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Title: Two on a Tower

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release Date: March, 2002  [Etext #3146]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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TWO ON A TOWER

BY THOMAS HARDY.




     'Ah, my heart! her eyes and she
      Have taught thee new astrology.
      Howe'er Love's native hours were set,
      Whatever starry synod met,
      'Tis in the mercy of her eye,
      If poor Love shall live or die.'
                            CRASHAW:  Love's Horoscope.



PREFACE.

This slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the
emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous
background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the
sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be
the greater to them as men.

But, on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck
with these high aims of the author than with their own opinion,
first, that the novel was an 'improper' one in its morals, and,
secondly, that it was intended to be a satire on the Established
Church of this country.  I was made to suffer in consequence from
several eminent pens.

That, however, was thirteen years ago, and, in respect of the first
opinion, I venture to think that those who care to read the story
now will be quite astonished at the scrupulous propriety observed
therein on the relations of the sexes; for though there may be
frivolous, and even grotesque touches on occasion, there is hardly a
single caress in the book outside legal matrimony, or what was
intended so to be.

As for the second opinion, it is sufficient to draw attention, as I
did at the time, to the fact that the Bishop is every inch a
gentleman, and that the parish priest who figures in the narrative
is one of its most estimable characters.

However, the pages must speak for themselves.  Some few readers, I
trust--to take a serious view--will be reminded by this imperfect
story, in a manner not unprofitable to the growth of the social
sympathies, of the pathos, misery, long-suffering, and divine
tenderness which in real life frequently accompany the passion of
such a woman as Viviette for a lover several years her junior.

The scene of the action was suggested by two real spots in the part
of the country specified, each of which has a column standing upon
it.  Certain surrounding peculiarities have been imported into the
narrative from both sites.

T. H.
July 1895.




TWO ON A TOWER.




I

On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable
world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs 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 Melchester Road, which
the carriage had hitherto followed, was joined by a drive that led
round into a park at no great distance off.

The footman alighted, and went to the occupant of the carriage, a
lady about eight- or nine-and-twenty.  She was looking through the
opening afforded by a field-gate at the undulating stretch of
country beyond.  In pursuance of some remark from her the servant
looked in the same direction.

The central feature of the middle distance, as they beheld it, was a
circular isolated hill, of no great elevation, which placed itself
in strong chromatic contrast with a wide acreage of surrounding
arable by being covered 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 having on its summit a
tower in the form of a classical column, which, though partly
immersed in the plantation, rose above the tree-tops to a
considerable height.  Upon this object the eyes of lady and servant
were bent.

'Then there is no road leading near it?' she asked.

'Nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady.'

'Then drive home,' she said after a moment.  And the carriage rolled
on its way.

A few days later, the same lady, in the same carriage, passed that
spot again.  Her eyes, as before, turned to the distant tower.

'Nobbs,' she said to the coachman, 'could you find your way home
through that field, so as to get near the outskirts of the
plantation where the column is?'

The coachman regarded the field.  'Well, my lady,' he observed, 'in
dry weather we might drive in there by inching and pinching, and so
get across by Five-and-Twenty Acres, all being well.  But the ground
is so heavy after these rains that perhaps it would hardly be safe
to try it now.'

'Perhaps not,' she assented indifferently.  'Remember it, will you,
at a drier time?'

And again the carriage sped along the road, the lady's eyes resting
on the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, and the
column that formed its apex, till they were out of sight.

A long time elapsed before that lady drove over the hill again.  It
was February; the soil was now unquestionably dry, the weather and
scene being 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 inspection had arrived.  Giving her
directions she saw the gate opened, and after a little manoeuvring
the carriage swayed slowly into the uneven field.

Although the pillar stood upon the hereditary estate of her husband
the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-
nigh impracticable ground.  The drive to the base of the hill was
tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that
the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for
her on the nearest edge of the field.  She then ascended beneath the
trees on foot.

The column now showed itself as a much more important erection than
it had appeared from the road, or the park, or the windows of
Welland House, her residence hard by, whence she had surveyed it
hundreds of times without ever feeling a sufficient interest in its
details to investigate them.  The column had been erected in the
last century, as a 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 brought her here now.  She was
in a mood to welcome anything that would in some measure disperse an
almost killing ennui.  She would have welcomed even a misfortune.
She had heard that from the summit of the pillar four counties could
be seen.  Whatever pleasurable effect was to be derived from looking
into four counties she resolved to enjoy to-day.

The fir-shrouded hill-top was (according to some antiquaries) an old
Roman camp,--if it were not (as others insisted) an old British
castle, or (as the rest swore) an old Saxon 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 the trees formed a soft carpet over the route, and occasionally
a brake of brambles barred the interspaces of the trunks.  Soon she
stood immediately at the foot of the column.

It had been built in the Tuscan order of classic architecture, and
was really a tower, being hollow with steps inside.  The gloom and
solitude which prevailed round the base were remarkable.  The sob of
the environing trees was here expressively manifest; and moved by
the light breeze their thin straight stems rocked 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 in the joints of the stone-work, and
here and there shade-loving insects had engraved on the mortar
patterns of no human style or meaning; but curious and suggestive.
Above the trees the case was different:  the pillar rose into the
sky a bright and cheerful thing, unimpeded, clean, and flushed with
the sunlight.

The spot was seldom visited by a pedestrian, except perhaps in the
shooting season.  The rarity of human intrusion was evidenced by the
mazes of rabbit-runs, the feathers of shy birds, the exuviae of
reptiles; as also by the well-worn paths of squirrels down the sides
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,
when no necessity compels people to traverse it.  This rotund hill
of trees and brambles, standing in the centre of a ploughed field of
some ninety or a hundred acres, was probably visited less frequently
than a rock would have been visited in a lake of equal extent.

She walked round the column to the other side, where she found the
door through which the interior was reached.  The paint, if it had
ever had any, 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 door was a stone tablet, bearing,
apparently, letters or words; but the inscription, whatever it was,
had been smoothed over with a plaster of lichen.

Here stood this aspiring piece of masonry, erected as the most
conspicuous and ineffaceable reminder of a man that could be thought
of; and yet the whole aspect of the memorial betokened
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 or solid, whether with or
without a tablet explaining its date and purpose.  She herself had
lived within a mile of it for the last five years, and had never
come near it till now.

She hesitated to ascend alone, but finding that the door was not
fastened she pushed it open with her foot, and entered.  A scrap of
writing-paper lay within, and arrested her attention by its
freshness.  Some human being, then, 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
staircase was lighted by slits in the wall, and there was no
difficulty in reaching the top, the steps being quite unworn.  The
trap-door leading on to the roof was open, and on looking through it
an interesting spectacle met her eye.

A youth was sitting on a stool in the centre of the lead flat which
formed the summit of the column, his eye being applied to the end of
a large telescope 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 upon him by her footfall was
an impatient wave of the hand, which he did without removing his eye
from the instrument, as if to forbid her to interrupt him.

Pausing where she stood the lady examined the aspect of the
individual who thus made himself so completely at home on a building
which she deemed her unquestioned property.  He was a youth who
might properly have been characterized by a word the judicious
chronicler would not readily use in such a connexion, preferring to
reserve it for raising images of the opposite sex.  Whether 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 anything more about him.
The beautiful youth usually verges so perilously on the incipient
coxcomb, who is about to become the Lothario or Juan among the
neighbouring maidens, that, for the due understanding of our present
young man, his sublime innocence of any thought concerning his own
material aspect, or that of others, is most fervently asserted, and
must be as fervently believed.

Such as he was, there the lad sat.  The sun shone full in his face,
and on his head he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to view
below it a curly margin of very light shining hair, which accorded
well with the flush upon his cheek.

He had such a complexion as that with which Raffaelle enriches the
countenance of the youthful son of Zacharias,--a complexion which,
though clear, is far enough removed from virgin delicacy, and
suggests plenty of sun and wind as its accompaniment.  His features
were sufficiently straight in the contours to correct the beholder's
first impression that the head was the head of a girl.  Beside him
stood a little oak table, and in front was the telescope.

His visitor had ample time to make these observations; and she may
have done so all the more keenly through being herself of a totally
opposite type.  Her hair was black as midnight, her eyes had no less
deep 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 world as scarcely to know a real one, a warmer wave of
her warm temperament glowed visibly through her, and a qualified
observer might from this have hazarded a guess that there was
Romance blood in her veins.

But even the interest attaching to the youth could not arrest her
attention for ever, and as he made no further signs of moving his
eye from the instrument she broke the silence with--

'What do you see?--something happening somewhere?'

'Yes, quite a catastrophe!' he automatically murmured, without
moving round.

'What?'

'A cyclone in the sun.'

The lady paused, as if to consider the weight of that event in the
scale of terrene life.

'Will it make any difference to us here?' she asked.

The young man by this time seemed to be awakened to the
consciousness that somebody unusual was talking to him; he turned,
and started.

'I beg your pardon,' he said.  'I thought it was my relative come to
look after me!  She often comes about this time.'

He continued to look at her and forget the sun, just such a
reciprocity of influence as might have been expected between a dark
lady and a flaxen-haired youth making itself apparent in the faces
of each.

'Don't let me interrupt your observations,' said she.

'Ah, no,' said he, again applying his eye; whereupon his face lost
the animation which her presence had lent it, and became immutable
as that of a bust, though superadding to the serenity of repose the
sensitiveness of life.  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 being saw the luminary decline
westward, as the young man now beheld it doing, his was not the
weakest.  He was engaged in what may be called a very chastened or
schooled form of that first and most natural of adorations.

'But would you like to see it?' he recommenced.  'It is an event
that is witnessed only about once in two or three years, though it
may occur often enough.'

She assented, and looked through the shaded eyepiece, and saw a
whirling mass, in the centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be
laid bare to its core.  It was a peep into a maelstrom of fire,
taking place where nobody had ever been or ever would be.

'It is the strangest thing I ever beheld,' she said.  Then he looked
again; till wondering who her companion could be she asked, 'Are you
often here?'

'Every night when it is not cloudy, and often in the day.'

'Ah, night, of course.  The heavens must be beautiful from this
point.'

'They are rather more than that.'

'Indeed!  Have you entirely taken possession of this column?'

'Entirely.'

'But it is my column,' she said, with smiling asperity.

'Then are you Lady Constantine, wife of the absent Sir Blount
Constantine?'

'I am Lady Constantine.'

'Ah, then I agree that it is your ladyship's.  But will you allow me
to rent it of you for a time, Lady Constantine?'

'You have taken it, whether I allow it or not.  However, in the
interests of science it is advisable that you continue your tenancy.
Nobody knows you are here, I suppose?'

'Hardly anybody.'

He then took her down a few steps into the interior, and showed her
some ingenious contrivances for stowing articles away.

'Nobody ever comes near the column,--or, as it's called here, Rings-
Hill Speer,' he continued; 'and when I first came up it nobody had
been here for thirty or forty years.  The staircase was choked with
daws' nests and feathers, but I cleared them out.'

'I understood the column was always kept locked?'

'Yes, it has been so.  When it was built, in 1782, the key was given
to my great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors should
happen to want it.  He lived just down there where I live now.'

He denoted by a nod a little dell lying immediately beyond the
ploughed land which environed them.

'He kept it in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my
grandfather, my mother, and myself, the key descended with it.
After the first thirty or forty years, nobody 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 dark, and the stars came out, and that night I resolved to be
an astronomer.  I came back here from school several months ago, and
I mean to be an astronomer still.'

He lowered his voice, and added:

'I aim at nothing less than the dignity and office of Astronomer
Royal, if I live.  Perhaps I shall not live.'

'I don't see why you should suppose that,' said she.  'How long are
you going to make this your observatory?'

'About a year longer--till I have obtained a practical familiarity
with the heavens.  Ah, if I only had a good equatorial!'

'What is that?'

'A proper instrument for my pursuit.  But time is short, and science
is infinite,--how infinite only those who study astronomy fully
realize,--and perhaps I shall be worn out before I make my mark.'

She seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture in him of
scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all things human.
Perhaps it was owing to the nature of his studies.

'You are often on this tower alone at night?' she said.

'Yes; at this time of the year particularly, and while there is no
moon.  I observe from seven or eight till about two in the morning,
with a view to my great work on variable stars.  But with such a
telescope as this--well, I must put up with it!'

'Can you see Saturn's ring and Jupiter's moons?'

He said drily that he could manage to do that, not without some
contempt for the state of her knowledge.

'I have never seen any planet or star through a telescope.'

'If you will come the first clear night, Lady Constantine, I will
show you any number.  I mean, at your express wish; not otherwise.'

'I should like to come, and possibly may at some time.  These stars
that vary so much--sometimes evening stars, sometimes morning stars,
sometimes in the east, and sometimes in the west--have always
interested me.'

'Ah--now there is a reason for your not coming.  Your ignorance of
the realities of astronomy is so satisfactory that I will not
disturb it except at your serious request.'

'But I wish to be enlightened.'

'Let me caution you against it.'

'Is enlightenment on the subject, then, so terrible?'

'Yes, indeed.'

She laughingly declared that nothing could have so piqued her
curiosity as his statement, and turned to descend.  He helped her
down the stairs and through the briers.  He would have gone further
and crossed the open corn-land with her, but she preferred to go
alone.  He then retraced his way to the top of the column, but,
instead 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 reason of the excellent match between his clothes and the clods.
He was one of a dying-out generation who retained the principle,
nearly unlearnt now, that a man's habiliments should be in harmony
with his environment.  Lady Constantine and this figure halted
beside each other for some minutes; then they went on their several
ways.

The brown person was a labouring man known to the world of Welland
as Haymoss (the encrusted form of the word Amos, to adopt the phrase
of philologists).  The reason of the halt had been some inquiries
addressed to him by Lady Constantine.

'Who is that--Amos Fry, I think?' she had asked.

'Yes my lady,' said Haymoss; 'a homely barley driller, born under
the eaves of your ladyship's outbuildings, in a manner of speaking,-
-though your ladyship was neither born nor 'tempted at that time.'

'Who lives in the old house behind the plantation?'

'Old Gammer Martin, my lady, and her grandson.'

'He has neither father nor mother, then?'

'Not a single one, my lady.'

'Where was he educated?'

'At Warborne,--a place where they draw up young gam'sters' brains
like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, excusing my common way.
They hit so much larning into en that 'a could talk 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 'a went to.  His father, the
reverent Pa'son St. Cleeve, made a terrible bruckle hit in 's
marrying, in the sight of the high.  He were the curate here, my
lady, for a length o' time.'

'Oh, curate,' said Lady Constantine.  'It was before I knew the
village.'

'Ay, long and merry ago!  And he married Farmer Martin's daughter--
Giles Martin, a limberish man, who used to go rather bad upon his
lags, if you can mind.  I knowed the man well enough; who should
know en better!  The maid was a poor windling thing, and, though a
playward piece o' flesh when he married her, 'a socked and sighed,
and went out like a snoff!  Yes, my lady.  Well, when Pa'son St.
Cleeve married 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,--hee-hee!  I give the story
as I heard it, my lady, but be dazed if I believe in such trumpery
about folks in the sky, nor anything else that's said on 'em, good
or bad.  Well, Swithin, the boy, was sent to the grammar school, as
I say for; but what with having two stations of life in his blood
he's good for nothing, my lady.  He mopes about--sometimes here, and
sometimes there; nobody troubles about en.'

Lady Constantine thanked her informant, and proceeded onward.  To
her, as a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's
incident was that this lad, of striking beauty, scientific
attainments, and cultivated bearing, should 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,
blandishment, pleasure, even gross prosperity, should be at present
living on in a primitive Eden of unconsciousness, with aims towards
whose accomplishment a Caliban shape would have been as effective as
his own.



II

Swithin St. Cleeve lingered on at his post, until the more sanguine
birds of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter
anxieties, piped a short evening hymn to the vanishing sun.

The landscape was gently concave; with the exception of tower and
hill there were no points on which late rays might linger; and hence
the dish-shaped ninety acres of tilled land assumed a uniform hue of
shade quite suddenly.  The one or two stars that appeared were
quickly clouded over, and it was soon obvious that there would be no
sweeping the heavens that night.  After tying a piece of tarpaulin,
which had once seen service on his maternal grandfather's farm, over
all the apparatus around him, he went down the stairs in the dark,
and locked the door.

With the key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the
side of the slope opposite to that trodden by Lady Constantine, and
crossed the field in a line mathematically straight, and in a manner
that left no traces, by keeping in the same furrow all the way on
tiptoe.  In a few minutes he reached a little dell, which occurred
quite unexpectedly on the other side of the field-fence, and
descended to a venerable thatched house, whose enormous roof, broken
up by dormers as big as haycocks, could be seen even in the
twilight.  Over the white walls, built of chalk in the lump,
outlines of creepers formed dark patterns, as if drawn in charcoal.

Inside the house his maternal grandmother was sitting by a wood
fire.  Before it stood a pipkin, in which something was evidently
kept warm.  An eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was
laid for a meal.  This woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under
which she wore a little cap to keep the other clean, retained
faculties but little blunted.  She was gazing into the flames, with
her hands upon her knees, quietly re-enacting in her brain certain
of the long chain of episodes, pathetic, tragical, and humorous,
which had constituted the parish history for the last sixty years.
On Swithin's entry she looked up at him in a sideway direction.

'You should not have waited for me, granny,' he said.

''Tis of no account, my child.  I've had a nap while sitting here.
Yes, I've had a nap, and went straight up into my old country again,
as usual.  The place was as natural as when I left it,--e'en just
threescore years ago!  All the folks and my old aunt were there, as
when I was a child,--yet I suppose if I were really to set out and
go there, hardly a soul would be left alive to say to me, dog how
art!  But tell Hannah to stir her stumps and serve supper--though
I'd fain do it myself, the poor old soul is getting so unhandy!'

Hannah revealed herself to be much nimbler and several years younger
than granny, though of this the latter seemed to be oblivious.  When
the meal was nearly over Mrs. Martin produced the contents of the
mysterious vessel by the fire, saying that she had caused it to be
brought in from the back kitchen, because Hannah was hardly to be
trusted with such things, she was becoming so childish.

'What is it, then?' said Swithin.  'Oh, one of your special
puddings.'  At sight of it, however, he added reproachfully, 'Now,
granny!'

Instead of being round, it was in shape an irregular boulder that
had been exposed to the weather for centuries--a little scrap pared
off here, and a little piece broken away there; the general aim
being, nevertheless, to avoid destroying the symmetry of the pudding
while taking as much as possible of its substance.

'The fact is,' added Swithin, 'the pudding is half gone!'

'I've only sliced off the merest paring once or twice, to taste if
it was well done!' pleaded granny Martin, with wounded feelings.  'I
said to Hannah when she took it up, "Put it here to keep it warm, as
there's a better fire than in the back kitchen."'

'Well, I am not going to eat any of it!' said Swithin decisively, as
he rose from the table, pushed away his chair, and went up-stairs;
the 'other station of life that was in his blood,' and which had
been brought out by the grammar school, probably stimulating him.

'Ah, the world is an ungrateful place!  'Twas a pity I didn't take
my poor name off this earthly calendar and creep under ground sixty
long years ago, instead of leaving my own county to come here!'
mourned old Mrs. Martin.  'But I told his mother how 'twould be--
marrying so many notches above her.  The child was sure to chaw
high, like his father!'

When Swithin had been up-stairs a minute or two however, he altered
his mind, and coming down again ate all the pudding, with the aspect
of a person undertaking a deed of great magnanimity.  The relish
with which he did so restored the unison that knew no more serious
interruptions than such as this.

'Mr. Torkingham has been here this afternoon,' said his grandmother;
'and he wants me to let him meet some of the choir here to-night for
practice.  They who live at this end of the parish won't go to his
house to try over the tunes, because 'tis so far, they say, and so
'tis, poor men.  So he's going to see what coming to them will do.
He asks if you would like to join.'

'I would if I had not so much to do.'

'But it is cloudy to-night.'

'Yes; but I have calculations without end, granny.  Now, don't you
tell him I'm in the house, will you? and then he'll not ask for me.'

'But if he should, must I then tell a lie, Lord forgive me?'

'No, you can say I'm up-stairs; he must think what he likes.  Not a
word about the astronomy to any of them, whatever you do.  I should
be called a visionary, and all sorts.'

'So thou beest, child.  Why can't ye do something that's of use?'

At the sound of footsteps Swithin beat a hasty retreat up-stairs,
where he struck a light, and revealed a table covered with books and
papers, while round the walls hung star-maps, and other diagrams
illustrative of celestial phenomena.  In a corner stood a huge
pasteboard tube, which a close inspection would have shown to be
intended for a telescope.  Swithin hung a thick cloth over the
window, in addition to the curtains, and sat down to his papers.  On
the ceiling was a black stain of smoke, and under this he placed his
lamp, evidencing that the midnight oil was consumed on that precise
spot very often.

Meanwhile there had entered to the room below a personage who, to
judge from her voice and the quick pit-pat of her feet, was a maiden
young and blithe.  Mrs. Martin welcomed her by the title of Miss
Tabitha Lark, and inquired what wind had brought her that way; to
which the visitor replied that she had come for the singing.

'Sit ye down, then,' said granny.  'And do you still go to the House
to read to my lady?'

'Yes, I go and read, Mrs. Martin; but as to getting my lady to
hearken, that's more than a team of six horses could force her to
do.'

The girl had a remarkably smart and fluent utterance, which was
probably a cause, or a consequence, of her vocation.

''Tis the same story, then?' said grandmother Martin.

'Yes.  Eaten out with listlessness.  She's neither sick nor sorry,
but how dull and dreary she is, only herself can tell.  When I get
there in the morning, there she is sitting up in bed, for my lady
don't care to get up; and then she makes me bring this book and that
book, till the bed is heaped up with immense volumes that half bury
her, making her look, as she leans upon her elbow, like the stoning
of Stephen.  She yawns; then she looks towards the tall glass; then
she looks out at the weather, mooning her great black eyes, and
fixing them on the sky as if they stuck there, while my tongue goes
flick-flack along, a hundred and fifty words a minute; then she
looks at the clock; then she asks me what I've been reading.'

'Ah, poor soul!' said granny.  'No doubt she says in the morning,
"Would God it were evening," and in the evening, "Would God it were
morning," like the disobedient woman in Deuteronomy.'

Swithin, in the room overhead, had suspended his calculations, for
the duologue interested him.  There now crunched heavier steps
outside the door, and his grandmother could be heard greeting sundry
local representatives of the bass and tenor voice, who lent a
cheerful and well-known personality to the names Sammy Blore, Nat
Chapman, Hezekiah Biles, and Haymoss Fry (the latter being one with
whom the reader has already a distant acquaintance); besides these
came small producers of treble, who had not yet developed into such
distinctive units of society as to require particularizing.

'Is the good man come?' asked Nat Chapman.  'No,--I see we be here
afore him.  And how is it with aged women to-night, Mrs. Martin?'

'Tedious traipsing enough with this one, Nat.  Sit ye down.  Well,
little Freddy, you don't wish in the morning that 'twere evening,
and at evening that 'twere morning again, do you, Freddy, trust ye
for it?'

'Now, who might wish such a thing as that, Mrs Martin?--nobody in
this parish?' asked Sammy Blore curiously.

'My lady is always wishing it,' spoke up Miss Tabitha Lark.

'Oh, she!  Nobody can be answerable for the wishes of that onnatural
tribe of mankind.  Not but that the woman's heart-strings is tried
in many aggravating ways.'

'Ah, poor woman!' said granny.  'The state she finds herself in--
neither maid, wife, nor widow, as you may say--is not the primest
form of life for keeping in good spirits.  How long is it since she
has heard from Sir Blount, Tabitha?'

'Two years and more,' said the young woman.  'He went into one side
of Africa, as it might be, three St. Martin's days back.  I can mind
it, because 'twas my birthday.  And he meant to come out the other
side.  But he didn't.  He has never come out at all.'

'For all the world like losing a rat in a barley-mow,' said
Hezekiah.  'He's lost, though you know where he is.'

His comrades nodded.

'Ay, my lady is a walking weariness.  I seed her yawn just at the
very moment when the fox was halloaed away by Lornton Copse, and the
hounds runned en all but past her carriage wheels.  If I were she
I'd see a little life; though there's no fair, club-walking, nor
feast to speak of, till Easter week,--that's true.'

'She dares not.  She's under solemn oath to do no such thing.'

'Be cust if I would keep any such oath!  But here's the pa'son, if
my ears don't deceive me.'

There was a noise of horse's hoofs without, a stumbling against the
door-scraper, a tethering to the window-shutter, a creaking of the
door on its hinges, and a voice which Swithin recognized as Mr.
Torkingham's.  He greeted each of the previous arrivals by name, and
stated that he was glad to see them all so punctually assembled.

'Ay, sir,' said Haymoss Fry.  ''Tis only my jints that have kept me
from assembling myself long ago.  I'd assemble upon the top of
Welland Steeple, if 'tweren't for my jints.  I assure ye, Pa'son
Tarkenham, that in the clitch o' my knees, where the rain used to
come through when I was cutting clots for the new lawn, in old my
lady's time, 'tis as if rats wez gnawing, every now and then.  When
a feller's young he's too small in the brain to see how soon a
constitution can be squandered, worse luck!'

'True,' said Biles, to fill the time while the parson was engaged in
finding the Psalms.  'A man's a fool till he's forty.  Often have I
thought, when hay-pitching, and the small of my back seeming no
stouter than a harnet's, "The devil send that I had but the making
of labouring men for a twelvemonth!"  I'd gie every man jack two
good backbones, even if the alteration was as wrong as forgery.'

'Four,--four backbones,' said Haymoss, decisively.

'Yes, four,' threw in Sammy Blore, with additional weight of
experience.  'For you want one in front for breast-ploughing and
such like, one at the right side for ground-dressing, and one at the
left side for turning mixens.'

'Well; then next I'd move every man's wyndpipe a good span away from
his glutchpipe, so that at harvest time he could fetch breath in 's
drinking, without being choked and strangled as he is now.  Thinks
I, when I feel the victuals going--'

'Now, we'll begin,' interrupted Mr. Torkingham, his mind returning
to this world again on concluding his search for a hymn.

Thereupon the racket of chair-legs on the floor signified that they
were settling into their seats,--a disturbance which Swithin took
advantage of by going on tiptoe across the floor above, and putting
sheets of paper over knot-holes in the boarding at points where
carpet was lacking, that his lamp-light might not shine down.  The
absence of a ceiling beneath rendered his position virtually that of
one suspended in the same apartment.

The parson announced the tune, and his voice burst forth with
'Onward, Christian soldiers!' in notes of rigid cheerfulness.

In this start, however, he was joined only by the girls and boys,
the men furnishing but an accompaniment of ahas and hems.  Mr.
Torkingham stopped, and Sammy Blore spoke,--

'Beg your pardon, sir,--if you'll deal mild with us a moment.  What
with the wind and walking, my throat's as rough as a grater; and not
knowing you were going to hit up that minute, I hadn't hawked, and I
don't think Hezzy and Nat had, either,--had ye, souls?'

'I hadn't got thorough ready, that's true,' said Hezekiah.

'Quite right of you, then, to speak,' said Mr. Torkingham.  'Don't
mind explaining; we are here for practice.  Now clear your throats,
then, and at it again.'

There was a noise as of atmospheric hoes and scrapers, and the bass
contingent at last got under way with a time of its own:

'Honwerd, Christen sojers!'

'Ah, that's where we are so defective--the pronunciation,'
interrupted the parson.  'Now repeat after me:  "On-ward, Christ-
ian, sol-diers."'

The choir repeated like an exaggerative echo:  'On-wed, Chris-ting,
sol-jaws!'

'Better!' said the parson, in the strenuously sanguine tones of a
man who got his living by discovering a bright side in things where
it was not very perceptible to other people.  'But it should not be
given with quite so extreme an accent; or we may be called affected
by other parishes.  And, Nathaniel Chapman, there's a jauntiness in
your manner of singing which is not quite becoming.  Why don't you
sing more earnestly?'

'My conscience won't let me, sir.  They say every man for himself:
but, thank God, I'm not so mean as to lessen old fokes' chances by
being earnest at my time o' life, and they so much nearer the need
o't.'

'It's bad reasoning, Nat, I fear.  Now, perhaps we had better sol-fa
the tune.  Eyes on your books, please.  Sol-sol! fa-fa! mi--'

'I can't sing like that, not I!' said Sammy Blore, with condemnatory
astonishment.  'I can sing genuine music, like F and G; but not
anything so much out of the order of nater as that.'

'Perhaps you've brought the wrong book, sir?' chimed in Haymoss,
kindly.  'I've knowed music early in life and late,--in short, ever
since Luke Sneap broke his new fiddle-bow in the wedding psalm, when
Pa'son Wilton brought home his bride (you can mind the time, Sammy?-
-when we sung "His wife, like a fair fertile vine, her lovely fruit
shall bring," when the young woman turned as red as a rose, not
knowing 'twas coming).  I've knowed music ever since then, I say,
sir, and never heard the like o' that.  Every martel note had his
name of A, B, C, at that time.'

'Yes, yes, men; but this is a more recent system!'

'Still, you can't alter a old-established note that's A or B by
nater,' rejoined Haymoss, with yet deeper conviction that Mr.
Torkingham was getting off his head.  'Now sound A, neighbour Sammy,
and let's have a slap at Christen sojers again, and show the Pa'son
the true way!'

Sammy produced a private tuning-fork, black and grimy, which, being
about seventy years of age, and wrought before pianoforte builders
had sent up the pitch to make their instruments brilliant, was
nearly a note flatter than the parson's.  While an argument as to
the true pitch was in progress, there came a knocking without.

'Somebody's at the door!' said a little treble girl.

'Thought I heard a knock before!' said the relieved choir.

The latch was lifted, and a man asked from the darkness, 'Is Mr.
Torkingham here?'

'Yes, Mills.  What do you want?'

It was the parson's man.

'Oh, if you please,' said Mills, showing an advanced margin of
himself round the door, 'Lady Constantine wants to see you very
particular, sir, and could you call on her after dinner, if you
ben't engaged with poor fokes?  She's just had a letter,--so they
say,--and it's about that, I believe.'

Finding, on looking at his watch, that it was necessary to start at
once if he meant to see her that night, the parson cut short the
practising, and, naming another night for meeting, he withdrew.  All
the singers assisted him on to his cob, and watched him till he
disappeared over the edge of the Bottom.



III

Mr. Torkingham trotted briskly onward to his house, a distance of
about a mile, each cottage, as it revealed its half-buried position
by its single light, appearing like a one-eyed night creature
watching him from an ambush.  Leaving his horse at the parsonage he
performed the remainder of the journey on foot, crossing the park
towards Welland House by a stile and path, till he struck into the
drive near the north door of the mansion.

This drive, it may be remarked, was also the common highway to the
lower village, and hence Lady Constantine's residence and park, as
is occasionally the case with old-fashioned manors, possessed none
of the exclusiveness found in some aristocratic settlements.  The
parishioners looked upon the park avenue as their natural
thoroughfare, particularly for christenings, weddings, and funerals,
which passed the squire's mansion with due considerations as to the
scenic effect of the same from the manor windows.  Hence the house
of Constantine, when going out from its breakfast, had been
continually crossed on the doorstep for the last two hundred years
by the houses of Hodge and Giles in full cry to dinner.  At present
these collisions were but too infrequent, for though the villagers
passed the north front door as regularly as ever, they seldom met a
Constantine.  Only one was there to be met, and she had no zest for
outings before noon.

The long, low front of the Great House, as it was called by the
parish, stretching from end to end of the terrace, was in darkness
as the vicar slackened his pace before it, and only the distant fall
of water disturbed the stillness of the manorial precincts.

On gaining admittance he found Lady Constantine waiting to receive
him.  She wore a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and being the only
person in the spacious apartment she looked small and isolated.  In
her left hand she held a letter and a couple of at-home cards.  The
soft dark eyes which she raised to him as he entered--large, and
melancholy by circumstance far more than by quality--were the
natural indices of a warm and affectionate, perhaps slightly
voluptuous temperament, languishing for want of something to do,
cherish, or suffer for.

Mr. Torkingham seated himself.  His boots, which had seemed elegant
in the farm-house, appeared rather clumsy here, and his coat, that
was a model of tailoring when he stood amid the choir, now exhibited
decidedly strained relations with his limbs.  Three years had passed
since his induction to the living of Welland, but he had never as
yet found means to establish that reciprocity with Lady Constantine
which usually grows up, in the course of time, between parsonage and
manor-house,--unless, indeed, either side should surprise the other
by showing respectively a weakness for awkward modern ideas on
landownership, or on church formulas, which had not been the case
here.  The present meeting, however, seemed likely to initiate such
a reciprocity.

There was an appearance of confidence on Lady Constantine's face;
she said she was so very glad that he had come, and looking down at
the letter in her hand was on the point of pulling it from its
envelope; but she did not.  After a moment she went on more quickly:
'I wanted your advice, or rather your opinion, on a serious matter,-
-on a point of conscience.'  Saying which she laid down the letter
and looked at the cards.

It might have been apparent to a more penetrating eye than the
vicar's that Lady Constantine, either from timidity, misgiving, or
reconviction, had swerved from her intended communication, or
perhaps decided to begin at the other end.

The parson, who had been expecting a question on some local business
or intelligence, at the tenor of her words altered his face to the
higher branch of his profession.

'I hope I may find myself of service, on that or any other
question,' he said gently.

'I hope so.  You may possibly be aware, Mr. Torkingham, that my
husband, Sir Blount Constantine, was, not to mince matters, a
mistaken--somewhat jealous man.  Yet you may hardly have discerned
it in the short time you knew him.'

'I had some little knowledge of Sir Blount's character in that
respect.'

'Well, on this account my married life with him was not of the most
comfortable kind.'  (Lady Constantine's voice dropped to a more
pathetic note.)  'I am sure I gave him no cause for suspicion;
though had I known his disposition sooner I should hardly have dared
to marry him.  But his jealousy and doubt of me were not so strong
as to divert him from a purpose of his,--a mania for African lion-
hunting, which he dignified by calling it a scheme of geographical
discovery; for he was inordinately anxious to make a name for
himself in that field.  It was the one passion that was stronger
than his mistrust of me.  Before going away he sat down with me in
this room, and read me a lecture, which resulted in a very rash
offer on my part.  When I tell it to you, you will find that it
provides a key to all that is unusual in my life here.  He bade me
consider what my position would be when he was gone; hoped that I
should remember what was due to him,--that I would not so behave
towards other men as to bring the name of Constantine into
suspicion; and charged me to avoid levity of conduct in attending
any ball, rout, or dinner to which I might be invited.  I, in some
contempt for his low opinion of me, volunteered, there and then, to
live like a cloistered nun during his absence; to go into no society
whatever,--scarce even to a neighbour's dinner-party; and demanded
bitterly if that would satisfy him.  He said yes, held me to my
word, and gave me no loophole for retracting it.  The inevitable
fruits of precipitancy have resulted to me:  my life has become a
burden.  I get such invitations as these' (holding up the cards),
'but I so invariably refuse them that they are getting very rare. .
. .  I ask you, can I honestly break that promise to my husband?'

Mr. Torkingham seemed embarrassed.  'If you promised Sir Blount
Constantine to live in solitude till he comes back, you are, it
seems to me, bound by that promise.  I fear that the wish to be
released from your engagement is to some extent a reason why it
should be kept.  But your own conscience would surely be the best
guide, Lady Constantine?'

'My conscience is quite bewildered with its responsibilities,' she
continued, with a sigh.  'Yet it certainly does sometimes say to me
that--that I ought to keep my word.  Very well; I must go on as I am
going, I suppose.'

'If you respect a vow, I think you must respect your own,' said the
parson, acquiring some further firmness.  'Had it been wrung from
you by compulsion, moral or physical, it would have been open to you
to break it.  But as you proposed a vow when your husband only
required a good intention, I think you ought to adhere to it; or
what is the pride worth that led you to offer it?'

'Very well,' she said, with resignation.  'But it was quite a work
of supererogation on my part.'

'That you proposed it in a supererogatory spirit does not lessen
your obligation, having once put yourself under that obligation.
St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, says, "An oath for
confirmation is an end of all strife."  And you will readily recall
the words of Ecclesiastes, "Pay that which thou hast vowed.  Better
is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and
not pay."  Why not write to Sir Blount, tell him the inconvenience
of such a bond, and ask him to release you?'

'No; never will I.  The expression of such a desire would, in his
mind, be a sufficient reason for disallowing it.  I'll keep my
word.'

Mr. Torkingham rose to leave.  After she had held out her hand to
him, when he had crossed the room, and was within two steps of the
door, she said, 'Mr. Torkingham.'  He stopped.  'What I have told
you is only the least part of what I sent for you to tell you.'

Mr. Torkingham walked back to her side.  'What is the rest of it,
then?' he asked, with grave surprise.

'It is a true revelation, as far as it goes; but there is something
more.  I have received this letter, and I wanted to say--something.'

'Then say it now, my dear lady.'

'No,' she answered, with a look of utter inability.  'I cannot speak
of it now!  Some other time.  Don't stay.  Please consider this
conversation as private.  Good-night.'



IV

It was a bright starlight night, a week or ten days later.  There
had been several such nights since the occasion of Lady
Constantine's promise to Swithin St. Cleeve to come and study
astronomical phenomena on the Rings-Hill column; but she had not
gone there.  This evening she sat at a window, the blind of which
had not been drawn down.  Her elbow rested on a little table, and
her cheek on her hand.  Her eyes were attracted by the brightness of
the planet Jupiter, as he rode in the ecliptic opposite, beaming
down upon her as if desirous of notice.

Beneath the planet could be still discerned the dark edges of the
park landscape against the sky.  As one of its features, though
nearly screened by the trees which had been planted to shut out the
fallow tracts of the estate, rose the upper part of the column.  It
was hardly visible now, even if visible at all; yet Lady Constantine
knew from daytime experience its exact bearing from the window at
which she leaned.  The knowledge that there it still was, despite
its rapid envelopment by the shades, led her lonely mind to her late
meeting on its summit with the young astronomer, and to her promise
to honour him with a visit for learning some secrets about the
scintillating bodies overhead.  The curious juxtaposition of
youthful ardour and old despair that she had found in the lad would
have made him interesting to a woman of perception, apart from his
fair hair and early-Christian face.  But such is the heightening
touch of memory that his beauty was probably richer in her
imagination than in the real.  It was a moot point to consider
whether the temptations that would be brought to bear upon him in
his course would exceed the staying power of his nature.  Had he
been a wealthy youth he would have seemed one to tremble for.  In
spite of his attractive ambitions and gentlemanly bearing, she
thought it would possibly be better for him if he never became known
outside his lonely tower,--forgetting that he had received such
intellectual enlargement as would probably make his continuance in
Welland seem, in his own eye, a slight upon his father's branch of
his family, whose social standing had been, only a few years
earlier, but little removed from her own.

Suddenly she flung a cloak about her and went out on the terrace.
She passed down the steps to the lower lawn, through the door to the
open park, and there stood still.  The tower was now discernible.
As the words in which a thought is expressed develop a further
thought, so did the fact of her having got so far influence her to
go further.  A person who had casually observed her gait would have
thought it irregular; and the lessenings and increasings of speed
with which she proceeded in the direction of the pillar could be
accounted for only by a motive much more disturbing than an
intention to look through a telescope.  Thus she went on, till,
leaving the park, she crossed the turnpike-road, and entered the
large field, in the middle of which the fir-clad hill stood like
Mont St. Michel in its bay.

The stars were so bright as distinctly to show her the place, and
now she could see a faint light at the top of the column, which rose
like a shadowy finger pointing to the upper constellations.  There
was no wind, in a human sense; but a steady stertorous breathing
from the fir-trees showed that, now as always, there was movement in
apparent stagnation.  Nothing but an absolute vacuum could paralyze
their utterance.

The door of the tower was shut.  It was something more than the
freakishness which is engendered by a sickening monotony that had
led Lady Constantine thus far, and hence she made no ado about
admitting herself.  Three years ago, when her every action was a
thing of propriety, she had known of no possible purpose which could
have led her abroad in a manner such as this.

She ascended the tower noiselessly.  On raising her head above the
hatchway she beheld Swithin bending over a scroll of paper which lay
on the little table beside him.  The small lantern that illuminated
it showed also that he was warmly wrapped up in a coat and thick
cap, behind him standing the telescope on its frame.

What was he doing?  She looked over his shoulder upon the paper, and
saw figures and signs.  When he had jotted down something he went to
the telescope again.

'What are you doing to-night?' she said in a low voice.

Swithin started, and turned.  The faint lamp-light was sufficient to
reveal her face to him.

'Tedious work, Lady Constantine,' he answered, without betraying
much surprise.  'Doing my best to watch phenomenal stars, as I may
call them.'

'You said you would show me the heavens if I could come on a
starlight night.  I have come.'

Swithin, as a preliminary, swept round the telescope to Jupiter, and
exhibited to her the glory of that orb.  Then he directed the
instrument to the less bright shape of Saturn.

'Here,' he said, warming up to the subject, 'we see a world which is
to my mind by far the most wonderful in the solar system.  Think of
streams of satellites or meteors racing round and round the planet
like a fly-wheel, so close together as to seem solid matter!'  He
entered further and further into the subject, his ideas gathering
momentum as he went on, like his pet heavenly bodies.

When he paused for breath she said, in tones very different from his
own, 'I ought now to tell you that, though I am interested in the
stars, they were not what I came to see you about. . . .  I first
thought of disclosing the matter to Mr. Torkingham; but I altered my
mind, and decided on you.'

She spoke in so low a voice that he might not have heard her.  At
all events, abstracted by his grand theme, he did not heed her.  He
continued,--

'Well, we will get outside the solar system altogether,--leave the
whole group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in
our flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole
forest.  Now what do you see, Lady Constantine?'  He levelled the
achromatic at Sirius.

She said that she saw a bright star, though it only seemed a point
of light now as before.

'That's because it is so distant that no magnifying will bring its
size up to zero.  Though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed
stars, moving with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will
show that velocity as anything but rest.'

And thus they talked on about Sirius, and then about other stars

          . . in the scrowl
      Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl,
      With which, like Indian plantations,
      The learned stock the constellations,

till he asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at
that moment.

She looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their
high position unfolded.  'Oh, thousands, hundreds of thousands,' she
said absently.

'No.  There are only about three thousand.  Now, how many do you
think are brought within sight by the help of a powerful telescope?'

'I won't guess.'

'Twenty millions.  So that, whatever the stars were made for, they
were not made to please our eyes.  It is just the same in
everything; nothing is made for man.'

'Is it that notion which makes you so sad for your age?' she asked,
with almost maternal solicitude.  'I think astronomy is a bad study
for you.  It makes you feel human insignificance too plainly.'

'Perhaps it does.  However,' he added more cheerfully, 'though I
feel the study to be one almost tragic in its quality, I hope to be
the new Copernicus.  What he was to the solar system I aim to be to
the systems beyond.'

Then, by means of the instrument at hand, they travelled together
from the earth to Uranus and the mysterious outskirts of the solar
system; from the solar system to a star in the Swan, the nearest
fixed star in the northern sky; from the star in the Swan to remoter
stars; thence to the remotest visible; till the ghastly chasm which
they had bridged by a fragile line of sight was realized by Lady
Constantine.

'We are now traversing distances beside which the immense line
stretching from the earth to the sun is but an invisible point,'
said the youth.  'When, just now, we had reached a planet whose
remoteness is a hundred times the remoteness of the sun from the
earth, we were only a two thousandth part of the journey to the spot
at which we have optically arrived now.'

'Oh, pray don't; it overpowers me!' she replied, not without
seriousness.  'It makes me feel that it is not worth while to live;
it quite annihilates me.'

'If it annihilates your ladyship to roam over these yawning spaces
just once, think how it must annihilate me to be, as it were, in
constant suspension amid them night after night.'

'Yes. . . .  It was not really this subject that I came to see you
upon, Mr. St. Cleeve,' she began a second time.  'It was a personal
matter.'

'I am listening, Lady Constantine.'

'I will tell it you.  Yet no,--not this moment.  Let us finish this
grand subject first; it dwarfs mine.'

It would have been difficult to judge from her accents whether she
were afraid to broach her own matter, or really interested in his.
Or a certain youthful pride that he evidenced at being the
elucidator of such a large theme, and at having drawn her there to
hear and observe it, may have inclined her to indulge him for
kindness' sake.

Thereupon he took exception to her use of the word 'grand' as
descriptive of the actual universe:

'The imaginary picture of the sky as the concavity of a dome whose
base extends from horizon to horizon of our earth is grand, simply
grand, and I wish I had never got beyond looking at it in that way.
But the actual sky is a horror.'

'A new view of our old friends, the stars,' she said, smiling up at
them.

'But such an obviously true one!' said the young man.  'You would
hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to
be discovered by any moderately penetrating mind--monsters to which
those of the oceans bear no sort of comparison.'

'What monsters may they be?'

'Impersonal monsters, namely, Immensities.  Until a person has
thought out the stars and their inter-spaces, he has hardly learnt
that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape,
namely, monsters of magnitude without known shape.  Such monsters
are the voids and waste places of the sky.  Look, for instance, at
those pieces of darkness in the Milky Way,' he went on, pointing
with his finger to where the galaxy stretched across over their
heads with the luminousness of a frosted web.  'You see that dark
opening in it near the Swan?  There is a still more remarkable one
south of the equator, called the Coal Sack, as a sort of nickname
that has a farcical force from its very inadequacy.  In these our
sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited.  Those
are deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave
alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary
abysses to right and left as you pass on!'

Lady Constantine was heedful and silent.

He tried to give her yet another idea of the size of the universe;
never was there a more ardent endeavour to bring down the
immeasurable to human comprehension!  By figures of speech and apt
comparisons he took her mind into leading-strings, compelling her to
follow him into wildernesses of which she had never in her life even
realized the existence.

'There is a size at which dignity begins,' he exclaimed; 'further on
there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size
at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness
begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins.  That size
faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe.  So am I not
right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers
to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain
their faculties to gain a new horror?'

Standing, as she stood, in the presence of the stellar universe,
under the very eyes of the constellations, Lady Constantine
apprehended something of the earnest youth's argument.

'And to add a new weirdness to what the sky possesses in its size
and formlessness, there is involved the quality of decay.  For all
the wonder of these everlasting stars, eternal spheres, and what
not, they are not everlasting, they are not eternal; they burn out
like candles.  You see that dying one in the body of the Greater
Bear?  Two centuries ago it was as bright as the others.  The senses
may become terrified by plunging among them as they are, but there
is a pitifulness even in their glory.  Imagine them all
extinguished, and your mind feeling its way through a heaven of
total darkness, occasionally striking against the black, invisible
cinders of those stars. . . .  If you are cheerful, and wish to
remain so, leave the study of astronomy alone.  Of all the sciences,
it alone deserves the character of the terrible.'

'I am not altogether cheerful.'

'Then if, on the other hand, you are restless and anxious about the
future, study astronomy at once.  Your troubles will be reduced
amazingly.  But your study will reduce them in a singular way, by
reducing the importance of everything.  So that the science is still
terrible, even as a panacea.  It is quite impossible to think at all
adequately of the sky--of what the sky substantially is, without
feeling it as a juxtaposed nightmare.  It is better--far better--for
men to forget the universe than to bear it clearly in mind! . . .
But you say the universe was not really what you came to see me
about.  What was it, may I ask, Lady Constantine?'

She mused, and sighed, and turned to him with something pathetic in
her.

'The immensity of the subject you have engaged me on has completely
crushed my subject out of me!  Yours is celestial; mine lamentably
human!  And the less must give way to the greater.'

'But is it, in a human sense, and apart from macrocosmic magnitudes,
important?' he inquired, at last attracted by her manner; for he
began to perceive, in spite of his prepossession, that she had
really something on her mind.

'It is as important as personal troubles usually are.'

Notwithstanding her preconceived notion of coming to Swithin as
employer to dependant, as chatelaine to page, she was falling into
confidential intercourse with him.  His vast and romantic endeavours
lent him a personal force and charm which she could not but
apprehend.  In the presence of the immensities that his young mind
had, as it were, brought down from above to hers, they became
unconsciously equal.  There was, moreover, an inborn liking in Lady
Constantine to dwell less on her permanent position as a county lady
than on her passing emotions as a woman.

'I will postpone the matter I came to charge you with,' she resumed,
smiling.  'I must reconsider it.  Now I will return.'

'Allow me to show you out through the trees and across the fields?'

She said neither a distinct yes nor no; and, descending the tower,
they threaded the firs and crossed the ploughed field.  By an odd
coincidence he remarked, when they drew near the Great House--

'You may possibly be interested in knowing, Lady Constantine, that
that medium-sized star you see over there, low down in the south, is
precisely over Sir Blount Constantine's head in the middle of
Africa.'

'How very strange that you should have said so!' she answered.  'You
have broached for me the very subject I had come to speak of.'

'On a domestic matter?' he said, with surprise.

'Yes.  What a small matter it seems now, after our astronomical
stupendousness! and yet on my way to you it so far transcended the
ordinary matters of my life as the subject you have led me up to
transcends this.  But,' with a little laugh, 'I will endeavour to
sink down to such ephemeral trivialities as human tragedy, and
explain, since I have come.  The point is, I want a helper:  no
woman ever wanted one more.  For days I have wanted a trusty friend
who could go on a secret errand for me.  It is necessary that my
messenger should be educated, should be intelligent, should be
silent as the grave.  Do you give me your solemn promise as to the
last point, if I confide in you?'

'Most emphatically, Lady Constantine.'

'Your right hand upon the compact.'

He gave his hand, and raised hers to his lips.  In addition to his
respect for her as the lady of the manor, there was the admiration
of twenty years for twenty-eight or nine in such relations.

