Two on a Tower
Constantine was coming to live again at Welland in the old house, with
her child, now a little boy between three and four years of age.
Swithin, however, lived on as before.
But by the following autumn a change became necessary for the young man
himself. His work at the Cape was done. His uncle's wishes that he
should study there had been more than observed. The materials for his
great treatise were collected, and it now only remained for him to
arrange, digest, and publish them, for which purpose a return to England
was indispensable.
So the equatorial was unscrewed, and the stand taken down; the
astronomer's barrow-load of precious memoranda, and rolls upon rolls of
diagrams, representing three years of continuous labour, were safely
packed; and Swithin departed for good and all from the shores of Cape
Town.
He had long before informed his grandmother of the date at which she
might expect him; and in a reply from her, which reached him just
previous to sailing, she casually mentioned that she frequently saw Lady
Constantine; that on the last occasion her ladyship had shown great
interest in the information that Swithin was coming home, and had
inquired the time of his return.
* * * * *
On a late summer day Swithin stepped from the train at Warborne, and,
directing his baggage to be sent on after him, set out on foot for old
Welland once again.
It seemed but the day after his departure, so little had the scene
changed. True, there was that change which is always the first to arrest
attention in places that are conventionally called unchanging--a higher
and broader vegetation at every familiar corner than at the former time.
He had not gone a mile when he saw walking before him a clergyman whose
form, after consideration, he recognized, in spite of a novel whiteness
in that part of his hair that showed below the brim of his hat. Swithin
walked much faster than this gentleman, and soon was at his side.
'Mr. Torkingham! I knew it was,' said Swithin.
Mr. Torkingham was slower in recognizing the astronomer, but in a moment
had greeted him with a warm shake of the hand.
'I have been to the station on purpose to meet you!' cried Mr.
Torkingham, 'and was returning with the idea that you had not come. I am
your grandmother's emissary. She could not come herself, and as she was
anxious, and nobody else could be spared, I came for her.'
Then they walked on together. The parson told Swithin all about his
grandmother, the parish, and his endeavours to enlighten it; and in due
course said, 'You are no doubt aware that Lady Constantine is living
again at Welland?'
Swithin said he had heard as much, and added, what was far within the
truth, that the news of the Bishop's death had been a great surprise to
him.
'Yes,' said Mr. Torkingham, with nine thoughts to one word. 'One might
have prophesied, to look at him, that Melchester would not lack a bishop
for the next forty years. Yes; pale death knocks at the cottages of the
poor and the palaces of kings with an impartial foot!'
'Was he a particularly good man?' asked Swithin.
'He was not a Ken or a Heber. To speak candidly, he had his faults, of
which arrogance was not the least. But who is perfect?'
Swithin, somehow, felt relieved to hear that the Bishop was not a perfect
man.
'His poor wife, I fear, had not a great deal more happiness with him than
with her first husband. But one might almost have foreseen it; the
marriage was hasty--the result of a red-hot caprice, hardly becoming in a
man of his position; and it betokened a want of temperate discretion
which soon showed itself in other ways. That's all there was to be said
against him, and now it's all over, and things have settled again into
their old course. But the Bishop's widow is not the Lady Constantine of
former days. No; put it as you will, she is not the same. There seems
to be a nameless something on her mind--a trouble--a rooted melancholy,
which no man's ministry can reach. Formerly she was a woman whose
confidence it was easy to gain; but neither religion nor philosophy
avails with her now. Beyond that, her life is strangely like what it was
when you were with us.'
Conversing thus they pursued the turnpike road till their conversation
was interrupted by a crying voice on their left. They looked, and
perceived that a child, in getting over an adjoining stile, had fallen on
his face.
Mr. Torkingham and Swithin both hastened up to help the sufferer, who was
a lovely little fellow with flaxen hair, which spread out in a frill of
curls from beneath a quaint, close-fitting velvet cap that he wore.
Swithin picked him up, while Mr. Torkingham wiped the sand from his lips
and nose, and administered a few words of consolation, together with a
few sweet-meats, which, somewhat to Swithin's surprise, the parson
produced as if by magic from his pocket. One half the comfort rendered
would have sufficed to soothe such a disposition as the child's. He
ceased crying and ran away in delight to his unconscious nurse, who was
reaching up for blackberries at a hedge some way off.
'You know who he is, of course?' said Mr. Torkingham, as they resumed
their journey.
'No,' said Swithin.
'Oh, I thought you did. Yet how should you? It is Lady Constantine's
boy--her only child. His fond mother little thinks he is so far away
from home.'
'Dear me!--Lady Constantine's--ah, how interesting!' Swithin paused
abstractedly for a moment, then stepped back again to the stile, while he
stood watching the little boy out of sight.
'I can never venture out of doors now without sweets in my pocket,'
continued the good-natured vicar: 'and the result is that I meet that
young man more frequently on my rounds than any other of my
parishioners.'
