Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (427 page)

‘O I am lost!’ said Viviette, seizing his arm.  ‘Why was I so incautious?’

‘It is nobody of consequence,’ whispered Swithin assuringly.  ‘Somebody from my grandmother, probably, to know when I am coming home.’

They were unperceived so far, for the only window which gave light to the hut was screened by a curtain.  At that moment they heard the sound of their visitors’ voices, and, with a consternation as great as her own, Swithin discerned the tones of Mr. Torkingham and the Bishop of Melchester.

‘Where shall I get?  What shall I do?’ said the poor lady, clasping her hands.

Swithin looked around the cabin, and a very little look was required to take in all its resources.  At one end, as previously explained, were a table, stove, chair, cupboard, and so on; while the other was completely occupied by a diminutive Arabian bedstead, hung with curtains of pink-and-white chintz.  On the inside of the bed there was a narrow channel, about a foot wide, between it and the wall of the hut.  Into this cramped retreat Viviette slid herself, and stood trembling behind the curtains.

By this time the knock had been repeated more loudly, the light through the window-blind unhappily revealing the presence of some inmate.  Swithin threw open the door, and Mr. Torkingham introduced his visitors.

The Bishop shook hands with the young man, told him he had known his father, and at Swithin’s invitation, weak as it was, entered the cabin, the vicar and Louis Glanville remaining on the threshold, not to inconveniently crowd the limited space within.

Bishop Helmsdale looked benignantly around the apartment, and said, ‘Quite a settlement in the backwoods — quite: far enough from the world to afford the votary of science the seclusion he needs, and not so far as to limit his resources.  A hermit might apparently live here in as much solitude as in a primeval forest.’

‘His lordship has been good enough to express an interest in your studies,’ said Mr. Torkingham to St. Cleeve.  ‘And we have come to ask you to let us see the observatory.’

‘With great pleasure,’ stammered Swithin.

‘Where is the observatory?’ inquired the Bishop, peering round again.

‘The staircase is just outside this door,’ Swithin answered.  ‘I am at your lordship’s service, and will show you up at once.’

‘And this is your little bed, for use when you work late,’ said the Bishop.

‘Yes; I am afraid it is rather untidy,’ Swithin apologized.

‘And here are your books,’ the Bishop continued, turning to the table and the shaded lamp.  ‘You take an observation at the top, I presume, and come down here to record your observations.’

The young man explained his precise processes as well as his state of mind would let him, and while he was doing so Mr. Torkingham and Louis waited patiently without, looking sometimes into the night, and sometimes through the door at the interlocutors, and listening to their scientific converse.  When all had been exhibited here below, Swithin lit his lantern, and, inviting his visitors to follow, led the way up the column, experiencing no small sense of relief as soon as he heard the footsteps of all three tramping on the stairs behind him.  He knew very well that, once they were inside the spiral, Viviette was out of danger, her knowledge of the locality enabling her to find her way with perfect safety through the plantation, and into the park home.

At the top he uncovered his equatorial, and, for the first time at ease, explained to them its beauties, and revealed by its help the glories of those stars that were eligible for inspection.  The Bishop spoke as intelligently as could be expected on a topic not peculiarly his own; but, somehow, he seemed rather more abstracted in manner now than when he had arrived.  Swithin thought that perhaps the long clamber up the stairs, coming after a hard day’s work, had taken his spontaneity out of him, and Mr. Torkingham was afraid that his lordship was getting bored.  But this did not appear to be the case; for though he said little he stayed on some time longer, examining the construction of the dome after relinquishing the telescope; while occasionally Swithin caught the eyes of the Bishop fixed hard on him.

‘Perhaps he sees some likeness of my father in me,’ the young man thought; and the party making ready to leave at this time he conducted them to the bottom of the tower.

Swithin was not prepared for what followed their descent.  All were standing at the foot of the staircase.  The astronomer, lantern in hand, offered to show them the way out of the plantation, to which Mr. Torkingham replied that he knew the way very well, and would not trouble his young friend.  He strode forward with the words, and Louis followed him, after waiting a moment and finding that the Bishop would not take the precedence.  The latter and Swithin were thus left together for one moment, whereupon the Bishop turned.

