 8 Lady Constantine then had the pleasure of beholding a wagon 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 the 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 the virgin, where I had only seen a single one before. It is all I require to get me going. I'll come, but you need to 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 the studies alone." Swithin seemed a little affected at this announcement. Hilton and Pim's man handed me the bill. He continued. How much is it? He told her. And the man who had built the hut and dome, and on the other fixin' had sent his. He also named this amount. Very well, they shall be settled with. My debts must be paid with my money, which you shall have at once. In cash, since the check would hardly do. Come to the house for it this evening, but no, no, you must not come openly, as such is the world. Come to the window. The window that is exactly a nine with a long snow-drop bed, in the south front, is 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 snow-drop 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 it 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. When seemingly moved by second thoughts, she bent forward and said, Is the night good for observations? Perfect. She paused. Then I come to-night, she said at last. 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 earth-work 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 seemed to grasp their griefs from the funereal boughs overhead, and a few twigs scratched the pillow 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 the path. Many ancient Britons lie buried there doubtless. He led around to the other side, where, feeling his way with his hands, he suddenly left her, appearing after a moment 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 criticise me for coming alone, she said, 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. 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, formally open to the air and sun, was now arched over by a light dome of latwork 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, bending loosely in a groove, and on these the dome rested its whole weight. On 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, she said. 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 through the slit, there now appeared the countenances of Castor and Polo. Swithin then manipulated the equatorial, and put it through its capabilities in like manner. She was enchanted, being rather excitable, and 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 the defect which can soon be remedied. When is your birthday? Next month, the seventh. Then it shall be all 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 for 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 some more for you, exclaim the much-loved 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's wife enough 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, are you a man there, 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, with 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 colored stars, in the cursory manner of the merely curious. They plunged down to that at other times invisible multitude in the backgrows of the celestial theatre, remote layers of the constellation whose shapes were new and singular, pretty twinklers, which for infinite ages had sent their beams without calling forth from a single earthly poet a single lion, 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 God 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 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 Sweden's emancipation from the travelling body had been affected 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 neighbouring, 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 clockwork which gave diurnal motion to the instrument. The stars moved on, and the end of the telescope followed, but their tongue 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 would unpractice with and would have felt to be exquisite. I feel that I have been so foolish as to put in your hands an instrument to affect 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. CHAPTER 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 Wenzir 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. Talking emblazed forth the denuncery sentences of the combination, 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 church-yard, 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, a swithin came forward to speak to her. This was the most unusual circumstance, and argued a matter of importance. I have made an amazing discovery in connection with 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 the 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 forever. He sprang into the air and waved his hat in triumph. Oh! I am so glad, so rejoiced! she cried. What is it? But don't stop to tell me. Finish it at once in some paper, nail your name to it, or somebody will seize the idea and appropriate it, forstall you in some way. It will be Adams and the Verrier over again. If I may walk with you, I'll 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 depositories of such valuable secrets. You may walk with me a little way, with great pleasure. Then go and write your account, so as to ensure 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. Don't 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 here till daylight. But what does that matter, now that 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 Swith and St. Cleave—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 dream. 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 think Celestial thought 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 them. 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 archy vault of a movable 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 Swith and St. Cleave by talking about his grandmother. Ah! poor old heart! It is a bad time for her, my lady! exclaimed the dame. What? Our 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 them, she moaned, but I can't help it, and I don't care if it is wrong. I don't care. Without further considerations as to who beheld her doing, she instinctively went straight towards Mrs. Martens. Seeing a man coming, she calmed herself sufficiently to ask him, through her dropped veil, how poor Mr. St. Cleave was that day. But she only got the same reply. They say he's dying, my lady. When Swithon had parted from Lady Constantine on the previous Ash Wednesday, he had gone straight to the homestead and prepared his account of, 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 the most startling apness of all the difficulties which had accompanied the received theories on the phenomena attending to those changeable sons of marvellous systems