'I trust you,' she said.  'Now, beyond the above conditions, it was
specially necessary that my agent should have known Sir Blount
Constantine well by sight when he was at home.  For the errand is
concerning my husband; I am much disturbed at what I have heard
about him.'

'I am indeed sorry to know it.'

'There are only two people in the parish who fulfil all the
conditions,--Mr. Torkingham, and yourself.  I sent for Mr.
Torkingham, and he came.  I could not tell him.  I felt at the last
moment that he wouldn't do.  I have come to you because I think you
will do.  This is it:  my husband has led me and all the world to
believe that he is in Africa, hunting lions.  I have had a
mysterious letter informing me that he has been seen in London, in
very peculiar circumstances.  The truth of this I want ascertained.
Will you go on the journey?'

'Personally, I would go to the end of the world for you, Lady
Constantine; but--'

'No buts!'

'How can I leave?'

'Why not?'

'I am preparing a work on variable stars.  There is one of these
which I have exceptionally observed for several months, and on this
my great theory is mainly based.  It has been hitherto called
irregular; but I have detected a periodicity in its so-called
irregularities which, if proved, would add some very valuable facts
to those known on this subject, one of the most interesting,
perplexing, and suggestive in the whole field of astronomy.  Now, to
clinch my theory, there should be a sudden variation this week,--or
at latest next week,--and I have to watch every night not to let it
pass.  You see my reason for declining, Lady Constantine.'

'Young men are always so selfish!' she said.

'It might ruin the whole of my year's labour if I leave now!'
returned the youth, greatly hurt.  'Could you not wait a fortnight
longer?'

'No,--no.  Don't think that I have asked you, pray.  I have no wish
to inconvenience you.'

'Lady Constantine, don't be angry with me!  Will you do this,--watch
the star for me while I am gone?  If you are prepared to do it
effectually, I will go.'

'Will it be much trouble?'

'It will be some trouble.  You would have to come here every clear
evening about nine.  If the sky were not clear, then you would have
to come at four in the morning, should the clouds have dispersed.'

'Could not the telescope be brought to my house?'

Swithin shook his head.

'Perhaps you did not observe its real size,--that it was fixed to a
frame-work?  I could not afford to buy an equatorial, and I have
been obliged to rig up an apparatus of my own devising, so as to
make it in some measure answer the purpose of an equatorial.  It
COULD be moved, but I would rather not touch it.'

'Well, I'll go to the telescope,' she went on, with an emphasis that
was not wholly playful.  'You are the most ungallant youth I ever
met with; but I suppose I must set that down to science.  Yes, I'll
go to the tower at nine every night.'

'And alone?  I should prefer to keep my pursuits there unknown.'

'And alone,' she answered, quite overborne by his inflexibility.

'You will not miss the morning observation, if it should be
necessary?'

'I have given my word.'

'And I give mine.  I suppose I ought not to have been so exacting!'
He spoke with that sudden emotional sense of his own insignificance
which made these alternations of mood possible.  'I will go
anywhere--do anything for you--this moment--to-morrow or at any
time.  But you must return with me to the tower, and let me show you
the observing process.'

They retraced their steps, the tender hoar-frost taking the imprint
of their feet, while two stars in the Twins looked down upon their
two persons through the trees, as if those two persons could bear
some sort of comparison with them.  On the tower the instructions
were given.  When all was over, and he was again conducting her to
the Great House she said--

'When can you start?'

'Now,' said Swithin.

'So much the better.  You shall go up by the night mail.'



V

On the third morning after the young man's departure Lady
Constantine opened the post-bag anxiously.  Though she had risen
before four o'clock, and crossed to the tower through the gray half-
light when every blade and twig were furred with rime, she felt no
languor.  Expectation could banish at cock-crow the eye-heaviness
which apathy had been unable to disperse all the day long.

There was, as she had hoped, a letter from Swithin St. Cleeve.


'DEAR LADY CONSTANTINE,--I have quite succeeded in my mission, and
shall return to-morrow at 10 p.m.  I hope you have not failed in the
observations.  Watching the star through an opera-glass Sunday
night, I fancied some change had taken place, but I could not make
myself sure.  Your memoranda for that night I await with impatience.
Please don't neglect to write down AT THE MOMENT, all remarkable
appearances both as to colour and intensity; and be very exact as to
time, which correct in the way I showed you.--I am, dear Lady
Constantine, yours most faithfully,
                                                     SWITHIN ST.
CLEEVE.'


Not another word in the letter about his errand; his mind ran on
nothing but this astronomical subject.  He had succeeded in his
mission, and yet he did not even say yes or no to the great
question,--whether or not her husband was masquerading in London at
the address she had given.

'Was ever anything so provoking!' she cried.

However, the time was not long to wait.  His way homeward would lie
within a stone's-throw of the manor-house, and though for certain
reasons she had forbidden him to call at the late hour of his
arrival, she could easily intercept him in the avenue.  At twenty
minutes past ten she went out into the drive, and stood in the dark.
Seven minutes later she heard his footstep, and saw his outline in
the slit of light between the avenue-trees.  He had a valise in one
hand, a great-coat on his arm, and under his arm a parcel which
seemed to be very precious, from the manner in which he held it.

'Lady Constantine?' he asked softly.

'Yes,' she said, in her excitement holding out both her hands,
though he had plainly not expected her to offer one.

'Did you watch the star?'

'I'll tell you everything in detail; but, pray, your errand first!'

'Yes, it's all right.  Did you watch every night, not missing one?'

'I forgot to go--twice,' she murmured contritely.

'Oh, Lady Constantine!' he cried in dismay.  'How could you serve me
so! what shall I do?'

'Please forgive me!  Indeed, I could not help it.  I had watched and
watched, and nothing happened; and somehow my vigilance relaxed when
I found nothing was likely to take place in the star.'

'But the very circumstance of it not having happened, made it all
the more likely every day.'

'Have you--seen--' she began imploringly.

Swithin sighed, lowered his thoughts to sublunary things, and told
briefly the story of his journey.  Sir Blount Constantine was not in
London at the address which had been anonymously sent her.  It was a
mistake of identity.  The person who had been seen there Swithin had
sought out.  He resembled Sir Blount strongly; but he was a
stranger.

'How can I reward you!' she exclaimed, when he had done.

'In no way but by giving me your good wishes in what I am going to
tell you on my own account.'  He spoke in tones of mysterious
exultation.  'This parcel is going to make my fame!'

'What is it?'

'A huge object-glass for the great telescope I am so busy about!
Such a magnificent aid to science has never entered this county
before, you may depend.'

He produced from under his arm the carefully cuddled-up package,
which was in shape a round flat disk, like a dinner-plate, tied in
paper.

Proceeding to explain his plans to her more fully, he walked with
her towards the door by which she had emerged.  It was a little side
wicket through a wall dividing the open park from the garden
terraces.  Here for a moment he placed his valise and parcel on the
coping of the stone balustrade, till he had bidden her farewell.
Then he turned, and in laying hold of his bag by the dim light
pushed the parcel over the parapet.  It fell smash upon the paved
walk ten or a dozen feet beneath.

'Oh, good heavens!' he cried in anguish.

'What?'

'My object-glass broken!'

'Is it of much value?'

'It cost all I possess!'

He ran round by the steps to the lower lawn, Lady Constantine
following, as he continued, 'It is a magnificent eight-inch first
quality object lens!  I took advantage of my journey to London to
get it!  I have been six weeks making the tube of milled board; and
as I had not enough money by twelve pounds for the lens, I borrowed
it of my grandmother out of her last annuity payment.  What can be,
can be done!'

'Perhaps it is not broken.'

He felt on the ground, found the parcel, and shook it.  A clicking
noise issued from inside.  Swithin smote his forehead with his hand,
and walked up and down like a mad fellow.

'My telescope!  I have waited nine months for this lens.  Now the
possibility of setting up a really powerful instrument is over!  It
is too cruel--how could it happen!. . .  Lady Constantine, I am
ashamed of myself,--before you.  Oh, but, Lady Constantine, if you
only knew what it is to a person engaged in science to have the
means of clinching a theory snatched away at the last moment!  It is
I against the world; and when the world has accidents on its side in
addition to its natural strength, what chance for me!'

The young astronomer leant against the wall, and was silent.  His
misery was of an intensity and kind with that of Palissy, in these
struggles with an adverse fate.

'Don't mind it,--pray don't!' said Lady Constantine.  'It is
dreadfully unfortunate!  You have my whole sympathy.  Can it be
mended?'

'Mended,--no, no!'

'Cannot you do with your present one a little longer?'

'It is altogether inferior, cheap, and bad!'

'I'll get you another,--yes, indeed, I will!  Allow me to get you
another as soon as possible.  I'll do anything to assist you out of
your trouble; for I am most anxious to see you famous.  I know you
will be a great astronomer, in spite of this mishap!  Come, say I
may get a new one.'

Swithin took her hand.  He could not trust himself to speak.


Some days later a little box of peculiar kind came to the Great
House.  It was addressed to Lady Constantine, 'with great care.'
She had it partly opened and taken to her own little writing-room;
and after lunch, when she had dressed for walking, she took from the
box a paper parcel like the one which had met with the accident.
This she hid under her mantle, as if she had stolen it; and, going
out slowly across the lawn, passed through the little door before
spoken of, and was soon hastening in the direction of the Rings-Hill
column.

There was a bright sun overhead on that afternoon of early spring,
and its rays shed an unusual warmth on south-west aspects, though
shady places still retained the look and feel of winter.  Rooks were
already beginning to build new nests or to mend up old ones, and
clamorously called in neighbours to give opinions on difficulties in
their architecture.  Lady Constantine swerved once from her path, as
if she had decided to go to the homestead where Swithin lived; but
on second thoughts she bent her steps to the column.

Drawing near it she looked up; but by reason of the height of the
parapet nobody could be seen thereon who did not stand on tiptoe.
She thought, however, that her young friend might possibly see her,
if he were there, and come down; and that he was there she soon
ascertained by finding the door unlocked, and the key inside.  No
movement, however, reached her ears from above, and she began to
ascend.

Meanwhile affairs at the top of the column had progressed as
follows.  The afternoon being exceptionally fine, Swithin had
ascended about two o'clock, and, seating himself at the little table
which he had constructed on the spot, he began reading over his
notes and examining some astronomical journals that had reached him
in the morning.  The sun blazed into the hollow roof-space as into a
tub, and the sides kept out every breeze.  Though the month was
February below it was May in the abacus of the column.  This state
of the atmosphere, and the fact that on the previous night he had
pursued his observations till past two o'clock, produced in him at
the end of half an hour an overpowering inclination to sleep.
Spreading on the lead-work a thick rug which he kept up there, he
flung himself down against the parapet, and was soon in a state of
unconsciousness.

It was about ten minutes afterwards that a soft rustle of silken
clothes came up the spiral staircase, and, hesitating onwards,
reached the orifice, where appeared the form of Lady Constantine.
She did not at first perceive that he was present, and stood still
to reconnoitre.  Her eye glanced over his telescope, now wrapped up,
his table and papers, his observing-chair, and his contrivances for
making the best of a deficiency of instruments.  All was warm,
sunny, and silent, except that a solitary bee, which had somehow got
within the hollow of the abacus, was singing round inquiringly,
unable to discern that ascent was the only mode of escape.  In
another moment she beheld the astronomer, lying in the sun like a
sailor in the main-top.

Lady Constantine coughed slightly; he did not awake.  She then
entered, and, drawing the parcel from beneath her cloak, placed it
on the table.  After this she waited, looking for a long time at his
sleeping face, which had a very interesting appearance.  She seemed
reluctant to leave, yet wanted resolution to wake him; and,
pencilling his name on the parcel, she withdrew to the staircase,
where the brushing of her dress decreased to silence as she receded
round and round on her way to the base.

Swithin still slept on, and presently the rustle began again in the
far-down interior of the column.  The door could be heard closing,
and the rustle came nearer, showing that she had shut herself in,--
no doubt to lessen the risk of an accidental surprise by any roaming
villager.  When Lady Constantine reappeared at the top, and saw the
parcel still untouched and Swithin asleep as before, she exhibited
some disappointment; but she did not retreat.

Looking again at him, her eyes became so sentimentally fixed on his
face that it seemed as if she could not withdraw them.  There lay,
in the shape of an Antinous, no amoroso, no gallant, but a guileless
philosopher.  His parted lips were lips which spoke, not of love,
but of millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed,
not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds.  Within
his temples dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar
aspects and the configuration of constellations.

Thus, to his physical attractiveness was added the attractiveness of
mental inaccessibility.  The ennobling influence of scientific
pursuits was demonstrated by the speculative purity which expressed
itself in his eyes whenever he looked at her in speaking, and in the
childlike faults of manner which arose from his obtuseness to their
difference of sex.  He had never, since becoming a man, looked even
so low as to the level of a Lady Constantine.  His heaven at present
was truly in the skies, and not in that only other place where they
say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of Eve.  Would any
Circe or Calypso--and if so, what one?--ever check this pale-haired
scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces
overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and
stellar fire into Limbo?  Oh, the pity of it, if such should be the
case!

She became much absorbed in these very womanly reflections; and at
last Lady Constantine sighed, perhaps she herself did not exactly
know why.  Then a very soft expression lighted on her lips and eyes,
and she looked at one jump ten years more youthful than before--
quite a girl in aspect, younger than he.  On the table lay his
implements; among them a pair of scissors, which, to judge from the
shreds around, had been used in cutting curves in thick paper for
some calculating process.

What whim, agitation, or attraction prompted the impulse, nobody
knows; but she took the scissors, and, bending over the sleeping
youth, cut off one of the curls, or rather crooks,--for they hardly
reached a curl,--into which each lock of his hair chose to twist
itself in the last inch of its length.  The hair fell upon the rug.
She picked it up quickly, returned the scissors to the table, and,
as if her dignity had suddenly become ashamed of her fantasies,
hastened through the door, and descended the staircase.



VI

When his nap had naturally exhausted itself Swithin awoke.  He awoke
without any surprise, for he not unfrequently gave to sleep in the
day-time what he had stolen from it in the night watches.  The first
object that met his eyes was the parcel on the table, and, seeing
his name inscribed thereon, he made no scruple to open it.

The sun flashed upon a lens of surprising magnitude, polished to
such a smoothness that the eye could scarcely meet its reflections.
Here was a crystal in whose depths were to be seen more wonders than
had been revealed by the crystals of all the Cagliostros.

Swithin, hot with joyousness, took this treasure to his telescope
manufactory at the homestead; then he started off for the Great
House.

On gaining its precincts he felt shy of calling, never having
received any hint or permission to do so; while Lady Constantine's
mysterious manner of leaving the parcel seemed to demand a like
mysteriousness in his approaches to her.  All the afternoon he
lingered about uncertainly, in the hope of intercepting her on her
return from a drive, occasionally walking with an indifferent lounge
across glades commanded by the windows, that if she were in-doors
she might know he was near.  But she did not show herself during the
daylight.  Still impressed by her playful secrecy he carried on the
same idea after dark, by returning to the house and passing through
the garden door on to the lawn front, where he sat on the parapet
that breasted the terrace.

Now she frequently came out here for a melancholy saunter after
dinner, and to-night was such an occasion.  Swithin went forward,
and met her at nearly the spot where he had dropped the lens some
nights earlier.

'I have come to see you, Lady Constantine.  How did the glass get on
my table?'

She laughed as lightly as a girl; that he had come to her in this
way was plainly no offence thus far.

'Perhaps it was dropped from the clouds by a bird,' she said.

'Why should you be so good to me?' he cried.

'One good turn deserves another,' answered she.

'Dear Lady Constantine!  Whatever discoveries result from this shall
be ascribed to you as much as to me.  Where should I have been
without your gift?'

'You would possibly have accomplished your purpose just the same,
and have been so much the nobler for your struggle against ill-luck.
I hope that now you will be able to proceed with your large
telescope as if nothing had happened.'

'O yes, I will, certainly.  I am afraid I showed too much feeling,
the reverse of stoical, when the accident occurred.  That was not
very noble of me.'

'There is nothing unnatural in such feeling at your age.  When you
are older you will smile at such moods, and at the mishaps that gave
rise to them.'

'Ah, I perceive you think me weak in the extreme,' he said, with
just a shade of pique.  'But you will never realize that an incident
which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the
whole circumference of mine.  No person can see exactly what and
where another's horizon is.'

They soon parted, and she re-entered the house, where she sat
reflecting for some time, till she seemed to fear that she had
wounded his feelings.  She awoke in the night, and thought and
thought on the same thing, till she had worked herself into a
feverish fret about it.  When it was morning she looked across at
the tower, and sitting down, impulsively wrote the following note:--


'DEAR MR. ST. CLEEVE,--I cannot allow you to remain under the
impression that I despised your scientific endeavours in speaking as
I did last night.  I think you were too sensitive to my remark.  But
perhaps you were agitated with the labours of the day, and I fear
that watching so late at night must make you very weary.  If I can
help you again, please let me know.  I never realized the grandeur
of astronomy till you showed me how to do so.  Also let me know
about the new telescope.  Come and see me at any time.  After your
great kindness in being my messenger I can never do enough for you.
I wish you had a mother or sister, and pity your loneliness!  I am
lonely too.--Yours truly,
                                               VIVIETTE
CONSTANTINE.'


She was so anxious that he should get this letter the same day that
she ran across to the column with it during the morning, preferring
to be her own emissary in so curious a case.  The door, as she had
expected, was locked; and, slipping the letter under it, she went
home again.  During lunch her ardour in the cause of Swithin's hurt
feelings cooled down, till she exclaimed to herself, as she sat at
her lonely table, 'What could have possessed me to write in that
way!'

After lunch she went faster to the tower than she had gone in the
early morning, and peeped eagerly into the chink under the door.
She could discern no letter, and, on trying the latch, found that
the door would open.  The letter was gone, Swithin having obviously
arrived in the interval.

She blushed a blush which seemed to say, 'I am getting foolishly
interested in this young man.'  She had, in short, in her own
opinion, somewhat overstepped the bounds of dignity.  Her instincts
did not square well with the formalities of her existence, and she
walked home despondently.

Had a concert, bazaar, lecture, or Dorcas meeting required the
patronage and support of Lady Constantine at this juncture, the
circumstance would probably have been sufficient to divert her mind
from Swithin St. Cleeve and astronomy for some little time.  But as
none of these incidents were within the range of expectation--
Welland House and parish lying far from large towns and watering-
places--the void in her outer life continued, and with it the void
in her life within.

The youth had not answered her letter; neither had he called upon
her in response to the invitation she had regretted, with the rest
of the epistle, as being somewhat too warmly informal for black and
white.  To speak tenderly to him was one thing, to write another--
that was her feeling immediately after the event; but his counter-
move of silence and avoidance, though probably the result of pure
unconsciousness on his part, completely dispersed such self-
considerations now.  Her eyes never fell upon the Rings-Hill column
without a solicitous wonder arising as to what he was doing.  A true
woman, she would assume the remotest possibility to be the most
likely contingency, if the possibility had the recommendation of
being tragical; and she now feared that something was wrong with
Swithin St. Cleeve.  Yet there was not the least doubt that he had
become so immersed in the business of the new telescope as to forget
everything else.

On Sunday, between the services, she walked to Little Welland,
chiefly for the sake of giving a run to a house-dog, a large St.
Bernard, of whom she was fond.  The distance was but short; and she
returned along a narrow lane, divided from the river by a hedge,
through whose leafless twigs the ripples flashed silver lights into
her eyes.  Here she discovered Swithin, leaning over a gate, his
eyes bent upon the stream.

The dog first attracted his attention; then he heard her, and turned
round.  She had never seen him looking so despondent.

'You have never called, though I invited you,' said Lady
Constantine.

'My great telescope won't work!' he replied lugubriously.

'I am sorry for that.  So it has made you quite forget me?'

'Ah, yes; you wrote me a very kind letter, which I ought to have
answered.  Well, I did forget, Lady Constantine.  My new telescope
won't work, and I don't know what to do about it at all!'

'Can I assist you any further?'

'No, I fear not.  Besides, you have assisted me already.'

'What would really help you out of all your difficulties?  Something
would, surely?'

He shook his head.

'There must be some solution to them?'

'O yes,' he replied, with a hypothetical gaze into the stream; 'SOME
solution of course--an equatorial, for instance.'

'What's that?'

'Briefly, an impossibility.  It is a splendid instrument, with an
object lens of, say, eight or nine inches aperture, mounted with its
axis parallel to the earth's axis, and fitted up with graduated
circles for denoting right ascensions and declinations; besides
having special eye-pieces, a finder, and all sorts of appliances--
clock-work to make the telescope follow the motion in right
ascension--I cannot tell you half the conveniences.  Ah, an
equatorial is a thing indeed!'

'An equatorial is the one instrument required to make you quite
happy?'

'Well, yes.'

'I'll see what I can do.'

'But, Lady Constantine,' cried the amazed astronomer, 'an equatorial
such as I describe costs as much as two grand pianos!'

She was rather staggered at this news; but she rallied gallantly,
and said, 'Never mind.  I'll make inquiries.'

'But it could not be put on the tower without people seeing it!  It
would have to be fixed to the masonry.  And there must be a dome of
some kind to keep off the rain.  A tarpaulin might do.'

Lady Constantine reflected.  'It would be a great business, I see,'
she said.  'Though as far as the fixing and roofing go, I would of
course consent to your doing what you liked with the old column.  My
workmen could fix it, could they not?'

'O yes.  But what would Sir Blount say, if he came home and saw the
goings on?'

Lady Constantine turned aside to hide a sudden displacement of blood
from her cheek.  'Ah--my husband!' she whispered. . . .  'I am just
now going to church,' she added in a repressed and hurried tone.  'I
will think of this matter.'

In church it was with Lady Constantine as with the Lord Angelo of
Vienna in a similar situation--Heaven had her empty words only, and
her invention heard not her tongue.  She soon recovered from the
momentary consternation into which she had fallen at Swithin's
abrupt query.  The possibility of that young astronomer becoming a
renowned scientist by her aid was a thought which gave her secret
pleasure.  The course of rendering him instant material help began
to have a great fascination for her; it was a new and unexpected
channel for her cribbed and confined emotions.  With experiences so
much wider than his, Lady Constantine saw that the chances were
perhaps a million to one against Swithin St. Cleeve ever being
Astronomer Royal, or Astronomer Extraordinary of any sort; yet the
remaining chance in his favour was one of those possibilities which,
to a woman of bounding intellect and venturesome fancy, are
pleasanter to dwell on than likely issues that have no savour of
high speculation in them.  The equatorial question was a great one;
and she had caught such a large spark from his enthusiasm that she
could think of nothing so piquant as how to obtain the important
instrument.

When Tabitha Lark arrived at the Great House next day, instead of
finding Lady Constantine in bed, as formerly, she discovered her in
the library, poring over what astronomical works she had been able
to unearth from the worm-eaten shelves.  As these publications were,
for a science of such rapid development, somewhat venerable, there
was not much help of a practical kind to be gained from them.
Nevertheless, the equatorial retained a hold upon her fancy, till
she became as eager to see one on the Rings-Hill column as Swithin
himself.

The upshot of it was that Lady Constantine sent a messenger that
evening to Welland Bottom, where the homestead of Swithin's
grandmother was situated, requesting the young man's presence at the
house at twelve o'clock next day.

He hurriedly returned an obedient reply, and the promise was enough
to lend great freshness to her manner next morning, instead of the
leaden air which was too frequent with her before the sun reached
the meridian, and sometimes after.  Swithin had, in fact, arisen as
an attractive little intervention between herself and despair.



VII

A fog defaced all the trees of the park that morning, the white
atmosphere adhered to the ground like a fungoid growth from it, and
made the turfed undulations look slimy and raw.  But Lady
Constantine settled down in her chair to await the coming of the
late curate's son with a serenity which the vast blanks outside
could neither baffle nor destroy.

At two minutes to twelve the door-bell rang, and a look overspread
the lady's face that was neither maternal, sisterly, nor amorous;
but partook in an indescribable manner of all three kinds.  The door
was flung open and the young man was ushered in, the fog still
clinging to his hair, in which she could discern a little notch
where she had nipped off the curl.

A speechlessness that socially was a defect in him was to her view a
piquant attribute just now.  He looked somewhat alarmed.

'Lady Constantine, have I done anything, that you have sent--?' he
began breathlessly, as he gazed in her face, with parted lips.

'O no, of course not!  I have decided to do something,--nothing
more,' she smilingly said, holding out her hand, which he rather
gingerly touched.  'Don't look so concerned.  Who makes
equatorials?'

This remark was like the drawing of a weir-hatch and she was
speedily inundated with all she wished to know concerning
astronomical opticians.  When he had imparted the particulars he
waited, manifestly burning to know whither these inquiries tended.

'I am not going to buy you one,' she said gently.

He looked as if he would faint.

'Certainly not.  I do not wish it.  I--could not have accepted it,'
faltered the young man.

'But I am going to buy one for MYSELF.  I lack a hobby, and I shall
choose astronomy.  I shall fix my equatorial on the column.'

Swithin brightened up.

'And I shall let you have the use of it whenever you choose.  In
brief, Swithin St. Cleeve shall be Lady Constantine's Astronomer
Royal; and she--and she--'

'Shall be his Queen.'  The words came not much the worse for being
uttered only in the tone of one anxious to complete a tardy
sentence.

'Well, that's what I have decided to do,' resumed Lady Constantine.
'I will write to these opticians at once.'

There seemed to be no more for him to do than to thank her for the
privilege, whenever it should be available, which he promptly did,
and then made as if to go.  But Lady Constantine detained him with,
'Have you ever seen my library?'

'No; never.'

'You don't say you would like to see it.'

'But I should.'

'It is the third door on the right.  You can find your way in, and
you can stay there as long as you like.'

Swithin then left the morning-room for the apartment designated, and
amused himself in that 'soul of the house,' as Cicero defined it,
till he heard the lunch bell sounding from the turret, when he came
down from the library steps, and thought it time to go home.  But at
that moment a servant entered to inquire whether he would or would
not prefer to have his lunch brought in to him there; upon his
replying in the affirmative a large tray arrived on the stomach of a
footman, and Swithin was greatly surprised to see a whole pheasant
placed at his disposal.

Having breakfasted at eight that morning, and having been much in
the open air afterwards, the Adonis-astronomer's appetite assumed
grand proportions.  How much of that pheasant he might consistently
eat without hurting his dear patroness Lady Constantine's feelings,
when he could readily eat it all, was a problem in which the
reasonableness of a larger and larger quantity argued itself
inversely as a smaller and smaller quantity remained.  When, at
length, he had finally decided on a terminal point in the body of
the bird, the door was gently opened.

'Oh, you have not finished?' came to him over his shoulder, in a
considerate voice.

'O yes, thank you, Lady Constantine,' he said, jumping up.

'Why did you prefer to lunch in this awkward, dusty place?'

'I thought--it would be better,' said Swithin simply.

'There is fruit in the other room, if you like to come.  But perhaps
you would rather not?'

'O yes, I should much like to,' said Swithin, walking over his
napkin, and following her as she led the way to the adjoining
apartment.

Here, while she asked him what he had been reading, he modestly
ventured on an apple, in whose flavour he recognized the familiar
taste of old friends robbed from her husband's orchards in his
childhood, long before Lady Constantine's advent on the scene.  She
supposed he had confined his search to his own sublime subject,
astronomy?

Swithin suddenly became older to the eye, as his thoughts reverted
to the topic thus reintroduced.  'Yes,' he informed her.  'I seldom
read any other subject.  In these days the secret of productive
study is to avoid well.'

'Did you find any good treatises?'

'None.  The theories in your books are almost as obsolete as the
Ptolemaic System.  Only fancy, that magnificent Cyclopaedia,
leather-bound, and stamped, and gilt, and wide margined, and bearing
the blazon of your house in magnificent colours, says that the
twinkling of the stars is probably caused by heavenly bodies passing
in front of them in their revolutions.'

'And is it not so?  That was what I learned when I was a girl.'

The modern Eudoxus now rose above the embarrassing horizon of Lady
Constantine's great house, magnificent furniture, and awe-inspiring
footman.  He became quite natural, all his self-consciousness fled,
and his eye spoke into hers no less than his lips to her ears, as he
said, 'How such a theory can have lingered on to this day beats
conjecture!  Francois Arago, as long as forty or fifty years ago,
conclusively established the fact that scintillation is the simplest
thing in the world,--merely a matter of atmosphere.  But I won't
speak of this to you now.  The comparative absence of scintillation
in warm countries was noticed by Humboldt.  Then, again, the
scintillations vary.  No star flaps his wings like Sirius when he
lies low!  He flashes out emeralds and rubies, amethystine flames
and sapphirine colours, in a manner quite marvellous to behold, and
this is only ONE star!  So, too, do Arcturus, and Capella, and
lesser luminaries. . . .  But I tire you with this subject?'

'On the contrary, you speak so beautifully that I could listen all
day.'

The astronomer threw a searching glance upon her for a moment; but
there was no satire in the warm soft eyes which met his own with a
luxurious contemplative interest.  'Say some more of it to me,' she
continued, in a voice not far removed from coaxing.

After some hesitation the subject returned again to his lips, and he
said some more--indeed, much more; Lady Constantine often throwing
in an appreciative remark or question, often meditatively regarding
him, in pursuance of ideas not exactly based on his words, and
letting him go on as he would.

Before he left the house the new astronomical project was set in
train.  The top of the column was to be roofed in, to form a proper
observatory; and on the ground that he knew better than any one else
how this was to be carried out, she requested him to give precise
directions on the point, and to superintend the whole.  A wooden
cabin was to be erected at the foot of the tower, to provide better
accommodation for casual visitors to the observatory than the spiral
staircase and lead-flat afforded.  As this cabin would be completely
buried in the dense fir foliage which enveloped the lower part of
the column and its pedestal, it would be no disfigurement to the
general appearance.  Finally, a path was to be made across the
surrounding fallow, by which she might easily approach the scene of
her new study.

When he was gone she wrote to the firm of opticians concerning the
equatorial for whose reception all this was designed.

The undertaking was soon in full progress; and by degrees it became
the talk of the hamlets round that Lady Constantine had given up
melancholy for astronomy, to the great advantage of all who came in
contact with her.  One morning, when Tabitha Lark had come as usual
to read, Lady Constantine chanced to be in a quarter of the house to
which she seldom wandered; and while here she heard her maid talking
confidentially to Tabitha in the adjoining room on the curious and
sudden interest which Lady Constantine had acquired in the moon and
stars.

'They do say all sorts of trumpery,' observed the handmaid.  'They
say--though 'tis little better than mischief, to be sure--that it
isn't the moon, and it isn't the stars, and it isn't the plannards,
that my lady cares for, but for the pretty lad who draws 'em down
from the sky to please her; and being a married example, and what
with sin and shame knocking at every poor maid's door afore you can
say, "Hands off, my dear," to the civilest young man, she ought to
set a better pattern.'

Lady Constantine's face flamed up vividly.

'If Sir Blount were to come back all of a sudden--oh, my!'

Lady Constantine grew cold as ice.

'There's nothing in it,' said Tabitha scornfully.  'I could prove it
any day.'

'Well, I wish I had half her chance!' sighed the lady's maid.  And
no more was said on the subject then.

Tabitha's remark showed that the suspicion was quite in embryo as
yet.  Nevertheless, saying nothing to reveal what she had overheard,
immediately after the reading Lady Constantine flew like a bird to
where she knew that Swithin might be found.

He was in the plantation, setting up little sticks to mark where the
wooden cabin was to stand.  She called him to a remote place under
the funereal trees.

'I have altered my mind,' she said.  'I can have nothing to do with
this matter.'

'Indeed?' said Swithin, surprised.

'Astronomy is not my hobby any longer.  And you are not my
Astronomer Royal.'

'O Lady Constantine!' cried the youth, aghast.  'Why, the work is
begun!  I thought the equatorial was ordered.'

She dropped her voice, though a Jericho shout would not have been
overheard:  'Of course astronomy is my hobby privately, and you are
to be my Astronomer Royal, and I still furnish the observatory; but
not to the outer world.  There is a reason against my indulgence in
such scientific fancies openly; and the project must be arranged in
this wise.  The whole enterprise is yours:  you rent the tower of
me:  you build the cabin:  you get the equatorial.  I simply give
permission, since you desire it.  The path that was to be made from
the hill to the park is not to be thought of.  There is to be no
communication between the house and the column.  The equatorial will
arrive addressed to you, and its cost I will pay through you.  My
name must not appear, and I vanish entirely from the undertaking. .
. .  This blind is necessary,' she added, sighing.  'Good-bye!'

'But you DO take as much interest as before, and it WILL be yours
just the same?' he said, walking after her.  He scarcely
comprehended the subterfuge, and was absolutely blind as to its
reason.

'Can you doubt it?  But I dare not do it openly.'

With this she went away; and in due time there circulated through
the parish an assertion that it was a mistake to suppose Lady
Constantine had anything to do with Swithin St. Cleeve or his star-
gazing schemes.  She had merely allowed him to rent the tower of her
for use as his observatory, and to put some temporary fixtures on it
for that purpose.

After this Lady Constantine lapsed into her former life of
loneliness; and by these prompt measures the ghost of a rumour which
had barely started into existence was speedily laid to rest.  It had
probably originated in her own dwelling, and had gone but little
further.  Yet, despite her self-control, a certain north window of
the Great House, that commanded an uninterrupted view of the upper
ten feet of the column, revealed her to be somewhat frequently
gazing from it at a rotundity which had begun to appear on the
summit.  To those with whom she came in contact she sometimes
addressed such remarks as, 'Is young Mr. St. Cleeve getting on with
his observatory?  I hope he will fix his instruments without
damaging the column, which is so interesting to us as being in
memory of my dear husband's great-grandfather--a truly brave man.'

On one occasion her building-steward ventured to suggest to her
that, Sir Blount having deputed to her the power to grant short
leases in his absence, she should have a distinctive agreement with
Swithin, as between landlord and tenant, with a stringent clause
against his driving nails into the stonework of such an historical
memorial.  She replied that she did not wish to be severe on the
last representative of such old and respected parishioners as St.
Cleeve's mother's family had been, and of such a well-descended
family as his father's; so that it would only be necessary for the
steward to keep an eye on Mr. St. Cleeve's doings.

Further, when a letter arrived at the Great House from Hilton and
Pimm's, the opticians, with information that the equatorial was
ready and packed, and that a man would be sent with it to fix it,
she replied to that firm to the effect that their letter should have
been addressed to Mr. St. Cleeve, the local astronomer, on whose
behalf she had made the inquiries; that she had nothing more to do
with the matter; that he would receive the instrument and pay the
bill,--her guarantee being given for the latter performance.



VIII

Lady Constantine then had the pleasure of beholding a waggon, laden
with packing-cases, moving across the field towards the pillar; and
not many days later Swithin, who had never come to the Great House
since the luncheon, met her in a path which he knew to be one of her
promenades.

'The equatorial is fixed, and the man gone,' he said, half in doubt
as to his speech, for her commands to him not to recognize her
agency or patronage still puzzled him.  'I respectfully wish--you
could come and see it, Lady Constantine.'

'I would rather not; I cannot.'

'Saturn is lovely; Jupiter is simply sublime; I can see double stars
in the Lion and in the Virgin, where I had seen only a single one
before.  It is all I required to set me going!'

'I'll come.  But--you need say nothing about my visit.  I cannot
come to-night, but I will some time this week.  Yet only this once,
to try the instrument.  Afterwards you must be content to pursue
your studies alone.'

Swithin seemed but little affected at this announcement.  'Hilton
and Pimm's man handed me the bill,' he continued.

'How much is it?'

He told her.  'And the man who has built the hut and dome, and done
the other fixing, has sent in his.'  He named this amount also.

'Very well.  They shall be settled with.  My debts must be paid with
my money, which you shall have at once,--in cash, since a cheque
would hardly do.  Come to the house for it this evening.  But no,
no--you must not come openly; such is the world.  Come to the
window--the window that is exactly in a line with the long snowdrop
bed, in the south front--at eight to-night, and I will give you what
is necessary.'

'Certainly, Lady Constantine,' said the young man.

At eight that evening accordingly, Swithin entered like a spectre
upon the terrace to seek out the spot she had designated.  The
equatorial had so entirely absorbed his thoughts that he did not
trouble himself seriously to conjecture the why and wherefore of her
secrecy.  If he casually thought of it, he set it down in a general
way to an intensely generous wish on her part not to lessen his
influence among the poorer inhabitants by making him appear the
object of patronage.

While he stood by the long snowdrop bed, which looked up at him like
a nether Milky Way, the French casement of the window opposite
softly opened, and a hand bordered by a glimmer of lace was
stretched forth, from which he received a crisp little parcel,--
bank-notes, apparently.  He knew the hand, and held it long enough
to press it to his lips, the only form which had ever occurred to
him of expressing his gratitude to her without the incumbrance of
clumsy words, a vehicle at the best of times but rudely suited to
such delicate merchandise.  The hand was hastily withdrawn, as if
the treatment had been unexpected.  Then seemingly moved by second
thoughts she bent forward and said, 'Is the night good for
observations?'

'Perfect.'

She paused.  'Then I'll come to-night,' she at last said.  'It makes
no difference to me, after all.  Wait just one moment.'

He waited, and she presently emerged, muffled up like a nun;
whereupon they left the terrace and struck across the park together.

Very little was said by either till they were crossing the fallow,
when he asked if his arm would help her.  She did not take the
offered support just then; but when they were ascending the
prehistoric earthwork, under the heavy gloom of the fir-trees, she
seized it, as if rather influenced by the oppressive solitude than
by fatigue.

Thus they reached the foot of the column, ten thousand spirits in
prison seeming to gasp their griefs from the funereal boughs
overhead, and a few twigs scratching the pillar with the drag of
impish claws as tenacious as those figuring in St. Anthony's
temptation.

'How intensely dark it is just here!' she whispered.  'I wonder you
can keep in the path.  Many ancient Britons lie buried there
doubtless.'

He led her round to the other side, where, feeling his way with his
hands, he suddenly left her, appearing a moment after with a light.

'What place is this?' she exclaimed.

'This is the new wood cabin,' said he.

She could just discern the outline of a little house, not unlike a
bathing-machine without wheels.

'I have kept lights ready here,' he went on, 'as I thought you might
come any evening, and possibly bring company.'

'Don't criticize me for coming alone,' she exclaimed with sensitive
promptness.  'There are social reasons for what I do of which you
know nothing.'

'Perhaps it is much to my discredit that I don't know.'

'Not at all.  You are all the better for it.  Heaven forbid that I
should enlighten you.  Well, I see this is the hut.  But I am more
curious to go to the top of the tower, and make discoveries.'

He brought a little lantern from the cabin, and lighted her up the
winding staircase to the temple of that sublime mystery on whose
threshold he stood as priest.

The top of the column was quite changed.  The tub-shaped space
within the parapet, formerly open to the air and sun, was now arched
over by a light dome of lath-work covered with felt.  But this dome
was not fixed.  At the line where its base descended to the parapet
there were half a dozen iron balls, precisely like cannon-shot,
standing loosely in a groove, and on these the dome rested its whole
weight.  In the side of the dome was a slit, through which the wind
blew and the North Star beamed, and towards it the end of the great
telescope was directed.  This latter magnificent object, with its
circles, axes, and handles complete, was securely fixed in the
middle of the floor.

'But you can only see one part of the sky through that slit,' said
she.

The astronomer stretched out his arm, and the whole dome turned
horizontally round, running on the balls with a rumble like thunder.
Instead of the star Polaris, which had first been peeping in through
the slit, there now appeared the countenances of Castor and Pollux.
Swithin then manipulated the equatorial, and put it through its
capabilities in like manner.

She was enchanted; being rather excitable she even clapped her hands
just once.  She turned to him:  'Now are you happy?'

'But it is all YOURS, Lady Constantine.'

'At this moment.  But that's a defect which can soon be remedied.
When is your birthday?'

'Next month,--the seventh.'

'Then it shall all be yours,--a birthday present.'

The young man protested; it was too much.

'No, you must accept it all,--equatorial, dome stand, hut, and
everything that has been put here for this astronomical purpose.
The possession of these apparatus would only compromise me.  Already
they are reputed to be yours, and they must be made yours.  There is
no help for it.  If ever' (here her voice lost some firmness),--'if
ever you go away from me,--from this place, I mean,--and marry, and
settle in a new home elsewhere for good, and forget me, you must
take these things, equatorial and all, and never tell your wife or
anybody how they came to be yours.'

'I wish I could do something more for you!' exclaimed the much-moved
astronomer.  'If you could but share my fame,--supposing I get any,
which I may die before doing,--it would be a little compensation.
As to my going away and marrying, I certainly shall not.  I may go
away, but I shall never marry.'

'Why not?'

'A beloved science is enough wife for me,--combined, perhaps, with a
little warm friendship with one of kindred pursuits.'

'Who is the friend of kindred pursuits?'

'Yourself I should like it to be.'

'You would have to become a woman before I could be that, publicly;
or I a man,' she replied, with dry melancholy.

'Why I a woman, or you a man, dear Lady Constantine?'

'I cannot explain.  No; you must keep your fame and your science all
to yourself, and I must keep my--troubles.'

Swithin, to divert her from melancholy--not knowing that in the
expression of her melancholy thus and now she found much pleasure,--
changed the subject by asking if they should take some observations.

'Yes; the scenery is well hung to-night,' she said looking out upon
the heavens.

Then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star,
from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars, in
the cursory manner of the merely curious.  They plunged down to that
at other times invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial
theatre:  remote layers of constellations whose shapes were new and
singular; pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their
beams without calling forth from a single earthly poet a single
line, or being able to bestow a ray of comfort on a single benighted
traveller.

'And to think,' said Lady Constantine, 'that the whole race of
shepherds, since the beginning of the world,--even those immortal
shepherds who watched near Bethlehem,--should have gone into their
graves without knowing that for one star that lighted them in their
labours, there were a hundred as good behind trying to do so!. . .
I have a feeling for this instrument not unlike the awe I should
feel in the presence of a great magician in whom I really believed.
Its powers are so enormous, and weird, and fantastical, that I
should have a personal fear in being with it alone.  Music drew an
angel down, said the poet:  but what is that to drawing down
worlds!'

'I often experience a kind of fear of the sky after sitting in the
observing-chair a long time,' he answered.  'And when I walk home
afterwards I also fear it, for what I know is there, but cannot see,
as one naturally fears the presence of a vast formless something
that only reveals a very little of itself.  That's partly what I
meant by saying that magnitude, which up to a certain point has
grandeur, has beyond it ghastliness.'

Thus the interest of their sidereal observations led them on, till
the knowledge that scarce any other human vision was travelling
within a hundred million miles of their own gave them such a sense
of the isolation of that faculty as almost to be a sense of
isolation in respect of their whole personality, causing a shudder
at its absoluteness.  At night, when human discords and harmonies
are hushed, in a general sense, for the greater part of twelve
hours, there is nothing to moderate the blow with which the
infinitely great, the stellar universe, strikes down upon the
infinitely little, the mind of the beholder; and this was the case
now.  Having got closer to immensity than their fellow-creatures,
they saw at once its beauty and its frightfulness.  They more and
more felt the contrast between their own tiny magnitudes and those
among which they had recklessly plunged, till they were oppressed
with the presence of a vastness they could not cope with even as an
idea, and which hung about them like a nightmare.

He stood by her while she observed; she by him when they changed
places.  Once that Swithin's emancipation from a trammelling body
had been effected by the telescope, and he was well away in space,
she felt her influence over him diminishing to nothing.  He was
quite unconscious of his terrestrial neighbourings, and of herself
as one of them.  It still further reduced her towards unvarnished
simplicity in her manner to him.

The silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock-work which
gave diurnal motion to the instrument.  The stars moved on, the end
of the telescope followed, but their tongues stood still.  To expect
that he was ever voluntarily going to end the pause by speech was
apparently futile.  She laid her hand upon his arm.

He started, withdrew his eye from the telescope, and brought himself
back to the earth by a visible--almost painful--effort.

'Do come out of it,' she coaxed, with a softness in her voice which
any man but unpractised Swithin would have felt to be exquisite.  'I
feel that I have been so foolish as to put in your hands an
instrument to effect my own annihilation.  Not a word have you
spoken for the last ten minutes.'

'I have been mentally getting on with my great theory.  I hope soon
to be able to publish it to the world.  What, are you going?  I will
walk with you, Lady Constantine.  When will you come again?'

'When your great theory is published to the world.'



IX

Lady Constantine, if narrowly observed at this time, would have
seemed to be deeply troubled in conscience, and particularly after
the interview above described.  Ash Wednesday occurred in the
calendar a few days later, and she went to morning service with a
look of genuine contrition on her emotional and yearning
countenance.

Besides herself the congregation consisted only of the parson,
clerk, school-children, and three old people living on alms, who sat
under the reading-desk; and thus, when Mr. Torkingham blazed forth
the denunciatory sentences of the Commination, nearly the whole
force of them seemed to descend upon her own shoulders.  Looking
across the empty pews she saw through the one or two clear panes of
the window opposite a youthful figure in the churchyard, and the
very feeling against which she had tried to pray returned again
irresistibly.

When she came out and had crossed into the private walk, Swithin
came forward to speak to her.  This was a most unusual circumstance,
and argued a matter of importance.

'I have made an amazing discovery in connexion with the variable
stars,' he exclaimed.  'It will excite the whole astronomical world,
and the world outside but little less.  I had long suspected the
true secret of their variability; but it was by the merest chance on
earth that I hit upon a proof of my guess.  Your equatorial has done
it, my good, kind Lady Constantine, and our fame is established for
ever!'

He sprang into the air, and waved his hat in his triumph.

'Oh, I am so glad--so rejoiced!' she cried.  'What is it?  But don't
stop to tell me.  Publish it at once in some paper; nail your name
to it, or somebody will seize the idea and appropriate it,--
forestall you in some way.  It will be Adams and Leverrier over
again.'

'If I may walk with you I will explain the nature of the discovery.
It accounts for the occasional green tint of Castor, and every
difficulty.  I said I would be the Copernicus of the stellar system,
and I have begun to be.  Yet who knows?'

'Now don't be so up and down!  I shall not understand your
explanation, and I would rather not know it.  I shall reveal it if
it is very grand.  Women, you know, are not safe depositaries of
such valuable secrets.  You may walk with me a little way, with
great pleasure.  Then go and write your account, so as to insure
your ownership of the discovery. . . .  But how you have watched!'
she cried, in a sudden accession of anxiety, as she turned to look
more closely at him.  'The orbits of your eyes are leaden, and your
eyelids are red and heavy.  Don't do it--pray don't.  You will be
ill, and break down.'

'I have, it is true, been up a little late this last week,' he said
cheerfully.  'In fact, I couldn't tear myself away from the
equatorial; it is such a wonderful possession that it keeps me there
till daylight.  But what does that matter, now I have made the
discovery?'

'Ah, it DOES matter!  Now, promise me--I insist--that you will not
commit such imprudences again; for what should I do if my Astronomer
Royal were to die?'

She laughed, but far too apprehensively to be effective as a display
of levity.

They parted, and he went home to write out his paper.  He promised
to call as soon as his discovery was in print.  Then they waited for
the result.

It is impossible to describe the tremulous state of Lady Constantine
during the interval.  The warm interest she took in Swithin St.
Cleeve--many would have said dangerously warm interest--made his
hopes her hopes; and though she sometimes admitted to herself that
great allowance was requisite for the overweening confidence of
youth in the future, she permitted herself to be blinded to
probabilities for the pleasure of sharing his dreams.  It seemed not
unreasonable to suppose the present hour to be the beginning of
realization to her darling wish that this young man should become
famous.  He had worked hard, and why should he not be famous early?
His very simplicity in mundane affairs afforded a strong presumption
that in things celestial he might be wise.  To obtain support for
this hypothesis she had only to think over the lives of many eminent
astronomers.

She waited feverishly for the flourish of trumpets from afar, by
which she expected the announcement of his discovery to be greeted.
Knowing that immediate intelligence of the outburst would be brought
to her by himself, she watched from the windows of the Great House
each morning for a sight of his figure hastening down the glade.

But he did not come.

A long array of wet days passed their dreary shapes before her, and
made the waiting still more tedious.  On one of these occasions she
ran across to the tower, at the risk of a severe cold.  The door was
locked.

Two days after she went again.  The door was locked still.  But this
was only to be expected in such weather.  Yet she would have gone on
to his house, had there not been one reason too many against such
precipitancy.  As astronomer and astronomer there was no harm in
their meetings; but as woman and man she feared them.

Ten days passed without a sight of him; ten blurred and dreary days,
during which the whole landscape dripped like a mop; the park trees
swabbed the gravel from the drive, while the sky was a zinc-coloured
archi-vault of immovable cloud.  It seemed as if the whole science
of astronomy had never been real, and that the heavenly bodies, with
their motions, were as theoretical as the lines and circles of a
bygone mathematical problem.

She could content herself no longer with fruitless visits to the
column, and when the rain had a little abated she walked to the
nearest hamlet, and in a conversation with the first old woman she
met contrived to lead up to the subject of Swithin St. Cleeve by
talking about his grandmother.

'Ah, poor old heart; 'tis a bad time for her, my lady!' exclaimed
the dame.

'What?'

'Her grandson is dying; and such a gentleman through and through!'

'What!. . .  Oh, it has something to do with that dreadful
discovery!'

'Discovery, my lady?'

She left the old woman with an evasive answer, and with a breaking
heart crept along the road.  Tears brimmed into her eyes as she
walked, and by the time that she was out of sight sobs burst forth
tumultuously.

'I am too fond of him!' she moaned; 'but I can't help it; and I
don't care if it's wrong,--I don't care!'

