Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (428 page)

The voice of Swithin in his next remark showed how tremendously this attack of the Bishop had told upon his feelings.  Louis, of course, did not know the reason why the words should have affected him precisely as they did; to any one in the secret the double embarrassment arising from misapprehended ethics and inability to set matters right, because his word of secrecy to another was inviolable, would have accounted for the young man’s emotion sufficiently well.

‘I am very sorry your lordship should have seen anything objectionable,’ said Swithin.  ‘May I ask what it was?’

‘You know what it was.  Something in your chamber, which forced me to the above conclusions.  I disguised my feelings of sorrow at the time for obvious reasons, but I never in my whole life was so shocked!’

‘At what, my lord?’

‘At what I saw.’

‘Pardon me, Bishop Helmsdale, but you said just now that we are strangers; so what you saw in my cabin concerns me only.’

‘There I contradict you.  Twenty-four hours ago that remark would have been plausible enough; but by presenting yourself for confirmation at my hands you have invited my investigation into your principles.’

Swithin sighed.  ‘I admit it,’ he said.

‘And what do I find them?’

‘You say reprehensible.  But you might at least let me hear the proof!’

‘I can do more, sir.  I can let you see it!’

There was a pause.  Louis Glanville was so highly interested that he stood upon the seat of the arbour, and looked through the leafage over the wall.  The Bishop had produced an article from his pocket.

‘What is it?’ said Swithin, labouriously scrutinizing the thing.

‘Why, don’t you see?’ said the Bishop, holding it out between his finger and thumb in Swithin’s face.  ‘A bracelet, — a coral bracelet.  I found the wanton object on the bed in your cabin!  And of the sex of the owner there can be no doubt.  More than that, she was concealed behind the curtains, for I saw them move.’  In the decision of his opinion the Bishop threw the coral bracelet down on a tombstone.

‘Nobody was in my room, my lord, who had not a perfect right to be there,’ said the younger man.

‘Well, well, that’s a matter of assertion.  Now don’t get into a passion, and say to me in your haste what you’ll repent of saying afterwards.’

‘I am not in a passion, I assure your lordship.  I am too sad for passion.’

‘Very well; that’s a hopeful sign.  Now I would ask you, as one man of another, do you think that to come to me, the Bishop of this large and important diocese, as you came yesterday, and pretend to be something that you are not, is quite upright conduct, leave alone religious?  Think it over.  We may never meet again.  But bear in mind what your Bishop and spiritual head says to you, and see if you cannot mend before it is too late.’

Swithin was meek as Moses, but he tried to appear sturdy.  ‘My lord, I am in a difficult position,’ he said mournfully; ‘how difficult, nobody but myself can tell.  I cannot explain; there are insuperable reasons against it.  But will you take my word of assurance that I am not so bad as I seem?  Some day I will prove it.  Till then I only ask you to suspend your judgment on me.’

The Bishop shook his head incredulously and went towards the vicarage, as if he had lost his hearing.  Swithin followed him with his eyes, and Louis followed the direction of Swithin’s.  Before the Bishop had reached the vicarage entrance Lady Constantine crossed in front of him.  She had a basket on her arm, and was, in fact, going to visit some of the poorer cottages.  Who could believe the Bishop now to be the same man that he had been a moment before?  The darkness left his face as if he had come out of a cave; his look was all sweetness, and shine, and gaiety, as he again greeted Viviette.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The conversation which arose between the Bishop and Lady Constantine was of that lively and reproductive kind which cannot be ended during any reasonable halt of two people going in opposite directions.  He turned, and walked with her along the laurel-screened lane that bordered the churchyard, till their voices died away in the distance.  Swithin then aroused himself from his thoughtful regard of them, and went out of the churchyard by another gate.

Seeing himself now to be left alone on the scene, Louis Glanville descended from his post of observation in the arbour.  He came through the private doorway, and on to that spot among the graves where the Bishop and St. Cleeve had conversed.  On the tombstone still lay the coral bracelet which Dr. Helmsdale had flung down there in his indignation; for the agitated, introspective mood into which Swithin had been thrown had banished from his mind all thought of securing the trinket and putting it in his pocket.

