"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 s.e.x 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 ama.s.sed, 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, pa.s.sing 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 f.a.ggot 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 G.o.d 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 f.a.ggots 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 brother--and that her health had not been so good since her return from Melchester as formerly. Still, this proved nothing as to the state of her heart, and as she had kept a dead silence since the Bishop"s death it was quite possible that she would meet him with that cold repressive tone and manner which experienced women know so well how to put on when they wish to intimate to the long-lost lover that old episodes are to be taken as forgotten.
The next morning he prepared to call, if only on the ground of old acquaintance, for Swithin was too straightforward to ascertain anything indirectly. It was rather too early for this purpose when he went out from his grandmother"s garden-gate, after breakfast, and he waited in the garden. While he lingered his eye fell on Rings-Hill Speer.
It appeared dark, for a moment, against the blue sky behind it; then the fleeting cloud which shadowed it pa.s.sed on, and the face of the column brightened into such luminousness that the sky behind sank to the complexion of a dark foil.
"Surely somebody is on the column," he said to himself, after gazing at it awhile.
Instead of going straight to the Great House he deviated through the insulating field, now sown with turnips, which surrounded the plantation on Rings-Hill. By the time that he plunged under the trees he was still more certain that somebody was on the tower. He crept up to the base with proprietary curiosity, for the spot seemed again like his own.
The path still remained much as formerly, but the nook in which the cabin had stood was covered with undergrowth. Swithin entered the door of the tower, ascended the staircase about half-way on tip-toe, and listened, for he did not wish to intrude on the top if any stranger were there. The hollow spiral, as he knew from old experience, would bring down to his ears the slightest sound from above; and it now revealed to him the words of a duologue in progress at the summit of the tower.
"Mother, what shall I do?" a child"s voice said. "Shall I sing?"
The mother seemed to a.s.sent, for the child began--
"The robin has fled from the wood To the snug habitation of man."
This performance apparently attracted but little attention from the child"s companion, for the young voice suggested, as a new form of entertainment, "Shall I say my prayers?"
"Yes," replied one whom Swithin had begun to recognize.
"Who shall I pray for?"
No answer.
"Who shall I pray for?"
"Pray for father."
"But he is gone to heaven?"
A sigh from Viviette was distinctly audible.
"You made a mistake, didn"t you, mother?" continued the little one.
"I must have. The strangest mistake a woman ever made!"