Without further considerations as to who beheld her doings she
instinctively went straight towards Mrs. Martin's.  Seeing a man
coming she calmed herself sufficiently to ask him through her
dropped veil how poor Mr. St. Cleeve was that day.  But she only got
the same reply:  'They say he is dying, my lady.'

When Swithin had parted from Lady Constantine, on the previous Ash-
Wednesday, he had gone straight to the homestead and prepared his
account of 'A New Astronomical Discovery.'  It was written perhaps
in too glowing a rhetoric for the true scientific tone of mind; but
there was no doubt that his assertion met with a most startling
aptness all the difficulties which had accompanied the received
theories on the phenomena attending those changeable suns of
marvellous systems so far away.  It accounted for the nebulous mist
that surrounds some of them at their weakest time; in short, took up
a position of probability which has never yet been successfully
assailed.

The papers were written in triplicate, and carefully sealed up with
blue wax.  One copy was directed to Greenwich, another to the Royal
Society, another to a prominent astronomer.  A brief statement of
the essence of the discovery was also prepared for the leading daily
paper.

He considered these documents, embodying as they did two years of
his constant thought, reading, and observation, too important to be
entrusted for posting to the hands of a messenger; too important to
be sent to the sub-post-office at hand.  Though the day was wet,
dripping wet, he went on foot with them to a chief office, five
miles off, and registered them.  Quite exhausted by the walk, after
his long night-work, wet through, yet sustained by the sense of a
great achievement, he called at a bookseller's for the astronomical
periodicals to which he subscribed; then, resting for a short time
at an inn, he plodded his way homewards, reading his papers as he
went, and planning how to enjoy a repose on his laurels of a week or
more.

On he strolled through the rain, holding the umbrella vertically
over the exposed page to keep it dry while he read.  Suddenly his
eye was struck by an article.  It was the review of a pamphlet by an
American astronomer, in which the author announced a conclusive
discovery with regard to variable stars.

The discovery was precisely the discovery of Swithin St. Cleeve.
Another man had forestalled his fame by a period of about six weeks.

Then the youth found that the goddess Philosophy, to whom he had
vowed to dedicate his whole life, would not in return support him
through a single hour of despair.  In truth, the impishness of
circumstance was newer to him than it would have been to a
philosopher of threescore-and-ten.  In a wild wish for annihilation
he flung himself down on a patch of heather that lay a little
removed from the road, and in this humid bed remained motionless,
while time passed by unheeded.

At last, from sheer misery and weariness, he fell asleep.

The March rain pelted him mercilessly, the beaded moisture from the
heavily charged locks of heath penetrated him through back and
sides, and clotted his hair to unsightly tags and tufts.  When he
awoke it was dark.  He thought of his grandmother, and of her
possible alarm at missing him.  On attempting to rise, he found that
he could hardly bend his joints, and that his clothes were as heavy
as lead from saturation.  His teeth chattering and his knees
trembling he pursued his way home, where his appearance excited
great concern.  He was obliged at once to retire to bed, and the
next day he was delirious from the chill.

It was about ten days after this unhappy occurrence that Lady
Constantine learnt the news, as above described, and hastened along
to the homestead in that state of anguish in which the heart is no
longer under the control of the judgment, and self-abandonment even
to error, verges on heroism.

On reaching the house in Welland Bottom the door was opened to her
by old Hannah, who wore an assiduously sorrowful look; and Lady
Constantine was shown into the large room,--so wide that the beams
bent in the middle,--where she took her seat in one of a methodic
range of chairs, beneath a portrait of the Reverend Mr. St. Cleeve,
her astronomer's erratic father.

The eight unwatered dying plants, in the row of eight flower-pots,
denoted that there was something wrong in the house.  Mrs. Martin
came downstairs fretting, her wonder at beholding Lady Constantine
not altogether displacing the previous mood of grief.

'Here's a pretty kettle of fish, my lady!' she exclaimed.

Lady Constantine said, 'Hush!' and pointed inquiringly upward.

'He is not overhead, my lady,' replied Swithin's grandmother.  'His
bedroom is at the back of the house.'

'How is he now?'

'He is better, just at this moment; and we are more hopeful.  But he
changes so.'

'May I go up?  I know he would like to see me.'

Her presence having been made known to the sufferer, she was
conducted upstairs to Swithin's room.  The way thither was through
the large chamber he had used as a study and for the manufacture of
optical instruments.  There lay the large pasteboard telescope, that
had been just such a failure as Crusoe's large boat; there were his
diagrams, maps, globes, and celestial apparatus of various sorts.
The absence of the worker, through illness or death is sufficient to
touch the prosiest workshop and tools with the hues of pathos, and
it was with a swelling bosom that Lady Constantine passed through
this arena of his youthful activities to the little chamber where he
lay.

Old Mrs. Martin sat down by the window, and Lady Constantine bent
over Swithin.

'Don't speak to me!' she whispered.  'It will weaken you; it will
excite you.  If you do speak, it must be very softly.'

She took his hand, and one irrepressible tear fell upon it.

'Nothing will excite me now, Lady Constantine,' he said; 'not even
your goodness in coming.  My last excitement was when I lost the
battle. . . .  Do you know that my discovery has been forestalled?
It is that that's killing me.'

'But you are going to recover; you are better, they say.  Is it so?'

'I think I am, to-day.  But who can be sure?'

'The poor boy was so upset at finding that his labour had been
thrown away,' said his grandmother, 'that he lay down in the rain,
and chilled his life out.'

'How could you do it?' Lady Constantine whispered.  'O, how could
you think so much of renown, and so little of me?  Why, for every
discovery made there are ten behind that await making.  To commit
suicide like this, as if there were nobody in the world to care for
you!'

'It was done in my haste, and I am very, very sorry for it!  I beg
both you and all my few friends never, never to forgive me!  It
would kill me with self-reproach if you were to pardon my rashness!'

At this moment the doctor was announced, and Mrs. Martin went
downstairs to receive him.  Lady Constantine thought she would
remain to hear his report, and for this purpose withdrew, and sat
down in a nook of the adjoining work-room of Swithin, the doctor
meeting her as he passed through it into the sick chamber.

He was there a torturingly long time; but at length he came out to
the room she waited in, and crossed it on his way downstairs.  She
rose and followed him to the stairhead.

'How is he?' she anxiously asked.  'Will he get over it?'

The doctor, not knowing the depth of her interest in the patient,
spoke with the blunt candour natural towards a comparatively
indifferent inquirer.

'No, Lady Constantine,' he replied; 'there's a change for the
worse.'

And he retired down the stairs.

Scarcely knowing what she did Lady Constantine ran back to Swithin's
side, flung herself upon the bed and in a paroxysm of sorrow kissed
him.



X

The placid inhabitants of the parish of Welland, including warbling
waggoners, lone shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, the carpenter,
the gardener at the Great House, the steward and agent, the parson,
clerk, and so on, were hourly expecting the announcement of St.
Cleeve's death.  The sexton had been going to see his brother-in-
law, nine miles distant, but promptly postponed the visit for a few
days, that there might be the regular professional hand present to
toll the bell in a note of due fulness and solemnity; an attempt by
a deputy, on a previous occasion of his absence, having degenerated
into a miserable stammering clang that was a disgrace to the parish.

But Swithin St. Cleeve did not decease, a fact of which, indeed, the
habituated reader will have been well aware ever since the rain came
down upon the young man in the ninth chapter, and led to his
alarming illness.  Though, for that matter, so many maimed histories
are hourly enacting themselves in this dun-coloured world as to lend
almost a priority of interest to narratives concerning those

     'Who lay great bases for eternity
      Which prove more short than waste or ruining.'

How it arose that he did not die was in this wise; and his example
affords another instance of that reflex rule of the vassal soul over
the sovereign body, which, operating so wonderfully in elastic
natures, and more or less in all, originally gave rise to the legend
that supremacy lay on the other side.

The evening of the day after the tender, despairing, farewell kiss
of Lady Constantine, when he was a little less weak than during her
visit, he lay with his face to the window.  He lay alone, quiet and
resigned.  He had been thinking, sometimes of her and other friends,
but chiefly of his lost discovery.  Although nearly unconscious at
the time, he had yet been aware of that kiss, as the delicate flush
which followed it upon his cheek would have told; but he had
attached little importance to it as between woman and man.  Had he
been dying of love instead of wet weather, perhaps the impulsive act
of that handsome lady would have been seized on as a proof that his
love was returned.  As it was her kiss seemed but the evidence of a
naturally demonstrative kindliness, felt towards him chiefly because
he was believed to be leaving her for ever.

The reds of sunset passed, and dusk drew on.  Old Hannah came
upstairs to pull down the blinds and as she advanced to the window
he said to her, in a faint voice, 'Well, Hannah, what news to-day?'

'Oh, nothing, sir,' Hannah replied, looking out of the window with
sad apathy, 'only that there's a comet, they say.'

'A WHAT?' said the dying astronomer, starting up on his elbow.

'A comet--that's all, Master Swithin,' repeated Hannah, in a lower
voice, fearing she had done harm in some way.

'Well, tell me, tell me!' cried Swithin.  'Is it Gambart's?  Is it
Charles the Fifth's, or Halley's, or Faye's, or whose?'

'Hush!' said she, thinking St. Cleeve slightly delirious again.
''Tis God A'mighty's, of course.  I haven't seed en myself, but they
say he's getting bigger every night, and that he'll be the biggest
one known for fifty years when he's full growed.  There, you must
not talk any more now, or I'll go away.'

Here was an amazing event, little noise as it had made in the
happening.  Of all phenomena that he had longed to witness during
his short astronomical career, those appertaining to comets had
excited him most.  That the magnificent comet of 1811 would not
return again for thirty centuries had been quite a permanent regret
with him.  And now, when the bottomless abyss of death seemed
yawning beneath his feet, one of these much-desired apparitions, as
large, apparently, as any of its tribe, had chosen to show itself.

'O, if I could but live to see that comet through my equatorial!' he
cried.

Compared with comets, variable stars, which he had hitherto made his
study, were, from their remoteness, uninteresting.  They were to the
former as the celebrities of Ujiji or Unyamwesi to the celebrities
of his own country.  Members of the solar system, these dazzling and
perplexing rangers, the fascination of all astronomers, rendered
themselves still more fascinating by the sinister suspicion
attaching to them of being possibly the ultimate destroyers of the
human race.  In his physical prostration St. Cleeve wept bitterly at
not being hale and strong enough to welcome with proper honour the
present specimen of these desirable visitors.

The strenuous wish to live and behold the new phenomenon,
supplanting the utter weariness of existence that he had heretofore
experienced, gave him a new vitality.  The crisis passed; there was
a turn for the better; and after that he rapidly mended.  The comet
had in all probability saved his life.  The limitless and complex
wonders of the sky resumed their old power over his imagination; the
possibilities of that unfathomable blue ocean were endless.  Finer
feats than ever he would perform were to be achieved in its
investigation.  What Lady Constantine had said, that for one
discovery made ten awaited making, was strikingly verified by the
sudden appearance of this splendid marvel.

The windows of St. Cleeve's bedroom faced the west, and nothing
would satisfy him but that his bed should be so pulled round as to
give him a view of the low sky, in which the as yet minute tadpole
of fire was recognizable.  The mere sight of it seemed to lend him
sufficient resolution to complete his own cure forthwith.  His only
fear now was lest, from some unexpected cause or other, the comet
would vanish before he could get to the observatory on Rings-Hill
Speer.

In his fervour to begin observing he directed that an old telescope,
which he had used in his first celestial attempts, should be tied at
one end to the bed-post, and at the other fixed near his eye as he
reclined.  Equipped only with this rough improvisation he began to
take notes.  Lady Constantine was forgotten, till one day, suddenly,
wondering if she knew of the important phenomenon, he revolved in
his mind whether as a fellow-student and sincere friend of his she
ought not to be sent for, and instructed in the use of the
equatorial.

But though the image of Lady Constantine, in spite of her kindness
and unmistakably warm heart, had been obscured in his mind by the
heavenly body, she had not so readily forgotten him.  Too shy to
repeat her visit after so nearly betraying her secret, she yet,
every day, by the most ingenious and subtle means that could be
devised by a woman who feared for herself, but could not refrain
from tampering with danger, ascertained the state of her young
friend's health.  On hearing of the turn in his condition she
rejoiced on his account, and became yet more despondent on her own.
If he had died she might have mused on him as her dear departed
saint without much sin:  but his return to life was a delight that
bewildered and dismayed.

One evening a little later on he was sitting at his bedroom window
as usual, waiting for a sufficient decline of light to reveal the
comet's form, when he beheld, crossing the field contiguous to the
house, a figure which he knew to be hers.  He thought she must be
coming to see him on the great comet question, to discuss which with
so delightful and kind a comrade was an expectation full of
pleasure.  Hence he keenly observed her approach, till something
happened that surprised him.

When, at the descent of the hill, she had reached the stile that
admitted to Mrs. Martin's garden, Lady Constantine stood quite still
for a minute or more, her gaze bent on the ground.  Instead of
coming on to the house she went heavily and slowly back, almost as
if in pain; and then at length, quickening her pace, she was soon
out of sight.  She appeared in the path no more that day.



XI

Why had Lady Constantine stopped and turned?

A misgiving had taken sudden possession of her.  Her true sentiment
towards St. Cleeve was too recognizable by herself to be tolerated.

That she had a legitimate interest in him as a young astronomer was
true; that her sympathy on account of his severe illness had been
natural and commendable was also true.  But the superfluous feeling
was what filled her with trepidation.

Superfluities have been defined as things you cannot do without, and
this particular emotion, that came not within her rightful measure,
was in danger of becoming just such a superfluity with her.  In
short, she felt there and then that to see St. Cleeve again would be
an impropriety; and by a violent effort she retreated from his
precincts, as he had observed.

She resolved to ennoble her conduct from that moment of her life
onwards.  She would exercise kind patronage towards Swithin without
once indulging herself with his company.  Inexpressibly dear to her
deserted heart he was becoming, but for the future he should at
least be hidden from her eyes.  To speak plainly, it was growing a
serious question whether, if he were not hidden from her eyes, she
would not soon be plunging across the ragged boundary which divides
the permissible from the forbidden.

By the time that she had drawn near home the sun was going down.
The heavy, many-chevroned church, now subdued by violet shadow
except where its upper courses caught the western stroke of flame-
colour, stood close to her grounds, as in many other parishes,
though the village of which it formerly was the nucleus had become
quite depopulated:  its cottages had been demolished to enlarge the
park, leaving the old building to stand there alone, like a standard
without an army.

It was Friday night, and she heard the organist practising
voluntaries within.  The hour, the notes, the even-song of the
birds, and her own previous emotions, combined to influence her
devotionally.  She entered, turning to the right and passing under
the chancel arch, where she sat down and viewed the whole empty
length, east and west.  The semi-Norman arches of the nave, with
their multitudinous notchings, were still visible by the light from
the tower window, but the lower portion of the building was in
obscurity, except where the feeble glimmer from the candle of the
organist spread a glow-worm radiance around.  The player, who was
Miss Tabitha Lark, continued without intermission to produce her
wandering sounds, unconscious of any one's presence except that of
the youthful blower at her side.

The rays from the organist's candle illuminated but one small
fragment of the chancel outside the precincts of the instrument, and
that was the portion of the eastern wall whereon the ten
commandments were inscribed.  The gilt letters shone sternly into
Lady Constantine's eyes; and she, being as impressionable as a
turtle-dove, watched a certain one of those commandments on the
second table, till its thunder broke her spirit with blank
contrition.

She knelt down, and did her utmost to eradicate those impulses
towards St. Cleeve which were inconsistent with her position as the
wife of an absent man, though not unnatural in her as his victim.

She knelt till she seemed scarcely to belong to the time she lived
in, which lost the magnitude that the nearness of its perspective
lent it on ordinary occasions, and took its actual rank in the long
line of other centuries.  Having once got out of herself, seen
herself from afar off, she was calmer, and went on to register a
magnanimous vow.  She would look about for some maiden fit and
likely to make St. Cleeve happy; and this girl she would endow with
what money she could afford, that the natural result of their
apposition should do him no worldly harm.  The interest of her, Lady
Constantine's, life should be in watching the development of love
between Swithin and the ideal maiden.  The very painfulness of the
scheme to her susceptible heart made it pleasing to her conscience;
and she wondered that she had not before this time thought of a
stratagem which united the possibility of benefiting the astronomer
with the advantage of guarding against peril to both Swithin and
herself.  By providing for him a suitable helpmate she would
preclude the dangerous awakening in him of sentiments reciprocating
her own.

Arrived at a point of exquisite misery through this heroic
intention, Lady Constantine's tears moistened the books upon which
her forehead was bowed.  And as she heard her feverish heart throb
against the desk, she firmly believed the wearing impulses of that
heart would put an end to her sad life, and momentarily recalled the
banished image of St. Cleeve to apostrophise him in thoughts that
paraphrased the quaint lines of Heine's Lieb' Liebchen:--

     'Dear my love, press thy hand to my breast, and tell
      If thou tracest the knocks in that narrow cell;
      A carpenter dwells there; cunning is he,
      And slyly he's shaping a coffin for me!'

Lady Constantine was disturbed by a break in the organist's
meandering practice, and raising her head she saw a person standing
by the player.  It was Mr. Torkingham, and what he said was
distinctly audible.  He was inquiring for herself.

'I thought I saw Lady Constantine walk this way,' he rejoined to
Tabitha's negative.  'I am very anxious indeed to meet with her.'

She went forward.  'I am here,' she said.  'Don't stop playing, Miss
Lark.  What is it, Mr. Torkingham?'

Tabitha thereupon resumed her playing, and Mr. Torkingham joined
Lady Constantine.

'I have some very serious intelligence to break to your ladyship,'
he said.  'But--I will not interrupt you here.'  (He had seen her
rise from her knees to come to him.)  'I will call at the House the
first moment you can receive me after reaching home.'

'No, tell me here,' she said, seating herself.

He came close, and placed his hand on the poppy-head of the seat.

'I have received a communication,' he resumed haltingly, 'in which I
am requested to prepare you for the contents of a letter that you
will receive to-morrow morning.'

'I am quite ready.'

'The subject is briefly this, Lady Constantine:  that you have been
a widow for more than eighteen months.'

'Dead!'

'Yes.  Sir Blount was attacked by dysentery and malarious fever, on
the banks of the Zouga in South Africa, so long ago as last October
twelvemonths, and it carried him off.  Of the three men who were
with him, two succumbed to the same illness, a hundred miles further
on; while the third, retracing his steps into a healthier district,
remained there with a native tribe, and took no pains to make the
circumstances known.  It seems to be only by the mere accident of
his having told some third party that we know of the matter now.
This is all I can tell you at present.'

She was greatly agitated for a few moments; and the Table of the Law
opposite, which now seemed to appertain to another dispensation,
glistened indistinctly upon a vision still obscured by the old
tears.

'Shall I conduct you home?' asked the parson.

'No thank you,' said Lady Constantine.  'I would rather go alone.'



XII

On the afternoon of the next day Mr. Torkingham, who occasionally
dropped in to see St. Cleeve, called again as usual; after duly
remarking on the state of the weather, congratulating him on his
sure though slow improvement, and answering his inquiries about the
comet, he said, 'You have heard, I suppose, of what has happened to
Lady Constantine?'

'No!  Nothing serious?'

'Yes, it is serious.'  The parson informed him of the death of Sir
Blount, and of the accidents which had hindered all knowledge of the
same,--accidents favoured by the estrangement of the pair and the
cessation of correspondence between them for some time.

His listener received the news with the concern of a friend, Lady
Constantine's aspect in his eyes depending but little on her
condition matrimonially.

'There was no attempt to bring him home when he died?'

'O no.  The climate necessitates instant burial.  We shall have more
particulars in a day or two, doubtless.'

'Poor Lady Constantine,--so good and so sensitive as she is!  I
suppose she is quite prostrated by the bad news.'

'Well, she is rather serious,--not prostrated.  The household is
going into mourning.'

'Ah, no, she would not be quite prostrated,' murmured Swithin,
recollecting himself.  'He was unkind to her in many ways.  Do you
think she will go away from Welland?'

That the vicar could not tell.  But he feared that Sir Blount's
affairs had been in a seriously involved condition, which might
necessitate many and unexpected changes.

Time showed that Mr. Torkingham's surmises were correct.

During the long weeks of early summer, through which the young man
still lay imprisoned, if not within his own chamber, within the
limits of the house and garden, news reached him that Sir Blount's
mismanagement and eccentric behaviour were resulting in serious
consequences to Lady Constantine; nothing less, indeed, than her
almost complete impoverishment.  His personalty was swallowed up in
paying his debts, and the Welland estate was so heavily charged with
annuities to his distant relatives that only a mere pittance was
left for her.  She was reducing the establishment to the narrowest
compass compatible with decent gentility.  The horses were sold one
by one; the carriages also; the greater part of the house was shut
up, and she resided in the smallest rooms.  All that was allowed to
remain of her former contingent of male servants were an odd man and
a boy.  Instead of using a carriage she now drove about in a donkey-
chair, the said boy walking in front to clear the way and keep the
animal in motion; while she wore, so his informants reported, not an
ordinary widow's cap or bonnet, but something even plainer, the
black material being drawn tightly round her face, giving her
features a small, demure, devout cast, very pleasing to the eye.

'Now, what's the most curious thing in this, Mr. San Cleeve,' said
Sammy Blore, who, in calling to inquire after Swithin's health, had
imparted some of the above particulars, 'is that my lady seems not
to mind being a pore woman half so much as we do at seeing her so.
'Tis a wonderful gift, Mr. San Cleeve, wonderful, to be able to
guide yerself, and not let loose yer soul in blasting at such a
misfortune.  I should go and drink neat regular, as soon as I had
swallered my breakfast, till my innerds was burnt out like a' old
copper, if it had happened to me; but my lady's plan is best.
Though I only guess how one feels in such losses, to be sure, for I
never had nothing to lose.'

Meanwhile the observatory was not forgotten; nor that visitant of
singular shape and habits which had appeared in the sky from no one
knew whence, trailing its luminous streamer, and proceeding on its
way in the face of a wondering world, till it should choose to
vanish as suddenly as it had come.

When, about a month after the above dialogue took place, Swithin was
allowed to go about as usual, his first pilgrimage was to the Rings-
Hill Speer.  Here he studied at leisure what he had come to see.

On his return to the homestead, just after sunset, he found his
grandmother and Hannah in a state of great concern.  The former was
looking out for him against the evening light, her face showing
itself worn and rutted, like an old highway, by the passing of many
days.  Her information was that in his absence Lady Constantine had
called in her driving-chair, to inquire for him.  Her ladyship had
wished to observe the comet through the great telescope, but had
found the door locked when she applied at the tower.  Would he
kindly leave the door unfastened to-morrow, she had asked, that she
might be able to go to the column on the following evening for the
same purpose?  She did not require him to attend.

During the next day he sent Hannah with the key to Welland House,
not caring to leave the tower open.  As evening advanced and the
comet grew distinct, he doubted if Lady Constantine could handle the
telescope alone with any pleasure or profit to herself.  Unable, as
a devotee to science, to rest under this misgiving, he crossed the
field in the furrow that he had used ever since the corn was sown,
and entered the plantation.  His unpractised mind never once guessed
that her stipulations against his coming might have existed along
with a perverse hope that he would come.

On ascending he found her already there.  She sat in the observing-
chair:  the warm light from the west, which flowed in through the
opening of the dome, brightened her face, and her face only, her
robes of sable lawn rendering the remainder of her figure almost
invisible.

'You have come!' she said with shy pleasure.  'I did not require
you.  But never mind.'  She extended her hand cordially to him.

Before speaking he looked at her with a great new interest in his
eye.  It was the first time that he had seen her thus, and she was
altered in more than dress.  A soberly-sweet expression sat on her
face.  It was of a rare and peculiar shade--something that he had
never seen before in woman.

'Have you nothing to say?' she continued.  'Your footsteps were
audible to me from the very bottom, and I knew they were yours.  You
look almost restored.'

'I am almost restored,' he replied, respectfully pressing her hand.
'A reason for living arose, and I lived.'

'What reason?' she inquired, with a rapid blush.

He pointed to the rocket-like object in the western sky.

'Oh, you mean the comet.  Well, you will never make a courtier!  You
know, of course, what has happened to me; that I have no longer a
husband--have had none for a year and a half.  Have you also heard
that I am now quite a poor woman?  Tell me what you think of it.'

'I have thought very little of it since I heard that you seemed to
mind poverty but little.  There is even this good in it, that I may
now be able to show you some little kindness for all those you have
done me, my dear lady.'

'Unless for economy's sake, I go and live abroad, at Dinan,
Versailles, or Boulogne.'

Swithin, who had never thought of such a contingency, was earnest in
his regrets; without, however, showing more than a sincere friend's
disappointment.

'I did not say it was absolutely necessary,' she continued.  'I
have, in fact, grown so homely and home-loving, I am so interested
in the place and the people here, that, in spite of advice, I have
almost determined not to let the house; but to continue the less
business-like but pleasanter alternative of living humbly in a part
of it, and shutting up the rest.'

'Your love of astronomy is getting as strong as mine!' he said
ardently.  'You could not tear yourself away from the observatory!'

'You might have supposed me capable of a little human feeling as
well as scientific, in connection with the observatory.'

'Dear Lady Constantine, by admitting that your astronomer has also a
part of your interest--'

'Ah, you did not find it out without my telling!' she said, with a
playfulness which was scarcely playful, a new accession of pinkness
being visible in her face.  'I diminish myself in your esteem by
reminding you.'

'You might do anything in this world without diminishing yourself in
my esteem, after the goodness you have shown.  And more than that,
no misrepresentation, no rumour, no damning appearance whatever
would ever shake my loyalty to you.'

'But you put a very matter-of-fact construction on my motives
sometimes.  You see me in such a hard light that I have to drop
hints in quite a manoeuvring manner to let you know I am as
sympathetic as other people.  I sometimes think you would rather
have me die than have your equatorial stolen.  Confess that your
admiration for me was based on my house and position in the county!
Now I am shorn of all that glory, such as it was, and am a widow,
and am poorer than my tenants, and can no longer buy telescopes, and
am unable, from the narrowness of my circumstances, to mix in
circles that people formerly said I adorned, I fear I have lost the
little hold I once had over you.'

'You are as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,' said St.
Cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady,
which he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions.  Seizing her
hand he continued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'I swear to
you that I have but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, and two
blessings in this world, and that one of them is yourself!'

'And the other?'

'The pursuit of astronomy.'

'And astronomy stands first.'

'I have never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas.  And why should
you deplore your altered circumstances, my dear lady?  Your
widowhood, if I may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is,
though I suppose a sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil.  For though
your pecuniary troubles have been discovered to the world and
yourself by it, your happiness in marriage was, as you have confided
to me, not great; and you are now left free as a bird to follow your
own hobbies.'

'I wonder you recognize that.'

'But perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall
a prey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and
be lost to the scientific world after all.'

'If I fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire.
But don't go on with this, for heaven's sake!  You may think what
you like in silence.'

'We are forgetting the comet,' said St. Cleeve.  He turned, and set
the instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome.

While she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now
filled so large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it,
Swithin dropped his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying
light a number of labourers crossing directly towards the column.

'What do you see?' Lady Constantine asked, without ceasing to
observe the comet.

'Some of the work-folk are coming this way.  I know what they are
coming for,--I promised to let them look at the comet through the
glass.'

'They must not come up here,' she said decisively.

'They shall await your time.'

'I have a special reason for wishing them not to see me here.  If
you ask why, I can tell you.  They mistakenly suspect my interest to
be less in astronomy than in the astronomer, and they must have no
showing for such a wild notion.  What can you do to keep them out?'

'I'll lock the door,' said Swithin.  'They will then think I am
away.'  He ran down the staircase, and she could hear him hastily
turning the key.  Lady Constantine sighed.

'What weakness, what weakness!' she said to herself.  'That envied
power of self-control, where is it?  That power of concealment which
a woman should have--where?  To run such risks, to come here alone,-
-oh, if it were known!  But I was always so,--always!'

She jumped up, and followed him downstairs.



XIII

He was standing immediately inside the door at the bottom, though it
was so dark she could hardly see him.  The villagers were audibly
talking just without.

'He's sure to come, rathe or late,' resounded up the spiral in the
vocal note of Hezzy Biles.  'He wouldn't let such a fine show as the
comet makes to-night go by without peeping at it,--not Master
Cleeve!  Did ye bring along the flagon, Haymoss?  Then we'll sit
down inside his little board-house here, and wait.  He'll come afore
bed-time.  Why, his spy-glass will stretch out that there comet as
long as Welland Lane!'

'I'd as soon miss the great peep-show that comes every year to
Greenhill Fair as a sight of such a immortal spectacle as this!'
said Amos Fry.

'"Immortal spectacle,"--where did ye get that choice mossel,
Haymoss?' inquired Sammy Blore.  'Well, well, the Lord save good
scholars--and take just a bit o' care of them that bain't!  As 'tis
so dark in the hut, suppose we draw out the bench into the front
here, souls?'

The bench was accordingly brought forth, and in order to have a back
to lean against, they placed it exactly across the door into the
spiral staircase.

'Now, have ye got any backy?  If ye haven't, I have,' continued
Sammy Blore.  A striking of matches followed, and the speaker
concluded comfortably, 'Now we shall do very well.'

'And what do this comet mean?' asked Haymoss.  'That some great
tumult is going to happen, or that we shall die of a famine?'

'Famine--no!' said Nat Chapman.  'That only touches such as we, and
the Lord only consarns himself with born gentlemen.  It isn't to be
supposed that a strange fiery lantern like that would be lighted up
for folks with ten or a dozen shillings a week and their gristing,
and a load o' thorn faggots when we can get 'em.  If 'tis a token
that he's getting hot about the ways of anybody in this parish, 'tis
about my Lady Constantine's, since she is the only one of a figure
worth such a hint.'

'As for her income,--that she's now lost.'

'Ah, well; I don't take in all I hear.'

Lady Constantine drew close to St. Cleeve's side, and whispered,
trembling, 'Do you think they will wait long?  Or can we get out?'

Swithin felt the awkwardness of the situation.  The men had placed
the bench close to the door, which, owing to the stairs within,
opened outwards; so that at the first push by the pair inside to
release themselves the bench must have gone over, and sent the
smokers sprawling on their faces.  He whispered to her to ascend the
column and wait till he came.

'And have the dead man left her nothing?  Hey?  And have he carried
his inheritance into's grave?  And will his skeleton lie warm on
account o't?  Hee-hee!' said Haymoss.

''Tis all swallered up,' observed Hezzy Biles.  'His goings-on made
her miserable till 'a died, and if I were the woman I'd have my
randys now.  He ought to have bequeathed to her our young gent, Mr.
St. Cleeve, as some sort of amends.  I'd up and marry en, if I were
she; since her downfall has brought 'em quite near together, and
made him as good as she in rank, as he was afore in bone and
breeding.'

'D'ye think she will?' asked Sammy Blore.  'Or is she meaning to
enter upon a virgin life for the rest of her days?'

'I don't want to be unreverent to her ladyship; but I really don't
think she is meaning any such waste of a Christian carcase.  I say
she's rather meaning to commit flat matrimony wi' somebody or other,
and one young gentleman in particular.'

'But the young man himself?'

'Planned, cut out, and finished for the delight of 'ooman!'

'Yet he must be willing.'

'That would soon come.  If they get up this tower ruling plannards
together much longer, their plannards will soon rule them together,
in my way o' thinking.  If she've a disposition towards the knot,
she can soon teach him.'

'True, true, and lawfully.  What before mid ha' been a wrong desire
is now a holy wish!'

The scales fell from Swithin St. Cleeve's eyes as he heard the words
of his neighbours.  How suddenly the truth dawned upon him; how it
bewildered him, till he scarcely knew where he was; how he recalled
the full force of what he had only half apprehended at earlier
times, particularly of that sweet kiss she had impressed on his lips
when she supposed him dying,--these vivid realizations are difficult
to tell in slow verbiage.  He could remain there no longer, and with
an electrified heart he retreated up the spiral.

He found Lady Constantine half way to the top, standing by a loop-
hole; and when she spoke he discovered that she was almost in tears.
'Are they gone?' she asked.

'I fear they will not go yet,' he replied, with a nervous
fluctuation of manner that had never before appeared in his bearing
towards her.

'What shall I do?' she asked.  'I ought not to be here; nobody knows
that I am out of the house.  Oh, this is a mistake!  I must go home
somehow.'

'Did you hear what they were saying?'

'No,' said she.  'What is the matter?  Surely you are disturbed?
What did they say?'

'It would be the exaggeration of frankness in me to tell you.'

'Is it what a woman ought not to be made acquainted with?'

'It is, in this case.  It is so new and so indescribable an idea to
me--that'--he leant against the concave wall, quite tremulous with
strange incipient sentiments.

'What sort of an idea?' she asked gently.

'It is--an awakening.  In thinking of the heaven above, I did not
perceive--the--'

'Earth beneath?'

'The better heaven beneath.  Pray, dear Lady Constantine, give me
your hand for a moment.'

She seemed startled, and the hand was not given.

'I am so anxious to get home,' she repeated.  'I did not mean to
stay here more than five minutes!'

'I fear I am much to blame for this accident,' he said.  'I ought
not to have intruded here.  But don't grieve!  I will arrange for
your escape, somehow.  Be good enough to follow me down.'

They redescended, and, whispering to Lady Constantine to remain a
few stairs behind, he began to rattle and unlock the door.

The men precipitately removed their bench, and Swithin stepped out,
the light of the summer night being still enough to enable them to
distinguish him.

'Well, Hezekiah, and Samuel, and Nat, how are you?' he said boldly.

'Well, sir, 'tis much as before wi' me,' replied Nat.  'One hour a
week wi' God A'mighty and the rest with the devil, as a chap may
say.  And really, now yer poor father's gone, I'd as lief that that
Sunday hour should pass like the rest; for Pa'son Tarkenham do tease
a feller's conscience that much, that church is no hollerday at all
to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's time!  But we've
been waiting here, Mr. San Cleeve, supposing ye had not come.'

'I have been staying at the top, and fastened the door not to be
disturbed.  Now I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have another
engagement this evening, so that it would be inconvenient to admit
you.  To-morrow evening, or any evening but this, I will show you
the comet and any stars you like.'

They readily agreed to come the next night, and prepared to depart.
But what with the flagon, and the pipes, and the final observations,
getting away was a matter of time.  Meanwhile a cloud, which nobody
had noticed, arose from the north overhead, and large drops of rain
began to fall so rapidly that the conclave entered the hut till it
should be over.  St. Cleeve strolled off under the firs.

The next moment there was a rustling through the trees at another
point, and a man and woman appeared.  The woman took shelter under a
tree, and the man, bearing wraps and umbrellas, came forward.

'My lady's man and maid,' said Sammy.

'Is her ladyship here?' asked the man.

'No.  I reckon her ladyship keeps more kissable company,' replied
Nat Chapman.

'Pack o' stuff!' said Blore.

'Not here?  Well, to be sure!  We can't find her anywhere in the
wide house!  I've been sent to look for her with these overclothes
and umbrella.  I've suffered horse-flesh traipsing up and down, and
can't find her nowhere.  Lord, Lord, where can she be, and two
months' wages owing to me!'

'Why so anxious, Anthony Green, as I think yer name is shaped?  You
be not a married man?' said Hezzy.

''Tis what they call me, neighbours, whether or no.'

'But surely you was a bachelor chap by late, afore her ladyship got
rid of the regular servants and took ye?'

'I were; but that's past!'

'And how came ye to bow yer head to 't, Anthony?  'Tis what you
never was inclined to.  You was by no means a doting man in my
time.'

'Well, had I been left to my own free choice, 'tis as like as not I
should ha' shunned forming such kindred, being at that time a poor
day man, or weekly, at my highest luck in hiring.  But 'tis wearing
work to hold out against the custom of the country, and the woman
wanting ye to stand by her and save her from unborn shame; so, since
common usage would have it, I let myself be carried away by opinion,
and took her.  Though she's never once thanked me for covering her
confusion, that's true!  But, 'tis the way of the lost when safe,
and I don't complain.  Here she is, just behind, under the tree, if
you'd like to see her?--a very nice homespun woman to look at, too,
for all her few weather-stains. . . .  Well, well, where can my lady
be?  And I the trusty jineral man--'tis more than my place is worth
to lose her!  Come forward, Christiana, and talk nicely to the work-
folk.'

While the woman was talking the rain increased so much that they all
retreated further into the hut.  St. Cleeve, who had impatiently
stood a little way off, now saw his opportunity, and, putting in his
head, said, 'The rain beats in; you had better shut the door.  I
must ascend and close up the dome.'

Slamming the door upon them without ceremony he quickly went to Lady
Constantine in the column, and telling her they could now pass the
villagers unseen he gave her his arm.  Thus he conducted her across
the front of the hut into the shadows of the firs.

'I will run to the house and harness your little carriage myself,'
he said tenderly.  'I will then take you home in it.'

'No; please don't leave me alone under these dismal trees!'  Neither
would she hear of his getting her any wraps; and, opening her little
sunshade to keep the rain out of her face, she walked with him
across the insulating field, after which the trees of the park
afforded her a sufficient shelter to reach home without much damage.

Swithin was too greatly affected by what he had overheard to speak
much to her on the way, and protected her as if she had been a shorn
lamb.  After a farewell which had more meaning than sound in it, he
hastened back to Rings-Hill Speer.  The work-folk were still in the
hut, and, by dint of friendly converse and a sip at the flagon, had
so cheered Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Green that they neither thought nor
cared what had become of Lady Constantine.

St. Cleeve's sudden sense of new relations with that sweet patroness
had taken away in one half-hour his natural ingenuousness.
Henceforth he could act a part.

'I have made all secure at the top,' he said, putting his head into
the hut.  'I am now going home.  When the rain stops, lock this door
and bring the key to my house.'



XIV

The laboured resistance which Lady Constantine's judgment had
offered to her rebellious affection ere she learnt that she was a
widow, now passed into a bashfulness that rendered her almost as
unstable of mood as before.  But she was one of that mettle--fervid,
cordial, and spontaneous--who had not the heart to spoil a passion;
and her affairs having gone to rack and ruin by no fault of her own
she was left to a painfully narrowed existence which lent even
something of rationality to her attachment.  Thus it was that her
tender and unambitious soul found comfort in her reverses.

As for St. Cleeve, the tardiness of his awakening was the natural
result of inexperience combined with devotion to a hobby.  But, like
a spring bud hard in bursting, the delay was compensated by after
speed.  At once breathlessly recognizing in this fellow-watcher of
the skies a woman who loved him, in addition to the patroness and
friend, he truly translated the nearly forgotten kiss she had given
him in her moment of despair.

Lady Constantine, in being eight or nine years his senior, was an
object even better calculated to nourish a youth's first passion
than a girl of his own age, superiority of experience and ripeness
of emotion exercising the same peculiar fascination over him as over
other young men in their first ventures in this kind.

The alchemy which thus transmuted an abstracted astronomer into an
eager lover--and, must it be said, spoilt a promising young
physicist to produce a common-place inamorato--may be almost
described as working its change in one short night.  Next morning he
was so fascinated with the novel sensation that he wanted to rush
off at once to Lady Constantine, and say, 'I love you true!' in the
intensest tones of his mental condition, to register his assertion
in her heart before any of those accidents which 'creep in 'twixt
vows, and change decrees of kings,' should occur to hinder him.  But
his embarrassment at standing in a new position towards her would
not allow him to present himself at her door in any such hurry.  He
waited on, as helplessly as a girl, for a chance of encountering
her.

But though she had tacitly agreed to see him on any reasonable
occasion, Lady Constantine did not put herself in his way.  She even
kept herself out of his way.  Now that for the first time he had
learnt to feel a strong impatience for their meeting, her shyness
for the first time led her to delay it.  But given two people living
in one parish, who long from the depths of their hearts to be in
each other's company, what resolves of modesty, policy, pride, or
apprehension will keep them for any length of time apart?

One afternoon he was watching the sun from his tower, half echoing
the Greek astronomer's wish that he might be set close to that
luminary for the wonder of beholding it in all its glory, under the
slight penalty of being consumed the next instant.  He glanced over
the high-road between the field and the park (which sublunary
features now too often distracted his attention from his telescope),
and saw her passing along that way.

She was seated in the donkey-carriage that had now taken the place
of her landau, the white animal looking no larger than a cat at that
distance.  The buttoned boy, who represented both coachman and
footman, walked alongside the animal's head at a solemn pace; the
dog stalked at the distance of a yard behind the vehicle, without
indulging in a single gambol; and the whole turn-out resembled in
dignity a dwarfed state procession.

Here was an opportunity but for two obstructions:  the boy, who
might be curious; and the dog, who might bark and attract the
attention of any labourers or servants near.  Yet the risk was to be
run, and, knowing that she would soon turn up a certain shady lane
at right angles to the road she had followed, he ran hastily down
the staircase, crossed the barley (which now covered the field) by
the path not more than a foot wide that he had trodden for himself,
and got into the lane at the other end.  By slowly walking along in
the direction of the turnpike-road he soon had the satisfaction of
seeing her coming.  To his surprise he also had the satisfaction of
perceiving that neither boy nor dog was in her company.

They both blushed as they approached, she from sex, he from
inexperience.  One thing she seemed to see in a moment, that in the
interval of her absence St. Cleeve had become a man; and as he
greeted her with this new and maturer light in his eyes she could
not hide her embarrassment, or meet their fire.

'I have just sent my page across to the column with your book on
Cometary Nuclei,' she said softly; 'that you might not have to come
to the house for it.  I did not know I should meet you here.'

'Didn't you wish me to come to the house for it?'

'I did not, frankly.  You know why, do you not?'

'Yes, I know.  Well, my longing is at rest.  I have met you again.
But are you unwell, that you drive out in this chair?'

'No; I walked out this morning, and am a little tired.'

'I have been looking for you night and day.  Why do you turn your
face aside?  You used not to be so.'  Her hand rested on the side of
the chair, and he took it.  'Do you know that since we last met, I
have been thinking of you--daring to think of you--as I never
thought of you before?'

'Yes, I know it.'

'How did you know?'

'I saw it in your face when you came up.'

'Well, I suppose I ought not to think of you so.  And yet, had I not
learned to, I should never fully have felt how gentle and sweet you
are.  Only think of my loss if I had lived and died without seeing
more in you than in astronomy!  But I shall never leave off doing so
now.  When you talk I shall love your understanding; when you are
silent I shall love your face.  But how shall I know that you care
to be so much to me?'

Her manner was disturbed as she recognized the impending self-
surrender, which she knew not how to resist, and was not altogether
at ease in welcoming.

'O, Lady Constantine,' he continued, bending over her, 'give me some
proof more than mere seeming and inference, which are all I have at
present, that you don't think this I tell you of presumption in me!
I have been unable to do anything since I last saw you for pondering
uncertainly on this.  Some proof, or little sign, that we are one in
heart!'

A blush settled again on her face; and half in effort, half in
spontaneity, she put her finger on her cheek.  He almost
devotionally kissed the spot.

'Does that suffice?' she asked, scarcely giving her words voice.

'Yes; I am convinced.'

'Then that must be the end.  Let me drive on; the boy will be back
again soon.'  She spoke hastily, and looked askance to hide the heat
of her cheek.

'No; the tower door is open, and he will go to the top, and waste
his time in looking through the telescope.'

'Then you should rush back, for he will do some damage.'

'No; he may do what he likes, tinker and spoil the instrument,
destroy my papers,--anything, so that he will stay there and leave
us alone.'

She glanced up with a species of pained pleasure.

'You never used to feel like that!' she said, and there was keen
self-reproach in her voice.  'You were once so devoted to your
science that the thought of an intruder into your temple would have
driven you wild.  Now you don't care; and who is to blame?  Ah, not
you, not you!'

The animal ambled on with her, and he, leaning on the side of the
little vehicle, kept her company.

'Well, don't let us think of that,' he said.  'I offer myself and
all my energies, frankly and entirely, to you, my dear, dear lady,
whose I shall be always!  But my words in telling you this will only
injure my meaning instead of emphasize it.  In expressing, even to
myself, my thoughts of you, I find that I fall into phrases which,
as a critic, I should hitherto have heartily despised for their
commonness.  What's the use of saying, for instance, as I have just
said, that I give myself entirely to you, and shall be yours
always,--that you have my devotion, my highest homage?  Those words
have been used so frequently in a flippant manner that honest use of
them is not distinguishable from the unreal.'  He turned to her, and
added, smiling, 'Your eyes are to be my stars for the future.'

'Yes, I know it,--I know it, and all you would say!  I dreaded even
while I hoped for this, my dear young friend,' she replied, her eyes
being full of tears.  'I am injuring you; who knows that I am not
ruining your future,--I who ought to know better?  Nothing can come
of this, nothing must,--and I am only wasting your time.  Why have I
drawn you off from a grand celestial study to study poor lonely me?
Say you will never despise me, when you get older, for this episode
in our lives.  But you will,--I know you will!  All men do, when
they have been attracted in their unsuspecting youth, as I have
attracted you.  I ought to have kept my resolve.'

'What was that?'

'To bear anything rather than draw you from your high purpose; to be
like the noble citizen of old Greece, who, attending a sacrifice,
let himself be burnt to the bone by a coal that jumped into his
sleeve rather than disturb the sacred ceremony.'

'But can I not study and love both?'

'I hope so,--I earnestly hope so.  But you'll be the first if you
do, and I am the responsible one if you do not.'

'You speak as if I were quite a child, and you immensely older.
Why, how old do you think I am?  I am twenty.'

'You seem younger.  Well, that's so much the better.  Twenty sounds
strong and firm.  How old do you think I am?'

'I have never thought of considering.'  He innocently turned to
scrutinize her face.  She winced a little.  But the instinct was
premature.  Time had taken no liberties with her features as yet;
nor had trouble very roughly handled her.

'I will tell you,' she replied, speaking almost with physical pain,
yet as if determination should carry her through.  'I am eight-and-
twenty--nearly--I mean a little more, a few months more.  Am I not a
fearful deal older than you?'

'At first it seems a great deal,' he answered, musing.  'But it
doesn't seem much when one gets used to it.'

'Nonsense!' she exclaimed.  'It IS a good deal.'

'Very well, then, sweetest Lady Constantine, let it be,' he said
gently.

'You should not let it be!  A polite man would have flatly
contradicted me. . . .  O I am ashamed of this!' she added a moment
after, with a subdued, sad look upon the ground.  'I am speaking by
the card of the outer world, which I have left behind utterly; no
such lip service is known in your sphere.  I care nothing for those
things, really; but that which is called the Eve in us will out
sometimes.  Well, we will forget that now, as we must, at no very
distant date, forget all the rest of this.'

He walked beside her thoughtfully awhile, with his eyes also bent on
the road.  'Why must we forget it all?' he inquired.

'It is only an interlude.'

'An interlude!  It is no interlude to me.  O how can you talk so
lightly of this, Lady Constantine?  And yet, if I were to go away
from here, I might, perhaps, soon reduce it to an interlude!  Yes,'
he resumed impulsively, 'I will go away.  Love dies, and it is just
as well to strangle it in its birth; it can only die once!  I'll
go.'

'No, no!' she said, looking up apprehensively.  'I misled you.  It
is no interlude to me,--it is tragical.  I only meant that from a
worldly point of view it is an interlude, which we should try to
forget.  But the world is not all.  You will not go away?'

But he continued drearily, 'Yes, yes, I see it all; you have
enlightened me.  It will be hurting your prospects even more than
mine, if I stay.  Now Sir Blount is dead, you are free again,--may
marry where you will, but for this fancy of ours.  I'll leave
Welland before harm comes of my staying.'

'Don't decide to do a thing so rash!' she begged, seizing his hand,
and looking miserable at the effect of her words.  'I shall have
nobody left in the world to care for!  And now I have given you the
great telescope, and lent you the column, it would be ungrateful to
go away!  I was wrong; believe me that I did not mean that it was a
mere interlude to ME.  O if you only knew how very, very far it is
from that!  It is my doubt of the result to you that makes me speak
so slightingly.'

They were now approaching cross-roads, and casually looking up they
beheld, thirty or forty yards beyond the crossing, Mr. Torkingham,
who was leaning over a gate, his back being towards them.  As yet he
had not recognized their approach.

The master-passion had already supplanted St. Cleeve's natural
ingenuousness by subtlety.

'Would it be well for us to meet Mr. Torkingham just now?' he began.

'Certainly not,' she said hastily, and pulling the rein she
instantly drove down the right-hand road.  'I cannot meet anybody!'
she murmured.  'Would it not be better that you leave me now?--not
for my pleasure, but that there may arise no distressing tales about
us before we know--how to act in this--this'--(she smiled faintly at
him) 'heartaching extremity!'

They were passing under a huge oak-tree, whose limbs, irregular with
shoulders, knuckles, and elbows, stretched horizontally over the
lane in a manner recalling Absalom's death.  A slight rustling was
perceptible amid the leafage as they drew out from beneath it, and
turning up his eyes Swithin saw that very buttoned page whose advent
they had dreaded, looking down with interest at them from a perch
not much higher than a yard above their heads.  He had a bunch of
oak-apples in one hand, plainly the object of his climb, and was
furtively watching Lady Constantine with the hope that she might not
see him.  But that she had already done, though she did not reveal
it, and, fearing that the latter words of their conversation had
been overheard, they spoke not till they had passed the next
turning.

She stretched out her hand to his.  'This must not go on,' she said
imploringly.  'My anxiety as to what may be said of such methods of
meeting makes me too unhappy.  See what has happened!'  She could
not help smiling.  'Out of the frying-pan into the fire!  After
meanly turning to avoid the parson we have rushed into a worse
publicity.  It is too humiliating to have to avoid people, and
lowers both you and me.  The only remedy is not to meet.'