Louis picked up the little red scandal-breeding thing, and while walking on with it in his hand he observed Tabitha Lark approaching the church, in company with the young blower whom she had gone in search of to inspire her organ-practising within.  Louis immediately put together, with that rare diplomatic keenness of which he was proud, the little scene he had witnessed between Tabitha and Swithin during the confirmation, and the Bishop’s stern statement as to where he had found the bracelet.  He had no longer any doubt that it belonged to her.

‘Poor girl!’ he said to himself, and sang in an undertone —

   ’Tra deri, dera,

L’histoire n’est pas nouvelle!’

When she drew nearer Louis called her by name.  She sent the boy into the church, and came forward, blushing at having been called by so fine a gentleman.  Louis held out the bracelet.

‘Here is something I have found, or somebody else has found,’ he said to her.  ‘I won’t state where.  Put it away, and say no more about it.  I will not mention it either.  Now go on into the church where you are going, and may Heaven have mercy on your soul, my dear.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Tabitha, with some perplexity, yet inclined to be pleased, and only recognizing in the situation the fact that Lady Constantine’s humorous brother was making her a present.

‘You are much obliged to me?’

‘O yes!’

‘Well, Miss Lark, I’ve discovered a secret, you see.’

‘What may that be, Mr. Glanville?’

‘That you are in love.’

‘I don’t admit it, sir.  Who told you so?’

‘Nobody.  Only I put two and two together.  Now take my advice.  Beware of lovers!  They are a bad lot, and bring young women to tears.’

‘Some do, I dare say.  But some don’t.’

‘And you think that in your particular case the latter alternative will hold good?  We generally think we shall be lucky ourselves, though all the world before us, in the same situation, have been otherwise.’

‘O yes, or we should die outright of despair.’

‘Well, I don’t think you will be lucky in your case.’

‘Please how do you know so much, since my case has not yet arrived?’ asked Tabitha, tossing her head a little disdainfully, but less than she might have done if he had not obtained a charter for his discourse by giving her the bracelet.

‘Fie, Tabitha!’

‘I tell you it has not arrived!’ she said, with some anger.  ‘I have not got a lover, and everybody knows I haven’t, and it’s an insinuating thing for you to say so!’

Louis laughed, thinking how natural it was that a girl should so emphatically deny circumstances that would not bear curious inquiry.

‘Why, of course I meant myself,’ he said soothingly.  ‘So, then, you will not accept me?’

‘I didn’t know you meant yourself,’ she replied.  ‘But I won’t accept you.  And I think you ought not to jest on such subjects.’

‘Well, perhaps not.  However, don’t let the Bishop see your bracelet, and all will be well.  But mind, lovers are deceivers.’

Tabitha laughed, and they parted, the girl entering the church.  She had been feeling almost certain that, having accidentally found the bracelet somewhere, he had presented it in a whim to her as the first girl he met.  Yet now she began to have momentary doubts whether he had not been labouring under a mistake, and had imagined her to be the owner.  The bracelet was not valuable; it was, in fact, a mere toy, — the pair of which this was one being a little present made to Lady Constantine by Swithin on the day of their marriage; and she had not worn them with sufficient frequency out of doors for Tabitha to recognize either as positively her ladyship’s.  But when, out of sight of the blower, the girl momentarily tried it on, in a corner by the organ, it seemed to her that the ornament was possibly Lady Constantine’s.  Now that the pink beads shone before her eyes on her own arm she remembered having seen a bracelet with just such an effect gracing the wrist of Lady Constantine upon one occasion.  A temporary self-surrender to the sophism that if Mr. Louis Glanville chose to give away anything belonging to his sister, she, Tabitha, had a right to take it without question, was soon checked by a resolve to carry the tempting strings of coral to her ladyship that evening, and inquire the truth about them.  This decided on she slipped the bracelet into her pocket, and played her voluntaries with a light heart.

* * * * *

Bishop Helmsdale did not tear himself away from Welland till about two o’clock that afternoon, which was three hours later than he had intended to leave.  It was with a feeling of relief that Swithin, looking from the top of the tower, saw the carriage drive out from the vicarage into the turnpike road, and whirl the right reverend gentleman again towards Warborne.  The coast being now clear of him Swithin meditated how to see Viviette, and explain what had happened.  With this in view he waited where he was till evening came on.