St. Cleeve was silent, and they turned into Welland Lane, where their
paths presently diverged, and Swithin was left to pursue his way alone.
He might have accompanied the vicar yet further, and gone straight to
Welland House; but it would have been difficult to do so then without
provoking inquiry. It was easy to go there now: by a cross path he could
be at the mansion almost as soon as by the direct road. And yet Swithin
did not turn; he felt an indescribable reluctance to see Viviette. He
could not exactly say why. True, before he knew how the land lay it
might be awkward to attempt to call: and this was a sufficient excuse for
postponement.
In this mood he went on, following the direct way to his grandmother's
homestead. He reached the garden-gate, and, looking into the bosky basin
where the old house stood, saw a graceful female form moving before the
porch, bidding adieu to some one within the door.
He wondered what creature of that mould his grandmother could know, and
went forward with some hesitation. At his approach the apparition
turned, and he beheld, developed into blushing womanhood, one who had
once been known to him as the village maiden Tabitha Lark. Seeing
Swithin, and apparently from an instinct that her presence would not be
desirable just then, she moved quickly round into the garden.
The returned traveller entered the house, where he found awaiting him
poor old Mrs. Martin, to whose earthly course death stood rather as the
asymptote than as the end. She was perceptibly smaller in form than when
he had left her, and she could see less distinctly.
A rather affecting greeting followed, in which his grandmother murmured
the words of Israel: '"Now let me die, since I have seen thy face,
because thou art yet alive."'
The form of Hannah had disappeared from the kitchen, that ancient servant
having been gathered to her fathers about six months before, her place
being filled by a young girl who knew not Joseph. They presently chatted
with much cheerfulness, and his grandmother said, 'Have you heard what a
wonderful young woman Miss Lark has become?--a mere fleet-footed,
slittering maid when you were last home.'
St. Cleeve had not heard, but he had partly seen, and he was informed
that Tabitha had left Welland shortly after his own departure, and had
studied music with great success in London, where she had resided ever
since till quite recently; that she played at concerts, oratorios--had,
in short, joined the phalanx of Wonderful Women who had resolved to
eclipse masculine genius altogether, and humiliate the brutal sex to the
dust.
'She is only in the garden,' added his grandmother. 'Why don't ye go out
and speak to her?'
Swithin was nothing loth, and strolled out under the apple-trees, where
he arrived just in time to prevent Miss Lark from going off by the back
gate. There was not much difficulty in breaking the ice between them,
and they began to chat with vivacity.
Now all these proceedings occupied time, for somehow it was very charming
to talk to Miss Lark; and by degrees St. Cleeve informed Tabitha of his
great undertaking, and of the voluminous notes he had amassed, which
would require so much rearrangement and recopying by an amanuensis as to
absolutely appal him. He greatly feared he should not get one careful
enough for such scientific matter; whereupon Tabitha said she would be
delighted to do it for him. Then blushing, and declaring suddenly that
it had grown quite late, she left him and the garden for her relation's
house hard by.
Swithin, no less than Tabitha, had been surprised by the disappearance of
the sun behind the hill; and the question now arose whether it would be
advisable to call upon Viviette that night. There was little doubt that
she knew of his coming; but more than that he could not predicate; and
being entirely ignorant of whom she had around her, entirely in the dark
as to her present feelings towards him, he thought it would be better to
defer his visit until the next day.
Walking round to the front of the house he beheld the well-known
agriculturists Hezzy Biles, Haymoss Fry, and some others of the same old
school, passing the gate homeward from their work with bundles of wood at
their backs. Swithin saluted them over the top rail.
'Well! do my eyes and ears--' began Hezzy; and then, balancing his faggot
on end against the hedge, he came forward, the others following.
'Says I to myself as soon as I heerd his voice,' Hezzy continued
(addressing Swithin as if he were a disinterested spectator and not
himself), 'please God I'll pitch my nitch, and go across and speak to
en.'
'I knowed in a winking 'twas some great navigator that I see a standing
there,' said Haymoss. 'But whe'r 'twere a sort of nabob, or a diment-
digger, or a lion-hunter, I couldn't so much as guess till I heerd en
speak.'
'And what changes have come over Welland since I was last at home?' asked
Swithin.
'Well, Mr. San Cleeve,' Hezzy replied, 'when you've said that a few
stripling boys and maidens have busted into blooth, and a few married
women have plimmed and chimped (my lady among 'em), why, you've said
anighst all, Mr. San Cleeve.'
The conversation thus began was continued on divers matters till they
were all enveloped in total darkness, when his old acquaintances
shouldered their faggots again and proceeded on their way.
Now that he was actually within her coasts again Swithin felt a little
more strongly the influence of the past and Viviette than he had been
accustomed to do for the last two or three years. During the night he
felt half sorry that he had not marched off to the Great House to see
her, regardless of the time of day. If she really nourished for him any
particle of her old affection it had been the cruellest thing not to
call. A few questions that he put concerning her to his grandmother
elicited that Lady Constantine had no friends about her--not even her