'Very well,' said Swithin, with a sigh.  'So it shall be.'

And with smiles that might more truly have been tears they parted
there and then.



XV

The summer passed away, and autumn, with its infinite suite of
tints, came creeping on.  Darker grew the evenings, tearfuller the
moonlights, and heavier the dews.  Meanwhile the comet had waxed to
its largest dimensions,--so large that not only the nucleus but a
portion of the tail had been visible in broad day.  It was now on
the wane, though every night the equatorial still afforded an
opportunity of observing the singular object which would soon
disappear altogether from the heavens for perhaps thousands of
years.

But the astronomer of the Rings-Hill Speer was no longer a match for
his celestial materials.  Scientifically he had become but a dim
vapour of himself; the lover had come into him like an armed man,
and cast out the student, and his intellectual situation was growing
a life-and-death matter.

The resolve of the pair had been so far kept:  they had not seen
each other in private for three months.  But on one day in October
he ventured to write a note to her:--


'I can do nothing!  I have ceased to study, ceased to observe.  The
equatorial is useless to me.  This affection I have for you absorbs
my life, and outweighs my intentions.  The power to labour in this
grandest of fields has left me.  I struggle against the weakness
till I think of the cause, and then I bless her.  But the very
desperation of my circumstances has suggested a remedy; and this I
would inform you of at once.

'Can you come to me, since I must not come to you?  I will wait to-
morrow night at the edge of the plantation by which you would enter
to the column.  I will not detain you; my plan can be told in ten
words.'


The night after posting this missive to her he waited at the spot
mentioned.

It was a melancholy evening for coming abroad.  A blusterous wind
had risen during the day, and still continued to increase.  Yet he
stood watchful in the darkness, and was ultimately rewarded by
discerning a shady muffled shape that embodied itself from the
field, accompanied by the scratching of silk over stubble.  There
was no longer any disguise as to the nature of their meeting.  It
was a lover's assignation, pure and simple; and boldly realizing it
as such he clasped her in his arms.

'I cannot bear this any longer!' he exclaimed.  'Three months since
I saw you alone!  Only a glimpse of you in church, or a bow from the
distance, in all that time!  What a fearful struggle this keeping
apart has been!'

'Yet I would have had strength to persist, since it seemed best,'
she murmured when she could speak, 'had not your words on your
condition so alarmed and saddened me.  This inability of yours to
work, or study, or observe,--it is terrible!  So terrible a sting is
it to my conscience that your hint about a remedy has brought me
instantly.'

'Yet I don't altogether mind it, since it is you, my dear, who have
displaced the work; and yet the loss of time nearly distracts me,
when I have neither the power to work nor the delight of your
company.'

'But your remedy!  O, I cannot help guessing it!  Yes; you are going
away!'

'Let us ascend the column; we can speak more at ease there.  Then I
will explain all.  I would not ask you to climb so high but the hut
is not yet furnished.'

He entered the cabin at the foot, and having lighted a small
lantern, conducted her up the hollow staircase to the top, where he
closed the slides of the dome to keep out the wind, and placed the
observing-chair for her.

'I can stay only five minutes,' she said, without sitting down.
'You said it was important that you should see me, and I have come.
I assure you it is at a great risk.  If I am seen here at this time
I am ruined for ever.  But what would I not do for you?  O Swithin,
your remedy--is it to go away?  There is no other; and yet I dread
that like death!'

'I can tell you in a moment, but I must begin at the beginning.  All
this ruinous idleness and distraction is caused by the misery of our
not being able to meet with freedom.  The fear that something may
snatch you from me keeps me in a state of perpetual apprehension.'

'It is too true also of me!  I dread that some accident may happen,
and waste my days in meeting the trouble half-way.'

'So our lives go on, and our labours stand still.  Now for the
remedy.  Dear Lady Constantine, allow me to marry you.'

She started, and the wind without shook the building, sending up a
yet intenser moan from the firs.

'I mean, marry you quite privately.  Let it make no difference
whatever to our outward lives for years, for I know that in my
present position you could not possibly acknowledge me as husband
publicly.  But by marrying at once we secure the certainty that we
cannot be divided by accident, coaxing, or artifice; and, at ease on
that point, I shall embrace my studies with the old vigour, and you
yours.'

Lady Constantine was so agitated at the unexpected boldness of such
a proposal from one hitherto so boyish and deferential that she sank
into the observing-chair, her intention to remain for only a few
minutes being quite forgotten.

She covered her face with her hands.  'No, no, I dare not!' she
whispered.

'But is there a single thing else left to do?' he pleaded, kneeling
down beside her, less in supplication than in abandonment.  'What
else can we do?'

'Wait till you are famous.'

'But I cannot be famous unless I strive, and this distracting
condition prevents all striving!'

'Could you not strive on if I--gave you a promise, a solemn promise,
to be yours when your name is fairly well known?'

St. Cleeve breathed heavily.  'It will be a long, weary time,' he
said.  'And even with your promise I shall work but half-heartedly.
Every hour of study will be interrupted with "Suppose this or this
happens;" "Suppose somebody persuades her to break her promise;"
worse still, "Suppose some rival maligns me, and so seduces her
away."  No, Lady Constantine, dearest, best as you are, that element
of distraction would still remain, and where that is, no sustained
energy is possible.  Many erroneous things have been written and
said by the sages, but never did they float a greater fallacy than
that love serves as a stimulus to win the loved one by patient
toil.'

'I cannot argue with you,' she said weakly.

'My only possible other chance would lie in going away,' he resumed
after a moment's reflection, with his eyes on the lantern flame,
which waved and smoked in the currents of air that leaked into the
dome from the fierce wind-stream without.  'If I might take away the
equatorial, supposing it possible that I could find some suitable
place for observing in the southern hemisphere,--say, at the Cape,--
I MIGHT be able to apply myself to serious work again, after the
lapse of a little time.  The southern constellations offer a less
exhausted field for investigation.  I wonder if I might!'

'You mean,' she answered uneasily, 'that you might apply yourself to
work when your recollection of me began to fade, and my life to
become a matter of indifference to you?. .  Yes, go!  No,--I cannot
bear it!  The remedy is worse than the disease.  I cannot let you go
away!'

'Then how can you refuse the only condition on which I can stay,
without ruin to my purpose and scandal to your name?  Dearest, agree
to my proposal, as you love both me and yourself!'

He waited, while the fir-trees rubbed and prodded the base of the
tower, and the wind roared around and shook it; but she could not
find words to reply.

'Would to God,' he burst out, 'that I might perish here, like
Winstanley in his lighthouse!  Then the difficulty would be solved
for you.'

'You are so wrong, so very wrong, in saying so!' she exclaimed
passionately.  'You may doubt my wisdom, pity my short-sightedness;
but there is one thing you do know,--that I love you dearly!'

'You do,--I know it!' he said, softened in a moment.  'But it seems
such a simple remedy for the difficulty that I cannot see how you
can mind adopting it, if you care so much for me as I do for you.'

'Should we live. . .  just as we are, exactly, . . .  supposing I
agreed?' she faintly inquired.

'Yes, that is my idea.'

'Quite privately, you say.  How could--the marriage be quite
private?'

'I would go away to London and get a license.  Then you could come
to me, and return again immediately after the ceremony.  I could
return at leisure and not a soul in the world would know what had
taken place.  Think, dearest, with what a free conscience you could
then assist me in my efforts to plumb these deeps above us!  Any
feeling that you may now have against clandestine meetings as such
would then be removed, and our hearts would be at rest.'

There was a certain scientific practicability even in his love-
making, and it here came out excellently.  But she sat on with
suspended breath, her heart wildly beating, while he waited in open-
mouthed expectation.  Each was swayed by the emotion within them,
much as the candle-flame was swayed by the tempest without.  It was
the most critical evening of their lives.

The pale rays of the little lantern fell upon her beautiful face,
snugly and neatly bound in by her black bonnet; but not a beam of
the lantern leaked out into the night to suggest to any watchful eye
that human life at its highest excitement was beating within the
dark and isolated tower; for the dome had no windows, and every
shutter that afforded an opening for the telescope was hermetically
closed.  Predilections and misgivings so equally strove within her
still youthful breast that she could not utter a word; her intention
wheeled this way and that like the balance of a watch.  His
unexpected proposition had brought about the smartest encounter of
inclination with prudence, of impulse with reserve, that she had
ever known.

Of all the reasons that she had expected him to give for his urgent
request to see her this evening, an offer of marriage was probably
the last.  Whether or not she had ever amused herself with
hypothetical fancies on such a subject,--and it was only natural
that she should vaguely have done so,--the courage in her protege
coolly to advance it, without a hint from herself that such a
proposal would be tolerated, showed her that there was more in his
character than she had reckoned on:  and the discovery almost
frightened her.  The humour, attitude, and tenor of her attachment
had been of quite an unpremeditated quality, unsuggestive of any
such audacious solution to their distresses as this.

'I repeat my question, dearest,' he said, after her long pause.
'Shall it be done?  Or shall I exile myself, and study as best I
can, in some distant country, out of sight and sound?'

'Are those the only alternatives?  Yes, yes; I suppose they are!'
She waited yet another moment, bent over his kneeling figure, and
kissed his forehead.  'Yes; it shall be done,' she whispered.  'I
will marry you.'

'My angel, I am content!'

He drew her yielding form to his heart, and her head sank upon his
shoulder, as he pressed his two lips continuously upon hers.  To
such had the study of celestial physics brought them in the space of
eight months, one week, and a few odd days.

'I am weaker than you,--far the weaker,' she went on, her tears
falling.  'Rather than lose you out of my sight I will marry without
stipulation or condition.  But--I put it to your kindness--grant me
one little request.'

He instantly assented.

'It is that, in consideration of my peculiar position in this
county,--O, you can't understand it!--you will not put an end to the
absolute secrecy of our relationship without my full assent.  Also,
that you will never come to Welland House without first discussing
with me the advisability of the visit, accepting my opinion on the
point.  There, see how a timid woman tries to fence herself in!'

'My dear lady-love, neither of those two high-handed courses should
I have taken, even had you not stipulated against them.  The very
essence of our marriage plan is that those two conditions are kept.
I see as well as you do, even more than you do, how important it is
that for the present,--ay, for a long time hence--I should still be
but the curate's lonely son, unattached to anybody or anything, with
no object of interest but his science; and you the recluse lady of
the manor, to whom he is only an acquaintance.'

'See what deceits love sows in honest minds!'

'It would be a humiliation to you at present that I could not bear
if a marriage between us were made public; an inconvenience without
any compensating advantage.'

'I am so glad you assume it without my setting it before you!  Now I
know you are not only good and true, but politic and trustworthy.'

'Well, then, here is our covenant.  My lady swears to marry me; I,
in return for such great courtesy, swear never to compromise her by
intruding at Welland House, and to keep the marriage concealed till
I have won a position worthy of her.'

'Or till I request it to be made known,' she added, possibly
foreseeing a contingency which had not occurred to him.

'Or till you request it,' he repeated.

'It is agreed,' murmured Lady Constantine,



XVI

After this there only remained to be settled between them the
practical details of the project.

These were that he should leave home in a couple of days, and take
lodgings either in the distant city of Bath or in a convenient
suburb of London, till a sufficient time should have elapsed to
satisfy legal requirements; that on a fine morning at the end of
this time she should hie away to the same place, and be met at the
station by St. Cleeve, armed with the marriage license; whence they
should at once proceed to the church fixed upon for the ceremony;
returning home independently in the course of the next two or three
days.

While these tactics were under discussion the two-and-thirty winds
of heaven continued, as before, to beat about the tower, though
their onsets appeared to be somewhat lessening in force.  Himself
now calmed and satisfied, Swithin, as is the wont of humanity, took
serener views of Nature's crushing mechanics without, and said, 'The
wind doesn't seem disposed to put the tragic period to our hopes and
fears that I spoke of in my momentary despair.'

'The disposition of the wind is as vicious as ever,' she answered,
looking into his face with pausing thoughts on, perhaps, other
subjects than that discussed.  'It is your mood of viewing it that
has changed.  "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so."'

And, as if flatly to stultify Swithin's assumption, a circular
hurricane, exceeding in violence any that had preceded it, seized
hold upon Rings-Hill Speer at that moment with the determination of
a conscious agent.  The first sensation of a resulting catastrophe
was conveyed to their intelligence by the flapping of the candle-
flame against the lantern-glass; then the wind, which hitherto they
had heard rather than felt, rubbed past them like a fugitive.
Swithin beheld around and above him, in place of the concavity of
the dome, the open heaven, with its racing clouds, remote horizon,
and intermittent gleam of stars.  The dome that had covered the
tower had been whirled off bodily; and they heard it descend
crashing upon the trees.

Finding himself untouched Swithin stretched out his arms towards
Lady Constantine, whose apparel had been seized by the spinning air,
nearly lifting her off her legs.  She, too, was as yet unharmed.
Each held the other for a moment, when, fearing that something
further would happen, they took shelter in the staircase.

'Dearest, what an escape!' he said, still holding her.

'What is the accident?' she asked.  'Has the whole top really gone?'

'The dome has been blown off the roof.'

As soon as it was practicable he relit the extinguished lantern, and
they emerged again upon the leads, where the extent of the disaster
became at once apparent.  Saving the absence of the enclosing
hemisphere all remained the same.  The dome, being constructed of
wood, was light by comparison with the rest of the structure, and
the wheels which allowed it horizontal, or, as Swithin expressed it,
azimuth motion, denied it a firm hold upon the walls; so that it had
been lifted off them like a cover from a pot.  The equatorial stood
in the midst as it had stood before.

Having executed its grotesque purpose the wind sank to comparative
mildness.  Swithin took advantage of this lull by covering up the
instruments with cloths, after which the betrothed couple prepared
to go downstairs.

But the events of the night had not yet fully disclosed themselves.
At this moment there was a sound of footsteps and a knocking at the
door below.

'It can't be for me!' said Lady Constantine.  'I retired to my room
before leaving the house, and told them on no account to disturb
me.'

She remained at the top while Swithin went down the spiral.  In the
gloom he beheld Hannah.

'O Master Swithin, can ye come home!  The wind have blowed down the
chimley that don't smoke, and the pinning-end with it; and the old
ancient house, that have been in your family so long as the memory
of man, is naked to the world!  It is a mercy that your grammer were
not killed, sitting by the hearth, poor old soul, and soon to walk
wi' God,--for 'a 's getting wambling on her pins, Mr. Swithin, as
aged folks do.  As I say, 'a was all but murdered by the elements,
and doing no more harm than the babes in the wood, nor speaking one
harmful word.  And the fire and smoke were blowed all across house
like a chapter in Revelation; and your poor reverent father's
features scorched to flakes, looking like the vilest ruffian, and
the gilt frame spoiled!  Every flitch, every eye-piece, and every
chine is buried under the walling; and I fed them pigs with my own
hands, Master Swithin, little thinking they would come to this end.
Do ye collect yourself, Mr. Swithin, and come at once!'

'I will,--I will.  I'll follow you in a moment.  Do you hasten back
again and assist.'

When Hannah had departed the young man ran up to Lady Constantine,
to whom he explained the accident.  After sympathizing with old Mrs.
Martin Lady Constantine added, 'I thought something would occur to
mar our scheme!'

'I am not quite sure of that yet.'

On a short consideration with him, she agreed to wait at the top of
the tower till he could come back and inform her if the accident
were really so serious as to interfere with his plan for departure.
He then left her, and there she sat in the dark, alone, looking over
the parapet, and straining her eyes in the direction of the
homestead.

At first all was obscurity; but when he had been gone about ten
minutes lights began to move to and fro in the hollow where the
house stood, and shouts occasionally mingled with the wind, which
retained some violence yet, playing over the trees beneath her as on
the strings of a lyre.  But not a bough of them was visible, a cloak
of blackness covering everything netherward; while overhead the
windy sky looked down with a strange and disguised face, the three
or four stars that alone were visible being so dissociated by clouds
that she knew not which they were.  Under any other circumstances
Lady Constantine might have felt a nameless fear in thus sitting
aloft on a lonely column, with a forest groaning under her feet, and
palaeolithic dead men feeding its roots; but the recent passionate
decision stirred her pulses to an intensity beside which the
ordinary tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain.
The apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not
inharmonious, and afforded an appropriate background to her
intentions.

After what seemed to her an interminable space of time, quick steps
in the staircase became audible above the roar of the firs, and in a
few instants St. Cleeve again stood beside her.

The case of the homestead was serious.  Hannah's account had not
been exaggerated in substance:  the gable end of the house was open
to the garden; the joists, left without support, had dropped, and
with them the upper floor.  By the help of some labourers, who lived
near, and Lady Constantine's man Anthony, who was passing at the
time, the homestead had been propped up, and protected for the night
by some rickcloths; but Swithin felt that it would be selfish in the
highest degree to leave two lonely old women to themselves at this
juncture.  'In short,' he concluded despondently, 'I cannot go to
stay in Bath or London just now; perhaps not for another fortnight!'

'Never mind,' she said.  'A fortnight hence will do as well.'

'And I have these for you,' he continued.  'Your man Green was
passing my grandmother's on his way back from Warborne, where he had
been, he says, for any letters that had come for you by the evening
post.  As he stayed to assist the other men I told him I would go on
to your house with the letters he had brought.  Of course I did not
tell him I should see you here.'

'Thank you.  Of course not.  Now I'll return at once.'

In descending the column her eye fell upon the superscription of one
of the letters, and she opened and glanced over it by the lantern
light.  She seemed startled, and, musing, said, 'The postponement of
our--intention must be, I fear, for a long time.  I find that after
the end of this month I cannot leave home safely, even for a day.'
Perceiving that he was about to ask why, she added, 'I will not
trouble you with the reason now; it would only harass you.  It is
only a family business, and cannot be helped.'

'Then we cannot be married till--God knows when!' said Swithin
blankly.  'I cannot leave home till after the next week or two; you
cannot leave home unless within that time.  So what are we to do?'

'I do not know.'

'My dear, dear one, don't let us be beaten like this!  Don't let a
well-considered plan be overthrown by a mere accident!  Here's a
remedy.  Do YOU go and stay the requisite time in the parish we are
to be married in, instead of me.  When my grandmother is again well
housed I can come to you, instead of you to me, as we first said.
Then it can be done within the time.'

Reluctantly, shyly, and yet with a certain gladness of heart, she
gave way to his proposal that they should change places in the
programme.  There was much that she did not like in it, she said.
It seemed to her as if she were taking the initiative by going and
attending to the preliminaries.  It was the man's part to do that,
in her opinion, and was usually undertaken by him.

'But,' argued Swithin, 'there are cases in which the woman does give
the notices, and so on; that is to say, when the man is absolutely
hindered from doing so; and ours is such a case.  The seeming is
nothing; I know the truth, and what does it matter?  You do not
refuse--retract your word to be my wife, because, to avoid a
sickening delay, the formalities require you to attend to them in
place of me?'

She did not refuse, she said.  In short she agreed to his entreaty.
They had, in truth, gone so far in their dream of union that there
was no drawing back now.  Whichever of them was forced by
circumstances to be the protagonist in the enterprise, the thing
must be done.  Their intention to become husband and wife, at first
halting and timorous, had accumulated momentum with the lapse of
hours, till it now bore down every obstacle in its course.

'Since you beg me to,--since there is no alternative between my
going and a long postponement,' she said, as they stood in the dark
porch of Welland House before parting,--'since I am to go first, and
seem to be the pioneer in this adventure, promise me, Swithin,
promise your Viviette, that in years to come, when perhaps you may
not love me so warmly as you do now--'

'That will never be.'

'Well, hoping it will not, but supposing it should, promise me that
you will never reproach me as the one who took the initiative when
it should have been yourself, forgetting that it was at your
request; promise that you will never say I showed immodest readiness
to do so, or anything which may imply your obliviousness of the fact
that I act in obedience to necessity and your earnest prayer.'

Need it be said that he promised never to reproach her with that or
any other thing as long as they should live?  The few details of the
reversed arrangement were soon settled, Bath being the place finally
decided on.  Then, with a warm audacity which events had encouraged,
he pressed her to his breast, and she silently entered the house.
He returned to the homestead, there to attend to the unexpected
duties of repairing the havoc wrought by the gale.


That night, in the solitude of her chamber, Lady Constantine
reopened and read the subjoined letter--one of those handed to her
by St. Cleeve:--


                                        "----- STREET, PICCADILLY,
                                               October 15, 18--.

'DEAR VIVIETTE,--You will be surprised to learn that I am in
England, and that I am again out of harness--unless you should have
seen the latter in the papers.  Rio Janeiro may do for monkeys, but
it won't do for me.  Having resigned the appointment I have returned
here, as a preliminary step to finding another vent for my energies;
in other words, another milch cow for my sustenance.  I knew nothing
whatever of your husband's death till two days ago; so that any
letter from you on the subject, at the time it became known, must
have miscarried.  Hypocrisy at such a moment is worse than useless,
and I therefore do not condole with you, particularly as the event,
though new to a banished man like me, occurred so long since.  You
are better without him, Viviette, and are now just the limb for
doing something for yourself, notwithstanding the threadbare state
in which you seem to have been cast upon the world.  You are still
young, and, as I imagine (unless you have vastly altered since I
beheld you), good-looking:  therefore make up your mind to retrieve
your position by a match with one of the local celebrities; and you
would do well to begin drawing neighbouring covers at once.  A
genial squire, with more weight than wit, more realty than weight,
and more personalty than realty (considering the circumstances),
would be best for you.  You might make a position for us both by
some such alliance; for, to tell the truth, I have had but in-and-
out luck so far.  I shall be with you in little more than a
fortnight, when we will talk over the matter seriously, if you don't
object.--Your affectionate brother,
                 LOUIS.'


It was this allusion to her brother's coming visit which had caught
her eye in the tower staircase, and led to a modification in the
wedding arrangement.

Having read the letter through once Lady Constantine flung it aside
with an impatient little stamp that shook the decaying old floor and
casement.  Its contents produced perturbation, misgiving, but not
retreat.  The deep glow of enchantment shed by the idea of a private
union with her beautiful young lover killed the pale light of cold
reasoning from an indifferently good relative.

'Oh, no,' she murmured, as she sat, covering her face with her hand.
'Not for wealth untold could I give him up now!'

No argument, short of Apollo in person from the clouds, would have
influenced her.  She made her preparations for departure as if
nothing had intervened.



XVII

In her days of prosperity Lady Constantine had often gone to the
city of Bath, either frivolously, for shopping purposes, or musico-
religiously, to attend choir festivals in the abbey; so there was
nothing surprising in her reverting to an old practice.  That the
journey might appear to be of a somewhat similar nature she took
with her the servant who had been accustomed to accompany her on
former occasions, though the woman, having now left her service, and
settled in the village as the wife of Anthony Green, with a young
child on her hands, could with some difficulty leave home.  Lady
Constantine overcame the anxious mother's scruples by providing that
young Green should be well cared for; and knowing that she could
count upon this woman's fidelity, if upon anybody's, in case of an
accident (for it was chiefly Lady Constantine's exertions that had
made an honest wife of Mrs. Green), she departed for a fortnight's
absence.

The next day found mistress and maid settled in lodgings in an old
plum-coloured brick street, which a hundred years ago could boast of
rank and fashion among its residents, though now the broad fan-light
over each broad door admitted the sun to the halls of a lodging-
house keeper only.  The lamp-posts were still those that had done
duty with oil lights; and rheumatic old coachmen and postilions,
that once had driven and ridden gloriously from London to Land's
End, ornamented with their bent persons and bow legs the pavement in
front of the chief inn, in the sorry hope of earning sixpence to
keep body and soul together.

'We are kept well informed on the time o' day, my lady,' said Mrs.
Green, as she pulled down the blinds in Lady Constantine's room on
the evening of their arrival.  'There's a church exactly at the back
of us, and I hear every hour strike.'

Lady Constantine said she had noticed that there was a church quite
near.

'Well, it is better to have that at the back than other folks'
winders.  And if your ladyship wants to go there it won't be far to
walk.'

'That's what occurred to me,' said Lady Constantine, 'IF I should
want to go.'

During the ensuing days she felt to the utmost the tediousness of
waiting merely that time might pass.  Not a soul knew her there, and
she knew not a soul, a circumstance which, while it added to her
sense of secrecy, intensified her solitude.  Occasionally she went
to a shop, with Green as her companion.  Though there were purchases
to be made, they were by no means of a pressing nature, and but
poorly filled up the vacancies of those strange, speculative days,--
days surrounded by a shade of fear, yet poetized by sweet
expectation.

On the thirteenth day she told Green that she was going to take a
walk, and leaving the house she passed by the obscurest streets to
the Abbey.  After wandering about beneath the aisles till her
courage was screwed to its highest, she went out at the other side,
and, looking timidly round to see if anybody followed, walked on
till she came to a certain door, which she reached just at the
moment when her heart began to sink to its very lowest, rendering
all the screwing up in vain.

Whether it was because the month was October, or from any other
reason, the deserted aspect of the quarter in general sat especially
on this building.  Moreover the pavement was up, and heaps of stone
and gravel obstructed the footway.  Nobody was coming, nobody was
going, in that thoroughfare; she appeared to be the single one of
the human race bent upon marriage business, which seemed to have
been unanimously abandoned by all the rest of the world as proven
folly.  But she thought of Swithin, his blonde hair, ardent eyes,
and eloquent lips, and was carried onward by the very reflection.

Entering the surrogate's room Lady Constantine managed, at the last
juncture, to state her errand in tones so collected as to startle
even herself to which her listener replied also as if the whole
thing were the most natural in the world.  When it came to the
affirmation that she had lived fifteen days in the parish, she said
with dismay--

'O no!  I thought the fifteen days meant the interval of residence
before the marriage takes place.  I have lived here only thirteen
days and a half.  Now I must come again!'

'Ah--well--I think you need not be so particular,' said the
surrogate.  'As a matter of fact, though the letter of the law
requires fifteen days' residence, many people make five sufficient.
The provision is inserted, as you doubtless are aware, to hinder
runaway marriages as much as possible, and secret unions, and other
such objectionable practices.  You need not come again.'

That evening Lady Constantine wrote to Swithin St. Cleeve the last
letter of the fortnight:--


'MY DEAREST,--Do come to me as soon as you can.  By a sort of
favouring blunder I have been able to shorten the time of waiting by
a day.  Come at once, for I am almost broken down with apprehension.
It seems rather rash at moments, all this, and I wish you were here
to reassure me.  I did not know I should feel so alarmed.  I am
frightened at every footstep, and dread lest anybody who knows me
should accost me, and find out why I am here.  I sometimes wonder
how I could have agreed to come and enact your part, but I did not
realize how trying it would be.  You ought not to have asked me,
Swithin; upon my word, it was too cruel of you, and I will punish
you for it when you come!  But I won't upbraid.  I hope the
homestead is repaired that has cost me all this sacrifice of
modesty.  If it were anybody in the world but YOU in question I
would rush home, without waiting here for the end of it,--I really
think I would!  But, dearest, no.  I must show my strength now, or
let it be for ever hid.  The barriers of ceremony are broken down
between us, and it is for the best that I am here.'


And yet, at no point of this trying prelude need Lady Constantine
have feared for her strength.  Deeds in this connexion demand the
particular kind of courage that such perfervid women are endowed
with, the courage of their emotions, in which young men are often
lamentably deficient.  Her fear was, in truth, the fear of being
discovered in an unwonted position; not of the act itself.  And
though her letter was in its way a true exposition of her feeling,
had it been necessary to go through the whole legal process over
again she would have been found equal to the emergency.

It had been for some days a point of anxiety with her what to do
with Green during the morning of the wedding.  Chance unexpectedly
helped her in this difficulty.  The day before the purchase of the
license Green came to Lady Constantine with a letter in her hand
from her husband Anthony, her face as long as a fiddle.

'I hope there's nothing the matter?' said Lady Constantine.

'The child's took bad, my lady!' said Mrs. Green, with suspended
floods of water in her eyes.  'I love the child better than I shall
love all them that's coming put together; for he's been a good boy
to his mother ever since twelve weeks afore he was born!  'Twas he,
a tender deary, that made Anthony marry me, and thereby turned
hisself from a little calamity to a little blessing!  For, as you
know, the man were a backward man in the church part o' matrimony,
my lady; though he'll do anything when he's forced a bit by his
manly feelings.  And now to lose the child--hoo-hoo-hoo!  What shall
I doo!'

'Well, you want to go home at once, I suppose?'

Mrs. Green explained, between her sobs, that such was her desire;
and though this was a day or two sooner than her mistress had wished
to be left alone she consented to Green's departure.  So during the
afternoon her woman went off, with directions to prepare for Lady
Constantine's return in two or three days.  But as the exact day of
her return was uncertain no carriage was to be sent to the station
to meet her, her intention being to hire one from the hotel.

Lady Constantine was now left in utter solitude to await her lover's
arrival.



XVIII

A more beautiful October morning than that of the next day never
beamed into the Welland valleys.  The yearly dissolution of leafage
was setting in apace.  The foliage of the park trees rapidly
resolved itself into the multitude of complexions which mark the
subtle grades of decay, reflecting wet lights of such innumerable
hues that it was a wonder to think their beauties only a repetition
of scenes that had been exhibited there on scores of previous
Octobers, and had been allowed to pass away without a single dirge
from the imperturbable beings who walked among them.  Far in  the
shadows semi-opaque screens of blue haze made mysteries of the
commonest gravel-pit, dingle, or recess.

The wooden cabin at the foot of Rings-Hill Speer had been furnished
by Swithin as a sitting and sleeping apartment, some little while
before this time; for he had found it highly convenient, during
night observations at the top of the column, to remain on the spot
all night, not to disturb his grandmother by passing in and out of
the house, and to save himself the labour of incessantly crossing
the field.

He would much have liked to tell her the secret, and, had it been
his own to tell, would probably have done so; but sharing it with an
objector who knew not his grandmother's affection so well as he did
himself, there was no alternative to holding his tongue.  The more
effectually to guard it he decided to sleep at the cabin during the
two or three nights previous to his departure, leaving word at the
homestead that in a day or two he was going on an excursion.

It was very necessary to start early.  Long before the great eye of
the sun was lifted high enough to glance into the Welland valley,
St. Cleeve arose from his bed in the cabin and prepared to depart,
cooking his breakfast upon a little stove in the corner.  The young
rabbits, littered during the foregoing summer, watched his
preparations through the open door from the grey dawn without, as he
bustled, half dressed, in and out under the boughs, and among the
blackberries and brambles that grew around.

It was a strange place for a bridegroom to perform his toilet in,
but, considering the unconventional nature of the marriage, a not
inappropriate one.  What events had been enacted in that earthen
camp since it was first thrown up, nobody could say; but the
primitive simplicity of the young man's preparations accorded well
with the prehistoric spot on which they were made.  Embedded under
his feet were possibly even now rude trinkets that had been worn at
bridal ceremonies of the early inhabitants.  Little signified those
ceremonies to-day, or the happiness or otherwise of the contracting
parties.  That his own rite, nevertheless, signified much, was the
inconsequent reasoning of Swithin, as it is of many another
bridegroom besides; and he, like the rest, went on with his
preparations in that mood which sees in his stale repetition the
wondrous possibilities of an untried move.

Then through the wet cobwebs, that hung like movable diaphragms on
each blade and bough, he pushed his way down to the furrow which led
from the secluded fir-tree island to the wide world beyond the
field.

He was not a stranger to enterprise, and still less to the
contemplation of enterprise; but an enterprise such as this he had
never even outlined.  That his dear lady was troubled at the
situation he had placed her in by not going himself on that errand,
he could see from her letter; but, believing an immediate marriage
with her to be the true way of restoring to both that equanimity
necessary to serene philosophy, he held it of little account how the
marriage was brought about, and happily began his journey towards
her place of sojourn.

He passed through a little copse before leaving the parish, the
smoke from newly lit fires rising like the stems of blue trees out
of the few cottage chimneys.  Here he heard a quick, familiar
footstep in the path ahead of him, and, turning the corner of the
bushes, confronted the foot-post on his way to Welland.  In answer
to St. Cleeve's inquiry if there was anything for himself the
postman handed out one letter, and proceeded on his route.

Swithin opened and read the letter as he walked, till it brought him
to a standstill by the importance of its contents.

They were enough to agitate a more phlegmatic youth than he.  He
leant over the wicket which came in his path, and endeavoured to
comprehend the sense of the whole.

The large long envelope contained, first, a letter from a solicitor
in a northern town, informing him that his paternal great-uncle, who
had recently returned from the Cape (whither he had gone in an
attempt to repair a broken constitution), was now dead and buried.
This great-uncle's name was like a new creation to Swithin.  He had
held no communication with the young man's branch of the family for
innumerable years,--never, in fact, since the marriage of Swithin's
father with the simple daughter of Welland Farm.  He had been a
bachelor to the end of his life, and had amassed a fairly good
professional fortune by a long and extensive medical practice in the
smoky, dreary, manufacturing town in which he had lived and died.
Swithin had always been taught to think of him as the embodiment of
all that was unpleasant in man.  He was narrow, sarcastic, and
shrewd to unseemliness.  That very shrewdness had enabled him,
without much professional profundity, to establish his large and
lucrative connexion, which lay almost entirely among a class who
neither looked nor cared for drawing-room courtesies.

However, what Dr. St. Cleeve had been as a practitioner matters
little.  He was now dead, and the bulk of his property had been left
to persons with whom this story has nothing to do.  But Swithin was
informed that out of it there was a bequest of 600 pounds a year to
himself,--payment of which was to begin with his twenty-first year,
and continue for his life, unless he should marry before reaching
the age of twenty-five.  In the latter precocious and objectionable
event his annuity would be forfeited.  The accompanying letter, said
the solicitor, would explain all.

This, the second letter, was from his uncle to himself, written
about a month before the former's death, and deposited with his
will, to be forwarded to his nephew when that event should have
taken place.  Swithin read, with the solemnity that such posthumous
epistles inspire, the following words from one who, during life, had
never once addressed him:-


'DEAR NEPHEW,--You will doubtless experience some astonishment at
receiving a communication from one whom you have never personally
known, and who, when this comes into your hands, will be beyond the
reach of your knowledge.  Perhaps I am the loser by this life-long
mutual ignorance.  Perhaps I am much to blame for it; perhaps not.
But such reflections are profitless at this date:  I have written
with quite other views than to work up a sentimental regret on such
an amazingly remote hypothesis as that the fact of a particular pair
of people not meeting, among the millions of other pairs of people
who have never met, is a great calamity either to the world in
general or to themselves.

'The occasion of my addressing you is briefly this:  Nine months ago
a report casually reached me that your scientific studies were
pursued by you with great ability, and that you were a young man of
some promise as an astronomer.  My own scientific proclivities
rendered the report more interesting than it might otherwise have
been to me; and it came upon me quite as a surprise that any issue
of your father's marriage should have so much in him, or you might
have seen more of me in former years than you are ever likely to do
now.  My health had then begun to fail, and I was starting for the
Cape, or I should have come myself to inquire into your condition
and prospects.  I did not return till six months later, and as my
health had not improved I sent a trusty friend to examine into your
life, pursuits, and circumstances, without your own knowledge, and
to report his observations to me.  This he did.  Through him I
learnt, of favourable news:--

'(1) That you worked assiduously at the science of astronomy.
'(2) That everything was auspicious in the career you had chosen.

'Of unfavourable news:--

'(1) That the small income at your command, even when eked out by
the sum to which you would be entitled on your grandmother's death
and the freehold of the homestead, would be inadequate to support
you becomingly as a scientific man, whose lines of work were of a
nature not calculated to produce emoluments for many years, if ever.
'(2) That there was something in your path worse than narrow means,
and that that something was a WOMAN.

'To save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads, I take the
preventive measures detailed below.

'The chief step is, as my solicitor will have informed you, that, at
the age of twenty-five, the sum of 600 pounds a year be settled on
you for life, provided you have not married before reaching that
age;--a yearly gift of an equal sum to be also provisionally made to
you in the interim--and, vice versa, that if you do marry before
reaching the age of twenty-five you will receive nothing from the
date of the marriage.

'One object of my bequest is that you may have resources sufficient
to enable you to travel and study the Southern constellations.  When
at the Cape, after hearing of your pursuits, I was much struck with
the importance of those constellations to an astronomer just pushing
into notice.  There is more to be made of the Southern hemisphere
than ever has been made of it yet; the mine is not so thoroughly
worked as the Northern, and thither your studies should tend.

'The only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation,
at which I am not an adept.  Nevertheless, I say to you, Swithin St.
Cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your father did.  If your
studies are to be worth anything, believe me, they must be carried
on without the help of a woman.  Avoid her, and every one of the
sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing.  Eschew all of that
sort for many a year yet.  Moreover, I say, the lady of your
acquaintance avoid in particular.  I have heard nothing against her
moral character hitherto; I have no doubt it has been excellent.
She may have many good qualities, both of heart and of mind.  But
she has, in addition to her original disqualification as a companion
for you (that is, that of sex), these two serious drawbacks:  she is
much older than yourself--'

'MUCH older!' said Swithin resentfully.

'--and she is so impoverished that the title she derives from her
late husband is a positive objection.  Beyond this, frankly, I don't
think well of her.  I don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a
man younger than herself.  To care to be the first fancy of a young
fellow like you shows no great common sense in her.  If she were
worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a
youth in your unassured position, to say no worse.  She is old
enough to know that a liaison with her may, and almost certainly
would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would
be preposterous,--unless she is a complete goose, and in that case
there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her
few senses.

'A woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do
nothing to hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in
your way most certainly will.  Yet I hear that she professes a great
anxiety on this same future of yours as a physicist.  The best way
in which she can show the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you
to yourself.  Perhaps she persuades herself that she is doing you no
harm.  Well, let her have the benefit of the possible belief; but
depend upon it that in truth she gives the lie to her conscience by
maintaining such a transparent fallacy.  Women's brains are not
formed for assisting at any profound science:  they lack the power
to see things except in the concrete.  She'll blab your most secret
plans and theories to every one of her acquaintance--'

'She's got none!' said Swithin, beginning to get warm.

'--and make them appear ridiculous by announcing them before they
are matured.  If you attempt to study with a woman, you'll be ruled
by her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead
of intentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions
instead of reasoned conclusions.  Your wide heaven of study, young
man, will soon reduce itself to the miserable narrow expanse of her
face, and your myriad of stars to her two trumpery eyes.

'A woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment when he is
endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little less than
committing a crime.

'Like a certain philosopher I would, upon my soul, have all young
men from eighteen to twenty-five kept under barrels; seeing how
often, in the lack of some such sequestering process, the woman sits
down before each as his destiny, and too frequently enervates his
purpose, till he abandons the most promising course ever conceived!

'But no more.  I now leave your fate in your own hands.  Your well-
wishing relative,
                                                'JOCELYN ST. CLEEVE,
                                                 Doctor in
Medicine.'


As coming from a bachelor and hardened misogynist of seventy-two,
the opinions herein contained were nothing remarkable:  but their
practical result in restricting the sudden endowment of Swithin's
researches by conditions which turned the favour into a harassment
was, at this unique moment, discomfiting and distracting in the
highest degree.

Sensational, however, as the letter was, the passionate intention of
the day was not hazarded for more than a few minutes thereby.  The
truth was, the caution and bribe came too late, too unexpectedly, to
be of influence.  They were the sort of thing which required
fermentation to render them effective.  Had St. Cleeve received the
exhortation a month earlier; had he been able to run over in his
mind, at every wakeful hour of thirty consecutive nights, a private
catechism on the possibilities opened up by this annuity, there is
no telling what might have been the stress of such a web of
perplexity upon him, a young man whose love for celestial physics
was second to none.  But to have held before him, at the last
moment, the picture of a future advantage that he had never once
thought of, or discounted for present staying power, it affected him
about as much as the view of horizons shown by sheet-lightning.  He
saw an immense prospect; it went, and the world was as before.

He caught the train at Warborne, and moved rapidly towards Bath; not
precisely in the same key as when he had dressed in the hut at dawn,
but, as regarded the mechanical part of the journey, as
unhesitatingly as before.

And with the change of scene even his gloom left him; his bosom's
lord sat lightly in his throne.  St. Cleeve was not sufficiently in
mind of poetical literature to remember that wise poets are
accustomed to read that lightness of bosom inversely.  Swithin
thought it an omen of good fortune; and as thinking is causing in
not a few such cases, he was perhaps, in spite of poets, right.



XIX

At the station Lady Constantine appeared, standing expectant; he saw
her face from the window of the carriage long before she saw him.
He no sooner saw her than he was satisfied to his heart's content
with his prize.  If his great-uncle had offered him from the grave a
kingdom instead of her, he would not have accepted it.

Swithin jumped out, and nature never painted in a woman's face more
devotion than appeared in my lady's at that moment.  To both the
situation seemed like a beautiful allegory, not to be examined too
closely, lest its defects of correspondence with real life should be
apparent.

They almost feared to shake hands in public, so much depended upon
their passing that morning without molestation.  A fly was called
and they drove away.

'Take this,' she said, handing him a folded paper.  'It belongs to
you rather than to me.'

At crossings, and other occasional pauses, pedestrians turned their
faces and looked at the pair (for no reason but that, among so many,
there were naturally a few of the sort who have eyes to note what
incidents come in their way as they plod on); but the two in the
vehicle could not but fear that these innocent beholders had special
detective designs on them.

'You look so dreadfully young!' she said with humorous fretfulness,
as they drove along (Swithin's cheeks being amazingly fresh from the
morning air).  'Do try to appear a little haggard, that the parson
mayn't ask us awkward questions!'

Nothing further happened, and they were set down opposite a shop
about fifty yards from the church door, at five minutes to eleven.

'We will dismiss the fly,' she said.  'It will only attract idlers.'

On turning the corner and reaching the church they found the door
ajar; but the building contained only two persons, a man and a
woman,--the clerk and his wife, as they learnt.  Swithin asked when
the clergyman would arrive.

The clerk looked at his watch, and said, 'At just on eleven
o'clock.'

'He ought to be here,' said Swithin.

'Yes,' replied the clerk, as the hour struck.  'The fact is, sir, he
is a deppity, and apt to be rather wandering in his wits as regards
time and such like, which hev stood in the way of the man's getting
a benefit.  But no doubt he'll come.'

'The regular incumbent is away, then?'

'He's gone for his bare pa'son's fortnight,--that's all; and we was
forced to put up with a weak-talented man or none.  The best men
goes into the brewing, or into the shipping now-a-days, you see,
sir; doctrines being rather shaddery at present, and your money's
worth not sure in our line.  So we church officers be left poorly
provided with men for odd jobs.  I'll tell ye what, sir; I think I'd
better run round to the gentleman's lodgings, and try to find him?'

'Pray do,' said Lady Constantine.

The clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at
the further end, and Swithin and Viviette were left to themselves.
The imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman's forethought is so
assumptive, that the clerk's departure had no sooner doomed them to
inaction than it was borne in upon Lady Constantine's mind that she
would not become the wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, either to-day or on
any other day.  Her divinations were continually misleading her, she
knew:  but a hitch at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in
it.

'Ah,--the marriage is not to be!' she said to herself.  'This is a
fatality.'

It was twenty minutes past, and no parson had arrived.  Swithin took
her hand.

'If it cannot be to-day, it can be to-morrow,' he whispered.

'I cannot say,' she answered.  'Something tells me no.'

It was almost impossible that she could know anything of the
deterrent force exercised on Swithin by his dead uncle that morning.
Yet her manner tallied so curiously well with such knowledge that he
was struck by it, and remained silent.

'You have a black tie,' she continued, looking at him.

'Yes,' replied Swithin.  'I bought it on my way here.'

'Why could it not have been less sombre in colour?'

'My great-uncle is dead.'

'You had a great-uncle?  You never told me.'

'I never saw him in my life.  I have only heard about him since his
death.'

He spoke in as quiet and measured a way as he could, but his heart
was sinking.  She would go on questioning; he could not tell her an
untruth.  She would discover particulars of that great-uncle's
provision for him, which he, Swithin, was throwing away for her
sake, and she would refuse to be his for his own sake.  His
conclusion at this moment was precisely what hers had been five
minutes sooner:  they were never to be husband and wife.

But she did not continue her questions, for the simplest of all
reasons:  hasty footsteps were audible in the entrance, and the
parson was seen coming up the aisle, the clerk behind him wiping the
beads of perspiration from his face.  The somewhat sorry clerical
specimen shook hands with them, and entered the vestry; and the
clerk came up and opened the book.

'The poor gentleman's memory is a bit topsy-turvy,' whispered the
latter.  'He had got it in his mind that 'twere a funeral, and I
found him wandering about the cemetery a-looking for us.  However,
all's well as ends well.'  And the clerk wiped his forehead again.

'How ill-omened!' murmured Viviette.

But the parson came out robed at this moment, and the clerk put on
his ecclesiastical countenance and looked in his book.  Lady
Constantine's momentary languor passed; her blood resumed its
courses with a new spring.  The grave utterances of the church then
rolled out upon the palpitating pair, and no couple ever joined
their whispers thereto with more fervency than they.

Lady Constantine (as she continued to be called by the outside
world, though she liked to think herself the Mrs. St. Cleeve that
she legally was) had told Green that she might be expected at
Welland in a day, or two, or three, as circumstances should dictate.
Though the time of return was thus left open it was deemed
advisable, by both Swithin and herself, that her journey back should
not be deferred after the next day, in case any suspicions might be
aroused.  As for St. Cleeve, his comings and goings were of no
consequence.  It was seldom known whether he was at home or abroad,
by reason of his frequent seclusion at the column.

Late in the afternoon of the next day he accompanied her to the Bath
station, intending himself to remain in that city till the following
morning.  But when a man or youth has such a tender article on his
hands as a thirty-hour bride it is hardly in the power of his
strongest reason to set her down at a railway, and send her off like
a superfluous portmanteau.  Hence the experiment of parting so soon
after their union proved excruciatingly severe to these.  The
evening was dull; the breeze of autumn crept fitfully through every
slit and aperture in the town; not a soul in the world seemed to
notice or care about anything they did.  Lady Constantine sighed;
and there was no resisting it,--he could not leave her thus.  He
decided to get into the train with her, and keep her company for at
least a few stations on her way.

It drew on to be a dark night, and, seeing that there was no serious
risk after all, he prolonged his journey with her so far as to the
junction at which the branch line to Warborne forked off.  Here it
was necessary to wait a few minutes, before either he could go back
or she could go on.  They wandered outside the station doorway into
the gloom of the road, and there agreed to part.

While she yet stood holding his arm a phaeton sped towards the
station-entrance, where, in ascending the slope to the door, the
horse suddenly jibbed.  The gentleman who was driving, being either
impatient, or possessed with a theory that all jibbers may be
started by severe whipping, applied the lash; as a result of it, the
horse thrust round the carriage to where they stood, and the end of
the driver's sweeping whip cut across Lady Constantine's face with
such severity as to cause her an involuntary cry.  Swithin turned
her round to the lamplight, and discerned a streak of blood on her
cheek.

By this time the gentleman who had done the mischief, with many
words of regret, had given the reins to his man and dismounted.

'I will go to the waiting-room for a moment,' whispered Viviette
hurriedly; and, loosing her hand from his arm, she pulled down her
veil and vanished inside the building.

The stranger came forward and raised his hat.  He was a slightly
built and apparently town-bred man of twenty-eight or thirty; his
manner of address was at once careless and conciliatory.

'I am greatly concerned at what I have done,' he said.  'I sincerely
trust that your wife'--but observing the youthfulness of Swithin, he
withdrew the word suggested by the manner of Swithin towards Lady
Constantine--'I trust the young lady was not seriously cut?'

'I trust not,' said Swithin, with some vexation.

'Where did the lash touch her?'

'Straight down her cheek.'

'Do let me go to her, and learn how she is, and humbly apologize.'

'I'll inquire.'

He went to the ladies' room, in which Viviette had taken refuge.
She met him at the door, her handkerchief to her cheek, and Swithin
explained that the driver of the phaeton had sent to make inquiries.

'I cannot see him!' she whispered.  'He is my brother Louis!  He is,
no doubt, going on by the train to my house.  Don't let him
recognize me!  We must wait till he is gone.'

Swithin thereupon went out again, and told the young man that the
cut on her face was not serious, but that she could not see him;
after which they parted.  St. Cleeve then heard him ask for a ticket
for Warborne, which confirmed Lady Constantine's view that he was
going on to her house.  When the branch train had moved off Swithin
returned to his bride, who waited in a trembling state within.

On being informed that he had departed she showed herself much
relieved.

'Where does your brother come from?' said Swithin.

'From London, immediately.  Rio before that.  He has a friend or two
in this neighbourhood, and visits here occasionally.  I have seldom
or never spoken to you of him, because of his long absence.'

'Is he going to settle near you?'

'No, nor anywhere, I fear.  He is, or rather was, in the diplomatic
service.  He was first a clerk in the Foreign Office, and was
afterwards appointed attache at Rio Janeiro.  But he has resigned
the appointment.  I wish he had not.'

Swithin asked why he resigned.

'He complained of the banishment, and the climate, and everything
that people complain of who are determined to be dissatisfied,--
though, poor fellow, there is some ground for his complaints.
Perhaps some people would say that he is idle.  But he is scarcely
that; he is rather restless than idle, so that he never persists in
anything.  Yet if a subject takes his fancy he will follow it up
with exemplary patience till something diverts him.'

'He is not kind to you, is he, dearest?'

'Why do you think that?'

'Your manner seems to say so.'

'Well, he may not always be kind.  But look at my face; does the
mark show?'

A streak, straight as a meridian, was visible down her cheek.  The
blood had been brought almost to the surface, but was not quite
through, that which had originally appeared thereon having possibly
come from the horse.  It signified that to-morrow the red line would
be a black one.