Meanwhile Lady Constantine and her brother dined by themselves at Welland House.  They had not met since the morning, and as soon as they were left alone Louis said, ‘You have done very well so far; but you might have been a little warmer.’

‘Done well?’ she asked, with surprise.

‘Yes, with the Bishop.  The difficult question is how to follow up our advantage.  How are you to keep yourself in sight of him?’

‘Heavens, Louis! You don’t seriously mean that the Bishop of Melchester has any feelings for me other than friendly?’

‘Viviette, this is affectation.  You know he has as well as I do.’

She sighed.  ‘Yes,’ she said.  ‘I own I had a suspicion of the same thing.  What a misfortune!’

‘A misfortune?  Surely the world is turned upside down!  You will drive me to despair about our future if you see things so awry.  Exert yourself to do something, so as to make of this accident a stepping-stone to higher things.  The gentleman will give us the slip if we don’t pursue the friendship at once.’

‘I cannot have you talk like this,’ she cried impatiently.  ‘I have no more thought of the Bishop than I have of the Pope.  I would much rather not have had him here to lunch at all.  You said it would be necessary to do it, and an opportunity, and I thought it my duty to show some hospitality when he was coming so near, Mr. Torkingham’s house being so small.  But of course I understood that the opportunity would be one for you in getting to know him, your prospects being so indefinite at present; not one for me.’

‘If you don’t follow up this chance of being spiritual queen of Melchester, you will never have another of being anything.  Mind this, Viviette: you are not so young as you were.  You are getting on to be a middle-aged woman, and your black hair is precisely of the sort which time quickly turns grey.  You must make up your mind to grizzled bachelors or widowers.  Young marriageable men won’t look at you; or if they do just now, in a year or two more they’ll despise you as an antiquated party.’

Lady Constantine perceptibly paled.  ‘Young men what?’ she asked.  ‘Say that again.’

‘I said it was no use to think of young men; they won’t look at you much longer; or if they do, it will be to look away again very quickly.’

‘You imply that if I were to marry a man younger than myself he would speedily acquire a contempt for me?  How much younger must a man be than his wife — to get that feeling for her?’  She was resting her elbow on the chair as she faintly spoke the words, and covered her eyes with her hand.

‘An exceedingly small number of years,’ said Louis drily.  ‘Now the Bishop is at least fifteen years older than you, and on that account, no less than on others, is an excellent match.  You would be head of the church in this diocese: what more can you require after these years of miserable obscurity?  In addition, you would escape that minor thorn in the flesh of bishops’ wives, of being only “Mrs.” while their husbands are peers.’

She was not listening; his previous observation still detained her thoughts.

‘Louis,’ she said, ‘in the case of a woman marrying a man much younger than herself, does he get to dislike her, even if there has been a social advantage to him in the union?’

‘Yes, — not a whit less.  Ask any person of experience.  But what of that?  Let’s talk of our own affairs.  You say you have no thought of the Bishop.  And yet if he had stayed here another day or two he would have proposed to you straight off.’

‘Seriously, Louis, I could not accept him.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t love him.’

‘Oh, oh, I like those words!’ cried Louis, throwing himself back in his chair and looking at the ceiling in satirical enjoyment.  ‘A woman who at two-and-twenty married for convenience, at thirty talks of not marrying without love; the rule of inverse, that is, in which more requires less, and less requires more.  As your only brother, older than yourself, and more experienced, I insist that you encourage the Bishop.’

‘Don’t quarrel with me, Louis!’ she said piteously.  ‘We don’t know that he thinks anything of me, — we only guess.’

‘I know it, — and you shall hear how I know.  I am of a curious and conjectural nature, as you are aware.  Last night, when everybody had gone to bed, I stepped out for a five minutes’ smoke on the lawn, and walked down to where you get near the vicarage windows.  While I was there in the dark one of them opened, and Bishop Helmsdale leant out.  The illuminated oblong of your window shone him full in the face between the trees, and presently your shadow crossed it.  He waved his hand, and murmured some tender words, though what they were exactly I could not hear.’