‘Mr. St. Cleeve,’ he said in a strange voice, ‘I should like to speak to you privately, before I leave, to-morrow morning.  Can you meet me — let me see — in the churchyard, at half-past ten o’clock?’

‘O yes, my lord, certainly,’ said Swithin.  And before he had recovered from his surprise the Bishop had joined the others in the shades of the plantation.

Swithin immediately opened the door of the hut, and scanned the nook behind the bed.  As he had expected his bird had flown.

CHAPTER XXVII

All night the astronomer’s mind was on the stretch with curiosity as to what the Bishop could wish to say to him.  A dozen conjectures entered his brain, to be abandoned in turn as unlikely.  That which finally seemed the most plausible was that the Bishop, having become interested in his pursuits, and entertaining friendly recollections of his father, was going to ask if he could do anything to help him on in the profession he had chosen.  Should this be the case, thought the suddenly sanguine youth, it would seem like an encouragement to that spirit of firmness which had led him to reject his late uncle’s offer because it involved the renunciation of Lady Constantine.

At last he fell asleep; and when he awoke it was so late that the hour was ready to solve what conjecture could not.  After a hurried breakfast he paced across the fields, entering the churchyard by the south gate precisely at the appointed minute.

The inclosure was well adapted for a private interview, being bounded by bushes of laurel and alder nearly on all sides.  He looked round; the Bishop was not there, nor any living creature save himself.  Swithin sat down upon a tombstone to await Bishop Helmsdale’s arrival.

While he sat he fancied he could hear voices in conversation not far off, and further attention convinced him that they came from Lady Constantine’s lawn, which was divided from the churchyard by a high wall and shrubbery only.  As the Bishop still delayed his coming, though the time was nearly eleven, and as the lady whose sweet voice mingled with those heard from the lawn was his personal property, Swithin became exceedingly curious to learn what was going on within that screened promenade.  A way of doing so occurred to him.  The key was in the church door; he opened it, entered, and ascended to the ringers’ loft in the west tower.  At the back of this was a window commanding a full view of Viviette’s garden front.

The flowers were all in gayest bloom, and the creepers on the walls of the house were bursting into tufts of young green.  A broad gravel-walk ran from end to end of the facade, terminating in a large conservatory.  In the walk were three people pacing up and down.  Lady Constantine’s was the central figure, her brother being on one side of her, and on the other a stately form in a corded shovel-hat of glossy beaver and black breeches.  This was the Bishop.  Viviette carried over her shoulder a sunshade lined with red, which she twirled idly.  They were laughing and chatting gaily, and when the group approached the churchyard many of their remarks entered the silence of the church tower through the ventilator of the window.

The conversation was general, yet interesting enough to Swithin.  At length Louis stepped upon the grass and picked up something that had lain there, which turned out to be a bowl: throwing it forward he took a second, and bowled it towards the first, or jack.  The Bishop, who seemed to be in a sprightly mood, followed suit, and bowled one in a curve towards the jack, turning and speaking to Lady Constantine as he concluded the feat.  As she had not left the gravelled terrace he raised his voice, so that the words reached Swithin distinctly.

‘Do you follow us?’ he asked gaily.

‘I am not skilful,’ she said.  ‘I always bowl narrow.’

The Bishop meditatively paused.

‘This moment reminds one of the scene in
Richard the Second
,’ he said.  ‘I mean the Duke of York’s garden, where the queen and her two ladies play, and the queen says —

“What sport shall we devise here in this garden,

To drive away the heavy thought of care?”

To which her lady answers, “Madam, we’ll play at bowls.”‘

‘That’s an unfortunate quotation for you,’ said Lady Constantine; ‘for if I don’t forget, the queen declines, saying, “Twill make me think the world is full of rubs, and that my fortune runs against the bias.”‘

‘Then I cite
mal à propos
.  But it is an interesting old game, and might have been played at that very date on this very green.’

The Bishop lazily bowled another, and while he was doing it Viviette’s glance rose by accident to the church tower window, where she recognized Swithin’s face.  Her surprise was only momentary; and waiting till both her companions’ backs were turned she smiled and blew him a kiss.  In another minute she had another opportunity, and blew him another; afterwards blowing him one a third time.

Her blowings were put a stop to by the Bishop and Louis throwing down the bowls and rejoining her in the path, the house clock at the moment striking half-past eleven.