Swithin informed her that her brother had taken a ticket for
Warborne, and she at once perceived that he was going on to visit
her at Welland, though from his letter she had not expected him so
soon by a few days.  'Meanwhile,' continued Swithin, 'you can now
get home only by the late train, having missed that one.'

'But, Swithin, don't you see my new trouble?  If I go to Welland
House to-night, and find my brother just arrived there, and he sees
this cut on my face, which I suppose you described to him--'

'I did.'

'He will know I was the lady with you!'

'Whom he called my wife.  I wonder why we look husband and wife
already!'

'Then what am I to do?  For the ensuing three or four days I bear in
my face a clue to his discovery of our secret.'

'Then you must not be seen.  We must stay at an inn here.'

'O no!' she said timidly.  'It is too near home to be quite safe.
We might not be known; but IF we were!'

'We can't go back to Bath now.  I'll tell you, dear Viviette, what
we must do.  We'll go on to Warborne in separate carriages; we'll
meet outside the station; thence we'll walk to the column in the
dark, and I'll keep you a captive in the cabin till the scar has
disappeared.'

As there was nothing which better recommended itself this course was
decided on; and after taking from her trunk the articles that might
be required for an incarceration of two or three days they left the
said trunk at the cloak-room, and went on by the last train, which
reached Warborne about ten o'clock.

It was only necessary for Lady Constantine to cover her face with
the thick veil that she had provided for this escapade, to walk out
of the station without fear of recognition.  St. Cleeve came forth
from another compartment, and they did not rejoin each other till
they had reached a shadowy bend in the old turnpike road, beyond the
irradiation of the Warborne lamplight.

The walk to Welland was long.  It was the walk which Swithin had
taken in the rain when he had learnt the fatal forestalment of his
stellar discovery; but now he was moved by a less desperate mood,
and blamed neither God nor man.  They were not pressed for time, and
passed along the silent, lonely way with that sense rather of
predestination than of choice in their proceedings which the
presence of night sometimes imparts.  Reaching the park gate, they
found it open, and from this they inferred that her brother Louis
had arrived.

Leaving the house and park on their right they traced the highway
yet a little further, and, plunging through the stubble of the
opposite field, drew near the isolated earthwork bearing the
plantation and tower, which together rose like a flattened dome and
lantern from the lighter-hued plain of stubble.  It was far too dark
to distinguish firs from other trees by the eye alone, but the
peculiar dialect of sylvan language which the piny multitude used
would have been enough to proclaim their class at any time.  In the
lovers' stealthy progress up the slopes a dry stick here and there
snapped beneath their feet, seeming like a shot of alarm.

On being unlocked the hut was found precisely as Swithin had left it
two days before.  Lady Constantine was thoroughly wearied, and sat
down, while he gathered a handful of twigs and spikelets from the
masses strewn without and lit a small fire, first taking the
precaution to blind the little window and relock the door.

Lady Constantine looked curiously around by the light of the blaze.
The hut was small as the prophet's chamber provided by the
Shunammite:  in one corner stood the stove, with a little table and
chair, a small cupboard hard by, a pitcher of water, a rack
overhead, with various articles, including a kettle and a gridiron;
while the remaining three or four feet at the other end of the room
was fitted out as a dormitory, for Swithin's use during late
observations in the tower overhead.

'It is not much of a palace to offer you,' he remarked, smiling.
'But at any rate, it is a refuge.'

The cheerful firelight dispersed in some measure Lady Constantine's
anxieties.  'If we only had something to eat!' she said.

'Dear me,' cried St. Cleeve, blankly.  'That's a thing I never
thought of.'

'Nor I, till now,' she replied.

He reflected with misgiving.

'Beyond a small loaf of bread in the cupboard I have nothing.
However, just outside the door there are lots of those little
rabbits, about the size of rats, that the keepers call runners.  And
they are as tame as possible.  But I fear I could not catch one now.
Yet, dear Viviette, wait a minute; I'll try.  You must not be
starved.'

He softly let himself out, and was gone some time.  When he
reappeared, he produced, not a rabbit, but four sparrows and a
thrush.

'I could do nothing in the way of a rabbit without setting a wire,'
he said.  'But I have managed to get these by knowing where they
roost.'

He showed her how to prepare the birds, and, having set her to roast
them by the fire, departed with the pitcher, to replenish it at the
brook which flowed near the homestead in the neighbouring Bottom.

'They are all asleep at my grandmother's,' he informed her when he
re-entered, panting, with the dripping pitcher.  'They imagine me to
be a hundred miles off.'

The birds were now ready, and the table was spread.  With this fare,
eked out by dry toast from the loaf, and moistened with cups of
water from the pitcher, to which Swithin added a little wine from
the flask he had carried on his journey, they were forced to be
content for their supper.



XX

When Lady Constantine awoke the next morning Swithin was nowhere to
be seen.  Before she was quite ready for breakfast she heard the key
turn in the door, and felt startled, till she remembered that the
comer could hardly be anybody but he.  He brought a basket with
provisions, an extra cup-and-saucer, and so on.  In a short space of
time the kettle began singing on the stove, and the morning meal was
ready.

The sweet resinous air from the firs blew in upon them as they sat
at breakfast; the birds hopped round the door (which, somewhat
riskily, they ventured to keep open); and at their elbow rose the
lank column into an upper realm of sunlight, which only reached the
cabin in fitful darts and flashes through the trees.

'I could be happy here for ever,' said she, clasping his hand.  'I
wish I could never see my great gloomy house again, since I am not
rich enough to throw it open, and live there as I ought to do.
Poverty of this sort is not unpleasant at any rate.  What are you
thinking of?'

'I am thinking about my outing this morning.  On reaching my
grandmother's she was only a little surprised to see me.  I was
obliged to breakfast there, or appear to do so, to divert suspicion;
and this food is supposed to be wanted for my dinner and supper.
There will of course be no difficulty in my obtaining an ample
supply for any length of time, as I can take what I like from the
buttery without observation.  But as I looked in my grandmother's
face this morning, and saw her looking affectionately in mine, and
thought how she had never concealed anything from me, and had always
had my welfare at heart, I felt--that I should like to tell her what
we have done.'

'O no,--please not, Swithin!' she exclaimed piteously.

'Very well,' he answered.  'On no consideration will I do so without
your consent.'  And no more was said on the matter.

The morning was passed in applying wet rag and other remedies to the
purple line on Viviette's cheek; and in the afternoon they set up
the equatorial under the replaced dome, to have it in order for
night observations.

The evening was clear, dry, and remarkably cold by comparison with
the daytime weather.  After a frugal supper they replenished the
stove with charcoal from the homestead, which they also burnt during
the day,--an idea of Viviette's, that the smoke from a wood fire
might not be seen more frequently than was consistent with the
occasional occupation of the cabin by Swithin, as heretofore.

At eight o'clock she insisted upon his ascending the tower for
observations, in strict pursuance of the idea on which their
marriage had been based, namely, that of restoring regularity to his
studies.

The sky had a new and startling beauty that night.  A broad,
fluctuating, semicircular arch of vivid white light spanned the
northern quarter of the heavens, reaching from the horizon to the
star Eta in the Greater Bear.  It was the Aurora Borealis, just
risen up for the winter season out of the freezing seas of the
north, where every autumn vapour was now undergoing rapid
congelation.

'O, let us sit and look at it! ' she said; and they turned their
backs upon the equatorial and the southern glories of the heavens to
this new beauty in a quarter which they seldom contemplated.

The lustre of the fixed stars was diminished to a sort of blueness.
Little by little the arch grew higher against the dark void, like
the form of the Spirit-maiden in the shades of Glenfinlas, till its
crown drew near the zenith, and threw a tissue over the whole waggon
and horses of the great northern constellation.  Brilliant shafts
radiated from the convexity of the arch, coming and going silently.
The temperature fell, and Lady Constantine drew her wrap more
closely around her.

'We'll go down,' said Swithin.  'The cabin is beautifully warm.  Why
should we try to observe tonight?  Indeed, we cannot; the Aurora
light overpowers everything.'

'Very well.  To-morrow night there will be no interruption.  I shall
be gone.'

'You leave me to-morrow, Viviette?'

'Yes; to-morrow morning.'

The truth was that, with the progress of the hours and days, the
conviction had been borne in upon Viviette more and more forcibly
that not for kingdoms and principalities could she afford to risk
the discovery of her presence here by any living soul.

'But let me see your face, dearest,' he said.  'I don't think it
will be safe for you to meet your brother yet.'

As it was too dark to see her face on the summit where they sat they
descended the winding staircase, and in the cabin Swithin examined
the damaged cheek.  The line, though so far attenuated as not to be
observable by any one but a close observer, had not quite
disappeared.  But in consequence of her reiterated and almost
tearful anxiety to go, and as there was a strong probability that
her brother had left the house, Swithin decided to call at Welland
next morning, and reconnoitre with a view to her return.

Locking her in he crossed the dewy stubble into the park.  The house
was silent and deserted; and only one tall stalk of smoke ascended
from the chimneys.  Notwithstanding that the hour was nearly nine he
knocked at the door.

'Is Lady Constantine at home?' asked Swithin, with a
disingenuousness now habitual, yet unknown to him six months before.

'No, Mr. St. Cleeve; my lady has not returned from Bath.  We expect
her every day.'

'Nobody staying in the house?'

'My lady's brother has been here; but he is gone on to Budmouth.  He
will come again in two or three weeks, I understand.'

This was enough.  Swithin said he would call again, and returned to
the cabin, where, waking Viviette, who was not by nature an early
riser, he waited on the column till she was ready to breakfast.
When this had been shared they prepared to start.

A long walk was before them.  Warborne station lay five miles
distant, and the next station above that nine miles.  They were
bound for the latter; their plan being that she should there take
the train to the junction where the whip accident had occurred,
claim her luggage, and return with it to Warborne, as if from Bath.

The morning was cool and the walk not wearisome.  When once they had
left behind the stubble-field of their environment and the parish of
Welland, they sauntered on comfortably, Lady Constantine's spirits
rising as she withdrew further from danger.

They parted by a little brook, about half a mile from the station;
Swithin to return to Welland by the way he had come.

Lady Constantine telegraphed from the junction to Warborne for a
carriage to be in readiness to meet her on her arrival; and then,
waiting for the down train, she travelled smoothly home, reaching
Welland House about five minutes sooner than Swithin reached the
column hard by, after footing it all the way from where they had
parted.



XXI

From that day forward their life resumed its old channel in general
outward aspect.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature in their exploit was its
comparative effectiveness as an expedient for the end designed,--
that of restoring calm assiduity to the study of astronomy.  Swithin
took up his old position as the lonely philosopher at the column,
and Lady Constantine lapsed back to immured existence at the house,
with apparently not a friend in the parish.  The enforced narrowness
of life which her limited resources necessitated was now an
additional safeguard against the discovery of her relations with St.
Cleeve.  Her neighbours seldom troubled her; as much, it must be
owned, from a tacit understanding that she was not in a position to
return invitations as from any selfish coldness engendered by her
want of wealth.

At the first meeting of the secretly united pair after their short
honeymoon they were compelled to behave as strangers to each other.
It occurred in the only part of Welland which deserved the name of a
village street, and all the labourers were returning to their midday
meal, with those of their wives who assisted at outdoor work.
Before the eyes of this innocent though quite untrustworthy group,
Swithin and his Viviette could only shake hands in passing, though
she contrived to say to him in an undertone, 'My brother does not
return yet for some time.  He has gone to Paris.  I will be on the
lawn this evening, if you can come.'  It was a fluttered smile that
she bestowed on him, and there was no doubt that every fibre of her
heart vibrated afresh at meeting, with such reserve, one who stood
in his close relation to her.

The shades of night fell early now, and Swithin was at the spot of
appointment about the time that he knew her dinner would be over.
It was just where they had met at the beginning of the year, but
many changes had resulted since then.  The flower-beds that had used
to be so neatly edged were now jagged and leafy; black stars
appeared on the pale surface of the gravel walks, denoting tufts of
grass that grew unmolested there.  Lady Constantine's external
affairs wore just that aspect which suggests that new blood may be
advantageously introduced into the line; and new blood had been
introduced, in good sooth,--with what social result remained to be
seen.

She silently entered on the scene from the same window which had
given her passage in months gone by.  They met with a concerted
embrace, and St. Cleeve spoke his greeting in whispers.

'We are quite safe, dearest,' said she.

'But the servants?'

'My meagre staff consists of only two women and the boy; and they
are away in the other wing.  I thought you would like to see the
inside of my house, after showing me the inside of yours.  So we
will walk through it instead of staying out here.'

She let him in through the casement, and they strolled forward
softly, Swithin with some curiosity, never before having gone beyond
the library and adjoining room.  The whole western side of the house
was at this time shut up, her life being confined to two or three
small rooms in the south-east corner.  The great apartments through
which they now whisperingly walked wore already that funereal aspect
that comes from disuse and inattention.  Triangular cobwebs already
formed little hammocks for the dust in corners of the wainscot, and
a close smell of wood and leather, seasoned with mouse-droppings,
pervaded the atmosphere.  So seldom was the solitude of these
chambers intruded on by human feet that more than once a mouse stood
and looked the twain in the face from the arm of a sofa, or the top
of a cabinet, without any great fear.

Swithin had no residential ambition whatever, but he was interested
in the place.  'Will the house ever be thrown open to gaiety, as it
was in old times?' said he.

'Not unless you make a fortune,' she replied laughingly.  'It is
mine for my life, as you know; but the estate is so terribly saddled
with annuities to Sir Blount's distant relatives, one of whom will
succeed me here, that I have practically no more than my own little
private income to exist on.'

'And are you bound to occupy the house?'

'Not bound to.  But I must not let it on lease.'

'And was there any stipulation in the event of your re-marriage?'

'It was not mentioned.'

'It is satisfactory to find that you lose nothing by marrying me, at
all events, dear Viviette.'

'I hope you lose nothing either--at least, of consequence.'

'What have I to lose?'

'I meant your liberty.  Suppose you become a popular physicist
(popularity seems cooling towards art and coquetting with science
now-a-days), and a better chance offers, and one who would make you
a newer and brighter wife than I am comes in your way.  Will you
never regret this?  Will you never despise me?'

Swithin answered by a kiss, and they again went on; proceeding like
a couple of burglars, lest they should draw the attention of the
cook or Green.

In one of the upper rooms his eyes were attracted by an old chamber
organ, which had once been lent for use in the church.  He mentioned
his recollection of the same, which led her to say, 'That reminds me
of something.  There is to be a confirmation in our parish in the
spring, and you once told me that you had never been confirmed.
What shocking neglect!  Why was it?'

'I hardly know.  The confusion resulting from my father's death
caused it to be forgotten, I suppose.'

'Now, dear Swithin, you will do this to please me,--be confirmed on
the present occasion?'

'Since I have done without the virtue of it so long, might I not do
without it altogether?'

'No, no!' she said earnestly.  'I do wish it, indeed.  I am made
unhappy when I think you don't care about such serious matters.
Without the Church to cling to, what have we?'

'Each other.  But seriously, I should be inverting the established
order of spiritual things; people ought to be confirmed before they
are married.'

'That's really of minor consequence.  Now, don't think slightingly
of what so many good men have laid down as necessary to be done.
And, dear Swithin, I somehow feel that a certain levity which has
perhaps shown itself in our treatment of the sacrament of marriage--
by making a clandestine adventure of what is, after all, a solemn
rite--would be well atoned for by a due seriousness in other points
of religious observance.  This opportunity should therefore not be
passed over.  I thought of it all last night; and you are a parson's
son, remember, and he would have insisted on it if he had been
alive.  In short, Swithin, do be a good boy, and observe the
Church's ordinances.'

Lady Constantine, by virtue of her temperament, was necessarily
either lover or devote, and she vibrated so gracefully between these
two conditions that nobody who had known the circumstances could
have condemned her inconsistencies.  To be led into difficulties by
those mastering emotions of hers, to aim at escape by turning round
and seizing the apparatus of religion--which could only rightly be
worked by the very emotions already bestowed elsewhere--it was,
after all, but Nature's well-meaning attempt to preserve the honour
of her daughter's conscience in the trying quandary to which the
conditions of sex had given rise.  As Viviette could not be
confirmed herself, and as Communion Sunday was a long way off, she
urged Swithin thus.

'And the new bishop is such a good man,' she continued.  'I used to
have a slight acquaintance with him when he was a parish priest.'

'Very well, dearest.  To please you I'll be confirmed.  My
grandmother, too, will be delighted, no doubt.'

They continued their ramble:  Lady Constantine first advancing into
rooms with the candle, to assure herself that all was empty, and
then calling him forward in a whisper.  The stillness was broken
only by these whispers, or by the occasional crack of a floor-board
beneath their tread.  At last they sat down, and, shading the candle
with a screen, she showed him the faded contents of this and that
drawer or cabinet, or the wardrobe of some member of the family who
had died young early in the century, when muslin reigned supreme,
when waists were close to arm-pits, and muffs as large as smugglers'
tubs.  These researches among habilimental hulls and husks, whose
human kernels had long ago perished, went on for about half an hour;
when the companions were startled by a loud ringing at the front-
door bell.



XXII

Lady Constantine flung down the old-fashioned lacework, whose
beauties she had been pointing out to Swithin, and exclaimed, 'Who
can it be?  Not Louis, surely?'

They listened.  An arrival was such a phenomenon at this
unfrequented mansion, and particularly a late arrival, that no
servant was on the alert to respond to the call; and the visitor
rang again, more loudly than before.  Sounds of the tardy opening
and shutting of a passage-door from the kitchen quarter then reached
their ears, and Viviette went into the corridor to hearken more
attentively.  In a few minutes she returned to the wardrobe-room in
which she had left Swithin.

'Yes; it is my brother!' she said with difficult composure.  'I just
caught his voice.  He has no doubt come back from Paris to stay.
This is a rather vexatious, indolent way he has, never to write to
prepare me!'

'I can easily go away,' said Swithin.

By this time, however, her brother had been shown into the house,
and the footsteps of the page were audible, coming in search of Lady
Constantine.

'If you will wait there a moment,' she said, directing St. Cleeve
into a bedchamber which adjoined; 'you will be quite safe from
interruption, and I will quickly come back.'  Taking the light she
left him.

Swithin waited in darkness.  Not more than ten minutes had passed
when a whisper in her voice came through the keyhole.  He opened the
door.

'Yes; he is come to stay!' she said.  'He is at supper now.'

'Very well; don't be flurried, dearest.  Shall I stay too, as we
planned?'

'O, Swithin, I fear not!' she replied anxiously.  'You see how it
is.  To-night we have broken the arrangement that you should never
come here; and this is the result.  Will it offend you if--I ask you
to leave?'

'Not in the least.  Upon the whole, I prefer the comfort of my
little cabin and homestead to the gauntness and alarms of this
place.'

'There, now, I fear you are offended!' she said, a tear collecting
in her eye.  'I wish I was going back with you to the cabin!  How
happy we were, those three days of our stay there!  But it is
better, perhaps, just now, that you should leave me.  Yes, these
rooms are oppressive.  They require a large household to make them
cheerful. . . .  Yet, Swithin,' she added, after reflection, 'I will
not request you to go.  Do as you think best.  I will light a night-
light, and leave you here to consider.  For myself, I must go
downstairs to my brother at once, or he'll wonder what I am doing.'

She kindled the little light, and again retreated, closing the door
upon him.

Swithin stood and waited some time; till he considered that upon the
whole it would be preferable to leave.  With this intention he
emerged and went softly along the dark passage towards the extreme
end, where there was a little crooked staircase that would conduct
him down to a disused side door.  Descending this stair he duly
arrived at the other side of the house, facing the quarter whence
the wind blew, and here he was surprised to catch the noise of rain
beating against the windows.  It was a state of weather which fully
accounted for the visitor's impatient ringing.

St. Cleeve was in a minor kind of dilemma.  The rain reminded him
that his hat and great-coat had been left downstairs, in the front
part of the house; and though he might have gone home without either
in ordinary weather it was not a pleasant feat in the pelting winter
rain.  Retracing his steps to Viviette's room he took the light, and
opened a closet-door that he had seen ajar on his way down.  Within
the closet hung various articles of apparel, upholstery lumber of
all kinds filling the back part.  Swithin thought he might find here
a cloak of hers to throw round him, but finally took down from a peg
a more suitable garment, the only one of the sort that was there.
It was an old moth-eaten great-coat, heavily trimmed with fur; and
in removing it a companion cap of sealskin was disclosed.

'Whose can they be?' he thought, and a gloomy answer suggested
itself.  'Pooh,' he then said (summoning the scientific side of his
nature), 'matter is matter, and mental association only a delusion.'
Putting on the garments he returned the light to Lady Constantine's
bedroom, and again prepared to depart as before.

Scarcely, however, had he regained the corridor a second time, when
he heard a light footstep--seemingly Viviette's--again on the front
landing.  Wondering what she wanted with him further he waited,
taking the precaution to step into the closet till sure it was she.

The figure came onward, bent to the keyhole of the bedroom door, and
whispered (supposing him still inside), 'Swithin, on second thoughts
I think you may stay with safety.'

Having no further doubt of her personality he came out with
thoughtless abruptness from the closet behind her, and looking round
suddenly she beheld his shadowy fur-clad outline.  At once she
raised her hands in horror, as if to protect herself from him; she
uttered a shriek, and turned shudderingly to the wall, covering her
face.

Swithin would have picked her up in a moment, but by this time he
could hear footsteps rushing upstairs, in response to her cry.  In
consternation, and with a view of not compromising her, he effected
his retreat as fast as possible, reaching the bend of the corridor
just as her brother Louis appeared with a light at the other
extremity.

'What's the matter, for heaven's sake, Viviette?' said Louis.

'My husband!' she involuntarily exclaimed.

'What nonsense!'

'O yes, it is nonsense,' she added, with an effort.  'It was
nothing.'

'But what was the cause of your cry?'

She had by this time recovered her reason and judgment.  'O, it was
a trick of the imagination,' she said, with a faint laugh.  'I live
so much alone that I get superstitious--and--I thought for the
moment I saw an apparition.'

'Of your late husband?'

'Yes.  But it was nothing; it was the outline of the--tall clock and
the chair behind.  Would you mind going down, and leaving me to go
into my room for a moment?'

She entered the bedroom, and her brother went downstairs.  Swithin
thought it best to leave well alone, and going noiselessly out of
the house plodded through the rain homeward.  It was plain that
agitations of one sort and another had so weakened Viviette's nerves
as to lay her open to every impression.  That the clothes he had
borrowed were some cast-off garments of the late Sir Blount had
occurred to St. Cleeve in taking them; but in the moment of
returning to her side he had forgotten this, and the shape they gave
to his figure had obviously been a reminder of too sudden a sort for
her.  Musing thus he walked along as if he were still, as before,
the lonely student, dissociated from all mankind, and with no shadow
of right or interest in Welland House or its mistress.

The great-coat and cap were unpleasant companions; but Swithin
having been reared, or having reared himself, in the scientific
school of thought, would not give way to his sense of their
weirdness.  To do so would have been treason to his own beliefs and
aims.

When nearly home, at a point where his track converged on another
path, there approached him from the latter a group of indistinct
forms.  The tones of their speech revealed them to be Hezzy Biles,
Nat Chapman, Fry, and other labourers.  Swithin was about to say a
word to them, till recollecting his disguise he deemed it advisable
to hold his tongue, lest his attire should tell a too dangerous tale
as to where he had come from.  By degrees they drew closer, their
walk being in the same direction.

'Good-night, strainger,' said Nat.

The stranger did not reply.

All of them paced on abreast of him, and he could perceive in the
gloom that their faces were turned inquiringly upon his form.  Then
a whisper passed from one to another of them; then Chapman, who was
the boldest, dropped immediately behind his heels, and followed
there for some distance, taking close observations of his outline,
after which the men grouped again and whispered.  Thinking it best
to let them pass on Swithin slackened his pace, and they went ahead
of him, apparently without much reluctance.

There was no doubt that they had been impressed by the clothes he
wore; and having no wish to provoke similar comments from his
grandmother and Hannah, Swithin took the precaution, on arriving at
Welland Bottom, to enter the homestead by the outhouse.  Here he
deposited the cap and coat in secure hiding, afterwards going round
to the front and opening the door in the usual way.

In the entry he met Hannah, who said--

'Only to hear what have been seed to-night, Mr. Swithin!  The work-
folk have dropped in to tell us!'

In the kitchen were the men who had outstripped him on the road.
Their countenances, instead of wearing the usual knotty
irregularities, had a smoothed-out expression of blank concern.
Swithin's entrance was unobtrusive and quiet, as if he had merely
come down from his study upstairs, and they only noticed him by
enlarging their gaze, so as to include him in the audience.

'We was in a deep talk at the moment,' continued Blore, 'and Natty
had just brought up that story about old Jeremiah Paddock's crossing
the park one night at one o'clock in the morning, and seeing Sir
Blount a-shutting my lady out-o'-doors; and we was saying that it
seemed a true return that he should perish in a foreign land; when
we happened to look up, and there was Sir Blount a-walking along.'

'Did it overtake you, or did you overtake it?' whispered Hannah
sepulchrally.

'I don't say 'twas IT,' returned Sammy.  'God forbid that I should
drag in a resurrection word about what perhaps was still solid
manhood, and has to die!  But he, or it, closed in upon us, as
'twere.'

'Yes, closed in upon us!' said Haymoss.

'And I said "Good-night, strainger,"' added Chapman.

'Yes, "Good-night, strainger,"--that wez yer words, Natty.  I
support ye in it.'

'And then he closed in upon us still more.'

'We closed in upon he, rather,' said Chapman.

'Well, well; 'tis the same thing in such matters!  And the form was
Sir Blount's.  My nostrils told me, for--there, 'a smelled.  Yes, I
could smell'n, being to leeward.'

'Lord, lord, what unwholesome scandal's this about the ghost of a
respectable gentleman?' said Mrs. Martin, who had entered from the
sitting-room.

'Now, wait, ma'am.  I don't say 'twere a low smell, mind ye.  'Twere
a high smell, a sort of gamey flaviour, calling to mind venison and
hare, just as you'd expect of a great squire,--not like a poor man's
'natomy, at all; and that was what strengthened my faith that 'twas
Sir Blount.'

('The skins that old coat was made of,' ruminated Swithin.)

'Well, well; I've not held out against the figure o' starvation
these five-and-twenty year, on nine shillings a week, to be afeard
of a walking vapour, sweet or savoury,' said Hezzy.  'So here's
home-along.'

'Bide a bit longer, and I'm going too,' continued Fry.  'Well, when
I found 'twas Sir Blount my spet dried up within my mouth; for
neither hedge nor bush were there for refuge against any foul spring
'a might have made at us.'

''Twas very curious; but we had likewise a-mentioned his name just
afore, in talking of the confirmation that's shortly coming on,'
said Hezzy.

'Is there soon to be a confirmation?'

'Yes.  In this parish--the first time in Welland church for twenty
years.  As I say, I had told 'em that he was confirmed the same year
that I went up to have it done, as I have very good cause to mind.
When we went to be examined, the pa'son said to me, "Rehearse the
articles of thy belief."  Mr. Blount (as he was then) was nighest
me, and he whispered, "Women and wine."  "Women and wine," says I to
the pa'son:  and for that I was sent back till next confirmation,
Sir Blount never owning that he was the rascal.'

'Confirmation was a sight different at that time,' mused Biles.
'The Bishops didn't lay it on so strong then as they do now.  Now-a-
days, yer Bishop gies both hands to every Jack-rag and Tom-straw
that drops the knee afore him; but 'twas six chaps to one blessing
when we was boys.  The Bishop o' that time would stretch out his
palms and run his fingers over our row of crowns as off-hand as a
bank gentleman telling money.  The great lords of the Church in them
days wasn't particular to a soul or two more or less; and, for my
part, I think living was easier for 't.'

'The new Bishop, I hear, is a bachelor-man; or a widow gentleman is
it?' asked Mrs. Martin.

'Bachelor, I believe, ma'am.  Mr. San Cleeve, making so bold, you've
never faced him yet, I think?'

Mrs. Martin shook her head.

'No; it was a piece of neglect.  I hardly know how it happened,' she
said.

'I am going to, this time,' said Swithin, and turned the chat to
other matters.



XXIII

Swithin could not sleep that night for thinking of his Viviette.
Nothing told so significantly of the conduct of her first husband
towards the poor lady as the abiding dread of him which was revealed
in her by any sudden revival of his image or memory.  But for that
consideration her almost childlike terror at Swithin's inadvertent
disguise would have been ludicrous.

He waited anxiously through several following days for an
opportunity of seeing her, but none was afforded.  Her brother's
presence in the house sufficiently accounted for this.  At length he
ventured to write a note, requesting her to signal to him in a way
she had done once or twice before,--by pulling down a blind in a
particular window of the house, one of the few visible from the top
of the Rings-Hill column; this to be done on any evening when she
could see him after dinner on the terrace.

When he had levelled the glass at that window for five successive
nights he beheld the blind in the position suggested.  Three hours
later, quite in the dusk, he repaired to the place of appointment.

'My brother is away this evening,' she explained, 'and that's why I
can come out.  He is only gone for a few hours, nor is he likely to
go for longer just yet.  He keeps himself a good deal in my company,
which has made it unsafe for me to venture near you.'

'Has he any suspicion?'

'None, apparently.  But he rather depresses me.'

'How, Viviette?'  Swithin feared, from her manner, that this was
something serious.

'I would rather not tell.'

'But--  Well, never mind.'

'Yes, Swithin, I will tell you.  There should be no secrets between
us.  He urges upon me the necessity of marrying, day after day.'

'For money and position, of course.'

'Yes.  But I take no notice.  I let him go on.'

'Really, this is sad!' said the young man.  'I must work harder than
ever, or you will never be able to own me.'

'O yes, in good time!' she cheeringly replied.

'I shall be very glad to have you always near me.  I felt the gloom
of our position keenly when I was obliged to disappear that night,
without assuring you it was only I who stood there.  Why were you so
frightened at those old clothes I borrowed?'

'Don't ask,--don't ask!' she said, burying her face on his shoulder.
'I don't want to speak of that.  There was something so ghastly and
so uncanny in your putting on such garments that I wish you had been
more thoughtful, and had left them alone.'

He assured her that he did not stop to consider whose they were.
'By the way, they must be sent back,' he said.

'No; I never wish to see them again!  I cannot help feeling that
your putting them on was ominous.'

'Nothing is ominous in serene philosophy,' he said, kissing her.
'Things are either causes, or they are not causes.  When can you see
me again?'

In such wise the hour passed away.  The evening was typical of
others which followed it at irregular intervals through the winter.
And during the intenser months of the season frequent falls of snow
lengthened, even more than other difficulties had done, the periods
of isolation between the pair.  Swithin adhered with all the more
strictness to the letter of his promise not to intrude into the
house, from his sense of her powerlessness to compel him to keep out
should he choose to rebel.  A student of the greatest forces in
nature, he had, like many others of his sort, no personal force to
speak of in a social point of view, mainly because he took no
interest in human ranks and formulas; and hence he was as docile as
a child in her hands wherever matters of that kind were concerned.

Her brother wintered at Welland; but whether because his experience
of tropic climes had unfitted him for the brumal rigours of Britain,
or for some other reason, he seldom showed himself out of doors, and
Swithin caught but passing glimpses of him.  Now and then Viviette's
impulsive affection would overcome her sense of risk, and she would
press Swithin to call on her at all costs.  This he would by no
means do.  It was obvious to his more logical mind that the secrecy
to which they had bound themselves must be kept in its fulness, or
might as well be abandoned altogether.

He was now sadly exercised on the subject of his uncle's will.
There had as yet been no pressing reasons for a full and candid
reply to the solicitor who had communicated with him, owing to the
fact that the payments were not to begin till Swithin was one-and-
twenty; but time was going on, and something definite would have to
be done soon.  To own to his marriage and consequent
disqualification for the bequest was easy in itself; but it involved
telling at least one man what both Viviette and himself had great
reluctance in telling anybody.  Moreover he wished Viviette to know
nothing of his loss in making her his wife.  All he could think of
doing for the present was to write a postponing letter to his
uncle's lawyer, and wait events.

The one comfort of this dreary winter-time was his perception of a
returning ability to work with the regularity and much of the spirit
of earlier days.


One bright night in April there was an eclipse of the moon, and Mr.
Torkingham, by arrangement, brought to the observatory several
labouring men and boys, to whom he had promised a sight of the
phenomenon through the telescope.  The coming confirmation, fixed
for May, was again talked of; and St. Cleeve learnt from the parson
that the Bishop had arranged to stay the night at the vicarage, and
was to be invited to a grand luncheon at Welland House immediately
after the ordinance.

This seemed like a going back into life again as regarded the
mistress of that house; and St. Cleeve was a little surprised that,
in his communications with Viviette, she had mentioned no such
probability.  The next day he walked round the mansion, wondering
how in its present state any entertainment could be given therein.

He found that the shutters had been opened, which had restored an
unexpected liveliness to the aspect of the windows.  Two men were
putting a chimney-pot on one of the chimney-stacks, and two more
were scraping green mould from the front wall.  He made no inquiries
on that occasion.  Three days later he strolled thitherward again.
Now a great cleaning of window-panes was going on, Hezzy Biles and
Sammy Blore being the operators, for which purpose their services
must have been borrowed from the neighbouring farmer.  Hezzy dashed
water at the glass with a force that threatened to break it in, the
broad face of Sammy being discernible inside, smiling at the onset.
In addition to these, Anthony Green and another were weeding the
gravel walks, and putting fresh plants into the flower-beds.
Neither of these reasonable operations was a great undertaking,
singly looked at; but the life Viviette had latterly led and the
mood in which she had hitherto regarded the premises, rendered it
somewhat significant.  Swithin, however, was rather curious than
concerned at the proceedings, and returned to his tower with
feelings of interest not entirely confined to the worlds overhead.

Lady Constantine may or may not have seen him from the house; but
the same evening, which was fine and dry, while he was occupying
himself in the observatory with cleaning the eye-pieces of the
equatorial, skull-cap on head, observing-jacket on, and in other
ways primed for sweeping, the customary stealthy step on the winding
staircase brought her form in due course into the rays of the
bull's-eye lantern.  The meeting was all the more pleasant to him
from being unexpected, and he at once lit up a larger lamp in honour
of the occasion.

'It is but a hasty visit,' she said when, after putting up her mouth
to be kissed, she had seated herself in the low chair used for
observations, panting a little with the labour of ascent.  'But I
hope to be able to come more freely soon.  My brother is still
living on with me.  Yes, he is going to stay until the confirmation
is over.  After the confirmation he will certainly leave.  So good
it is of you, dear, to please me by agreeing to the ceremony.  The
Bishop, you know, is going to lunch with us.  It is a wonder he has
promised to come, for he is a man averse to society, and mostly
keeps entirely with the clergy on these confirmation tours, or
circuits, or whatever they call them.  But Mr. Torkingham's house is
so very small, and mine is so close at hand, that this arrangement
to relieve him of the fuss of one meal, at least, naturally
suggested itself; and the Bishop has fallen in with it very readily.
How are you getting on with your observations?  Have you not wanted
me dreadfully, to write down notes?'

'Well, I have been obliged to do without you, whether or no.  See
here,--how much I have done.'  And he showed her a book ruled in
columns, headed 'Object,' 'Right Ascension,' 'Declination,'
'Features,' 'Remarks,' and so on.

She looked over this and other things, but her mind speedily winged
its way back to the confirmation.  'It is so new to me,' she said,
'to have persons coming to the house, that I feel rather anxious.  I
hope the luncheon will be a success.'

'You know the Bishop?' said Swithin.

'I have not seen him for many years.  I knew him when I was quite a
girl, and he held the little living of Puddle-sub-Mixen, near us;
but after that time, and ever since I have lived here, I have seen
nothing of him.  There has been no confirmation in this village,
they say, for twenty years.  The other bishop used to make the young
men and women go to Warborne; he wouldn't take the trouble to come
to such an out-of-the-way parish as ours.'

'This cleaning and preparation that I observe going on must be
rather a tax upon you?'

'My brother Louis sees to it, and, what is more, bears the expense.'

'Your brother?' said Swithin, with surprise.

'Well, he insisted on doing so,' she replied, in a hesitating,
despondent tone.  'He has been active in the whole matter, and was
the first to suggest the invitation.  I should not have thought of
it.'

'Well, I will hold aloof till it is all over.'

'Thanks, dearest, for your considerateness.  I wish it was not still
advisable!  But I shall see you on the day, and watch my own
philosopher all through the service from the corner of my pew!. . .
I hope you are well prepared for the rite, Swithin?' she added,
turning tenderly to him.  'It would perhaps be advisable for you to
give up this astronomy till the confirmation is over, in order to
devote your attention exclusively to that more serious matter.'

'More serious!  Well, I will do the best I can.  I am sorry to see
that you are less interested in astronomy than you used to be,
Viviette.'

'No; it is only that these preparations for the Bishop unsettle my
mind from study.  Now put on your other coat and hat, and come with
me a little way.'



XXIV

The morning of the confirmation was come.  It was mid-May time,
bringing with it weather not, perhaps, quite so blooming as that
assumed to be natural to the month by the joyous poets of three
hundred years ago; but a very tolerable, well-wearing May, that the
average rustic would willingly have compounded for in lieu of Mays
occasionally fairer, but usually more foul.

Among the larger shrubs and flowers which composed the outworks of
the Welland gardens, the lilac, the laburnum, and the guelder-rose
hung out their respective colours of purple, yellow, and white;
whilst within these, belted round from every disturbing gale, rose
the columbine, the peony, the larkspur, and the Solomon's seal.  The
animate things that moved amid this scene of colour were plodding
bees, gadding butterflies, and numerous sauntering young feminine
candidates for the impending confirmation, who, having gaily
bedecked themselves for the ceremony, were enjoying their own
appearance by walking about in twos and threes till it was time to
start.

Swithin St. Cleeve, whose preparations were somewhat simpler than
those of the village belles, waited till his grandmother and Hannah
had set out, and then, locking the door, followed towards the
distant church.  On reaching the churchyard gate he met Mr.
Torkingham, who shook hands with him in the manner of a man with
several irons in the fire, and telling Swithin where to sit,
disappeared to hunt up some candidates who had not yet made
themselves visible.

Casting his eyes round for Viviette, and seeing nothing of her,
Swithin went on to the church porch, and looked in.  From the north
side of the nave smiled a host of girls, gaily uniform in dress,
age, and a temporary repression of their natural tendency to 'skip
like a hare over the meshes of good counsel.'  Their white muslin
dresses, their round white caps, from beneath whose borders hair-
knots and curls of various shades of brown escaped upon their low
shoulders, as if against their will, lighted up the dark pews and
grey stone-work to an unwonted warmth and life.  On the south side
were the young men and boys,--heavy, angular, and massive, as indeed
was rather necessary, considering what they would have to bear at
the hands of wind and weather before they returned to that mouldy
nave for the last time.

Over the heads of all these he could see into the chancel to the
square pew on the north side, which was attached to Welland House.
There he discerned Lady Constantine already arrived, her brother
Louis sitting by her side.

Swithin entered and seated himself at the end of a bench, and she,
who had been on the watch, at once showed by subtle signs her
consciousness of the presence of the young man who had reversed the
ordained sequence of the Church services on her account.  She
appeared in black attire, though not strictly in mourning, a touch
of red in her bonnet setting off the richness of her complexion
without making her gay.  Handsomest woman in the church she
decidedly was; and yet a disinterested spectator who had known all
the circumstances would probably have felt that, the future
considered, Swithin's more natural mate would have been one of the
muslin-clad maidens who were to be presented to the Bishop with him
that day.

When the Bishop had arrived and gone into the chancel, and blown his
nose, the congregation were sufficiently impressed by his presence
to leave off looking at one another.

The Right Reverend Cuthbert Helmsdale, D.D., ninety-fourth occupant
of the episcopal throne of the diocese, revealed himself to be a
personage of dark complexion, whose darkness was thrown still
further into prominence by the lawn protuberances that now rose upon
his two shoulders like the Eastern and Western hemispheres.  In
stature he seemed to be tall and imposing, but something of this
aspect may have been derived from his robes.

The service was, as usual, of a length which severely tried the
tarrying powers of the young people assembled; and it was not till
the youth of all the other parishes had gone up that the turn came
for the Welland bevy.  Swithin and some older ones were nearly the
last.  When, at the heels of Mr. Torkingham, he passed Lady
Constantine's pew, he lifted his eyes from the red lining of that
gentleman's hood sufficiently high to catch hers.  She was
abstracted, tearful, regarding him with all the rapt mingling of
religion, love, fervour, and hope which such women can feel at such
times, and which men know nothing of.  How fervidly she watched the
Bishop place his hand on her beloved youth's head; how she saw the
great episcopal ring glistening in the sun among Swithin's brown
curls; how she waited to hear if Dr. Helmsdale uttered the form
'this thy child' which he used for the younger ones, or 'this thy
servant' which he used for those older; and how, when he said, 'this
thy CHILD,' she felt a prick of conscience, like a person who had
entrapped an innocent youth into marriage for her own gratification,
till she remembered that she had raised his social position
thereby,--all this could only have been told in its entirety by
herself.

As for Swithin, he felt ashamed of his own utter lack of the high
enthusiasm which beamed so eloquently from her eyes.  When he passed
her again, on the return journey from the Bishop to his seat, her
face was warm with a blush which her brother might have observed had
he regarded her.

Whether he had observed it or not, as soon as St. Cleeve had sat
himself down again Louis Glanville turned and looked hard at the
young astronomer.  This was the first time that St. Cleeve and
Viviette's brother had been face to face in a distinct light, their
first meeting having occurred in the dusk of a railway-station.
Swithin was not in the habit of noticing people's features; he
scarcely ever observed any detail of physiognomy in his friends, a
generalization from their whole aspect forming his idea of them; and
he now only noted a young man of perhaps thirty, who lolled a good
deal, and in whose small dark eyes seemed to be concentrated the
activity that the rest of his frame decidedly lacked.  This
gentleman's eyes were henceforward, to the end of the service,
continually fixed upon Swithin; but as this was their natural
direction, from the position of his seat, there was no great
strangeness in the circumstance.

Swithin wanted to say to Viviette, 'Now I hope you are pleased; I
have conformed to your ideas of my duty, leaving my fitness out of
consideration;' but as he could only see her bonnet and forehead it
was not possible even to look the intelligence.  He turned to his
left hand, where the organ stood, with Miss Tabitha Lark seated
behind it.

It being now sermon-time the youthful blower had fallen asleep over
the handle of his bellows, and Tabitha pulled out her handkerchief
intending to flap him awake with it.  With the handkerchief tumbled
out a whole family of unexpected articles:  a silver thimble; a
photograph; a little purse; a scent-bottle; some loose halfpence;
nine green gooseberries; a key.  They rolled to Swithin's feet, and,
passively obeying his first instinct, he picked up as many of the
articles as he could find, and handed them to her amid the smiles of
the neighbours.

Tabitha was half-dead with humiliation at such an event, happening
under the very eyes of the Bishop on this glorious occasion; she
turned pale as a sheet, and could hardly keep her seat.  Fearing she
might faint, Swithin, who had genuinely sympathized, bent over and
whispered encouragingly, 'Don't mind it, Tabitha.  Shall I take you
out into the air?'  She declined his offer, and presently the sermon
came to an end.

Swithin lingered behind the rest of the congregation sufficiently
long to see Lady Constantine, accompanied by her brother, the
Bishop, the Bishop's chaplain, Mr. Torkingham, and several other
clergy and ladies, enter to the grand luncheon by the door which
admitted from the churchyard to the lawn of Welland House; the whole
group talking with a vivacity all the more intense, as it seemed,
from the recent two hours' enforced repression of their social
qualities within the adjoining building.

The young man stood till he was left quite alone in the churchyard,
and then went slowly homeward over the hill, perhaps a trifle
depressed at the impossibility of being near Viviette in this her
one day of gaiety, and joining in the conversation of those who
surrounded her.

Not that he felt much jealousy of her situation, as his wife, in
comparison with his own.  He had so clearly understood from the
beginning that, in the event of marriage, their outward lives were
to run on as before, that to rebel now would have been unmanly in
himself and cruel to her, by adding to embarrassments that were
great enough already.  His momentary doubt was of his own strength
to achieve sufficiently high things to render him, in relation to
her, other than a patronized young favourite, whom she had married
at an immense sacrifice of position.  Now, at twenty, he was doomed
to isolation even from a wife; could it be that at, say thirty, he
would be welcomed everywhere?

But with motion through the sun and air his mood assumed a lighter
complexion, and on reaching home he remembered with interest that
Venus was in a favourable aspect for observation that afternoon.



XXV

Meanwhile the interior of Welland House was rattling with the
progress of the ecclesiastical luncheon.

The Bishop, who sat at Lady Constantine's side, seemed enchanted
with her company, and from the beginning she engrossed his attention
almost entirely.  The truth was that the circumstance of her not
having her whole soul centred on the success of the repast and the
pleasure of Bishop Helmsdale, imparted to her, in a great measure,
the mood to ensure both.  Her brother Louis it was who had laid out
the plan of entertaining the Bishop, to which she had assented but
indifferently.  She was secretly bound to another, on whose career
she had staked all her happiness.  Having thus other interests she
evinced to-day the ease of one who hazards nothing, and there was no
sign of that preoccupation with housewifely contingencies which so
often makes the hostess hardly recognizable as the charming woman
who graced a friend's home the day before.  In marrying Swithin Lady
Constantine had played her card,--recklessly, impulsively,
ruinously, perhaps; but she had played it; it could not be
withdrawn; and she took this morning's luncheon as an episode that
could result in nothing to her beyond the day's entertainment.

Hence, by that power of indirectness to accomplish in an hour what
strenuous aiming will not effect in a life-time, she fascinated the
Bishop to an unprecedented degree.  A bachelor, he rejoiced in the
commanding period of life that stretches between the time of waning
impulse and the time of incipient dotage, when a woman can reach the
male heart neither by awakening a young man's passion nor an old
man's infatuation.  He must be made to admire, or he can be made to
do nothing.  Unintentionally that is how Viviette operated on her
guest.

Lady Constantine, to external view, was in a position to desire many
things, and of a sort to desire them.  She was obviously, by nature,
impulsive to indiscretion.  But instead of exhibiting activities to
correspond, recently gratified affection lent to her manner just now
a sweet serenity, a truly Christian contentment, which it puzzled
the learned Bishop exceedingly to find in a warm young widow, and
increased his interest in her every moment.  Thus matters stood when
the conversation veered round to the morning's confirmation.

'That was a singularly engaging young man who came up among Mr.
Torkingham's candidates,' said the Bishop to her somewhat abruptly.

But abruptness does not catch a woman without her wit.  'Which one?'
she said innocently.

'That youth with the "corn-coloured" hair, as a poet of the new
school would call it, who sat just at the side of the organ.  Do you
know who he is?'

In answering Viviette showed a little nervousness, for the first
time that day.

'O yes.  He is the son of an unfortunate gentleman who was formerly
curate here,--a Mr. St. Cleeve.'

'I never saw a handsomer young man in my life,' said the Bishop.
Lady Constantine blushed.  'There was a lack of self-consciousness,
too, in his manner of presenting himself, which very much won me.  A
Mr. St. Cleeve, do you say?  A curate's son?  His father must have
been St. Cleeve of All Angels, whom I knew.  How comes he to be
staying on here?  What is he doing?'

Mr. Torkingham, who kept one ear on the Bishop all the lunch-time,
finding that Lady Constantine was not ready with an answer, hastened
to reply:  'Your lordship is right.  His father was an All Angels'
man.  The youth is rather to be pitied.'

'He was a man of talent,' affirmed the Bishop.  'But I quite lost
sight of him.'

'He was curate to the late vicar,' resumed the parson, 'and was much
liked by the parish:  but, being erratic in his tastes and
tendencies, he rashly contracted a marriage with the daughter of a
farmer, and then quarrelled with the local gentry for not taking up
his wife.  This lad was an only child.  There was enough money to
educate him, and he is sufficiently well provided for to be
independent of the world so long as he is content to live here with
great economy.  But of course this gives him few opportunities of
bettering himself.'

'Yes, naturally,' replied the Bishop of Melchester.  'Better have
been left entirely dependent on himself.  These half-incomes do men
little good, unless they happen to be either weaklings or geniuses.'

Lady Constantine would have given the world to say, 'He is a genius,
and the hope of my life;' but it would have been decidedly risky,
and in another moment was unnecessary, for Mr. Torkingham said,
'There is a certain genius in this young man, I sometimes think.'

'Well, he really looks quite out of the common,' said the Bishop.

'Youthful genius is sometimes disappointing,' observed Viviette, not
believing it in the least.

'Yes,' said the Bishop.  'Though it depends, Lady Constantine, on
what you understand by disappointing.  It may produce nothing
visible to the world's eye, and yet may complete its development
within to a very perfect degree.  Objective achievements, though the
only ones which are counted, are not the only ones that exist and
have value; and I for one should be sorry to assert that, because a
man of genius dies as unknown to the world as when he was born, he
therefore was an instance of wasted material.'

Objective achievements were, however, those that Lady Constantine
had a weakness for in the present case, and she asked her more
experienced guest if he thought early development of a special
talent a good sign in youth.

The Bishop thought it well that a particular bent should not show
itself too early, lest disgust should result.

'Still,' argued Lady Constantine rather firmly (for she felt this
opinion of the Bishop's to be one throwing doubt on Swithin),
'sustained fruition is compatible with early bias.  Tycho Brahe
showed quite a passion for the solar system when he was but a youth,
and so did Kepler; and James Ferguson had a surprising knowledge of
the stars by the time he was eleven or twelve.'

