Two on a Tower

bs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex. The spot was where the old Melche

-twenty. She was looking through the opening afforded by a field-gate at the undulating stretch

ered with fir-trees. The trees were all of one size and age, so that their tips assumed the precise curve of the hill they grew upon. This pine-clad protuberance was yet further marked out from the general landscape by

road leading nea

than where we ar

d after a moment. And the

me carriage, passed that spot again. Her e

our way home through that field, so as to get near t

n there by inching and pinching, and so get across by Five-and-Twenty Acres, all being well. Bu

indifferently. ‘Remember it,

sting on the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, a

in other respects much as they had been before. The familiar shape of the column seemed to remind her that at last an opportunity for a close insp

h impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carria

substantial memorial of her husband’s great-grandfather, a respectable officer who had fallen in the American war, and the reason of her lack of interest was partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more anon. It was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do — the chronic desire of her curiously lonely life — that had

axon field of Witenagemote — with remains of an outer and an inner vallum, a winding path leading up between their overlapping ends by an easy ascent. The spikelets from th

cked in seconds, like inverted pendulums; while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar’s sides, or occasionally clicked in catching each other. Below the level of their summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun never pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. Pads of moss grew

ides of trunks, and thence horizontally away. The fact of the plantation being an island in the midst of an arable plain sufficiently accounted for this lack of visitors. Few unaccustomed to such places can be aware of the insulating effect of ploughed ground, wh

was all washed from the wood, and down the decaying surface of the boards liquid rust from the nails and hinges had run in red stains. Over the doo

tokened forgetfulness. Probably not a dozen people within the district knew the name of the person commemorated, while perhaps not a soul remembered whether the column were hollow

knew the spot, despite her surmises. But as the paper had nothing on it no clue was afforded; yet feeling herself the proprietor of the column and of all around it her self-assertiveness was sufficient to lead her on. The stair

that stood before him on a tripod. This sort of presence was unexpected, and the lady started back into the shade of the opening. The only effect produced

because no deep felicity is likely to arise from the condition, or from any other reason, to say in these days that a youth is beautiful is not to award him that amount of credit which the expression would have carried with it if he had lived in the times of the Classical Dictionary. So much, indeed, is the reverse the case that the assertion creates an awkwardness in saying anyt

head he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to view below it a curly margin

far enough removed from virgin delicacy, and suggests plenty of sun and wind as its accompaniment. His features were sufficiently straight in the conto

a shade, and her complexion showed the richness demanded as a support to these decided features. As she continued to look at the pretty fellow before her, apparently so far abstracted into some speculative

her attention for ever, and as he made no further signs of m

— something happ

!’ he automatically murmu

ha

one in

sider the weight of that even

difference to us

ned to the consciousness that somebody unusua

ht it was my relative come to look aft

city of influence as might have been expected between a dark lady a

errupt your obser

ife. The expression that settled on him was one of awe. Not unaptly might it have been said that he was worshipping the sun. Among the various intensities of that worship which have prevailed since the first intelligent

is an event that is witnessed only about once in t

e centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be laid bare to its core. It was a pee

id. Then he looked again; till wondering who her

t is not cloudy, an

The heavens must be bea

ather more

tirely taken possess

tir

mn,’ she said, wit

ntine, wife of the absent

dy Const

ship’s. But will you allow me to rent

in the interests of science it is advisable that you con

ly an

he interior, and showed her some ingenio

continued; ‘and when I first came up it nobody had been here for thirty or forty yea

e column was alw

ven to my great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors sho

l lying immediately beyond the p

obody ever asked for it. One day I saw it, lying rusty in its niche, and, finding that it belonged to this column, I took it and came up. I stayed here till it was

his voice

ity and office of Astronomer Royal,

that,’ said she. ‘How long are you g

ed a practical familiarity with the heave

is t

ce is infinite — how infinite only those who study astronomy full

f scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all thi

this tower alone a

from seven or eight till about two in the morning, with a view to my great work o

urn’s ring and J

to do that, not without some cont

any planet or star

y Constantine, I will show you any number. I

vary so much — sometimes evening stars, sometimes morning stars, somet

orance of the realities of astronomy is so satisfactory t

h to be en

ution you

on the subject,

, in

ad of looking longer at the sun, watched her diminishing towards the distant fence, behind which waited the carriage. When in the midst of the field, a dark spot on an area of brown, there crossed her path a moving figure, whom it was as difficult to distinguish from the earth he trod as the caterpillar from its leaf, by reas

the encrusted form of the word Amos, to adopt the phrase of philologists). The

mos Fry, I think

he eaves of your ladyship’s outbuildings, in a manner of speaking,-

old house behind

tin, my lady, a

er father nor

ngle one,

as he ed

alk like the day of Pentecost; which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only the plainest ciphering woman in the world. Warborne Grammar School — that’s where ’twas

Constantine. ‘It was bef

this homespun woman the toppermost folk wouldn’t speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he’d no longer get his living by curing their twopenny souls o’ such d —— nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took to farming straightway, and then ‘a dropped down dead in a nor’-west thunderstorm; it being said — hee-hee! — that Master God was in tantrums wi’en for leaving his service

ould be linked, on the maternal side, with a local agricultural family through his father’s matrimonial eccentricity. A more attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capable of being ruined by flattery, bla