount Constantine, was, not to mince matters, a mistaken--somewhat
jealous man. Yet you may hardly have discerned it in the short time you
knew him.'
'I had some little knowledge of Sir Blount's character in that respect.'
'Well, on this account my married life with him was not of the most
comfortable kind.' (Lady Constantine's voice dropped to a more pathetic
note.) 'I am sure I gave him no cause for suspicion; though had I known
his disposition sooner I should hardly have dared to marry him. But his
jealousy and doubt of me were not so strong as to divert him from a
purpose of his,--a mania for African lion-hunting, which he dignified by
calling it a scheme of geographical discovery; for he was inordinately
anxious to make a name for himself in that field. It was the one passion
that was stronger than his mistrust of me. Before going away he sat down
with me in this room, and read me a lecture, which resulted in a very
rash offer on my part. When I tell it to you, you will find that it
provides a key to all that is unusual in my life here. He bade me
consider what my position would be when he was gone; hoped that I should
remember what was due to him,--that I would not so behave towards other
men as to bring the name of Constantine into suspicion; and charged me to
avoid levity of conduct in attending any ball, rout, or dinner to which I
might be invited. I, in some contempt for his low opinion of me,
volunteered, there and then, to live like a cloistered nun during his
absence; to go into no society whatever,--scarce even to a neighbour's
dinner-party; and demanded bitterly if that would satisfy him. He said
yes, held me to my word, and gave me no loophole for retracting it. The
inevitable fruits of precipitancy have resulted to me: my life has become
a burden. I get such invitations as these' (holding up the cards), 'but
I so invariably refuse them that they are getting very rare. . . . I ask