'Yes; sustained fruition,' conceded the Bishop (rather liking the
words), 'is certainly compatible with early bias.  Fenelon preached
at fourteen.'

'He--Mr. St. Cleeve--is not in the church,' said Lady Constantine.

'He is a scientific young man, my lord,' explained Mr. Torkingham.

'An astronomer,' she added, with suppressed pride.

'An astronomer!  Really, that makes him still more interesting than
being handsome and the son of a man I knew.  How and where does he
study astronomy?'

'He has a beautiful observatory.  He has made use of an old column
that was erected on this manor to the memory of one of the
Constantines.  It has been very ingeniously adapted for his purpose,
and he does very good work there.  I believe he occasionally sends
up a paper to the Royal Society, or Greenwich, or somewhere, and to
astronomical periodicals.'

'I should have had no idea, from his boyish look, that he had
advanced so far,' the Bishop answered.  'And yet I saw on his face
that within there was a book worth studying.  His is a career I
should very much like to watch.'

A thrill of pleasure chased through Lady Constantine's heart at this
praise of her chosen one.  It was an unwitting compliment to her
taste and discernment in singling him out for her own, despite its
temporary inexpediency.

Her brother Louis now spoke.  'I fancy he is as interested in one of
his fellow-creatures as in the science of astronomy,' observed the
cynic dryly.

'In whom?' said Lady Constantine quickly.

'In the fair maiden who sat at the organ,--a pretty girl, rather.  I
noticed a sort of by-play going on between them occasionally, during
the sermon, which meant mating, if I am not mistaken.'

'She!' said Lady Constantine.  'She is only a village girl, a
dairyman's daughter,--Tabitha Lark, who used to come to read to me.'

'She may be a savage, for all that I know:  but there is something
between those two young people, nevertheless.'

The Bishop looked as if he had allowed his interest in a stranger to
carry him too far, and Mr. Torkingham was horrified at the
irreverent and easy familiarity of Louis Glanville's talk in the
presence of a consecrated bishop.  As for Viviette, her tongue lost
all its volubility.  She felt quite faint at heart, and hardly knew
how to control herself.

'I have never noticed anything of the sort,' said Mr. Torkingham.

'It would be a matter for regret,' said the Bishop, 'if he should
follow his father in forming an attachment that would be a hindrance
to him in any honourable career; though perhaps an early marriage,
intrinsically considered, would not be bad for him.  A youth who
looks as if he had come straight from old Greece may be exposed to
many temptations, should he go out into the world without a friend
or counsellor to guide him.'

Despite her sudden jealousy Viviette's eyes grew moist at the
picture of her innocent Swithin going into the world without a
friend or counsellor.  But she was sick in soul and disquieted still
by Louis's dreadful remarks, who, unbeliever as he was in human
virtue, could have no reason whatever for representing Swithin as
engaged in a private love affair if such were not his honest
impression.

She was so absorbed during the remainder of the luncheon that she
did not even observe the kindly light that her presence was shedding
on the right reverend ecclesiastic by her side.  He reflected it
back in tones duly mellowed by his position; the minor clergy caught
up the rays thereof, and so the gentle influence played down the
table.

The company soon departed when luncheon was over, and the remainder
of the day passed in quietness, the Bishop being occupied in his
room at the vicarage with writing letters or a sermon.  Having a
long journey before him the next day he had expressed a wish to be
housed for the night without ceremony, and would have dined alone
with Mr. Torkingham but that, by a happy thought, Lady Constantine
and her brother were asked to join them.

However, when Louis crossed the churchyard and entered the vicarage
drawing-room at seven o'clock, his sister was not in his company.
She was, he said, suffering from a slight headache, and much
regretted that she was on that account unable to come.  At this
intelligence the social sparkle disappeared from the Bishop's eye,
and he sat down to table, endeavouring to mould into the form of
episcopal serenity an expression which was really one of common
human disappointment.

In his simple statement Louis Glanville had by no means expressed
all the circumstances which accompanied his sister's refusal, at the
last moment, to dine at her neighbour's house.  Louis had strongly
urged her to bear up against her slight indisposition--if it were
that, and not disinclination--and come along with him on just this
one occasion, perhaps a more important episode in her life than she
was aware of.  Viviette thereupon knew quite well that he alluded to
the favourable impression she was producing on the Bishop,
notwithstanding that neither of them mentioned the Bishop's name.
But she did not give way, though the argument waxed strong between
them; and Louis left her in no very amiable mood, saying, 'I don't
believe you have any more headache than I have, Viviette.  It is
some provoking whim of yours--nothing more.'

In this there was a substratum of truth.  When her brother had left
her, and she had seen him from the window entering the vicarage
gate, Viviette seemed to be much relieved, and sat down in her
bedroom till the evening grew dark, and only the lights shining
through the trees from the parsonage dining-room revealed to the eye
where that dwelling stood.  Then she arose, and putting on the cloak
she had used so many times before for the same purpose, she locked
her bedroom door (to be supposed within, in case of the accidental
approach of a servant), and let herself privately out of the house.

Lady Constantine paused for a moment under the vicarage windows,
till she could sufficiently well hear the voices of the diners to be
sure that they were actually within, and then went on her way, which
was towards the Rings-Hill column.  She appeared a mere spot, hardly
distinguishable from the grass, as she crossed the open ground, and
soon became absorbed in the black mass of the fir plantation.

Meanwhile the conversation at Mr. Torkingham's dinner-table was not
of a highly exhilarating quality.  The parson, in long self-
communing during the afternoon, had decided that the Diocesan Synod,
whose annual session at Melchester had occurred in the month
previous, would afford a solid and unimpeachable subject to launch
during the meal, whenever conversation flagged; and that it would be
one likely to win the respect of his spiritual chieftain for himself
as the introducer.  Accordingly, in the further belief that you
could not have too much of a good thing, Mr. Torkingham not only
acted upon his idea, but at every pause rallied to the synod point
with unbroken firmness.  Everything which had been discussed at that
last session--such as the introduction of the lay element into the
councils of the church, the reconstitution of the ecclesiastical
courts, church patronage, the tithe question--was revived by Mr.
Torkingham, and the excellent remarks which the Bishop had made in
his addresses on those subjects were quoted back to him.

As for Bishop Helmsdale himself, his instincts seemed to be to
allude in a debonair spirit to the incidents of the past day--to the
flowers in Lady Constantine's beds, the date of her house--perhaps
with a view of hearing a little more about their owner from Louis,
who would very readily have followed the Bishop's lead had the
parson allowed him room.  But this Mr. Torkingham seldom did, and
about half-past nine they prepared to separate.

Louis Glanville had risen from the table, and was standing by the
window, looking out upon the sky, and privately yawning, the topics
discussed having been hardly in his line.

'A fine night,' he said at last.

'I suppose our young astronomer is hard at work now,' said the
Bishop, following the direction of Louis's glance towards the clear
sky.

'Yes,' said the parson; 'he is very assiduous whenever the nights
are good for observation.  I have occasionally joined him in his
tower, and looked through his telescope with great benefit to my
ideas of celestial phenomena.  I have not seen what he has been
doing lately.'

'Suppose we stroll that way?' said Louis.  'Would you be interested
in seeing the observatory, Bishop?'

'I am quite willing to go,' said the Bishop, 'if the distance is not
too great.  I should not be at all averse to making the acquaintance
of so exceptional a young man as this Mr. St. Cleeve seems to be;
and I have never seen the inside of an observatory in my life.'

The intention was no sooner formed than it was carried out, Mr.
Torkingham leading the way.



XXVI

Half an hour before this time Swithin St. Cleeve had been sitting in
his cabin at the base of the column, working out some figures from
observations taken on preceding nights, with a view to a theory that
he had in his head on the motions of certain so-called fixed stars.

The evening being a little chilly a small fire was burning in the
stove, and this and the shaded lamp before him lent a remarkably
cosy air to the chamber.  He was awakened from his reveries by a
scratching at the window-pane like that of the point of an ivy leaf,
which he knew to be really caused by the tip of his sweetheart-
wife's forefinger.  He rose and opened the door to admit her, not
without astonishment as to how she had been able to get away from
her friends.

'Dearest Viv, why, what's the matter?' he said, perceiving that her
face, as the lamplight fell on it, was sad, and even stormy.

'I thought I would run across to see you.  I have heard something
so--so--to your discredit, and I know it can't be true!  I know you
are constancy itself; but your constancy produces strange effects in
people's eyes!'

'Good heavens!  Nobody has found us out--'

'No, no--it is not that.  You know, Swithin, that I am always
sincere, and willing to own if I am to blame in anything.  Now will
you prove to me that you are the same by owning some fault to me?'

'Yes, dear, indeed; directly I can think of one worth owning.'

'I wonder one does not rush upon your tongue in a moment!'

'I confess that I am sufficiently a Pharisee not to experience that
spontaneity.'

'Swithin, don't speak so affectedly, when you know so well what I
mean!  Is it nothing to you that, after all our vows for life, you
have thought it right to--flirt with a village girl?'

'O Viviette!' interrupted Swithin, taking her hand, which was hot
and trembling.  'You who are full of noble and generous feelings,
and regard me with devoted tenderness that has never been surpassed
by woman,--how can you be so greatly at fault?  _I_ flirt, Viviette?
By thinking that you injure yourself in my eyes.  Why, I am so far
from doing so that I continually pull myself up for watching you too
jealously, as to-day, when I have been dreading the effect upon you
of other company in my absence, and thinking that you rather shut
the gates against me when you have big-wigs to entertain.'

'Do you, Swithin?' she cried.  It was evident that the honest tone
of his words was having a great effect in clearing away the clouds.
She added with an uncertain smile, 'But how can I believe that,
after what was seen to-day?  My brother, not knowing in the least
that I had an iota of interest in you, told me that he witnessed the
signs of an attachment between you and Tabitha Lark in church, this
morning.'

'Ah!' cried Swithin, with a burst of laughter.  'Now I know what you
mean, and what has caused this misunderstanding!  How good of you,
Viviette, to come at once and have it out with me, instead of
brooding over it with dark imaginings, and thinking bitter things of
me, as many women would have done!'  He succinctly told the whole
story of his little adventure with Tabitha that morning; and the sky
was clear on both sides.  'When shall I be able to claim you,' he
added, 'and put an end to all such painful accidents as these?'

She partially sighed.  Her perception of what the outside world was
made of, latterly somewhat obscured by solitude and her lover's
company, had been revived to-day by her entertainment of the Bishop,
clergymen, and, more particularly, clergymen's wives; and it did not
diminish her sense of the difficulties in Swithin's path to see anew
how little was thought of the greatest gifts, mental and spiritual,
if they were not backed up by substantial temporalities.  However,
the pair made the best of their future that circumstances permitted,
and the interview was at length drawing to a close when there came,
without the slightest forewarning, a smart rat-tat-tat upon the
little door.

'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.



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 a 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.'

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, laboriously 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.



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.'

'What a vague, imaginary story,--as if he could know my shadow!
Besides, a man of the Bishop's dignity wouldn't have done such a
thing.  When I knew him as a younger man he was not at all romantic,
and he's not likely to have grown so now.'

'That's just what he is likely to have done.  No lover is so extreme
a specimen of the species as an old lover.  Come, Viviette, no more
of this fencing.  I have entered into the project heart and soul--so
much that I have postponed my departure till the matter is well
under way.'

'Louis--my dear Louis--you will bring me into some disagreeable
position!' said she, clasping her hands.  'I do entreat you not to
interfere or do anything rash about me.  The step is impossible.  I
have something to tell you some day.  I must live on, and endure--'

'Everything except this penury,' replied Louis, unmoved.  'Come, I
have begun the campaign by inviting Bishop Helmsdale, and I'll take
the responsibility of carrying it on.  All I ask of you is not to
make a ninny of yourself.  Come, give me your promise!'

'No, I cannot,--I don't know how to!  I only know one thing,--that I
am in no hurry--'

'"No hurry" be hanged!  Agree, like a good sister, to charm the
Bishop.'

'I must consider!' she replied, with perturbed evasiveness.

It being a fine evening Louis went out of the house to enjoy his
cigar in the shrubbery.  On reaching his favourite seat he found he
had left his cigar-case behind him; he immediately returned for it.
When he approached the window by which he had emerged he saw Swithin
St. Cleeve standing there in the dusk, talking to Viviette inside.

St. Cleeve's back was towards Louis, but, whether at a signal from
her or by accident, he quickly turned and recognized Glanville;
whereupon raising his hat to Lady Constantine the young man passed
along the terrace-walk and out by the churchyard door.

Louis rejoined his sister.  'I didn't know you allowed your lawn to
be a public thoroughfare for the parish,' he said.

'I am not exclusive, especially since I have been so poor,' replied
she.

'Then do you let everybody pass this way, or only that illustrious
youth because he is so good-looking?'

'I have no strict rule in the case.  Mr. St. Cleeve is an
acquaintance of mine, and he can certainly come here if he chooses.'
Her colour rose somewhat, and she spoke warmly.

Louis was too cautious a bird to reveal to her what had suddenly
dawned upon his mind--that his sister, in common with the (to his
thinking) unhappy Tabitha Lark, had been foolish enough to get
interested in this phenomenon of the parish, this scientific Adonis.
But he resolved to cure at once her tender feeling, if it existed,
by letting out a secret which would inflame her dignity against the
weakness.

'A good-looking young man,' he said, with his eyes where Swithin had
vanished.  'But not so good as he looks.  In fact a regular young
sinner.'

'What do you mean?'

'Oh, only a little feature I discovered in St. Cleeve's history.
But I suppose he has a right to sow his wild oats as well as other
young men.'

'Tell me what you allude to,--do, Louis.'

'It is hardly fit that I should.  However, the case is amusing
enough.  I was sitting in the arbour to-day, and was an unwilling
listener to the oddest interview I ever heard of.  Our friend the
Bishop discovered, when we visited the observatory last night, that
our astronomer was not alone in his seclusion.  A lady shared his
romantic cabin with him; and finding this, the Bishop naturally
enough felt that the ordinance of confirmation had been profaned.
So his lordship sent for Master Swithin this morning, and meeting
him in the churchyard read him such an excommunicating lecture as I
warrant he won't forget in his lifetime.  Ha-ha-ha!  'Twas very
good,--very.'

He watched her face narrowly while he spoke with such seeming
carelessness.  Instead of the agitation of jealousy that he had
expected to be aroused by this hint of another woman in the case,
there was a curious expression, more like embarrassment than
anything else which might have been fairly attributed to the
subject.  'Can it be that I am mistaken?' he asked himself.

The possibility that he might be mistaken restored Louis to good-
humour, and lights having been brought he sat with his sister for
some time, talking with purpose of Swithin's low rank on one side,
and the sordid struggles that might be in store for him.  St. Cleeve
being in the unhappy case of deriving his existence through two
channels of society, it resulted that he seemed to belong to either
this or that according to the altitude of the beholder.  Louis threw
the light entirely on Swithin's agricultural side, bringing out old
Mrs. Martin and her connexions and her ways of life with luminous
distinctness, till Lady Constantine became greatly depressed.  She,
in her hopefulness, had almost forgotten, latterly, that the bucolic
element, so incisively represented by Messrs. Hezzy Biles, Haymoss
Fry, Sammy Blore, and the rest entered into his condition at all; to
her he had been the son of his academic father alone.

But she would not reveal the depression to which she had been
subjected by this resuscitation of the homely half of poor Swithin,
presently putting an end to the subject by walking hither and
thither about the room.

'What have you lost?' said Louis, observing her movements.

'Nothing of consequence,--a bracelet.'

'Coral?' he inquired calmly.

'Yes.  How did you know it was coral?  You have never seen it, have
you?'

He was about to make answer; but the amazed enlightenment which her
announcement had produced in him through knowing where the Bishop
had found such an article, led him to reconsider himself.  Then,
like an astute man, by no means sure of the dimensions of the
intrigue he might be uncovering, he said carelessly, 'I found such a
one in the churchyard to-day.  But I thought it appeared to be of no
great rarity, and I gave it to one of the village girls who was
passing by.'

'Did she take it?  Who was she?' said the unsuspecting Viviette.

'Really, I don't remember.  I suppose it is of no consequence?'

'O no; its value is nothing, comparatively.  It was only one of a
pair such as young girls wear.'  Lady Constantine could not add
that, in spite of this, she herself valued it as being Swithin's
present, and the best he could afford.

Panic-struck by his ruminations, although revealing nothing by his
manner, Louis soon after went up to his room, professedly to write
letters.  He gave vent to a low whistle when he was out of hearing.
He of course remembered perfectly well to whom he had given the
corals, and resolved to seek out Tabitha the next morning to
ascertain whether she could possibly have owned such a trinket as
well as his sister,--which at present he very greatly doubted,
though fervently hoping that she might.



XXIX

The effect upon Swithin of the interview with the Bishop had been a
very marked one.  He felt that he had good ground for resenting that
dignitary's tone in haughtily assuming that all must be sinful which
at the first blush appeared to be so, and in narrowly refusing a
young man the benefit of a single doubt.  Swithin's assurance that
he would be able to explain all some day had been taken in
contemptuous incredulity.

'He may be as virtuous as his prototype Timothy; but he's an
opinionated old fogey all the same,' said St. Cleeve petulantly.

Yet, on the other hand, Swithin's nature was so fresh and ingenuous,
notwithstanding that recent affairs had somewhat denaturalized him,
that for a man in the Bishop's position to think him immoral was
almost as overwhelming as if he had actually been so, and at moments
he could scarcely bear existence under so gross a suspicion.  What
was his union with Lady Constantine worth to him when, by reason of
it, he was thought a reprobate by almost the only man who had
professed to take an interest in him?

Certainly, by contrast with his air-built image of himself as a
worthy astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied husband
of Viviette, the present imputation was humiliating.  The glorious
light of this tender and refined passion seemed to have become
debased to burlesque hues by pure accident, and his aesthetic no
less than his ethic taste was offended by such an anti-climax.  He
who had soared amid the remotest grandeurs of nature had been taken
to task on a rudimentary question of morals, which had never been a
question with him at all.  This was what the exigencies of an
awkward attachment had brought him to; but he blamed the
circumstances, and not for one moment Lady Constantine.

Having now set his heart against a longer concealment he was
disposed to think that an excellent way of beginning a revelation of
their marriage would be by writing a confidential letter to the
Bishop, detailing the whole case.  But it was impossible to do this
on his own responsibility.  He still recognized the understanding
entered into with Viviette, before the marriage, to be as binding as
ever,--that the initiative in disclosing their union should come
from her.  Yet he hardly doubted that she would take that initiative
when he told her of his extraordinary reprimand in the churchyard.

This was what he had come to do when Louis saw him standing at the
window.  But before he had said half-a-dozen words to Viviette she
motioned him to go on, which he mechanically did, ere he could
sufficiently collect his thoughts on its advisability or otherwise.
He did not, however, go far.  While Louis and his sister were
discussing him in the drawing-room he lingered musing in the
churchyard, hoping that she might be able to escape and join him in
the consultation he so earnestly desired.

She at last found opportunity to do this.  As soon as Louis had left
the room and shut himself in upstairs she ran out by the window in
the direction Swithin had taken.  When her footsteps began crunching
on the gravel he came forward from the churchyard door.

They embraced each other in haste, and then, in a few short panting
words, she explained to him that her brother had heard and witnessed
the interview on that spot between himself and the Bishop, and had
told her the substance of the Bishop's accusation, not knowing she
was the woman in the cabin.

'And what I cannot understand is this,' she added; 'how did the
Bishop discover that the person behind the bed-curtains was a woman
and not a man?'

Swithin explained that the Bishop had found the bracelet on the bed,
and had brought it to him in the churchyard.

'O Swithin, what do you say?  Found the coral bracelet?  What did
you do with it?'

Swithin clapped his hand to his pocket.

'Dear me!  I recollect--I left it where it lay on Reuben Heath's
tombstone.'

'Oh, my dear, dear Swithin!' she cried miserably.  'You have
compromised me by your forgetfulness.  I have claimed the article as
mine.  My brother did not tell me that the Bishop brought it from
the cabin.  What can I, can I do, that neither the Bishop nor my
brother may conclude _I_ was the woman there?'

'But if we announce our marriage--'

'Even as your wife, the position was too undignified--too I don't
know what--for me ever to admit that I was there!  Right or wrong, I
must declare the bracelet was not mine.  Such an escapade--why, it
would make me ridiculous in the county; and anything rather than
that!'

'I was in hope that you would agree to let our marriage be known,'
said Swithin, with some disappointment.  'I thought that these
circumstances would make the reason for doing so doubly strong.'

'Yes.  But there are, alas, reasons against it still stronger!  Let
me have my way.'

'Certainly, dearest.  I promised that before you agreed to be mine.
My reputation--what is it!  Perhaps I shall be dead and forgotten
before the next transit of Venus!'

She soothed him tenderly, but could not tell him why she felt the
reasons against any announcement as yet to be stronger than those in
favour of it.  How could she, when her feeling had been cautiously
fed and developed by her brother Louis's unvarnished exhibition of
Swithin's material position in the eyes of the world?--that of a
young man, the scion of a family of farmers recently her tenants,
living at the homestead with his grandmother, Mrs. Martin.

To soften her refusal she said in declaring it, 'One concession,
Swithin, I certainly will make.  I will see you oftener.  I will
come to the cabin and tower frequently; and will contrive, too, that
you come to the house occasionally.  During the last winter we
passed whole weeks without meeting; don't let us allow that to
happen again.'

'Very well, dearest,' said Swithin good-humouredly.  'I don't care
so terribly much for the old man's opinion of me, after all.  For
the present, then, let things be as they are.'

Nevertheless, the youth felt her refusal more than he owned; but the
unequal temperament of Swithin's age, so soon depressed on his own
account, was also soon to recover on hers, and it was with almost a
child's forgetfulness of the past that he took her view of the case.

When he was gone she hastily re-entered the house.  Her brother had
not reappeared from upstairs; but she was informed that Tabitha Lark
was waiting to see her, if her ladyship would pardon the said
Tabitha for coming so late.  Lady Constantine made no objection, and
saw the young girl at once.

When Lady Constantine entered the waiting-room behold, in Tabitha's
outstretched hand lay the coral ornament which had been causing
Viviette so much anxiety.

'I guessed, on second thoughts, that it was yours, my lady,' said
Tabitha, with rather a frightened face; 'and so I have brought it
back.'

'But how did you come by it, Tabitha?'

'Mr. Glanville gave it to me; he must have thought it was mine.  I
took it, fancying at the moment that he handed it to me because I
happened to come by first after he had found it.'

Lady Constantine saw how the situation might be improved so as to
effect her deliverance from this troublesome little web of evidence.

'Oh, you can keep it,' she said brightly.  'It was very good of you
to bring it back.  But keep it for your very own.  Take Mr.
Glanville at his word, and don't explain.  And, Tabitha, divide the
strands into two bracelets; there are enough of them to make a
pair.'

The next morning, in pursuance of his resolution, Louis wandered
round the grounds till he saw the girl for whom he was waiting enter
the church.  He accosted her over the wall.  But, puzzling to view,
a coral bracelet blushed on each of her young arms, for she had
promptly carried out the suggestion of Lady Constantine.

'You are wearing it, I see, Tabitha, with the other,' he murmured.
'Then you mean to keep it?'

'Yes, I mean to keep it.'

'You are sure it is not Lady Constantine's?  I find she has one like
it.'

'Quite sure.  But you had better take it to her, sir, and ask her,'
said the saucy girl.

'Oh, no; that's not necessary,' replied Louis, considerably shaken
in his convictions.

When Louis met his sister, a short time after, he did not catch her,
as he had intended to do, by saying suddenly, 'I have found your
bracelet.  I know who has got it.'

'You cannot have found it,' she replied quietly, 'for I have
discovered that it was never lost,' and stretching out both her
hands she revealed one on each, Viviette having performed the same
operation with her remaining bracelet that she had advised Tabitha
to do with the other.

Louis was mystified, but by no means convinced.  In spite of this
attempt to hoodwink him his mind returned to the subject every hour
of the day.  There was no doubt that either Tabitha or Viviette had
been with Swithin in the cabin.  He recapitulated every case that
had occurred during his visit to Welland in which his sister's
manner had been of a colour to justify the suspicion that it was
she.  There was that strange incident in the corridor, when she had
screamed at what she described to be a shadowy resemblance to her
late husband; how very improbable that this fancy should have been
the only cause of her agitation!  Then he had noticed, during
Swithin's confirmation, a blush upon her cheek when he passed her on
his way to the Bishop, and the fervour in her glance during the few
moments of the imposition of hands.  Then he suddenly recalled the
night at the railway station, when the accident with the whip took
place, and how, when he reached Welland House an hour later, he had
found no Viviette there.  Running thus from incident to incident he
increased his suspicions without being able to cull from the
circumstances anything amounting to evidence; but evidence he now
determined to acquire without saying a word to any one.

His plan was of a cruel kind:  to set a trap into which the pair
would blindly walk if any secret understanding existed between them
of the nature he suspected.



XXX

Louis began his stratagem by calling at the tower one afternoon, as
if on the impulse of the moment.

After a friendly chat with Swithin, whom he found there (having
watched him enter), Louis invited the young man to dine the same
evening at the House, that he might have an opportunity of showing
him some interesting old scientific works in folio, which, according
to Louis's account, he had stumbled on in the library.  Louis set no
great bait for St. Cleeve in this statement, for old science was not
old art which, having perfected itself, has died and left its secret
hidden in its remains.  But Swithin was a responsive fellow, and
readily agreed to come; being, moreover, always glad of a chance of
meeting Viviette en famille.  He hoped to tell her of a scheme that
had lately suggested itself to him as likely to benefit them both:
that he should go away for a while, and endeavour to raise
sufficient funds to visit the great observatories of Europe, with an
eye to a post in one of them.  Hitherto the only bar to the plan had
been the exceeding narrowness of his income, which, though
sufficient for his present life, was absolutely inadequate to the
requirements of a travelling astronomer.

Meanwhile Louis Glanville had returned to the House and told his
sister in the most innocent manner that he had been in the company
of St. Cleeve that afternoon, getting a few wrinkles on astronomy;
that they had grown so friendly over the fascinating subject as to
leave him no alternative but to invite St. Cleeve to dine at Welland
the same evening, with a view to certain researches in the library
afterwards.

'I could quite make allowances for any youthful errors into which he
may have been betrayed,' Louis continued sententiously, 'since, for
a scientist, he is really admirable.  No doubt the Bishop's caution
will not be lost upon him; and as for his birth and connexions,--
those he can't help.'

Lady Constantine showed such alacrity in adopting the idea of having
Swithin to dinner, and she ignored his 'youthful errors' so
completely, as almost to betray herself.  In fulfilment of her
promise to see him oftener she had been intending to run across to
Swithin on that identical evening.  Now the trouble would be saved
in a very delightful way, by the exercise of a little hospitality
which Viviette herself would not have dared to suggest.

Dinner-time came and with it Swithin, exhibiting rather a blushing
and nervous manner that was, unfortunately, more likely to betray
their cause than was Viviette's own more practised bearing.
Throughout the meal Louis sat like a spider in the corner of his
web, observing them narrowly, and at moments flinging out an artful
thread here and there, with a view to their entanglement.  But they
underwent the ordeal marvellously well.  Perhaps the actual tie
between them, through being so much closer and of so much more
practical a nature than even their critic supposed it, was in itself
a protection against their exhibiting that ultra-reciprocity of
manner which, if they had been merely lovers, might have betrayed
them.

After dinner the trio duly adjourned to the library as had been
planned, and the volumes were brought forth by Louis with the zest
of a bibliophilist.  Swithin had seen most of them before, and
thought but little of them; but the pleasure of staying in the house
made him welcome any reason for doing so, and he willingly looked at
whatever was put before him, from Bertius's Ptolemy to Rees's
Cyclopaedia.

The evening thus passed away, and it began to grow late.  Swithin
who, among other things, had planned to go to Greenwich next day to
view the Royal Observatory, would every now and then start up and
prepare to leave for home, when Glanville would unearth some other
volume and so detain him yet another half-hour.

'By George!' he said, looking at the clock when Swithin was at last
really about to depart.  'I didn't know it was so late.  Why not
stay here to-night, St. Cleeve?  It is very dark, and the way to
your place is an awkward cross-cut over the fields.'

'It would not inconvenience us at all, Mr. St. Cleeve, if you would
care to stay,' said Lady Constantine.

'I am afraid--the fact is, I wanted to take an observation at twenty
minutes past two,' began Swithin.

'Oh, now, never mind your observation,' said Louis.  'That's only an
excuse.  Do that to-morrow night.  Now you will stay.  It is
settled.  Viviette, say he must stay, and we'll have another hour of
these charming intellectual researches.'

Viviette obeyed with delightful ease.  'Do stay, Mr St. Cleeve!' she
said sweetly.

'Well, in truth I can do without the observation,' replied the young
man, as he gave way.  'It is not of the greatest consequence.'

Thus it was arranged; but the researches among the tomes were not
prolonged to the extent that Louis had suggested.  In three-quarters
of an hour from that time they had all retired to their respective
rooms; Lady Constantine's being on one side of the west corridor,
Swithin's opposite, and Louis's at the further end.

Had a person followed Louis when he withdrew, that watcher would
have discovered, on peeping through the key-hole of his door, that
he was engaged in one of the oddest of occupations for such a man,--
sweeping down from the ceiling, by means of a walking-cane, a long
cobweb which lingered on high in the corner.  Keeping it stretched
upon the cane he gently opened the door, and set the candle in such
a position on the mat that the light shone down the corridor.  Thus
guided by its rays he passed out slipperless, till he reached the
door of St. Cleeve's room, where he applied the dangling spider's
thread in such a manner that it stretched across like a tight-rope
from jamb to jamb, barring, in its fragile way, entrance and egress.
The operation completed he retired again, and, extinguishing his
light, went through his bedroom window out upon the flat roof of the
portico to which it gave access.

Here Louis made himself comfortable in his chair and smoking-cap,
enjoying the fragrance of a cigar for something like half-an-hour.
His position commanded a view of the two windows of Lady
Constantine's room, and from these a dim light shone continuously.
Having the window partly open at his back, and the door of his room
also scarcely closed, his ear retained a fair command of any noises
that might be made.

In due time faint movements became audible; whereupon, returning to
his room, he re-entered the corridor and listened intently.  All was
silent again, and darkness reigned from end to end.  Glanville,
however, groped his way along the passage till he again reached
Swithin's door, where he examined, by the light of a wax-match he
had brought, the condition of the spider's thread.  It was gone;
somebody had carried it off bodily, as Samson carried off the pin
and the web.  In other words, a person had passed through the door.

Still holding the faint wax-light in his hand Louis turned to the
door of Lady Constantine's chamber, where he observed first that,
though it was pushed together so as to appear fastened to cursory
view, the door was not really closed by about a quarter of an inch.
He dropped his light and extinguished it with his foot.  Listening,
he heard a voice within,--Viviette's voice, in a subdued murmur,
though speaking earnestly.

Without any hesitation Louis then returned to Swithin's door, opened
it, and walked in.  The starlight from without was sufficient, now
that his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, to reveal that
the room was unoccupied, and that nothing therein had been
disturbed.

With a heavy tread Louis came forth, walked loudly across the
corridor, knocked at Lady Constantine's door, and called 'Viviette!'

She heard him instantly, replying 'Yes' in startled tones.
Immediately afterwards she opened her door, and confronted him in
her dressing-gown, with a light in her hand.  'What is the matter,
Louis?' she said.

'I am greatly alarmed.  Our visitor is missing.'

'Missing?  What, Mr. St. Cleeve?'

'Yes.  I was sitting up to finish a cigar, when I thought I heard a
noise in this direction.  On coming to his room I find he is not
there.'

'Good Heaven!  I wonder what has happened!' she exclaimed, in
apparently intense alarm.

'I wonder,' said Glanville grimly.

'Suppose he is a somnambulist!  If so, he may have gone out and
broken his neck.  I have never heard that he is one, but they say
that sleeping in strange places disturbs the minds of people who are
given to that sort of thing, and provokes them to it.'

'Unfortunately for your theory his bed has not been touched.'

'Oh, what then can it be?'

Her brother looked her full in the face.  'Viviette!' he said
sternly.

She seemed puzzled.  'Well?' she replied, in simple tones.

'I heard voices in your room,' he continued.

'Voices?'

'A voice,--yours.'

'Yes, you may have done so.  It was mine.'

'A listener is required for a speaker.'

'True, Louis.'

'Well, to whom were you speaking?'

'God.'

'Viviette!  I am ashamed of you.'

'I was saying my prayers.'

'Prayers--to God!  To St. Swithin, rather!'

'What do you mean, Louis?' she asked, flushing up warm, and drawing
back from him.  'It was a form of prayer I use, particularly when I
am in trouble.  It was recommended to me by the Bishop, and Mr.
Torkingham commends it very highly.'

'On your honour, if you have any,' he said bitterly, 'whom have you
there in your room?'

'No human being.'

'Flatly, I don't believe you.'

She gave a dignified little bow, and, waving her hand into the
apartment, said, 'Very well; then search and see.'

Louis entered, and glanced round the room, behind the curtains,
under the bed, out of the window--a view from which showed that
escape thence would have been impossible,--everywhere, in short,
capable or incapable of affording a retreat to humanity; but
discovered nobody.  All he observed was that a light stood on the
low table by her bedside; that on the bed lay an open Prayer-Book,
the counterpane being unpressed, except into a little pit beside the
Prayer Book, apparently where her head had rested in kneeling.

'But where is St. Cleeve?' he said, turning in bewilderment from
these evidences of innocent devotion.

'Where can he be?' she chimed in, with real distress.  'I should so
much like to know.  Look about for him.  I am quite uneasy!'

'I will, on one condition:  that you own that you love him.'

'Why should you force me to that?' she murmured.  'It would be no
such wonder if I did.'

'Come, you do.'

'Well, I do.'

'Now I'll look for him.'

Louis took a light, and turned away, astonished that she had not
indignantly resented his intrusion and the nature of his
questioning.

At this moment a slight noise was heard on the staircase, and they
could see a figure rising step by step, and coming forward against
the long lights of the staircase window.  It was Swithin, in his
ordinary dress, and carrying his boots in his hand.  When he beheld
them standing there so motionless, he looked rather disconcerted,
but came on towards his room.

Lady Constantine was too agitated to speak, but Louis said, 'I am
glad to see you again.  Hearing a noise, a few minutes ago, I came
out to learn what it could be.  I found you absent, and we have been
very much alarmed.'

'I am very sorry,' said Swithin, with contrition.  'I owe you a
hundred apologies:  but the truth is that on entering my bedroom I
found the sky remarkably clear, and though I told you that the
observation I was to make was of no great consequence, on thinking
it over alone I felt it ought not to be allowed to pass; so I was
tempted to run across to the observatory, and make it, as I had
hoped, without disturbing anybody.  If I had known that I should
alarm you I would not have done it for the world.'

Swithin spoke very earnestly to Louis, and did not observe the
tender reproach in Viviette's eyes when he showed by his tale his
decided notion that the prime use of dark nights lay in their
furtherance of practical astronomy.

Everything being now satisfactorily explained the three retired to
their several chambers, and Louis heard no more noises that night,
or rather morning; his attempts to solve the mystery of Viviette's
life here and her relations with St. Cleeve having thus far resulted
chiefly in perplexity.  True, an admission had been wrung from her;
and even without such an admission it was clear that she had a
tender feeling for Swithin.  How to extinguish that romantic folly
it now became his object to consider.



XXXI

Swithin's midnight excursion to the tower in the cause of science
led him to oversleep himself, and when the brother and sister met at
breakfast in the morning he did not appear.

'Don't disturb him,--don't disturb him,' said Louis laconically.
'Hullo, Viviette, what are you reading there that makes you flame up
so?'

She was glancing over a letter that she had just opened, and at his
words looked up with misgiving.

The incident of the previous night left her in great doubt as to
what her bearing towards him ought to be.  She had made no show of
resenting his conduct at the time, from a momentary supposition that
he must know all her secret; and afterwards, finding that he did not
know it, it seemed too late to affect indignation at his suspicions.
So she preserved a quiet neutrality.  Even had she resolved on an
artificial part she might have forgotten to play it at this instant,
the letter being of a kind to banish previous considerations.

'It is a letter from Bishop Helmsdale,' she faltered.

'Well done!  I hope for your sake it is an offer.'

'That's just what it is.'

'No,--surely?' said Louis, beginning a laugh of surprise.

'Yes,' she returned indifferently.  'You can read it, if you like.'

'I don't wish to pry into a communication of that sort.'

'Oh, you may read it,' she said, tossing the letter across to him.

Louis thereupon read as under:--


                                           'THE PALACE, MELCHESTER,
                                                      June 28, 18--.

'MY DEAR LADY CONSTANTINE,--During the two or three weeks that have
elapsed since I experienced the great pleasure of renewing my
acquaintance with you, the varied agitation of my feelings has
clearly proved that my only course is to address you by letter, and
at once.  Whether the subject of my communication be acceptable to
you or not, I can at least assure you that to suppress it would be
far less natural, and upon the whole less advisable, than to speak
out frankly, even if afterwards I hold my peace for ever.

'The great change in my experience during the past year or two--the
change, that is, which has resulted from my advancement to a
bishopric--has frequently suggested to me, of late, that a
discontinuance in my domestic life of the solitude of past years was
a question which ought to be seriously contemplated.  But whether I
should ever have contemplated it without the great good fortune of
my meeting with you is doubtful.  However, the thing has been
considered at last, and without more ado I candidly ask if you would
be willing to give up your life at Welland, and relieve my household
loneliness here by becoming my wife.

'I am far from desiring to force a hurried decision on your part,
and will wait your good pleasure patiently, should you feel any
uncertainty at the moment as to the step.  I am quite disqualified,
by habits and experience, for the delightful procedure of urging my
suit in the ardent terms which would be so appropriate towards such
a lady, and so expressive of my inmost feeling.  In truth, a prosy
cleric of five-and-forty wants encouragement to make him eloquent.
Of this, however, I can assure you:  that if admiration, esteem, and
devotion can compensate in any way for the lack of those qualities
which might be found to burn with more outward brightness in a
younger man, those it is in my power to bestow for the term of my
earthly life.  Your steady adherence to church principles and your
interest in ecclesiastical polity (as was shown by your bright
questioning on those subjects during our morning walk round your
grounds) have indicated strongly to me the grace and appropriateness
with which you would fill the position of a bishop's wife, and how
greatly you would add to his reputation, should you be disposed to
honour him with your hand.  Formerly there have been times when I
was of opinion--and you will rightly appreciate my candour in owning
it--that a wife was an impediment to a bishop's due activities; but
constant observation has convinced me that, far from this being the
truth, a meet consort infuses life into episcopal influence and
teaching.

'Should you reply in the affirmative I will at once come to see you,
and with your permission will, among other things, show you a few
plain, practical rules which I have interested myself in drawing up
for our future guidance.  Should you refuse to change your condition
on my account, your decision will, as I need hardly say, be a great
blow to me.  In any event, I could not do less than I have done,
after giving the subject my full consideration.  Even if there be a
slight deficiency of warmth on your part, my earnest hope is that a
mind comprehensive as yours will perceive the immense power for good
that you might exercise in the position in which a union with me
would place you, and allow that perception to weigh in determining
your answer.

'I remain, my dear Lady Constantine, with the highest respect and
affection,--Yours always,
                                          'C. MELCHESTER.'


'Well, you will not have the foolhardiness to decline, now that the
question has actually been popped, I should hope,' said Louis, when
he had done reading.

'Certainly I shall,' she replied.

'You will really be such a flat, Viviette?'

'You speak without much compliment.  I have not the least idea of
accepting him.'

'Surely you will not let your infatuation for that young fellow
carry you so far, after my acquainting you with the shady side of
his character?  You call yourself a religious woman, say your
prayers out loud, follow up the revived methods in church practice,
and what not; and yet you can think with partiality of a person who,
far from having any religion in him, breaks the most elementary
commandments in the decalogue.'

'I cannot agree with you,' she said, turning her face askance, for
she knew not how much of her brother's language was sincere, and how
much assumed, the extent of his discoveries with regard to her
secret ties being a mystery.  At moments she was disposed to declare
the whole truth, and have done with it.  But she hesitated, and left
the words unsaid; and Louis continued his breakfast in silence.

When he had finished, and she had eaten little or nothing, he asked
once more, 'How do you intend to answer that letter?  Here you are,
the poorest woman in the county, abandoned by people who used to be
glad to know you, and leading a life as dismal and dreary as a
nun's, when an opportunity is offered you of leaping at once into a
leading position in this part of England.  Bishops are given to
hospitality; you would be welcomed everywhere.  In short, your
answer must be yes.'

'And yet it will be no,' she said, in a low voice.  She had at
length learnt, from the tone of her brother's latter remarks, that
at any rate he had no knowledge of her actual marriage, whatever
indirect ties he might suspect her guilty of.

Louis could restrain himself no longer at her answer.  'Then conduct
your affairs your own way.  I know you to be leading a life that
won't bear investigation, and I'm hanged if I'll stay here any
longer!'

Saying which, Glanville jerked back his chair, and strode out of the
room.  In less than a quarter of an hour, and before she had moved a
step from the table, she heard him leaving the house.



XXXII

What to do she could not tell.  The step which Swithin had entreated
her to take, objectionable and premature as it had seemed in a
county aspect, would at all events have saved her from this dilemma.
Had she allowed him to tell the Bishop his simple story in its
fulness, who could say but that that divine might have generously
bridled his own impulses, entered into the case with sympathy, and
forwarded with zest their designs for the future, owing to his
interest of old in Swithin's father, and in the naturally attractive
features of the young man's career.

A puff of wind from the open window, wafting the Bishop's letter to
the floor, aroused her from her reverie.  With a sigh she stooped
and picked it up, glanced at it again; then arose, and with the
deliberateness of inevitable action wrote her reply:--


                                  'WELLAND HOUSE, June 29, 18--.
'MY DEAR BISHOP OF MELCHESTER,--I confess to you that your letter,
so gracious and flattering as it is, has taken your friend somewhat
unawares.  The least I can do in return for its contents is to reply
as quickly as possible.

'There is no one in the world who esteems your high qualities more
than myself, or who has greater faith in your ability to adorn the
episcopal seat that you have been called on to fill.  But to your
question I can give only one reply, and that is an unqualified
negative.  To state this unavoidable decision distresses me, without
affectation; and I trust you will believe that, though I decline the
distinction of becoming your wife, I shall never cease to interest
myself in all that pertains to you and your office; and shall feel
the keenest regret if this refusal should operate to prevent a
lifelong friendship between us.--I am, my dear Bishop of Melchester,
ever sincerely yours,
                                         'VIVIETTE CONSTANTINE.'


A sudden revulsion from the subterfuge of writing as if she were
still a widow, wrought in her mind a feeling of dissatisfaction with
the whole scheme of concealment; and pushing aside the letter she
allowed it to remain unfolded and unaddressed.  In a few minutes she
heard Swithin approaching, when she put the letter out of the way
and turned to receive him.

Swithin entered quietly, and looked round the room.  Seeing with
unexpected pleasure that she was there alone, he came over and
kissed her.  Her discomposure at some foregone event was soon
obvious.

'Has my staying caused you any trouble?' he asked in a whisper.
'Where is your brother this morning?'

She smiled through her perplexity as she took his hand.  'The oddest
things happen to me, dear Swithin,' she said.  'Do you wish
particularly to know what has happened now?'

'Yes, if you don't mind telling me.'

'I do mind telling you.  But I must.  Among other things I am
resolving to give way to your representations,--in part, at least.
It will be best to tell the Bishop everything, and my brother, if
not other people.'

'I am truly glad to hear it, Viviette,' said he cheerfully.  'I have
felt for a long time that honesty is the best policy.'

'I at any rate feel it now.  But it is a policy that requires a
great deal of courage!'

'It certainly requires some courage,--I should not say a great deal;
and indeed, as far as I am concerned, it demands less courage to
speak out than to hold my tongue.'

'But, you silly boy, you don't know what has happened.  The Bishop
has made me an offer of marriage.'

'Good gracious, what an impertinent old man!  What have you done
about it, dearest?'

'Well, I have hardly accepted him,' she replied, laughing.  'It is
this event which has suggested to me that I should make my refusal a
reason for confiding our situation to him.'

'What would you have done if you had not been already appropriated?'

'That's an inscrutable mystery.  He is a worthy man; but he has very
pronounced views about his own position, and some other undesirable
qualities.  Still, who knows?  You must bless your stars that you
have secured me.  Now let us consider how to draw up our confession
to him.  I wish I had listened to you at first, and allowed you to
take him into our confidence before his declaration arrived.  He may
possibly resent the concealment now.  However, this cannot be
helped.'

'I tell you what, Viviette,' said Swithin, after a thoughtful pause,
'if the Bishop is such an earthly sort of man as this, a man who
goes falling in love, and wanting to marry you, and so on, I am not
disposed to confess anything to him at all.  I fancied him
altogether different from that.'

'But he's none the worse for it, dear.'

'I think he is--to lecture me and love you, all in one breath!'

'Still, that's only a passing phase; and you first proposed making a
confidant of him.'

'I did. . . .  Very well.  Then we are to tell nobody but the
Bishop?'

'And my brother Louis.  I must tell him; it is unavoidable.  He
suspects me in a way I could never have credited of him!'

Swithin, as was before stated, had arranged to start for Greenwich
that morning, permission having been accorded him by the Astronomer-
Royal to view the Observatory; and their final decision was that, as
he could not afford time to sit down with her, and write to the
Bishop in collaboration, each should, during the day, compose a
well-considered letter, disclosing their position from his and her
own point of view; Lady Constantine leading up to her confession by
her refusal of the Bishop's hand.  It was necessary that she should
know what Swithin contemplated saying, that her statements might
precisely harmonize.  He ultimately agreed to send her his letter by
the next morning's post, when, having read it, she would in due
course despatch it with her own.

As soon as he had breakfasted Swithin went his way, promising to
return from Greenwich by the end of the week.

Viviette passed the remainder of that long summer day, during which
her young husband was receding towards the capital, in an almost
motionless state.  At some instants she felt exultant at the idea of
announcing her marriage and defying general opinion.  At another her
heart misgave her, and she was tormented by a fear lest Swithin
should some day accuse her of having hampered his deliberately-
shaped plan of life by her intrusive romanticism.  That was often
the trick of men who had sealed by marriage, in their inexperienced
youth, a love for those whom their maturer judgment would have
rejected as too obviously disproportionate in years.

However, it was now too late for these lugubrious thoughts; and,
bracing herself, she began to frame the new reply to Bishop
Helmsdale--the plain, unvarnished tale that was to supplant the
undivulging answer first written.  She was engaged on this difficult
problem till daylight faded in the west, and the broad-faced moon
edged upwards, like a plate of old gold, over the elms towards the
village.  By that time Swithin had reached Greenwich; her brother
had gone she knew not whither; and she and loneliness dwelt solely,
as before, within the walls of Welland House.

At this hour of sunset and moonrise the new parlourmaid entered, to
inform her that Mr. Cecil's head clerk, from Warborne, particularly
wished to see her.

Mr. Cecil was her solicitor, and she knew of nothing whatever that
required his intervention just at present.  But he would not have
sent at this time of day without excellent reasons, and she directed
that the young man might be shown in where she was.  On his entry
the first thing she noticed was that in his hand he carried a
newspaper.

'In case you should not have seen this evening's paper, Lady
Constantine, Mr. Cecil has directed me to bring it to you at once,
on account of what appears there in relation to your ladyship.  He
has only just seen it himself.'

'What is it?  How does it concern me?'

'I will point it out.'

'Read it yourself to me.  Though I am afraid there's not enough
light.'

'I can see very well here,' said the lawyer's clerk stepping to the
window.  Folding back the paper he read:--


                       '"NEWS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

'"CAPE TOWN, May 17 (via Plymouth).--A correspondent of the Cape
Chronicle states that he has interviewed an Englishman just arrived
from the interior, and learns from him that a considerable
misapprehension exists in England concerning the death of the
traveller and hunter, Sir Blount Constantine--"'

'O, he's living!  My husband is alive,' she cried, sinking down in
nearly a fainting condition.

'No, my lady.  Sir Blount is dead enough, I am sorry to say.'

'Dead, did you say?'

'Certainly, Lady Constantine; there is no doubt of it.'

She sat up, and her intense relief almost made itself perceptible
like a fresh atmosphere in the room.  'Yes.  Then what did you come
for?' she asked calmly.

'That Sir Blount has died is unquestionable,' replied the lawyer's
clerk gently.  'But there has been some mistake about the date of
his death.'

'He died of malarious fever on the banks of the Zouga, October 24,
18--.'

'No; he only lay ill there a long time it seems.  It was a companion
who died at that date.  But I'll read the account to your ladyship,
with your permission:--

'"The decease of this somewhat eccentric wanderer did not occur at
the time hitherto supposed, but only in last December.  The
following is the account of the Englishman alluded to, given as
nearly as possible in his own words:  During the illness of Sir
Blount and his friend by the Zouga, three of the servants went away,
taking with them a portion of his clothing and effects; and it must
be they who spread the report of his death at this time.  After his
companion's death he mended, and when he was strong enough he and I
travelled on to a healthier district.  I urged him not to delay his
return to England; but he was much against going back there again,
and became so rough in his manner towards me that we parted company
at the first opportunity I could find.  I joined a party of white
traders returning to the West Coast.  I stayed here among the
Portuguese for many months.  I then found that an English travelling
party were going to explore a district adjoining that which I had
formerly traversed with Sir Blount.  They said they would be glad of
my services, and I joined them.  When we had crossed the territory
to the South of Ulunda, and drew near to Marzambo, I heard tidings
of a man living there whom I suspected to be Sir Blount, although he
was not known by that name.  Being so near I was induced to seek him
out, and found that he was indeed the same.  He had dropped his old
name altogether, and had married a native princess--"'

'Married a native princess!' said Lady Constantine.