‘This is a fine way of keeping an engagement,’ said Swithin to himself.  ‘I have waited an hour while you indulge in those trifles!’

He fumed, turned, and behold somebody was at his elbow: Tabitha Lark.  Swithin started, and said, ‘How did you come here, Tabitha?’

‘In the course of my calling, Mr. St. Cleeve,’ said the smiling girl.  ‘I come to practise on the organ.  When I entered I saw you up here through the tower arch, and I crept up to see what you were looking at.  The Bishop is a striking man, is he not?’

‘Yes, rather,’ said Swithin.

‘I think he is much devoted to Lady Constantine, and I am glad of it.  Aren’t you?’

‘O yes — very,’ said Swithin, wondering if Tabitha had seen the tender little salutes between Lady Constantine and himself.

‘I don’t think she cares much for him,’ added Tabitha judicially.  ‘Or, even if she does, she could be got away from him in no time by a younger man.’

‘Pooh, that’s nothing,’ said Swithin impatiently.

Tabitha then remarked that her blower had not come to time, and that she must go to look for him; upon which she descended the stairs, and left Swithin again alone.

A few minutes later the Bishop suddenly looked at his watch, Lady Constantine having withdrawn towards the house.  Apparently apologizing to Louis the Bishop came down the terrace, and through the door into the churchyard.  Swithin hastened downstairs and joined him in the path under the sunny wall of the aisle.

Their glances met, and it was with some consternation that Swithin beheld the change that a few short minutes had wrought in that episcopal countenance.  On the lawn with Lady Constantine the rays of an almost perpetual smile had brightened his dark aspect like flowers in a shady place: now the smile was gone as completely as yesterday; the lines of his face were firm; his dark eyes and whiskers were overspread with gravity; and, as he gazed upon Swithin from the repose of his stable figure it was like an evangelized King of Spades come to have it out with the Knave of Hearts.

* * * * *

To return for a moment to Louis Glanville.  He had been somewhat struck with the abruptness of the Bishop’s departure, and more particularly by the circumstance that he had gone away by the private door into the churchyard instead of by the regular exit on the other side.  True, great men were known to suffer from absence of mind, and Bishop Helmsdale, having a dim sense that he had entered by that door yesterday, might have unconsciously turned thitherward now.  Louis, upon the whole, thought little of the matter, and being now left quite alone on the lawn, he seated himself in an arbour and began smoking.

The arbour was situated against the churchyard wall.  The atmosphere was as still as the air of a hot-house; only fourteen inches of brickwork divided Louis from the scene of the Bishop’s interview with St. Cleeve, and as voices on the lawn had been audible to Swithin in the churchyard, voices in the churchyard could be heard without difficulty from that close corner of the lawn.  No sooner had Louis lit a cigar than the dialogue began.

‘Ah, you are here, St. Cleeve,’ said the Bishop, hardly replying to Swithin’s good morning.  ‘I fear I am a little late.  Well, my request to you to meet me may have seemed somewhat unusual, seeing that we were strangers till a few hours ago.’

‘I don’t mind that, if your lordship wishes to see me.’

‘I thought it best to see you regarding your confirmation yesterday; and my reason for taking a more active step with you than I should otherwise have done is that I have some interest in you through having known your father when we were undergraduates.  His rooms were on the same staircase with mine at All Angels, and we were friendly till time and affairs separated us even more completely than usually happens.  However, about your presenting yourself for confirmation.’  (The Bishop’s voice grew stern.)  ‘If I had known yesterday morning what I knew twelve hours later, I wouldn’t have confirmed you at all.’

‘Indeed, my lord!’

‘Yes, I say it, and I mean it.  I visited your observatory last night.’

‘You did, my lord.’

‘In inspecting it I noticed something which I may truly describe as extraordinary.  I have had young men present themselves to me who turned out to be notoriously unfit, either from giddiness, from being profane or intemperate, or from some bad quality or other.  But I never remember a case which equalled the cool culpability of this.  While infringing the first principles of social decorum you might at least have respected the ordinance sufficiently to have stayed away from it altogether.  Now I have sent for you here to see if a last entreaty and a direct appeal to your sense of manly uprightness will have any effect in inducing you to change your course of life.’