'That's what it says, my lady,--"married a native princess according
to the rites of the tribe, and was living very happily with her.  He
told me he should never return to England again.  He also told me
that having seen this princess just after I had left him, he had
been attracted by her, and had thereupon decided to reside with her
in that country, as being a land which afforded him greater
happiness than he could hope to attain elsewhere.  He asked me to
stay with him, instead of going on with my party, and not reveal his
real title to any of them.  After some hesitation I did stay, and
was not uncomfortable at first.  But I soon found that Sir Blount
drank much harder now than when I had known him, and that he was at
times very greatly depressed in mind at his position.  One morning
in the middle of December last I heard a shot from his dwelling.
His wife rushed frantically past me as I hastened to the spot, and
when I entered I found that he had put an end to himself with his
revolver.  His princess was broken-hearted all that day.  When we
had buried him I discovered in his house a little box directed to
his solicitors at Warborne, in England, and a note for myself,
saying that I had better get the first chance of returning that
offered, and requesting me to take the box with me.  It is supposed
to contain papers and articles for friends in England who have
deemed him dead for some time."'

The clerk stopped his reading, and there was a silence.  'The middle
of last December,' she at length said, in a whisper.  'Has the box
arrived yet?'

'Not yet, my lady.  We have no further proof of anything.  As soon
as the package comes to hand you shall know of it immediately.'

Such was the clerk's mission; and, leaving the paper with her, he
withdrew.  The intelligence amounted to thus much:  that, Sir Blount
having been alive till at least six weeks after her marriage with
Swithin St. Cleeve, Swithin St. Cleeve was not her husband in the
eye of the law; that she would have to consider how her marriage
with the latter might be instantly repeated, to establish herself
legally as that young man's wife.



XXXIII

Next morning Viviette received a visit from Mr. Cecil himself.  He
informed her that the box spoken of by the servant had arrived quite
unexpectedly just after the departure of his clerk on the previous
evening.  There had not been sufficient time for him to thoroughly
examine it as yet, but he had seen enough to enable him to state
that it contained letters, dated memoranda in Sir Blount's
handwriting, notes referring to events which had happened later than
his supposed death, and other irrefragable proofs that the account
in the newspapers was correct as to the main fact--the comparatively
recent date of Sir Blount's decease.

She looked up, and spoke with the irresponsible helplessness of a
child.

'On reviewing the circumstances, I cannot think how I could have
allowed myself to believe the first tidings!' she said.

'Everybody else believed them, and why should you not have done so?'
said the lawyer.

'How came the will to be permitted to be proved, as there could,
after all, have been no complete evidence?' she asked.  'If I had
been the executrix I would not have attempted it!  As I was not, I
know very little about how the business was pushed through.  In a
very unseemly way, I think.'

'Well, no,' said Mr. Cecil, feeling himself morally called upon to
defend legal procedure from such imputations.  'It was done in the
usual way in all cases where the proof of death is only presumptive.
The evidence, such as it was, was laid before the court by the
applicants, your husband's cousins; and the servants who had been
with him deposed to his death with a particularity that was deemed
sufficient.  Their error was, not that somebody died--for somebody
did die at the time affirmed--but that they mistook one person for
another; the person who died being not Sir Blount Constantine.  The
court was of opinion that the evidence led up to a reasonable
inference that the deceased was actually Sir Blount, and probate was
granted on the strength of it.  As there was a doubt about the exact
day of the month, the applicants were allowed to swear that he died
on or after the date last given of his existence--which, in spite of
their error then, has really come true, now, of course.'

'They little think what they have done to me by being so ready to
swear!' she murmured.

Mr. Cecil, supposing her to allude only to the pecuniary straits in
which she had been prematurely placed by the will taking effect a
year before its due time, said, 'True.  It has been to your
ladyship's loss, and to their gain.  But they will make ample
restitution, no doubt:  and all will be wound up satisfactorily.'

Lady Constantine was far from explaining that this was not her
meaning; and, after some further conversation of a purely technical
nature, Mr. Cecil left her presence.

When she was again unencumbered with the necessity of exhibiting a
proper bearing, the sense that she had greatly suffered in pocket by
the undue haste of the executors weighed upon her mind with a
pressure quite inappreciable beside the greater gravity of her
personal position.  What was her position as legatee to her
situation as a woman?  Her face crimsoned with a flush which she was
almost ashamed to show to the daylight, as she hastily penned the
following note to Swithin at Greenwich--certainly one of the most
informal documents she had ever written.


                                                  'WELLAND,
Thursday.
'O Swithin, my dear Swithin, what I have to tell you is so sad and
so humiliating that I can hardly write it--and yet I must.  Though
we are dearer to each other than all the world besides, and as
firmly united as if we were one, I am not legally your wife!  Sir
Blount did not die till some time after we in England supposed.  The
service must be repeated instantly.  I have not been able to sleep
all night.  I feel so frightened and ashamed that I can scarcely
arrange my thoughts.  The newspapers sent with this will explain, if
you have not seen particulars.  Do come to me as soon as you can,
that we may consult on what to do.  Burn this at once.
                                                  'Your VIVIETTE.'


When the note was despatched she remembered that there was another
hardly less important question to be answered--the proposal of the
Bishop for her hand.  His communication had sunk into nothingness
beside the momentous news that had so greatly distressed her.  The
two replies lay before her--the one she had first written, simply
declining to become Dr. Helmsdale's wife, without giving reasons;
the second, which she had elaborated with so much care on the
previous day, relating in confidential detail the history of her
love for Swithin, their secret marriage, and their hopes for the
future; asking his advice on what their procedure should be to
escape the strictures of a censorious world.  It was the letter she
had barely finished writing when Mr. Cecil's clerk announced news
tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife at all.

This epistle she now destroyed--and with the less reluctance in
knowing that Swithin had been somewhat averse to the confession as
soon as he found that Bishop Helmsdale was also a victim to tender
sentiment concerning her.  The first, in which, at the time of
writing, the suppressio veri was too strong for her conscience, had
now become an honest letter, and sadly folding it she sent the
missive on its way.

The sense of her undefinable position kept her from much repose on
the second night also; but the following morning brought an
unexpected letter from Swithin, written about the same hour as hers
to him, and it comforted her much.

He had seen the account in the papers almost as soon as it had come
to her knowledge, and sent this line to reassure her in the
perturbation she must naturally feel.  She was not to be alarmed at
all.  They two were husband and wife in moral intent and antecedent
belief, and the legal flaw which accident had so curiously uncovered
could be mended in half-an-hour.  He would return on Saturday night
at latest, but as the hour would probably be far advanced, he would
ask her to meet him by slipping out of the house to the tower any
time during service on Sunday morning, when there would be few
persons about likely to observe them.  Meanwhile he might
provisionally state that their best course in the emergency would
be, instead of confessing to anybody that there had already been a
solemnization of marriage between them, to arrange their re-marriage
in as open a manner as possible--as if it were the just-reached
climax of a sudden affection, instead of a harking back to an old
departure--prefacing it by a public announcement in the usual way.

This plan of approaching their second union with all the show and
circumstance of a new thing, recommended itself to her strongly, but
for one objection--that by such a course the wedding could not,
without appearing like an act of unseemly haste, take place so
quickly as she desired for her own moral satisfaction.  It might
take place somewhat early, say in the course of a month or two,
without bringing down upon her the charge of levity; for Sir Blount,
a notoriously unkind husband, had been out of her sight four years,
and in his grave nearly one.  But what she naturally desired was
that there should be no more delay than was positively necessary for
obtaining a new license--two or three days at longest; and in view
of this celerity it was next to impossible to make due preparation
for a wedding of ordinary publicity, performed in her own church,
from her own house, with a feast and amusements for the villagers, a
tea for the school children, a bonfire, and other of those
proclamatory accessories which, by meeting wonder half-way, deprive
it of much of its intensity.  It must be admitted, too, that she
even now shrank from the shock of surprise that would inevitably be
caused by her openly taking for husband such a mere youth of no
position as Swithin still appeared, notwithstanding that in years he
was by this time within a trifle of one-and-twenty.

The straightforward course had, nevertheless, so much to recommend
it, so well avoided the disadvantage of future revelation which a
private repetition of the ceremony would entail, that assuming she
could depend upon Swithin, as she knew she could do, good sense
counselled its serious consideration.

She became more composed at her queer situation:  hour after hour
passed, and the first spasmodic impulse of womanly decorum--not to
let the sun go down upon her present improper state--was quite
controllable.  She could regard the strange contingency that had
arisen with something like philosophy.  The day slipped by:  she
thought of the awkwardness of the accident rather than of its
humiliation; and, loving Swithin now in a far calmer spirit than at
that past date when they had rushed into each other's arms and vowed
to be one for the first time, she ever and anon caught herself
reflecting, 'Were it not that for my honour's sake I must re-marry
him, I should perhaps be a nobler woman in not allowing him to
encumber his bright future by a union with me at all.'

This thought, at first artificially raised, as little more than a
mental exercise, became by stages a genuine conviction; and while
her heart enforced, her reason regretted the necessity of abstaining
from self-sacrifice--the being obliged, despite his curious escape
from the first attempt, to lime Swithin's young wings again solely
for her credit's sake.

However, the deed had to be done; Swithin was to be made legally
hers.  Selfishness in a conjuncture of this sort was excusable, and
even obligatory.  Taking brighter views, she hoped that upon the
whole this yoking of the young fellow with her, a portionless woman
and his senior, would not greatly endanger his career.  In such a
mood night overtook her, and she went to bed conjecturing that
Swithin had by this time arrived in the parish, was perhaps even at
that moment passing homeward beneath her walls, and that in less
than twelve hours she would have met him, have ventilated the secret
which oppressed her, and have satisfactorily arranged with him the
details of their reunion.



XXXIV

Sunday morning came, and complicated her previous emotions by
bringing a new and unexpected shock to mingle with them.  The
postman had delivered among other things an illustrated newspaper,
sent by a hand she did not recognize; and on opening the cover the
sheet that met her eyes filled her with a horror which she could not
express.  The print was one which drew largely on its imagination
for its engravings, and it already contained an illustration of the
death of Sir Blount Constantine.  In this work of art he was
represented as standing with his pistol to his mouth, his brains
being in process of flying up to the roof of his chamber, and his
native princess rushing terror-stricken away to a remote position in
the thicket of palms which neighboured the dwelling.

The crude realism of the picture, possibly harmless enough in its
effect upon others, overpowered and sickened her.  By a curious
fascination she would look at it again and again, till every line of
the engraver's performance seemed really a transcript from what had
happened before his eyes.  With such details fresh in her thoughts
she was going out of the door to make arrangements for confirming,
by repetition, her marriage with another.  No interval was available
for serious reflection on the tragedy, or for allowing the softening
effects of time to operate in her mind.  It was as though her first
husband had died that moment, and she was keeping an appointment
with another in the presence of his corpse.

So revived was the actuality of Sir Blount's recent life and death
by this incident, that the distress of her personal relations with
Swithin was the single force in the world which could have coerced
her into abandoning to him the interval she would fain have set
apart for getting over these new and painful impressions.  Self-pity
for ill-usage afforded her good reasons for ceasing to love Sir
Blount; but he was yet too closely intertwined with her past life to
be destructible on the instant as a memory.

But there was no choice of occasions for her now, and she steadily
waited for the church bells to cease chiming.  At last all was
silent; the surrounding cottagers had gathered themselves within the
walls of the adjacent building.  Tabitha Lark's first voluntary then
droned from the tower window, and Lady Constantine left the garden
in which she had been loitering, and went towards Rings-Hill Speer.

The sense of her situation obscured the morning prospect.  The
country was unusually silent under the intensifying sun, the
songless season of birds having just set in.  Choosing her path amid
the efts that were basking upon the outer slopes of the plantation
she wound her way up the tree-shrouded camp to the wooden cabin in
the centre.

The door was ajar, but on entering she found the place empty.  The
tower door was also partly open; and listening at the foot of the
stairs she heard Swithin above, shifting the telescope and wheeling
round the rumbling dome, apparently in preparation for the next
nocturnal reconnoitre.  There was no doubt that he would descend in
a minute or two to look for her, and not wishing to interrupt him
till he was ready she re-entered the cabin, where she patiently
seated herself among the books and papers that lay scattered about.

She did as she had often done before when waiting there for him;
that is, she occupied her moments in turning over the papers and
examining the progress of his labours.  The notes were mostly
astronomical, of course, and she had managed to keep sufficiently
abreast of him to catch the meaning of a good many of these.  The
litter on the table, however, was somewhat more marked this morning
than usual, as if it had been hurriedly overhauled.  Among the rest
of the sheets lay an open note, and, in the entire confidence that
existed between them, she glanced over and read it as a matter of
course.

It was a most business-like communication, and beyond the address
and date contained only the following words:--


'DEAR SIR,--We beg leave to draw your attention to a letter we
addressed to you on the 26th ult., to which we have not yet been
favoured with a reply.  As the time for payment of the first moiety
of the six hundred pounds per annum settled on you by your late
uncle is now at hand, we should be obliged by your giving directions
as to where and in what manner the money is to be handed over to
you, and shall also be glad to receive any other definite
instructions from you with regard to the future.--We are, dear Sir,
yours faithfully,
                  HANNER AND RAWLES.'

'SWITHIN ST. CLEEVE, Esq.'


An income of six hundred a year for Swithin, whom she had hitherto
understood to be possessed of an annuity of eighty pounds at the
outside, with no prospect of increasing the sum but by hard work!
What could this communication mean?  He whose custom and delight it
was to tell her all his heart, had breathed not a syllable of this
matter to her, though it met the very difficulty towards which their
discussions invariably tended--how to secure for him a competency
that should enable him to establish his pursuits on a wider basis,
and throw himself into more direct communion with the scientific
world.  Quite bewildered by the lack of any explanation she rose
from her seat, and with the note in her hand ascended the winding
tower-steps.

Reaching the upper aperture she perceived him under the dome, moving
musingly about as if he had never been absent an hour, his light
hair frilling out from under the edge of his velvet skull-cap as it
was always wont to do.  No question of marriage seemed to be
disturbing the mind of this juvenile husband of hers.  The primum
mobile of his gravitation was apparently the equatorial telescope
which she had given him, and which he was carefully adjusting by
means of screws and clamps.  Hearing her movements he turned his
head.

'O here you are, my dear Viviette!  I was just beginning to expect
you,' he exclaimed, coming forward.  'I ought to have been looking
out for you, but I have found a little defect here in the
instrument, and I wanted to set it right before evening comes on.
As a rule it is not a good thing to tinker your glasses; but I have
found that the diffraction-rings are not perfect circles.  I learnt
at Greenwich how to correct them--so kind they have been to me
there!--and so I have been loosening the screws and gently shifting
the glass, till I think that I have at last made the illumination
equal all round.  I have so much to tell you about my visit; one
thing is, that the astronomical world is getting quite excited about
the coming Transit of Venus.  There is to be a regular expedition
fitted out.  How I should like to join it!'

He spoke enthusiastically, and with eyes sparkling at the mental
image of the said expedition; and as it was rather gloomy in the
dome he rolled it round on its axis, till the shuttered slit for the
telescope directly faced the morning sun, which thereupon flooded
the concave interior, touching the bright metal-work of the
equatorial, and lighting up her pale, troubled face.

'But Swithin!' she faltered; 'my letter to you--our marriage!'

'O yes, this marriage question,' he added.  'I had not forgotten it,
dear Viviette--or at least only for a few minutes.'

'Can you forget it, Swithin, for a moment?  O how can you!' she said
reproachfully.  'It is such a distressing thing.  It drives away all
my rest!'

'Forgotten is not the word I should have used,' he apologized.
'Temporarily dismissed it from my mind, is all I meant.  The simple
fact is, that the vastness of the field of astronomy reduces every
terrestrial thing to atomic dimensions.  Do not trouble, dearest.
The remedy is quite easy, as I stated in my letter.  We can now be
married in a prosy public way.  Yes, early or late--next week, next
month, six months hence--just as you choose.  Say the word when, and
I will obey.'

The absence of all anxiety or consternation from his face contrasted
strangely with hers, which at last he saw, and, looking at the
writing she held, inquired--

'But what paper have you in your hand?'

'A letter which to me is actually inexplicable,' said she, her
curiosity returning to the letter, and overriding for the instant
her immediate concerns.  'What does this income of six hundred a
year mean?  Why have you never told me about it, dear Swithin? or
does it not refer to you?'

He looked at the note, flushed slightly, and was absolutely unable
to begin his reply at once.

'I did not mean you to see that, Viviette,' he murmured.

'Why not?'

'I thought you had better not, as it does not concern me further
now.  The solicitors are labouring under a mistake in supposing that
it does.  I have to write at once and inform them that the annuity
is not mine to receive.'

'What a strange mystery in your life!' she said, forcing a perplexed
smile.  'Something to balance the tragedy in mine.  I am absolutely
in the dark as to your past history, it seems.  And yet I had
thought you told me everything.'

'I could not tell you that, Viviette, because it would have
endangered our relations--though not in the way you may suppose.
You would have reproved me.  You, who are so generous and noble,
would have forbidden me to do what I did; and I was determined not
to be forbidden.'

'To do what?'

'To marry you.'

'Why should I have forbidden?'

'Must I tell--what I would not?' he said, placing his hands upon her
arms, and looking somewhat sadly at her.  'Well, perhaps as it has
come to this you ought to know all, since it can make no possible
difference to my intentions now.  We are one for ever--legal
blunders notwithstanding; for happily they are quickly reparable--
and this question of a devise from my uncle Jocelyn only concerned
me when I was a single man.'

Thereupon, with obviously no consideration of the possibilities that
were reopened of the nullity of their marriage contract, he related
in detail, and not without misgiving for having concealed them so
long, the events that had occurred on the morning of their wedding-
day; how he had met the postman on his way to Warborne after
dressing in the cabin, and how he had received from him the letter
his dead uncle had confided to his family lawyers, informing him of
the annuity, and of the important request attached--that he should
remain unmarried until his five-and-twentieth year; how in
comparison with the possession of her dear self he had reckoned the
income as nought, abandoned all idea of it there and then, and had
come on to the wedding as if nothing had happened to interrupt for a
moment the working out of their plan; how he had scarcely thought
with any closeness of the circumstances of the case since, until
reminded of them by this note she had seen, and a previous one of a
like sort received from the same solicitors.

'O Swithin! Swithin!' she cried, bursting into tears as she realized
it all, and sinking on the observing-chair; 'I have ruined you! yes,
I have ruined you!'

The young man was dismayed by her unexpected grief, and endeavoured
to soothe her; but she seemed touched by a poignant remorse which
would not be comforted.

'And now,' she continued, as soon as she could speak, 'when you are
once more free, and in a position--actually in a position to claim
the annuity that would be the making of you, I am compelled to come
to you, and beseech you to undo yourself again, merely to save me!'

'Not to save you, Viviette, but to bless me.  You do not ask me to
re-marry; it is not a question of alternatives at all; it is my
straight course.  I do not dream of doing otherwise.  I should be
wretched if you thought for one moment I could entertain the idea of
doing otherwise.'

But the more he said the worse he made the matter.  It was a state
of affairs that would not bear discussion at all, and the
unsophisticated view he took of his course seemed to increase her
responsibility.

'Why did your uncle attach such a cruel condition to his bounty?'
she cried bitterly.  'O, he little thinks how hard he hits me from
the grave--me, who have never done him wrong; and you, too!
Swithin, are you sure that he makes that condition indispensable?
Perhaps he meant that you should not marry beneath you; perhaps he
did not mean to object in such a case as your marrying (forgive me
for saying it) a little above you.'

'There is no doubt that he did not contemplate a case which has led
to such happiness as this has done,' the youth murmured with
hesitation; for though he scarcely remembered a word of his uncle's
letter of advice, he had a dim apprehension that it was couched in
terms alluding specifically to Lady Constantine.

'Are you sure you cannot retain the money, and be my lawful husband
too?' she asked piteously.  'O, what a wrong I am doing you!  I did
not dream that it could be as bad as this.  I knew I was wasting
your time by letting you love me, and hampering your projects; but I
thought there were compensating advantages.  This wrecking of your
future at my hands I did not contemplate.  You are sure there is no
escape?  Have you his letter with the conditions, or the will?  Let
me see the letter in which he expresses his wishes.'

'I assure you it is all as I say,' he pensively returned.  'Even if
I were not legally bound by the conditions I should be morally.'

'But how does he put it?  How does he justify himself in making such
a harsh restriction?  Do let me see the letter, Swithin.  I shall
think it a want of confidence if you do not.  I may discover some
way out of the difficulty if you let me look at the papers.
Eccentric wills can be evaded in all sorts of ways.'

Still he hesitated.  'I would rather you did not see the papers,' he
said.

But she persisted as only a fond woman can.  Her conviction was that
she who, as a woman many years his senior, should have shown her
love for him by guiding him straight into the paths he aimed at, had
blocked his attempted career for her own happiness.  This made her
more intent than ever to find out a device by which, while she still
retained him, he might also retain the life-interest under his
uncle's will.

Her entreaties were at length too potent for his resistance.
Accompanying her downstairs to the cabin, he opened the desk from
which the other papers had been taken, and against his better
judgment handed her the ominous communication of Jocelyn St. Cleeve
which lay in the envelope just as it had been received three-
quarters of a year earlier.

'Don't read it now,' he said.  'Don't spoil our meeting by entering
into a subject which is virtually past and done with.  Take it with
you, and look it over at your leisure--merely as an old curiosity,
remember, and not as a still operative document.  I have almost
forgotten what the contents are, beyond the general advice and
stipulation that I was to remain a bachelor.'

'At any rate,' she rejoined, 'do not reply to the note I have seen
from the solicitors till I have read this also.'

He promised.  'But now about our public wedding,' he said.  'Like
certain royal personages, we shall have had the religious rite and
the civil contract performed on independent occasions.  Will you fix
the day?  When is it to be? and shall it take place at a registrar's
office, since there is no necessity for having the sacred part over
again?'

'I'll think,' replied she.  'I'll think it over.'

'And let me know as soon as you can how you decide to proceed.'

'I will write to-morrow, or come.  I do not know what to say now.  I
cannot forget how I am wronging you.  This is almost more than I can
bear!'

To divert her mind he began talking about Greenwich Observatory, and
the great instruments therein, and how he had been received by the
astronomers, and the details of the expedition to observe the
Transit of Venus, together with many other subjects of the sort, to
which she had not power to lend her attention.

'I must reach home before the people are out of church,' she at
length said wearily.  'I wish nobody to know I have been out this
morning.'  And forbidding Swithin to cross into the open in her
company she left him on the edge of the isolated plantation, which
had latterly known her tread so well.



XXXV

Lady Constantine crossed the field and the park beyond, and found on
passing the church that the congregation was still within.  There
was no hurry for getting indoors, the open windows enabling her to
hear that Mr. Torkingham had only just given out his text.  So
instead of entering the house she went through the garden-door to
the old bowling-green, and sat down in the arbour that Louis had
occupied when he overheard the interview between Swithin and the
Bishop.  Not until then did she find courage to draw out the letter
and papers relating to the bequest, which Swithin in a critical
moment had handed to her.

Had he been ever so little older he would not have placed that
unconsidered confidence in Viviette which had led him to give way to
her curiosity.  But the influence over him which eight or nine
outnumbering years lent her was immensely increased by her higher
position and wider experiences, and he had yielded the point, as he
yielded all social points; while the same conditions exempted him
from any deep consciousness that it was his duty to protect her even
from herself.

The preamble of Dr. St. Cleeve's letter, in which he referred to his
pleasure at hearing of the young man's promise as an astronomer,
disturbed her not at all--indeed, somewhat prepossessed her in
favour of the old gentleman who had written it.  The first item of
what he called 'unfavourable news,' namely, the allusion to the
inadequacy of Swithin's income to the wants of a scientific man,
whose lines of work were not calculated to produce pecuniary
emolument for many years, deepened the cast of her face to concern.
She reached the second item of the so-called unfavourable news; and
her face flushed as she read how the doctor had learnt 'that there
was something in your path worse than narrow means, and that
something is a woman.'

'To save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads,' she read on,
'I take the preventive measures entailed below.'

And then followed the announcement of the 600 pounds a year settled
on the youth for life, on the single condition that he remained
unmarried till the age of twenty-five--just as Swithin had explained
to her.  She next learnt that the bequest was for a definite object-
-that he might have resources sufficient to enable him to travel in
an inexpensive way, and begin a study of the southern
constellations, which, according to the shrewd old man's judgment,
were a mine not so thoroughly worked as the northern, and therefore
to be recommended.  This was followed by some sentences which hit
her in the face like a switch:--

'The only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation.
. . .  Swithin St. Cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your
father did.  If your studies are to be worth anything, believe me
they must be carried on without the help of a woman.  Avoid her, and
every one of the sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing.
Eschew all of that sort for many a year yet.  Moreover, I say, the
lady of your acquaintance avoid in particular. . . .  She has, in
addition to her original disqualification as a companion for you
(that is, that of sex), these two special drawbacks:  she is much
older than yourself--'

Lady Constantine's indignant flush forsook her, and pale despair
succeeded in its stead.  Alas, it was true.  Handsome, and in her
prime, she might be; but she was too old for Swithin!

'And she is so impoverished. . . .  Beyond this, frankly, I don't
think well of her.  I don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a
man younger than herself. . . .  To care to be the first fancy of a
young fellow like you shows no great common sense in her.  If she
were worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate
with a youth in your unassured position, to say no more.'
(Viviette's face by this time tingled hot again.)  'She is old
enough to know that a liaison with her may, and almost certainly
would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would
be preposterous--unless she is a complete fool; and in that case
there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her
few senses.

'A woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do
nothing to hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in
your way most certainly will.  Yet I hear that she professes a great
anxiety on this same future of yours as a physicist.  The best way
in which she can show the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you
to yourself.'

Leaving him to himself!  She paled again, as if chilled by a
conviction that in this the old man was right.

'She'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her
acquaintance, and make you appear ridiculous by announcing them
before they are matured.  If you attempt to study with a woman,
you'll be ruled by her to entertain fancies instead of theories,
air-castles instead of intentions, qualms instead of opinions,
sickly prepossessions instead of reasoned conclusions. . . .

'An experienced woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment
when he is endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little
less than committing a crime.'


Thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed.  The
flushes of indignation which had passed over her, as she gathered
this man's opinion of herself, combined with flushes of grief and
shame when she considered that Swithin--her dear Swithin--was
perfectly acquainted with this cynical view of her nature; that,
reject it as he might, and as he unquestionably did, such thoughts
of her had been implanted in him, and lay in him.  Stifled as they
were, they lay in him like seeds too deep for germination, which
accident might some day bring near the surface and aerate into life.

The humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure;
the mortification--she had known nothing like it till now.  But this
was not all.  There succeeded a feeling in comparison with which
resentment and mortification were happy moods--a miserable
conviction that this old man who spoke from the grave was not
altogether wrong in his speaking; that he was only half wrong; that
he was, perhaps, virtually right.  Only those persons who are by
nature affected with that ready esteem for others' positions which
induces an undervaluing of their own, fully experience the deep
smart of such convictions against self--the wish for annihilation
that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that at
length we, our best and firmest friend, cease to believe in our
cause.

Viviette could hear the people coming out of church on the other
side of the garden wall.  Their footsteps and their cheerful voices
died away; the bell rang for lunch; and she went in.  But her life
during that morning and afternoon was wholly introspective.  Knowing
the full circumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she
had never before known them--ought she to make herself the legal
wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any
price to him? such was the formidable question which Lady
Constantine propounded to her startled understanding.  As a
subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her charity at home,
there was no doubt that she ought.  Save Thyself was sound Old
Testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the New.
But was there a line of conduct which transcended mere self-
preservation? and would it not be an excellent thing to put it in
practice now?

That she had wronged St. Cleeve by marrying him--that she would
wrong him infinitely more by completing the marriage--there was, in
her opinion, no doubt.  She in her experience had sought out him in
his inexperience, and had led him like a child.  She remembered--as
if it had been her fault, though it was in fact only her misfortune-
-that she had been the one to go for the license and take up
residence in the parish in which they were wedded.  He was now just
one-and-twenty.  Without her, he had all the world before him, six
hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a road to fame as he
should choose:  with her, this story was negatived.

No money from his uncle; no power of advancement; but a bondage with
a woman whose disparity of years, though immaterial just now, would
operate in the future as a wet blanket upon his social ambitions;
and that content with life as it was which she had noticed more than
once in him latterly, a content imperilling his scientific spirit by
abstracting his zeal for progress.

It was impossible, in short, to blind herself to the inference that
marriage with her had not benefited him.  Matters might improve in
the future; but to take upon herself the whole liability of
Swithin's life, as she would do by depriving him of the help his
uncle had offered, was a fearful responsibility.  How could she, an
unendowed woman, replace such assistance?  His recent visit to
Greenwich, which had momentarily revived that zest for his pursuit
that was now less constant than heretofore, should by rights be
supplemented by other such expeditions.  It would be true
benevolence not to deprive him of means to continue them, so as to
keep his ardour alive, regardless of the cost to herself.

It could be done.  By the extraordinary favour of a unique accident
she had now an opportunity of redeeming Swithin's seriously
compromised future, and restoring him to a state no worse than his
first.  His annuity could be enjoyed by him, his travels undertaken,
his studies pursued, his high vocation initiated, by one little
sacrifice--that of herself.  She only had to refuse to legalize
their marriage, to part from him for ever, and all would be well
with him thenceforward.  The pain to him would after all be but
slight, whatever it might be to his wretched Viviette.

The ineptness of retaining him at her side lay not only in the fact
itself of injury to him, but in the likelihood of his living to see
it as such, and reproaching her for selfishness in not letting him
go in this unprecedented opportunity for correcting a move proved to
be false.  He wished to examine the southern heavens--perhaps his
uncle's letter was the father of the wish--and there was no telling
what good might not result to mankind at large from his exploits
there.  Why should she, to save her narrow honour, waste the wide
promise of his ability?

That in immolating herself by refusing him, and leaving him free to
work wonders for the good of his fellow-creatures, she would in all
probability add to the sum of human felicity, consoled her by its
breadth as an idea even while it tortured her by making herself the
scapegoat or single unit on whom the evil would fall.  Ought a
possibly large number, Swithin included, to remain unbenefited
because the one individual to whom his release would be an injury
chanced to be herself?  Love between man and woman, which in Homer,
Moses, and other early exhibitors of life, is mere desire, had for
centuries past so far broadened as to include sympathy and
friendship; surely it should in this advanced stage of the world
include benevolence also.  If so, it was her duty to set her young
man free.

Thus she laboured, with a generosity more worthy even than its
object, to sink her love for her own decorum in devotion to the
world in general, and to Swithin in particular.  To counsel her
activities by her understanding, rather than by her emotions as
usual, was hard work for a tender woman; but she strove hard, and
made advance.  The self-centred attitude natural to one in her
situation was becoming displaced by the sympathetic attitude, which,
though it had to be artificially fostered at first, gave her, by
degrees, a certain sweet sense that she was rising above self-love.
That maternal element which had from time to time evinced itself in
her affection for the youth, and was imparted by her superior
ripeness in experience and years, appeared now again, as she drew
nearer the resolve not to secure propriety in her own social
condition at the expense of this youth's earthly utility.

Unexpectedly grand fruits are sometimes forced forth by harsh
pruning.  The illiberal letter of Swithin's uncle was suggesting to
Lady Constantine an altruism whose thoroughness would probably have
amazed that queer old gentleman into a withdrawal of the conditions
that had induced it.  To love St. Cleeve so far better than herself
as this was to surpass the love of women as conventionally
understood, and as mostly existing.

Before, however, clinching her decision by any definite step she
worried her little brain by devising every kind of ingenious scheme,
in the hope of lighting on one that might show her how that decision
could be avoided with the same good result.  But to secure for him
the advantages offered, and to retain him likewise; reflection only
showed it to be impossible.

Yet to let him go FOR EVER was more than she could endure, and at
length she jumped at an idea which promised some sort of improvement
on that design.  She would propose that reunion should not be
entirely abandoned, but simply postponed--namely, till after his
twenty-fifth birthday--when he might be her husband without, at any
rate, the loss to him of the income.  By this time he would
approximate to a man's full judgment, and that painful aspect of her
as one who had deluded his raw immaturity would have passed for
ever.

The plan somewhat appeased her disquieted honour.  To let a marriage
sink into abeyance for four or five years was not to nullify it; and
though she would leave it to him to move its substantiation at the
end of that time, without present stipulations, she had not much
doubt upon the issue.

The clock struck five.  This silent mental debate had occupied her
whole afternoon.  Perhaps it would not have ended now but for an
unexpected incident--the entry of her brother Louis.  He came into
the room where she was sitting, or rather writhing, and after a few
words to explain how he had got there and about the mistake in the
date of Sir Blount's death, he walked up close to her.  His next
remarks were apologetic in form, but in essence they were bitterness
itself.

'Viviette,' he said, 'I am sorry for my hasty words to you when I
last left this house.  I readily withdraw them.  My suspicions took
a wrong direction.  I think now that I know the truth.  You have
been even madder than I supposed!'

'In what way?' she asked distantly.

'I lately thought that unhappy young man was only your too-favoured
lover.'

'You thought wrong:  he is not.'

'He is not--I believe you--for he is more.  I now am persuaded that
he is your lawful husband.  Can you deny it!'

'I can.'

'On your sacred word!'

'On my sacred word he is not that either.'

'Thank heaven for that assurance!' said Louis, exhaling a breath of
relief.  'I was not so positive as I pretended to be--but I wanted
to know the truth of this mystery.  Since you are not fettered to
him in that way I care nothing.'

Louis turned away; and that afforded her an opportunity for leaving
the room.  Those few words were the last grains that had turned the
balance, and settled her doom.

She would let Swithin go.  All the voices in her world seemed to
clamour for that consummation.  The morning's mortification, the
afternoon's benevolence, and the evening's instincts of evasion had
joined to carry the point.

Accordingly she sat down, and wrote to Swithin a summary of the
thoughts above detailed.

'We shall separate,' she concluded.  'You to obey your uncle's
orders and explore the southern skies; I to wait as one who can
implicitly trust you.  Do not see me again till the years have
expired.  You will find me still the same.  I am your wife through
all time; the letter of the law is not needed to reassert it at
present; while the absence of the letter secures your fortune.'

Nothing can express what it cost Lady Constantine to marshal her
arguments; but she did it, and vanquished self-comfort by a sense of
the general expediency.  It may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the
only ignoble reason which might have dictated such a step was non-
existent; that is to say, a serious decline in her affection.
Tenderly she had loved the youth at first, and tenderly she loved
him now, as time and her after-conduct proved.

Women the most delicate get used to strange moral situations.  Eve
probably regained her normal sweet composure about a week after the
Fall.  On first learning of her anomalous position Lady Constantine
had blushed hot, and her pure instincts had prompted her to legalize
her marriage without a moment's delay.  Heaven and earth were to be
moved at once to effect it.  Day after day had passed; her union had
remained unsecured, and the idea of its nullity had gradually ceased
to be strange to her; till it became of little account beside her
bold resolve for the young man's sake.



XXXVI

The immediate effect upon St. Cleeve of the receipt of her well-
reasoned argument for retrocession was, naturally, a bitter attack
upon himself for having been guilty of such cruel carelessness as to
leave in her way the lawyer's letter that had first made her aware
of his uncle's provision for him.  Immature as he was, he could
realize Viviette's position sufficiently well to perceive what the
poor lady must suffer at having suddenly thrust upon her the
responsibility of repairing her own situation as a wife by ruining
his as a legatee.  True, it was by the purest inadvertence that his
pending sacrifice of means had been discovered; but he should have
taken special pains to render such a mishap impossible.  If on the
first occasion, when a revelation might have been made with
impunity, he would not put it in the power of her good nature to
relieve his position by refusing him, he should have shown double
care not to do so now, when she could not exercise that benevolence
without the loss of honour.

With a young man's inattention to issues he had not considered how
sharp her feelings as a woman must be in this contingency.  It had
seemed the easiest thing in the world to remedy the defect in their
marriage, and therefore nothing to be anxious about.  And in his
innocence of any thought of appropriating the bequest by taking
advantage of the loophole in his matrimonial bond, he undervalued
the importance of concealing the existence of that bequest.

The looming fear of unhappiness between them revived in Swithin the
warm emotions of their earlier acquaintance.  Almost before the sun
had set he hastened to Welland House in search of her.  The air was
disturbed by stiff summer blasts, productive of windfalls and
premature descents of leafage.  It was an hour when unripe apples
shower down in orchards, and unbrowned chestnuts descend in their
husks upon the park glades.  There was no help for it this afternoon
but to call upon her in a direct manner, regardless of suspicions.
He was thunderstruck when, while waiting in the full expectation of
being admitted to her presence, the answer brought back to him was
that she was unable to see him.

This had never happened before in the whole course of their
acquaintance.  But he knew what it meant, and turned away with a
vague disquietude.  He did not know that Lady Constantine was just
above his head, listening to his movements with the liveliest
emotions, and, while praying for him to go, longing for him to
insist on seeing her and spoil all.  But the faintest symptom being
always sufficient to convince him of having blundered, he
unwittingly took her at her word, and went rapidly away.

However, he called again the next day, and she, having gained
strength by one victory over herself, was enabled to repeat her
refusal with greater ease.  Knowing this to be the only course by
which her point could be maintained, she clung to it with strenuous
and religious pertinacity.

Thus immured and self-controlling she passed a week.  Her brother,
though he did not live in the house (preferring the nearest
watering-place at this time of the year), was continually coming
there; and one day he happened to be present when she denied herself
to Swithin for the third time.  Louis, who did not observe the tears
in her eyes, was astonished and delighted:  she was coming to her
senses at last.  Believing now that there had been nothing more
between them than a too-plainly shown partiality on her part, he
expressed his commendation of her conduct to her face.  At this,
instead of owning to its advantage also, her tears burst forth
outright.

Not knowing what to make of this, Louis said--

'Well, I am simply upholding you in your course.'

'Yes, yes; I know it!' she cried.  'And it is my deliberately chosen
course.  I wish he--Swithin St. Cleeve--would go on his travels at
once, and leave the place!  Six hundred a year has been left him for
travel and study of the southern constellations; and I wish he would
use it.  You might represent the advantage to him of the course if
you cared to.'

Louis thought he could do no better than let Swithin know this as
soon as possible.  Accordingly when St. Cleeve was writing in the
hut the next day he heard the crackle of footsteps over the fir-
needles outside, and jumped up, supposing them to be hers; but, to
his disappointment, it was her brother who appeared at the door.

'Excuse my invading the hermitage, St. Cleeve,' he said in his
careless way, 'but I have heard from my sister of your good
fortune.'

'My good fortune?'

'Yes, in having an opportunity for roving; and with a traveller's
conceit I couldn't help coming to give you the benefit of my
experience.  When do you start?'

'I have not formed any plan as yet.  Indeed, I had not quite been
thinking of going.'

Louis stared.

'Not going?  Then I may have been misinformed.  What I have heard is
that a good uncle has kindly bequeathed you a sufficient income to
make a second Isaac Newton of you, if you only use it as he
directs.'

Swithin breathed quickly, but said nothing.

'If you have not decided so to make use of it, let me implore you,
as your friend, and one nearly old enough to be your father, to
decide at once.  Such a chance does not happen to a scientific youth
once in a century.'

'Thank you for your good advice--for it is good in itself, I know,'
said Swithin, in a low voice.  'But has Lady Constantine spoken of
it at all?'

'She thinks as I do.'

'She has spoken to you on the subject?'

'Certainly.  More than that; it is at her request--though I did not
intend to say so--that I come to speak to you about it now.'

'Frankly and plainly,' said Swithin, his voice trembling with a
compound of scientific and amatory emotion that defies definition,
'does she say seriously that she wishes me to go?'

'She does.'

'Then go I will,' replied Swithin firmly.  'I have been fortunate
enough to interest some leading astronomers, including the
Astronomer Royal; and in a letter received this morning I learn that
the use of the Cape Observatory has been offered me for any southern
observations I may wish to make.  This offer I will accept.  Will
you kindly let Lady Constantine know this, since she is interested
in my welfare?'

Louis promised, and when he was gone Swithin looked blankly at his
own situation, as if he could scarcely believe in its reality.  Her
letter to him, then, had been deliberately written; she meant him to
go.

But he was determined that none of those misunderstandings which
ruin the happiness of lovers should be allowed to operate in the
present case.  He would see her, if he slept under her walls all
night to do it, and would hear the order to depart from her own
lips.  This unexpected stand she was making for his interests was
winning his admiration to such a degree as to be in danger of
defeating the very cause it was meant to subserve.  A woman like
this was not to be forsaken in a hurry.  He wrote two lines, and
left the note at the house with his own hand.


                                         'THE CABIN, RINGS-HILL,
                                                       July 7th.
'DEAREST VIVIETTE,--If you insist, I will go.  But letter-writing
will not do.  I must have the command from your own two lips,
otherwise I shall not stir.  I am here every evening at seven.  Can
you come?--S.'


This note, as fate would have it, reached her hands in the single
hour of that week when she was in a mood to comply with his request,
just when moved by a reactionary emotion after dismissing Swithin.
She went upstairs to the window that had so long served purposes of
this kind, and signalled 'Yes.'

St. Cleeve soon saw the answer she had given and watched her
approach from the tower as the sunset drew on.  The vivid
circumstances of his life at this date led him ever to remember the
external scenes in which they were set.  It was an evening of
exceptional irradiations, and the west heaven gleamed like a foundry
of all metals common and rare.  The clouds were broken into a
thousand fragments, and the margin of every fragment shone.
Foreseeing the disadvantage and pain to her of maintaining a resolve
under the pressure of a meeting, he vowed not to urge her by word or
sign; to put the question plainly and calmly, and to discuss it on a
reasonable basis only, like the philosophers they assumed themselves
to be.

But this intention was scarcely adhered to in all its integrity.
She duly appeared on the edge of the field, flooded with the
metallic radiance that marked the close of this day; whereupon he
quickly descended the steps, and met her at the cabin door.  They
entered it together.

As the evening grew darker and darker he listened to her reasoning,
which was precisely a repetition of that already sent him by letter,
and by degrees accepted her decision, since she would not revoke it.
Time came for them to say good-bye, and then--

     'He turn'd and saw the terror in her eyes,
      That yearn'd upon him, shining in such wise
      As a star midway in the midnight fix'd.'

It was the misery of her own condition that showed forth, hitherto
obscured by her ardour for ameliorating his.  They closed together,
and kissed each other as though the emotion of their whole year-and-
half's acquaintance had settled down upon that moment.

'I won't go away from you!' said Swithin huskily.  'Why did you
propose it for an instant?'

Thus the nearly ended interview was again prolonged, and Viviette
yielded to all the passion of her first union with him.  Time,
however, was merciless, and the hour approached midnight, and she
was compelled to depart.  Swithin walked with her towards the house,
as he had walked many times before, believing that all was now
smooth again between them, and caring, it must be owned, very little
for his fame as an expositor of the southern constellations just
then.

When they reached the silent house he said what he had not ventured
to say before, 'Fix the day--you have decided that it is to be soon,
and that I am not to go?'

But youthful Swithin was far, very far, from being up to the fond
subtlety of Viviette this evening.  'I cannot decide here,' she said
gently, releasing herself from his arm; 'I will speak to you from
the window.  Wait for me.'

She vanished; and he waited.  It was a long time before the window
opened, and he was not aware that, with her customary complication
of feeling, she had knelt for some time inside the room before
looking out.

'Well?' said he.

'It cannot be,' she answered.  'I cannot ruin you.  But the day
after you are five-and-twenty our marriage shall be confirmed, if
you choose.'

'O, my Viviette, how is this!' he cried.

'Swithin, I have not altered.  But I feared for my powers, and could
not tell you whilst I stood by your side.  I ought not to have given
way as I did to-night.  Take the bequest, and go.  You are too
young--to be fettered--I should have thought of it!  Do not
communicate with me for at least a year:  it is imperative.  Do not
tell me your plans.  If we part, we do part.  I have vowed a vow not
to further obstruct the course you had decided on before you knew me
and my puling ways; and by Heaven's help I'll keep that vow. . . .
Now go.  These are the parting words of your own Viviette!'

Swithin, who was stable as a giant in all that appertained to nature
and life outside humanity, was a mere pupil in domestic matters.  He
was quite awed by her firmness, and looked vacantly at her for a
time, till she closed the window.  Then he mechanically turned, and
went, as she had commanded.



XXXVII

A week had passed away.  It had been a time of cloudy mental weather
to Swithin and Viviette, but the only noteworthy fact about it was
that what had been planned to happen therein had actually taken
place.  Swithin had gone from Welland, and would shortly go from
England.

She became aware of it by a note that he posted to her on his way
through Warborne.  There was much evidence of haste in the note, and
something of reserve.  The latter she could not understand, but it
might have been obvious enough if she had considered.

On the morning of his departure he had sat on the edge of his bed,
the sunlight streaming through the early mist, the house-martens
scratching the back of the ceiling over his head as they scrambled
out from the roof for their day's gnat-chasing, the thrushes
cracking snails on the garden stones outside with the noisiness of
little smiths at work on little anvils.  The sun, in sending its
rods of yellow fire into his room, sent, as he suddenly thought,
mental illumination with it.  For the first time, as he sat there,
it had crossed his mind that Viviette might have reasons for this
separation which he knew not of.  There might be family reasons--
mysterious blood necessities which are said to rule members of old
musty-mansioned families, and are unknown to other classes of
society--and they may have been just now brought before her by her
brother Louis on the condition that they were religiously concealed.

The idea that some family skeleton, like those he had read of in
memoirs, had been unearthed by Louis, and held before her terrified
understanding as a matter which rendered Swithin's departure, and
the neutralization of the marriage, no less indispensable to them
than it was an advantage to himself, seemed a very plausible one to
Swithin just now.  Viviette might have taken Louis into her
confidence at last, for the sake of his brotherly advice.  Swithin
knew that of her own heart she would never wish to get rid of him;
but coerced by Louis, might she not have grown to entertain views of
its expediency?  Events made such a supposition on St. Cleeve's part
as natural as it was inaccurate, and, conjoined with his own
excitement at the thought of seeing a new heaven overhead,
influenced him to write but the briefest and most hurried final note
to her, in which he fully obeyed her sensitive request that he would
omit all reference to his plans.  These at the last moment had been
modified to fall in with the winter expedition formerly mentioned,
to observe the Transit of Venus at a remote southern station.

The business being done, and himself fairly plunged into the
preliminaries of an important scientific pilgrimage, Swithin
acquired that lightness of heart which most young men feel in
forsaking old love for new adventure, no matter how charming may be
the girl they leave behind them.  Moreover, in the present case, the
man was endowed with that schoolboy temperament which does not see,
or at least consider with much curiosity, the effect of a given
scheme upon others than himself.  The bearing upon Lady Constantine
of what was an undoubted predicament for any woman, was forgotten in
his feeling that she had done a very handsome and noble thing for
him, and that he was therefore bound in honour to make the most of
it.

His going had resulted in anything but lightness of heart for her.
Her sad fancy could, indeed, indulge in dreams of her yellow-haired
laddie without that formerly besetting fear that those dreams would
prompt her to actions likely to distract and weight him.  She was
wretched on her own account, relieved on his.  She no longer stood
in the way of his advancement, and that was enough.  For herself she
could live in retirement, visit the wood, the old camp, the column,
and, like OEnone, think of the life they had led there--

     'Mournful OEnone, wandering forlorn
      Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills,'

leaving it entirely to his goodness whether he would come and claim
her in the future, or desert her for ever.

She was diverted for a time from these sad performances by a letter
which reached her from Bishop Helmsdale.  To see his handwriting
again on an envelope, after thinking so anxiously of making a
father-confessor of him, started her out of her equanimity.  She
speedily regained it, however, when she read his note.


                                           'THE PALACE, MELCHESTER,
                                                     July 30, 18--.
MY DEAR LADY CONSTANTINE,--I am shocked and grieved that, in the
strange dispensation of things here below, my offer of marriage
should have reached you almost simultaneously with the intelligence
that your widowhood had been of several months less duration than
you and I, and the world, had supposed.  I can quite understand
that, viewed from any side, the news must have shaken and disturbed
you; and your unequivocal refusal to entertain any thought of a new
alliance at such a moment was, of course, intelligible, natural, and
praiseworthy.  At present I will say no more beyond expressing a
hope that you will accept my assurances that I was quite ignorant of
the news at the hour of writing, and a sincere desire that in due
time, and as soon as you have recovered your equanimity, I may be
allowed to renew my proposal.--I am, my dear Lady Constantine, yours
ever sincerely,
                    C. MELCHESTER.'


She laid the letter aside, and thought no more about it, beyond a
momentary meditation on the errors into which people fall in
reasoning from actions to motives.  Louis, who was now again with
her, became in due course acquainted with the contents of the
letter, and was satisfied with the promising position in which
matters seemingly stood all round.

Lady Constantine went her mournful ways as she had planned to do,
her chief resort being the familiar column, where she experienced
the unutterable melancholy of seeing two carpenters dismantle the
dome of its felt covering, detach its ribs, and clear away the
enclosure at the top till everything stood as it had stood before
Swithin had been known to the place.  The equatorial had already
been packed in a box, to be in readiness if he should send for it
from abroad.  The cabin, too, was in course of demolition, such
having been his directions, acquiesced in by her, before he started.
Yet she could not bear the idea that these structures, so germane to
the events of their romance, should be removed as if removed for
ever.  Going to the men she bade them store up the materials intact,
that they might be re-erected if desired.  She had the junctions of
the timbers marked with figures, the boards numbered, and the
different sets of screws tied up in independent papers for
identification.  She did not hear the remarks of the workmen when
she had gone, to the effect that the young man would as soon think
of buying a halter for himself as come back and spy at the moon from
Rings-Hill Speer, after seeing the glories of other nations and the
gold and jewels that were found there, or she might have been more
unhappy than she was.

On returning from one of these walks to the column a curious
circumstance occurred.  It was evening, and she was coming as usual
down through the sighing plantation, choosing her way between the
ramparts of the camp towards the outlet giving upon the field, when
suddenly in a dusky vista among the fir-trunks she saw, or thought
she saw, a golden-haired, toddling child.  The child moved a step or
two, and vanished behind a tree.  Lady Constantine, fearing it had
lost its way, went quickly to the spot, searched, and called aloud.
But no child could she perceive or hear anywhere around.  She
returned to where she had stood when first beholding it, and looked
in the same direction, but nothing reappeared.  The only object at
all resembling a little boy or girl was the upper tuft of a bunch of
fern, which had prematurely yellowed to about the colour of a fair
child's hair, and waved occasionally in the breeze.  This, however,
did not sufficiently explain the phenomenon, and she returned to
make inquiries of the man whom she had left at work, removing the
last traces of Swithin's cabin.  But he had gone with her departure
and the approach of night.  Feeling an indescribable dread she
retraced her steps, and hastened homeward doubting, yet half
believing, what she had seemed to see, and wondering if her
imagination had played her some trick.

The tranquil mournfulness of her night of solitude terminated in a
most unexpected manner.

The morning after the above-mentioned incident Lady Constantine,
after meditating a while, arose with a strange personal conviction
that bore curiously on the aforesaid hallucination.  She realized a
condition of things that she had never anticipated, and for a moment
the discovery of her state so overwhelmed her that she thought she
must die outright.  In her terror she said she had sown the wind to
reap the whirlwind.  Then the instinct of self-preservation flamed
up in her like a fire.  Her altruism in subjecting her self-love to
benevolence, and letting Swithin go away from her, was demolished by
the new necessity, as if it had been a gossamer web.

There was no resisting or evading the spontaneous plan of action
which matured in her mind in five minutes.  Where was Swithin? how
could he be got at instantly?--that was her ruling thought.  She
searched about the room for his last short note, hoping, yet
doubting, that its contents were more explicit on his intended
movements than the few meagre syllables which alone she could call
to mind.  She could not find the letter in her room, and came
downstairs to Louis as pale as a ghost.

He looked up at her, and with some concern said, 'What's the
matter?'

'I am searching everywhere for a letter--a note from Mr. St. Cleeve-
-just a few words telling me when the Occidental sails, that I think
he goes in.'

'Why do you want that unimportant document?'

'It is of the utmost importance that I should know whether he has
actually sailed or not!' said she in agonized tones.  'Where CAN
that letter be?'

Louis knew where that letter was, for having seen it on her desk he
had, without reading it, torn it up and thrown it into the waste-
paper basket, thinking the less that remained to remind her of the
young philosopher the better.

'I destroyed it,' he said.

'O Louis! why did you?' she cried.  'I am going to follow him; I
think it best to do so; and I want to know if he is gone--and now
the date is lost!'

'Going to run after St. Cleeve?  Absurd!'

'Yes, I am!' she said with vehement firmness.  'I must see him; I
want to speak to him as soon as possible.'

'Good Lord, Viviette!  Are you mad?'

'O what was the date of that ship!  But it cannot be helped.  I
start at once for Southampton.  I have made up my mind to do it.  He
was going to his uncle's solicitors in the North first; then he was
coming back to Southampton.  He cannot have sailed yet.'

'I believe he has sailed,' muttered Louis sullenly.

She did not wait to argue with him, but returned upstairs, where she
rang to tell Green to be ready with the pony to drive her to
Warborne station in a quarter of an hour.



XXXVIII

Viviette's determination to hamper Swithin no longer had led her, as
has been shown, to balk any weak impulse to entreat his return, by
forbidding him to furnish her with his foreign address.  His ready
disposition, his fear that there might be other reasons behind, made
him obey her only too literally.  Thus, to her terror and dismay,
she had placed a gratuitous difficulty in the way of her present
endeavour.

She was ready before Green, and urged on that factotum so wildly as
to leave him no time to change his corduroys and 'skitty-boots' in
which he had been gardening; he therefore turned himself into a
coachman as far down as his waist merely--clapping on his proper
coat, hat, and waistcoat, and wrapping a rug over his horticultural
half below.  In this compromise he appeared at the door, mounted,
and reins in hand.

Seeing how sad and determined Viviette was, Louis pitied her so far
as to put nothing in the way of her starting, though he forbore to
help her.  He thought her conduct sentimental foolery, the outcome
of mistaken pity and 'such a kind of gain-giving as would trouble a
woman;' and he decided that it would be better to let this mood burn
itself out than to keep it smouldering by obstruction.

'Do you remember the date of his sailing?' she said finally, as the
pony-carriage turned to drive off.

'He sails on the 25th, that is, to-day.  But it may not be till late
in the evening.'

With this she started, and reached Warborne in time for the up-
train.  How much longer than it really is a long journey can seem to
be, was fully learnt by the unhappy Viviette that day.  The
changeful procession of country seats past which she was dragged,
the names and memories of their owners, had no points of interest
for her now.  She reached Southampton about midday, and drove
straight to the docks.

On approaching the gates she was met by a crowd of people and
vehicles coming out--men, women, children, porters, police, cabs,
and carts.  The Occidental had just sailed.

The adverse intelligence came upon her with such odds after her
morning's tension that she could scarcely crawl back to the cab
which had brought her.  But this was not a time to succumb.  As she
had no luggage she dismissed the man, and, without any real
consciousness of what she was doing, crept away and sat down on a
pile of merchandise.

After long thinking her case assumed a more hopeful complexion.
Much might probably be done towards communicating with him in the
time at her command.  The obvious step to this end, which she should
have thought of sooner, would be to go to his grandmother in Welland
Bottom, and there obtain his itinerary in detail--no doubt well
known to Mrs. Martin.  There was no leisure for her to consider
longer if she would be home again that night; and returning to the
railway she waited on a seat without eating or drinking till a train
was ready to take her back.

By the time she again stood in Warborne the sun rested his chin upon
the meadows, and enveloped the distant outline of the Rings-Hill
column in his humid rays.  Hiring an empty fly that chanced to be at
the station she was driven through the little town onward to
Welland, which she approached about eight o'clock.  At her request
the man set her down at the entrance to the park, and when he was
out of sight, instead of pursuing her way to the House, she went
along the high road in the direction of Mrs. Martin's.

Dusk was drawing on, and the bats were wheeling over the green basin
called Welland Bottom by the time she arrived; and had any other
errand instigated her call she would have postponed it till the
morrow.  Nobody responded to her knock, but she could hear footsteps
going hither and thither upstairs, and dull noises as of articles
moved from their places.  She knocked again and again, and
ultimately the door was opened by Hannah as usual.

'I could make nobody hear,' said Lady Constantine, who was so weary
she could scarcely stand.

'I am very sorry, my lady,' said Hannah, slightly awed on beholding
her visitor.  'But we was a putting poor Mr. Swithin's room to
rights, now that he is, as a woman may say, dead and buried to us;
so we didn't hear your ladyship.  I'll call Mrs. Martin at once.
She is up in the room that used to be his work-room.'

Here Hannah's voice implied moist eyes, and Lady Constantine's
instantly overflowed.

'No, I'll go up to her,' said Viviette; and almost in advance of
Hannah she passed up the shrunken ash stairs.

The ebbing light was not enough to reveal to Mrs. Martin's aged gaze
the personality of her visitor, till Hannah explained.

'I'll get a light, my lady,' said she.

'No, I would rather not.  What are you doing, Mrs. Martin?'

'Well, the poor misguided boy is gone--and he's gone for good to me!
I am a woman of over four-score years, my Lady Constantine; my
junketting days are over, and whether 'tis feasting or whether 'tis
sorrowing in the land will soon be nothing to me.  But his life may
be long and active, and for the sake of him I care for what I shall
never see, and wish to make pleasant what I shall never enjoy.  I am
setting his room in order, as the place will be his own freehold
when I am gone, so that when he comes back he may find all his poor
jim-cracks and trangleys as he left 'em, and not feel that I have
betrayed his trust.'

Mrs. Martin's voice revealed that she had burst into such few tears
as were left her, and then Hannah began crying likewise; whereupon
Lady Constantine, whose heart had been bursting all day (and who,
indeed, considering her coming trouble, had reason enough for
tears), broke into bitterer sobs than either--sobs of absolute pain,
that could no longer be concealed.

Hannah was the first to discover that Lady Constantine was weeping
with them; and her feelings being probably the least intense among
the three she instantly controlled herself.

'Refrain yourself, my dear woman, refrain!' she said hastily to Mrs.
Martin; 'don't ye see how it do raft my lady?'  And turning to
Viviette she whispered, 'Her years be so great, your ladyship, that
perhaps ye'll excuse her for busting out afore ye?  We know when the
mind is dim, my lady, there's not the manners there should be; but
decayed people can't help it, poor old soul!'

'Hannah, that will do now.  Perhaps Lady Constantine would like to
speak to me alone,' said Mrs. Martin.  And when Hannah had retreated
Mrs. Martin continued:  'Such a charge as she is, my lady, on
account of her great age!  You'll pardon her biding here as if she
were one of the family.  I put up with such things because of her
long service, and we know that years lead to childishness.'

'What are you doing?  Can I help you?' Viviette asked, as Mrs.
Martin, after speaking, turned to lift some large article.

'Oh, 'tis only the skeleton of a telescope that's got no works in
his inside,' said Swithin's grandmother, seizing the huge pasteboard
tube that Swithin had made, and abandoned because he could get no
lenses to suit it.  'I am going to hang it up to these hooks, and
there it will bide till he comes again.'

Lady Constantine took one end, and the tube was hung up against the
whitewashed wall by strings that the old woman had tied round it.

'Here's all his equinoctial lines, and his topics of Capricorn, and
I don't know what besides,' Mrs. Martin continued, pointing to some
charcoal scratches on the wall.  'I shall never rub 'em out; no,
though 'tis such untidiness as I was never brought up to, I shall
never rub 'em out.'

'Where has Swithin gone to first?' asked Viviette anxiously.  'Where
does he say you are to write to him?'

'Nowhere yet, my lady.  He's gone traipsing all over Europe and
America, and then to the South Pacific Ocean about this Transit of
Venus that's going to be done there.  He is to write to us first--
God knows when!--for he said that if we didn't hear from him for six
months we were not to be gallied at all.'

At this intelligence, so much worse than she had expected, Lady
Constantine stood mute, sank down, and would have fallen to the
floor if there had not been a chair behind her.  Controlling herself
by a strenuous effort, she disguised her despair and asked vacantly:
'From America to the South Pacific--Transit of Venus?'  (Swithin's
arrangement to accompany the expedition had been made at the last
moment, and therefore she had not as yet been informed.)

'Yes, to a lone island, I believe.'

'Yes, a lone islant, my lady!' echoed Hannah, who had crept in and
made herself one of the family again, in spite of Mrs. Martin.

'He is going to meet the English and American astronomers there at
the end of the year.  After that he will most likely go on to the
Cape.'

'But before the end of the year--what places did he tell you of
visiting?'

'Let me collect myself; he is going to the observatory of Cambridge,
United States, to meet some gentlemen there, and spy through the
great refractor.  Then there's the observatory of Chicago; and I
think he has a letter to make him beknown to a gentleman in the
observatory at Marseilles--and he wants to go to Vienna--and
Poulkowa, too, he means to take in his way--there being great
instruments and a lot of astronomers at each place.'

'Does he take Europe or America first?' she asked faintly, for the
account seemed hopeless.

Mrs. Martin could not tell till she had heard from Swithin.  It
depended upon what he had decided to do on the day of his leaving
England.

Lady Constantine bade the old people good-bye, and dragged her weary
limbs homeward.  The fatuousness of forethought had seldom been
evinced more ironically.  Had she done nothing to hinder him, he
would have kept up an unreserved communication with her, and all
might have been well.

For that night she could undertake nothing further, and she waited
for the next day.  Then at once she wrote two letters to Swithin,
directing one to Marseilles observatory, one to the observatory of
Cambridge, U.S., as being the only two spots on the face of the
globe at which they were likely to intercept him.  Each letter
stated to him the urgent reasons which existed for his return, and
contained a passionately regretful intimation that the annuity on
which his hopes depended must of necessity be sacrificed by the
completion of their original contract without delay.

But letter conveyance was too slow a process to satisfy her.  To
send an epitome of her epistles by telegraph was, after all,
indispensable.  Such an imploring sentence as she desired to address
to him it would be hazardous to despatch from Warborne, and she took
a dreary journey to a strange town on purpose to send it from an
office at which she was unknown.

There she handed in her message, addressing it to the port of
arrival of the Occidental, and again returned home.

She waited; and there being no return telegram, the inference was
that he had somehow missed hers.  For an answer to either of her
letters she would have to wait long enough to allow him time to
reach one of the observatories--a tedious while.

Then she considered the weakness, the stultifying nature of her
attempt at recall.

Events mocked her on all sides.  By the favour of an accident, and
by her own immense exertions against her instincts, Swithin had been
restored to the rightful heritage that he had nearly forfeited on
her account.  He had just started off to utilize it; when she,
without a moment's warning, was asking him again to cast it away.
She had set a certain machinery in motion--to stop it before it had
revolved once.

A horrid apprehension possessed her.  It had been easy for Swithin
to give up what he had never known the advantages of keeping; but
having once begun to enjoy his possession would he give it up now?
Could he be depended on for such self-sacrifice?  Before leaving, he
would have done anything at her request; but the mollia tempora
fandi had now passed.  Suppose there arrived no reply from him for
the next three months; and that when his answer came he were to
inform her that, having now fully acquiesced in her original
decision, he found the life he was leading so profitable as to be
unable to abandon it, even to please her; that he was very sorry,
but having embarked on this course by her advice he meant to adhere
to it by his own.

There was, indeed, every probability that, moving about as he was
doing, and cautioned as he had been by her very self against
listening to her too readily, she would receive no reply of any sort
from him for three or perhaps four months.  This would be on the eve
of the Transit; and what likelihood was there that a young man, full
of ardour for that spectacle, would forego it at the last moment to
return to a humdrum domesticity with a woman who was no longer a
novelty?

If she could only leave him to his career, and save her own
situation also!  But at that moment the proposition seemed as
impossible as to construct a triangle of two straight lines.

In her walk home, pervaded by these hopeless views, she passed near
the dark and deserted tower.  Night in that solitary place, which
would have caused her some uneasiness in her years of blitheness,
had no terrors for her now.  She went up the winding path, and, the
door being unlocked, felt her way to the top.  The open sky greeted
her as in times previous to the dome-and-equatorial period; but
there was not a star to suggest to her in which direction Swithin
had gone.  The absence of the dome suggested a way out of her
difficulties.  A leap in the dark, and all would be over.  But she
had not reached that stage of action as yet, and the thought was
dismissed as quickly as it had come.

The new consideration which at present occupied her mind was whether
she could have the courage to leave Swithin to himself, as in the
original plan, and singly meet her impending trial, despising the
shame, till he should return at five-and-twenty and claim her?  Yet
was this assumption of his return so very safe?  How altered things
would be at that time!  At twenty-five he would still be young and
handsome; she would be three-and-thirty, fading to middle-age and
homeliness, from a junior's point of view.  A fear sharp as a frost
settled down upon her, that in any such scheme as this she would be
building upon the sand.

She hardly knew how she reached home that night.  Entering by the
lawn door she saw a red coal in the direction of the arbour.  Louis
was smoking there, and he came forward.

He had not seen her since the morning and was naturally anxious
about her.  She blessed the chance which enveloped her in night and
lessened the weight of the encounter one half by depriving him of
vision.

'Did you accomplish your object?' he asked.

'No,' said she.

'How was that?'

'He has sailed.'

'A very good thing for both, I say.  I believe you would have
married him, if you could have overtaken him.'

'That would I!' she said.

'Good God!'

'I would marry a tinker for that matter; I have reasons for being
any man's wife,' she said recklessly, 'only I should prefer to drown
myself.'

Louis held his breath, and stood rigid at the meaning her words
conveyed.

'But Louis, you don't know all!' cried Viviette.  'I am not so bad
as you think; mine has been folly--not vice.  I thought I had
married him--and then I found I had not; the marriage was invalid--
Sir Blount was alive!  And now Swithin has gone away, and will not
come back for my calling!  How can he?  His fortune is left him on
condition that he forms no legal tie.  O will he--will he, come
again?'

'Never, if that's the position of affairs,' said Louis firmly, after
a pause.

'What then shall I do?' said Viviette.

Louis escaped the formidable difficulty of replying by pretending to
continue his Havannah; and she, bowed down to dust by what she had
revealed, crept from him into the house.  Louis's cigar went out in
his hand as he stood looking intently at the ground.



XXXIX

Louis got up the next morning with an idea in his head.  He had
dressed for a journey, and breakfasted hastily.

Before he had started Viviette came downstairs.  Louis, who was now
greatly disturbed about her, went up to his sister and took her
hand.

'Aux grands maux les grands remedes,' he said, gravely.  'I have a
plan.'

'I have a dozen!' said she.

'You have?'

'Yes.  But what are they worth?  And yet there must--there MUST be a
way!'

'Viviette,' said Louis, 'promise that you will wait till I come home
to-night, before you do anything.'

Her distracted eyes showed slight comprehension of his request as
she said 'Yes.'

An hour after that time Louis entered the train at Warborne, and was
speedily crossing a country of ragged woodland, which, though
intruded on by the plough at places, remained largely intact from
prehistoric times, and still abounded with yews of gigantic growth
and oaks tufted with mistletoe.  It was the route to Melchester.

On setting foot in that city he took the cathedral spire as his
guide, the place being strange to him; and went on till he reached
the archway dividing Melchester sacred from Melchester secular.
Thence he threaded his course into the precincts of the damp and
venerable Close, level as a bowling-green, and beloved of rooks, who
from their elm perches on high threatened any unwary gazer with the
mishap of Tobit.  At the corner of this reposeful spot stood the
episcopal palace.

Louis entered the gates, rang the bell, and looked around.  Here the
trees and rooks seemed older, if possible, than those in the Close
behind him.  Everything was dignified, and he felt himself like
Punchinello in the king's chambers.  Verily in the present case
Glanville was not a man to stick at trifles any more than his
illustrious prototype; and on the servant bringing a message that
his lordship would see him at once, Louis marched boldly in.

Through an old dark corridor, roofed with old dark beams, the
servant led the way to the heavily-moulded door of the Bishop's
room.  Dr. Helmsdale was there, and welcomed Louis with considerable
stateliness.  But his condescension was tempered with a curious
anxiety, and even with nervousness.

He asked in pointed tones after the health of Lady Constantine; if
Louis had brought an answer to the letter he had addressed to her a
day or two earlier; and if the contents of the letter, or of the
previous one, were known to him.

'I have brought no answer from her,' said Louis.  'But the contents
of your letter have been made known to me.'

Since entering the building Louis had more than once felt some
hesitation, and it might now, with a favouring manner from his
entertainer, have operated to deter him from going further with his
intention.  But the Bishop had personal weaknesses that were fatal
to sympathy for more than a moment.

'Then I may speak in confidence to you as her nearest relative,'
said the prelate, 'and explain that I am now in a position with
regard to Lady Constantine which, in view of the important office I
hold, I should not have cared to place myself in unless I had felt
quite sure of not being refused by her.  And hence it is a great
grief, and some mortification to me, that I was refused--owing, of
course, to the fact that I unwittingly risked making my proposal at
the very moment when she was under the influence of those strange
tidings, and therefore not herself, and scarcely able to judge what
was best for her.'

The Bishop's words disclosed a mind whose sensitive fear of danger
to its own dignity hindered it from criticism elsewhere.  Things
might have been worse for Louis's Puck-like idea of mis-mating his
Hermia with this Demetrius.

Throwing a strong colour of earnestness into his mien he replied:
'Bishop, Viviette is my only sister; I am her only brother and
friend.  I am alarmed for her health and state of mind.  Hence I
have come to consult you on this very matter that you have broached.
I come absolutely without her knowledge, and I hope
unconventionality may be excused in me on the score of my anxiety
for her.'

'Certainly.  I trust that the prospect opened up by my proposal,
combined with this other news, has not proved too much for her?'

'My sister is distracted and distressed, Bishop Helmsdale.  She
wants comfort.'

'Not distressed by my letter?' said the Bishop, turning red.  'Has
it lowered me in her estimation?'

'On the contrary; while your disinterested offer was uppermost in
her mind she was a different woman.  It is this other matter that
oppresses her.  The result upon her of the recent discovery with
regard to the late Sir Blount Constantine is peculiar.  To say that
he ill-used her in his lifetime is to understate a truth.  He has
been dead now a considerable period; but this revival of his memory
operates as a sort of terror upon her.  Images of the manner of Sir
Blount's death are with her night and day, intensified by a hideous
picture of the supposed scene, which was cruelly sent her.  She
dreads being alone.  Nothing will restore my poor Viviette to her
former cheerfulness but a distraction--a hope--a new prospect.'

'That is precisely what acceptance of my offer would afford.'

'Precisely,' said Louis, with great respect.  'But how to get her to
avail herself of it, after once refusing you, is the difficulty, and
my earnest problem.'

'Then we are quite at one.'

'We are.  And it is to promote our wishes that I am come; since she
will do nothing of herself.'

'Then you can give me no hope of a reply to my second
communication?'

'None whatever--by letter,' said Louis.  'Her impression plainly is
that she cannot encourage your lordship.  Yet, in the face of all
this reticence, the secret is that she loves you warmly.'

'Can you indeed assure me of that?  Indeed, indeed!' said the good
Bishop musingly.  'Then I must try to see her.  I begin to feel--to
feel strongly--that a course which would seem premature and
unbecoming in other cases would be true and proper conduct in this.
Her unhappy dilemmas--her unwonted position--yes, yes--I see it all!
I can afford to have some little misconstruction put upon my
motives.  I will go and see her immediately.  Her past has been a
cruel one; she wants sympathy; and with Heaven's help I'll give it.'

'I think the remedy lies that way,' said Louis gently.  'Some words
came from her one night which seemed to show it.  I was standing on
the terrace:  I heard somebody sigh in the dark, and found that it
was she.  I asked her what was the matter, and gently pressed her on
this subject of boldly and promptly contracting a new marriage as a
means of dispersing the horrors of the old.  Her answer implied that
she would have no objection to do it, and to do it at once, provided
she could remain externally passive in the matter, that she would
tacitly yield, in fact, to pressure, but would not meet solicitation
half-way.  Now, Bishop Helmsdale, you see what has prompted me.  On
the one hand is a dignitary of high position and integrity, to say
no more, who is anxious to save her from the gloom of her situation;
on the other is this sister, who will not make known to you her
willingness to be saved--partly from apathy, partly from a fear that
she may be thought forward in responding favourably at so early a
moment, partly also, perhaps, from a modest sense that there would
be some sacrifice on your part in allying yourself with a woman of
her secluded and sad experience.'

'O, there is no sacrifice!  Quite otherwise.  I care greatly for
this alliance, Mr. Glanville.  Your sister is very dear to me.
Moreover, the advantages her mind would derive from the enlarged
field of activity that the position of a bishop's wife would afford,
are palpable.  I am induced to think that an early settlement of the
question--an immediate coming to the point--which might be called
too early in the majority of cases, would be a right and considerate
tenderness here.  My only dread is that she should think an
immediate following up of the subject premature.  And the risk of a
rebuff a second time is one which, as you must perceive, it would be
highly unbecoming in me to run.'

'I think the risk would be small, if your lordship would approach
her frankly.  Write she will not, I am assured; and knowing that,
and having her interest at heart, I was induced to come to you and
make this candid statement in reply to your communication.  Her late
husband having been virtually dead these four or five years,
believed dead two years, and actually dead nearly one, no reproach
could attach to her if she were to contract another union to-
morrow.'

'I agree with you, Mr. Glanville,' said the Bishop warmly.  'I will
think this over.  Her motive in not replying I can quite understand:
your motive in coming I can also understand and appreciate in a
brother.  If I feel convinced that it would be a seemly and
expedient thing I will come to Welland to-morrow.'

The point to which Louis had brought the Bishop being so
satisfactory, he feared to endanger it by another word.  He went
away almost hurriedly, and at once left the precincts of the
cathedral, lest another encounter with Dr. Helmsdale should lead the
latter to take a new and slower view of his duties as Viviette's
suitor.

He reached Welland by dinner-time, and came upon Viviette in the
same pensive mood in which he had left her.  It seemed she had
hardly moved since.

'Have you discovered Swithin St. Cleeve's address?' she said,
without looking up at him.

'No,' said Louis.

Then she broke out with indescribable anguish:  'But you asked me to
wait till this evening; and I have waited through the long day, in
the belief that your words meant something, and that you would bring
good tidings!  And now I find your words meant nothing, and you have
NOT brought good tidings!'

Louis could not decide for a moment what to say to this.  Should he
venture to give her thoughts a new course by a revelation of his
design?  No:  it would be better to prolong her despair yet another
night, and spring relief upon her suddenly, that she might jump at
it and commit herself without an interval for reflection on certain
aspects of the proceeding.

Nothing, accordingly, did he say; and conjecturing that she would be
hardly likely to take any desperate step that night, he left her to
herself.

His anxiety at this crisis continued to be great.  Everything
depended on the result of the Bishop's self-communion.  Would he or
would he not come the next day?  Perhaps instead of his important
presence there would appear a letter postponing the visit
indefinitely.  If so, all would be lost.

Louis's suspense kept him awake, and he was not alone in his
sleeplessness.  Through the night he heard his sister walking up and
down, in a state which betokened that for every pang of grief she
had disclosed, twice as many had remained unspoken.  He almost
feared that she might seek to end her existence by violence, so
unreasonably sudden were her moods; and he lay and longed for the
day.

It was morning.  She came down the same as usual, and asked if there
had arrived any telegram or letter; but there was neither.  Louis
avoided her, knowing that nothing he could say just then would do
her any good.

No communication had reached him from the Bishop, and that looked
well.  By one ruse and another, as the day went on, he led her away
from contemplating the remote possibility of hearing from Swithin,
and induced her to look at the worst contingency as her probable
fate.  It seemed as if she really made up her mind to this, for by
the afternoon she was apathetic, like a woman who neither hoped nor
feared.

And then a fly drove up to the door.

Louis, who had been standing in the hall the greater part of that
day, glanced out through a private window, and went to Viviette.
'The Bishop has called,' he said.  'Be ready to see him.'

'The Bishop of Melchester?' said Viviette, bewildered.

'Yes.  I asked him to come.  He comes for an answer to his letters.'

'An answer--to--his--letters?' she murmured.

'An immediate reply of yes or no.'

Her face showed the workings of her mind.  How entirely an answer of
assent, at once acted on for better or for worse, would clear the
spectre from her path, there needed no tongue to tell.  It would,
moreover, accomplish that end without involving the impoverishment
of Swithin--the inevitable result if she had adopted the legitimate
road out of her trouble.  Hitherto there had seemed to her dismayed
mind, unenlightened as to any course save one of honesty, no
possible achievement of BOTH her desires--the saving of Swithin and
the saving of herself.  But behold, here was a way!  A tempter had
shown it to her.  It involved a great wrong, which to her had quite
obscured its feasibility.  But she perceived now that it was indeed
a way.  Nature was forcing her hand at this game; and to what will
not nature compel her weaker victims, in extremes?

Louis left her to think it out.  When he reached the drawing-room
Dr. Helmsdale was standing there with the air of a man too good for
his destiny--which, to be just to him, was not far from the truth
this time.

'Have you broken my message to her?' asked the Bishop sonorously.

'Not your message; your visit,' said Louis.  'I leave the rest in
your Lordship's hands.  I have done all I can for her.'

She was in her own small room to-day; and, feeling that it must be a
bold stroke or none, he led the Bishop across the hall till he
reached her apartment and opened the door; but instead of following
he shut it behind his visitor.

Then Glanville passed an anxious time.  He walked from the foot of
the staircase to the star of old swords and pikes on the wall; from
these to the stags' horns; thence down the corridor as far as the
door, where he could hear murmuring inside, but not its import.  The
longer they remained closeted the more excited did he become.  That
she had not peremptorily negatived the proposal at the outset was a
strong sign of its success.  It showed that she had admitted
argument; and the worthy Bishop had a pleader on his side whom he
knew little of.  The very weather seemed to favour Dr. Helmsdale in
his suit.  A blusterous wind had blown up from the west, howling in
the smokeless chimneys, and suggesting to the feminine mind storms
at sea, a tossing ocean, and the hopeless inaccessibility of all
astronomers and men on the other side of the same.

The Bishop had entered Viviette's room at ten minutes past three.
The long hand of the hall clock lay level at forty-five minutes past
when the knob of the door moved, and he came out.  Louis met him
where the passage joined the hall.

Dr. Helmsdale was decidedly in an emotional state, his face being
slightly flushed.  Louis looked his anxious inquiry without speaking
it.

'She accepts me,' said the Bishop in a low voice.  'And the wedding
is to be soon.  Her long solitude and sufferings justify haste.
What you said was true.  Sheer weariness and distraction have driven
her to me.  She was quite passive at last, and agreed to anything I
proposed--such is the persuasive force of trained logical reasoning!
A good and wise woman, she perceived what a true shelter from
sadness was offered in me, and was not the one to despise Heaven's
gift.'



XL

The silence of Swithin was to be accounted for by the circumstance
that neither to the Mediterranean nor to America had he in the first
place directed his steps.  Feeling himself absolutely free he had,
on arriving at Southampton, decided to make straight for the Cape,
and hence had not gone aboard the Occidental at all.  His object was
to leave his heavier luggage there, examine the capabilities of the
spot for his purpose, find out the necessity or otherwise of
shipping over his own equatorial, and then cross to America as soon
as there was a good opportunity.  Here he might inquire the
movements of the Transit expedition to the South Pacific, and join
it at such a point as might be convenient.

Thus, though wrong in her premisses, Viviette had intuitively
decided with sad precision.  There was, as a matter of fact, a great
possibility of her not being able to communicate with him for
several months, notwithstanding that he might possibly communicate
with her.

This excursive time was an awakening for Swithin.  To altered
circumstances inevitably followed altered views.  That such changes
should have a marked effect upon a young man who had made neither
grand tour nor petty one--who had, in short, scarcely been away from
home in his life--was nothing more than natural.  New ideas
struggled to disclose themselves and with the addition of strange
twinklers to his southern horizon came an absorbed attention that
way, and a corresponding forgetfulness of what lay to the north
behind his back, whether human or celestial.  Whoever may deplore it
few will wonder that Viviette, who till then had stood high in his
heaven, if she had not dominated it, sank, like the North Star,
lower and lower with his retreat southward.  Master of a large
advance of his first year's income in circular notes, he perhaps too
readily forgot that the mere act of honour, but for her self-
suppression, would have rendered him penniless.

Meanwhile, to come back and claim her at the specified time, four
years thence, if she should not object to be claimed, was as much a
part of his programme as were the exploits abroad and elsewhere that
were to prelude it.  The very thoroughness of his intention for that
advanced date inclined him all the more readily to shelve the
subject now.  Her unhappy caution to him not to write too soon was a
comfortable license in his present state of tension about sublime
scientific things, which knew not woman, nor her sacrifices, nor her
fears.  In truth he was not only too young in years, but too
literal, direct, and uncompromising in nature to understand such a
woman as Lady Constantine; and she suffered for that limitation in
him as it had been antecedently probable that she would do.

He stayed but a little time at Cape Town on this his first
reconnoitring journey; and on that account wrote to no one from the
place.  On leaving he found there remained some weeks on his hands
before he wished to cross to America; and feeling an irrepressible
desire for further studies in navigation on shipboard, and under
clear skies, he took the steamer for Melbourne; returning thence in
due time, and pursuing his journey to America, where he landed at
Boston.

Having at last had enough of great circles and other nautical
reckonings, and taking no interest in men or cities, this
indefatigable scrutineer of the universe went immediately on to
Cambridge; and there, by the help of an introduction he had brought
from England, he revelled for a time in the glories of the gigantic
refractor (which he was permitted to use on occasion), and in the
pleasures of intercourse with the scientific group around.  This
brought him on to the time of starting with the Transit expedition,
when he and his kind became lost to the eye of civilization behind
the horizon of the Pacific Ocean.

To speak of their doings on this pilgrimage, of ingress and egress,
of tangent and parallax, of external and internal contact, would
avail nothing.  Is it not all written in the chronicles of the
Astronomical Society?  More to the point will it be to mention that
Viviette's letter to Cambridge had been returned long before he
reached that place, while her missive to Marseilles was, of course,
misdirected altogether.  On arriving in America, uncertain of an
address in that country at which he would stay long, Swithin wrote
his first letter to his grandmother; and in this he ordered that all
communications should be sent to await him at Cape Town, as the only
safe spot for finding him, sooner or later.  The equatorial he also
directed to be forwarded to the same place.  At this time, too, he
ventured to break Viviette's commands, and address a letter to her,
not knowing of the strange results that had followed his absence
from home.

It was February.  The Transit was over, the scientific company had
broken up, and Swithin had steamed towards the Cape to take up his
permanent abode there, with a view to his great task of surveying,
charting and theorizing on those exceptional features in the
southern skies which had been but partially treated by the younger
Herschel.  Having entered Table Bay and landed on the quay, he
called at once at the post-office.

Two letters were handed him, and he found from the date that they
had been waiting there for some time.  One of these epistles, which
had a weather-worn look as regarded the ink, and was in old-
fashioned penmanship, he knew to be from his grandmother.  He opened
it before he had as much as glanced at the superscription of the
second.

Besides immaterial portions, it contained the following:--


'J reckon you know by now of our main news this fall, but lest you
should not have heard of it J send the exact thing snipped out of
the newspaper.  Nobody expected her to do it quite so soon; but it
is said hereabout that my lord bishop and my lady had been drawing
nigh to an understanding before the glum tidings of Sir Blount's
taking of his own life reached her; and the account of this wicked
deed was so sore afflicting to her mind, and made her poor heart so
timid and low, that in charity to my lady her few friends agreed on
urging her to let the bishop go on paying his court as before,
notwithstanding she had not been a widow-woman near so long as was
thought.  This, as it turned out, she was willing to do; and when my
lord asked her she told him she would marry him at once or never.
That's as J was told, and J had it from those that know.'


The cutting from the newspaper was an ordinary announcement of
marriage between the Bishop of Melchester and Lady Constantine.

Swithin was so astounded at the intelligence of what for the nonce
seemed Viviette's wanton fickleness that he quite omitted to look at
the second letter; and remembered nothing about it till an hour
afterwards, when sitting in his own room at the hotel.

It was in her handwriting, but so altered that its superscription
had not arrested his eye.  It had no beginning, or date; but its
contents soon acquainted him with her motive for the precipitate
act.  The few concluding sentences are all that it will be necessary
to quote here:--


'There was no way out of it, even if I could have found you, without
infringing one of the conditions I had previously laid down.  The
long desire of my heart has been not to impoverish you or mar your
career.  The new desire was to save myself and, still more, another
yet unborn. . . .  I have done a desperate thing.  Yet for myself I
could do no better, and for you no less.  I would have sacrificed my
single self to honesty, but I was not alone concerned.  What woman
has a right to blight a coming life to preserve her personal
integrity?. . .  The one bright spot is that it saves you and your
endowment from further catastrophes, and preserves you to the
pleasant paths of scientific fame.  I no longer lie like a log
across your path, which is now as open as on the day before you saw
me, and ere I encouraged you to win me.  Alas, Swithin, I ought to
have known better.  The folly was great, and the suffering be upon
my head!  I ought not to have consented to that last interview:  all
was well till then!. . .  Well, I have borne much, and am not
unprepared.  As for you, Swithin, by simply pressing straight on
your triumph is assured.  Do not communicate with me in any way--not
even in answer to this.  Do not think of me.  Do not see me ever any
more.--Your unhappy
          VIVIETTE.'


Swithin's heart swelled within him in sudden pity for her, first;
then he blanched with a horrified sense of what she had done, and at
his own relation to the deed.  He felt like an awakened somnambulist
who should find that he had been accessory to a tragedy during his
unconsciousness.  She had loosened the knot of her difficulties by
cutting it unscrupulously through and through.

The big tidings rather dazed than crushed him, his predominant
feeling being soon again one of keenest sorrow and sympathy.  Yet
one thing was obvious; he could do nothing--absolutely nothing.  The
event which he now heard of for the first time had taken place five
long months ago.  He reflected, and regretted--and mechanically went
on with his preparations for settling down to work under the shadow
of Table Mountain.  He was as one who suddenly finds the world a
stranger place than he thought; but is excluded by age, temperament,
and situation from being much more than an astonished spectator of
its strangeness.


The Royal Observatory was about a mile out of the town, and hither
he repaired as soon as he had established himself in lodgings.  He
had decided, on his first visit to the Cape, that it would be highly
advantageous to him if he could supplement the occasional use of the
large instruments here by the use at his own house of his own
equatorial, and had accordingly given directions that it might be
sent over from England.  The precious possession now arrived; and
although the sight of it--of the brasses on which her hand had often
rested, of the eyepiece through which her dark eyes had beamed--
engendered some decidedly bitter regrets in him for a time, he could
not long afford to give to the past the days that were meant for the
future.

Unable to get a room convenient for a private observatory he
resolved at last to fix the instrument on a solid pillar in the
garden; and several days were spent in accommodating it to its new
position.  In this latitude there was no necessity for economizing
clear nights as he had been obliged to do on the old tower at
Welland.  There it had happened more than once, that after waiting
idle through days and nights of cloudy weather, Viviette would fix
her time for meeting him at an hour when at last he had an
opportunity of seeing the sky; so that in giving to her the golden
moments of cloudlessness he was losing his chance with the orbs
above.

Those features which usually attract the eye of the visitor to a new
latitude are the novel forms of human and vegetable life, and other
such sublunary things.  But the young man glanced slightingly at
these; the changes overhead had all his attention.  The old subject
was imprinted there, but in a new type.  Here was a heaven, fixed
and ancient as the northern; yet it had never appeared above the
Welland hills since they were heaved up from beneath.  Here was an
unalterable circumpolar region; but the polar patterns stereotyped
in history and legend--without which it had almost seemed that a
polar sky could not exist--had never been seen therein.

St. Cleeve, as was natural, began by cursory surveys, which were not
likely to be of much utility to the world or to himself.  He wasted
several weeks--indeed above two months--in a comparatively idle
survey of southern novelties; in the mere luxury of looking at
stellar objects whose wonders were known, recounted, and classified,
long before his own personality had been heard of.  With a child's
simple delight he allowed his instrument to rove, evening after
evening, from the gorgeous glitter of Canopus to the hazy clouds of
Magellan.  Before he had well finished this optical prelude there
floated over to him from the other side of the Equator the
postscript to the epistle of his lost Viviette.  It came in the
vehicle of a common newspaper, under the head of 'Births:'--

'April 10th, 18--, at the Palace, Melchester, the wife of the Bishop
of Melchester, of a son.'



XLI

Three years passed away, and Swithin still remained at the Cape,
quietly pursuing the work that had brought him there.  His memoranda
of observations had accumulated to a wheelbarrow load, and he was
beginning to shape them into a treatise which should possess some
scientific utility.

He had gauged the southern skies with greater results than even he
himself had anticipated.  Those unfamiliar constellations which, to
the casual beholder, are at most a new arrangement of ordinary
points of light, were to this professed astronomer, as to his
brethren, a far greater matter.

It was below the surface that his material lay.  There, in regions
revealed only to the instrumental observer, were suns of hybrid
kind--fire-fogs, floating nuclei, globes that flew in groups like
swarms of bees, and other extraordinary sights--which, when
decomposed by Swithin's equatorial, turned out to be the beginning
of a new series of phenomena instead of the end of an old one.

There were gloomy deserts in those southern skies such as the north
shows scarcely an example of; sites set apart for the position of
suns which for some unfathomable reason were left uncreated, their
places remaining ever since conspicuous by their emptiness.

The inspection of these chasms brought him a second pulsation of
that old horror which he had used to describe to Viviette as
produced in him by bottomlessness in the north heaven.  The ghostly
finger of limitless vacancy touched him now on the other side.
Infinite deeps in the north stellar region had a homely familiarity
about them, when compared with infinite deeps in the region of the
south pole.  This was an even more unknown tract of the unknown.
Space here, being less the historic haunt of human thought than
overhead at home, seemed to be pervaded with a more lonely
loneliness.

Were there given on paper to these astronomical exercitations of St.
Cleeve a space proportionable to that occupied by his year with
Viviette at Welland, this narrative would treble its length; but not
a single additional glimpse would be afforded of Swithin in his
relations with old emotions.  In these experiments with tubes and
glasses, important as they were to human intellect, there was little
food for the sympathetic instincts which create the changes in a
life.  That which is the foreground and measuring base of one
perspective draught may be the vanishing-point of another
perspective draught, while yet they are both draughts of the same
thing.  Swithin's doings and discoveries in the southern sidereal
system were, no doubt, incidents of the highest importance to him;
and yet from an intersocial point of view they served but the humble
purpose of killing time, while other doings, more nearly allied to
his heart than to his understanding, developed themselves at home.

In the intervals between his professional occupations he took walks
over the sand-flats near, or among the farms which were gradually
overspreading the country in the vicinity of Cape Town.  He grew
familiar with the outline of Table Mountain, and the fleecy 'Devil's
Table-Cloth' which used to settle on its top when the wind was
south-east.  On these promenades he would more particularly think of
Viviette, and of that curious pathetic chapter in his life with her
which seemed to have wound itself up and ended for ever.  Those
scenes were rapidly receding into distance, and the intensity of his
sentiment regarding them had proportionately abated.  He felt that
there had been something wrong therein, and yet he could not exactly
define the boundary of the wrong.  Viviette's sad and amazing sequel
to that chapter had still a fearful, catastrophic aspect in his
eyes; but instead of musing over it and its bearings he shunned the
subject, as we shun by night the shady scene of a disaster, and keep
to the open road.

He sometimes contemplated her apart from the past--leading her life
in the Cathedral Close at Melchester; and wondered how often she
looked south and thought of where he was.

On one of these afternoon walks in the neighbourhood of the Royal
Observatory he turned and gazed towards the signal-post on the
Lion's Rump.  This was a high promontory to the north-west of Table
Mountain, and overlooked Table Bay.  Before his eyes had left the
scene the signal was suddenly hoisted on the staff.  It announced
that a mail steamer had appeared in view over the sea.  In the
course of an hour he retraced his steps, as he had often done on
such occasions, and strolled leisurely across the intervening mile
and a half till he arrived at the post-office door.

There was no letter from England for him; but there was a newspaper,
addressed in the seventeenth century handwriting of his grandmother,
who, in spite of her great age, still retained a steady hold on
life.  He turned away disappointed, and resumed his walk into the
country, opening the paper as he went along.

A cross in black ink attracted his attention; and it was opposite a
name among the 'Deaths.'  His blood ran icily as he discerned the
words 'The Palace, Melchester.'  But it was not she.  Her husband,
the Bishop of Melchester, had, after a short illness, departed this
life at the comparatively early age of fifty years.

All the enactments of the bygone days at Welland now started up like
an awakened army from the ground.  But a few months were wanting to
the time when he would be of an age to marry without sacrificing the
annuity which formed his means of subsistence.  It was a point in
his life that had had no meaning or interest for him since his
separation from Viviette, for women were now no more to him than the
inhabitants of Jupiter.  But the whirligig of time having again set
Viviette free, the aspect of home altered, and conjecture as to her
future found room to work anew.

But beyond the simple fact that she was a widow he for some time
gained not an atom of intelligence concerning her.  There was no one
of whom he could inquire but his grandmother, and she could tell him
nothing about a lady who dwelt far away at Melchester.

Several months slipped by thus; and no feeling within him rose to
sufficient strength to force him out of a passive attitude.  Then by
the merest chance his granny stated in one of her rambling epistles
that Lady 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 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 passed 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 assent, 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!'

Nothing more was said, and Swithin ascended, words from above
indicating to him that his footsteps were heard.  In another half-
minute he rose through the hatchway.  A lady in black was sitting in
the sun, and the boy with the flaxen hair whom he had seen yesterday
was at her feet.

'Viviette!' he said.

'Swithin!--at last!' she cried.

The words died upon her lips, and from very faintness she bent her
head.  For instead of rushing forward to her he had stood still; and
there appeared upon his face a look which there was no mistaking.

Yes; he was shocked at her worn and faded aspect.  The image he had
mentally carried out with him to the Cape he had brought home again
as that of the woman he was now to rejoin.  But another woman sat
before him, and not the original Viviette.  Her cheeks had lost for
ever that firm contour which had been drawn by the vigorous hand of
youth, and the masses of hair that were once darkness visible had
become touched here and there by a faint grey haze, like the Via
Lactea in a midnight sky.

Yet to those who had eyes to understand as well as to see, the
chastened pensiveness of her once handsome features revealed more
promising material beneath than ever her youth had done.  But
Swithin was hopelessly her junior.  Unhappily for her he had now
just arrived at an age whose canon of faith it is that the silly
period of woman's life is her only period of beauty.  Viviette saw
it all, and knew that Time had at last brought about his revenges.
She had tremblingly watched and waited without sleep, ever since
Swithin had re-entered Welland, and it was for this.

Swithin came forward, and took her by the hand, which she passively
allowed him to do.

'Swithin, you don't love me,' she said simply.

'O Viviette!'

'You don't love me,' she repeated.

'Don't say it!'

'Yes, but I will! you have a right not to love me.  You did once.
But now I am an old woman, and you are still a young man; so how can
you love me?  I do not expect it.  It is kind and charitable of you
to come and see me here.'

'I have come all the way from the Cape,' he faltered, for her
insistence took all power out of him to deny in mere politeness what
she said.

'Yes; you have come from the Cape; but not for me,' she answered.
'It would be absurd if you had come for me.  You have come because
your work there is finished. . . .  I like to sit here with my
little boy--it is a pleasant spot.  It was once something to us, was
it not? but that was long ago.  You scarcely knew me for the same
woman, did you?'

'Knew you--yes, of course I knew you!'

'You looked as if you did not.  But you must not be surprised at me.
I belong to an earlier generation than you, remember.'

Thus, in sheer bitterness of spirit did she inflict wounds on
herself by exaggerating the difference in their years.  But she had
nevertheless spoken truly.  Sympathize with her as he might, and as
he unquestionably did, he loved her no longer.  But why had she
expected otherwise?  'O woman,' might a prophet have said to her,
'great is thy faith if thou believest a junior lover's love will
last five years!'

'I shall be glad to know through your grandmother how you are
getting on,' she said meekly.  'But now I would much rather that we
part.  Yes; do not question me.  I would rather that we part.  Good-
bye.'

Hardly knowing what he did he touched her hand, and obeyed.  He was
a scientist, and took words literally.  There is something in the
inexorably simple logic of such men which partakes of the cruelty of
the natural laws that are their study.  He entered the tower-steps,
and mechanically descended; and it was not till he got half-way down
that he thought she could not mean what she had said.

Before leaving Cape Town he had made up his mind on this one point;
that if she were willing to marry him, marry her he would without
let or hindrance.  That much he morally owed her, and was not the
man to demur.  And though the Swithin who had returned was not quite
the Swithin who had gone away, though he could not now love her with
the sort of love he had once bestowed; he believed that all her
conduct had been dictated by the purest benevolence to him, by that
charity which 'seeketh not her own.'  Hence he did not flinch from a
wish to deal with loving-kindness towards her--a sentiment perhaps
in the long-run more to be prized than lover's love.

Her manner had caught him unawares; but now recovering himself he
turned back determinedly.  Bursting out upon the roof he clasped her
in his arms, and kissed her several times.

'Viviette, Viviette,' he said, 'I have come to marry you!'

She uttered a shriek--a shriek of amazed joy--such as never was
heard on that tower before or since--and fell in his arms, clasping
his neck.

There she lay heavily.  Not to disturb her he sat down in her seat,
still holding her fast.  Their little son, who had stood with round
conjectural eyes throughout the meeting, now came close; and
presently looking up to Swithin said--

'Mother has gone to sleep.'

Swithin looked down, and started.  Her tight clasp had loosened.  A
wave of whiteness, like that of marble which had never seen the sun,
crept up from her neck, and travelled upwards and onwards over her
cheek, lips, eyelids, forehead, temples, its margin banishing back
the live pink till the latter had entirely disappeared.

Seeing that something was wrong, yet not understanding what, the
little boy began to cry; but in his concentration Swithin hardly
heard it.  'Viviette--Viviette!' he said.

The child cried with still deeper grief, and, after a momentary
hesitation, pushed his hand into Swithin's for protection.

'Hush, hush! my child,' said Swithin distractedly.  'I'll take care
of you!  O Viviette!' he exclaimed again, pressing her face to his.

But she did not reply.

'What can this be?' he asked himself.  He would not then answer
according to his fear.

He looked up for help.  Nobody appeared in sight but Tabitha Lark,
who was skirting the field with a bounding tread--the single bright
spot of colour and animation within the wide horizon.  When he
looked down again his fear deepened to certainty.  It was no longer
a mere surmise that help was vain.  Sudden joy after despair had
touched an over-strained heart too smartly.  Viviette was dead.  The
Bishop was avenged.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Two on a Tower
by Thomas Hardy