so far away. It accounted for the nebulous mists that surround 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 the 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 out a booksellers 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 Swith and St. Cleave. The 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 three score 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 his 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 heat 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 learned 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, and heroism. On reaching the house and well-end bottom the door was open 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 reverent Mr. St. Cleave, her astronomer's erratic father. The eight unwatered dying plants, in a 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's not overhead, my lady," replied Swithin's grandmother. His bedroom is at the back of the house. How is he now? He's better just at the 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 a large pace-board 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 prosious workshop and tools with the hues of Pethos. 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 incoming. 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 today. But who can be sure? The poor boy was so upset I find that 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? Oh, how could you think so much of her now 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 of you and all my friends, never, never forgive me. It would kill me with self-approach 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 Swidon, 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 stair-head. 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 candor, 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 her place with inside, flung herself upon the bed, and in a paroxysm of sorrow kissed him. CHAPTER 10 The placid inhabitants of the parish of Welland, including wobbling wagoners, 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. Cleave's death. The sextant 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 dewfulness 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 St. Cleave did not de-cease, 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 done-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 man and woman. Lady being 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 with 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 today? Oh, nothing's o'er. 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 Gambards, is it Charles the Fifths, or Halleys, or Faes, or Whos? Hush! She said, thinking St. Cleave slightly delirious again. It has got a might as a course. I haven't seen him myself, but he says he's getting bigger every night, and that he'll be the biggest one known for fifty years when he's full-grown. 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 eighty-and-eleven 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. Oh, 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 Yunamwezi, 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 Sinclave wept bitterly at not being hail and strong enough to welcome, with proper honour, the present specimen of these desirable visitors. The strenuous wish to live, and behold, a new phenomenon, supplanting the utter weariness of existence that he had here to foreexperienced, gave him a new vitality. The crisis passed, and 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 his 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 Sinclave's bedroom faced 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 my new tadpole of fire was recognisable. The mere sight of it seemed to lend him sufficient resolution to complete his own cure forthwith. His only fear now was lest, for some unexpected cause or other, the comet should vanish before he should get to the observatory on Ringshill Spear. 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 resolved 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, ascertain 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 the delight that bewildered him 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 a style 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. CHAPTER XI Why had Lady Constantine stopped and turned? A misgiving had taken sudden possession of her. Her true sentiment towards St. Cleve was too recognisable 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 the 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. Cleve 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 in 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-shaven church now subdued by violent shadow, except where its upper-courses caught the western stroke of flame-color, stood close to her grounds as in many other parishes, though the village of which it formerly was a 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 practicing 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 of 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 letter shone sterily 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. Cleave, which were inconsistent with her position as the wife of an absent man, though not unnatural in her as a victim. She knelt till she seemed scarcely to belong to the time she lived in, which lost the magnitude that the nearness of the 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. Cleave happy, and this girl she would endow with what money she could afford, that the natural result of her opposition 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 our 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 that 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 a banished image of St. Cleve to apostrophize him in the thoughts that paraphrase the quaint lines of Haina's Lieb Liebchen. Dear my love, press thy hand to my breast and tell, if thou traced the nocks in that narrow cell, a carpenter dwells there cunning as 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. Talkingham, 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. Here I am. She said, Don't stop playing, Miss Lark. What is it, Mr. Talkingham? Tabitha thereupon resumed her playing, and Mr. Talkingham 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 tomorrow 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 malaria's fever on the banks of the Zuga in South Africa, so long as last October twelve months, 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 to a healthier district, remained there with a native tribe, and took no pains to make the circumstance known. It seems to be only by the mere accident that I was 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 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. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of Two on a Tower This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Tye Hines. Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy Chapter 12 On the afternoon of the next day Mr. Tawkingham, who occasionally dropped in to see St. Cleave, called again as usual, after Julie 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 them 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 matrimonally. There was no attempt to bring him home when he died. Oh, 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, swithing, recollecting himself. He was unkind to her in many ways. Do you think she will go away from well-ent? That the vicar could not tell, but he feared that Sir Blount's affairs had been in a serious involved condition, which might necessitate many and unexpected changes. Time showed that Mr. Talkingham'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 his house and garden. News reached him that Sir Blount's mismanagement and erratic behaviour were resulting in serious consequences to Lady Constantine. Nothing less, indeed, than her almost complete impoverishment. His personality was swallowed up in paying debts, and the well in the state 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 planer, 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 about this, Mr. Sancleve, said Sammy Bloor, who, in calling to inquire after Swithin's help, had imparted some of the above particulars, is that my lady seems not to mind being a poor woman, half so much as we do at seeing her so. It is a wonderful gift, Mr. Sancleve, wonderful, to be able to guide yourself and not let loose your soul in blasts and at such a misfortune. I should go and drink meat regular as soon as I had swallowed my breakfast, to me innards was borne out like old copper, if it happened to me, but my lady's plan is best, though I only guess how one fails 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 wandering 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 Ring's Hillspear. 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 in 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 to 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 the 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 corner sown and entered the plantation. His unpracticed mind never once guessed that her stipulations against his coming might have existed along with her 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 court here. 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 to me, my dear lady.' "'Unless for the 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 businesslike 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 cannot 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 the playfulness, which was scarcely playful, a new accession of pinkness being visible in her face. I diminished 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 motive 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 sure 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. Cleave, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which he, poor innocent, read has 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 deploy 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 in 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 prey to any man, it would be not 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. Cleave. 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 in the sky as completely to dominate it, Swithin dropped his gaze upon the field, and beheld, in the dying light, a number of laborers 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're coming for. I promise 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 not wishing them 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 locked the door, said Swithin. Then they will 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 tower 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. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of Two on a Tower This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tye Hines Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy Chapter 13 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 showed to come, rather late, resounded up the spiral in the vocal note of Hessey Biles. He wouldn't let such a fine show as the comet makes to-night go by without peeping at it, not master cleave. Did you bring along the flag in, Hamos? Or we'll sit down inside his little board-house here and wait. He'll come before bedtime, while his spy-glasses stretch out at their comet as long as well in lane. While it is soon Mr. Great Peep's show that comes every year to Greenhill Fair, as a sight as such an immortal spectacle as this, said Hamos Frye. Immortal spectacle? Where did you get that choice, muscle, Hamos? inquired Sammy Bloor. Well, well, the Lord save good scholars and take just a bit of care of them that baint. As it is so dark in the hut, suppose we drive the bench into the frontier 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 you got any backie? If you haven't, I have, continued Sammy Bloor. A striking of matches followed, and the speaker concluded comfortably. Now we shall do very well. And what did his comet mean, asked Hamos, that some great tumult is going to happen, or that we shall die of a famine? Famine? No, said that Chapman, that only touches such as we, and the Lord only concerns himself with born gentlemen. It isn't to be supposed that a strange fiery lantern like that will be lighted up for folks with ten or a dozen shillings a week, and their griston and a load of torn faggots when we can get them. If it's a token that he's getting hot about the ways of anybody in this parish, it's about Lady Constantine's, since she's the only one of a figure worth such a hint. As for her income, that she's lost now. Ah, well, I don't take in all I hear. Lady Constantine drew close to St. Cleave's side, and whispered trembling, Do you think they'll wait long, or can we get out? Swithin felt the awkwardness of the situation. The man 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 of 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 to wait till he came. And had the dead man left her nothing, hey? And had he carried his inheritance into his grave, and will his skelling lie warm on account of it? He he said, hey, moss. "'Tis all swallowed up,' observed Hezzie Boiles. His goings on made her miserable till he died, and if I were the woman, I'd have my randies now. He ought to have bequeathed to her how young gent Mr. St. Cleave has some sort of amends. I'd open Marian if I were she, since her downfall has brought him quite near together, and made him as good as she in rank, as he was of fore, in bone, and breedin. "'Do you think she will?' asks Sammy Bloor. Or is she meanin' to enter upon a virgin life for the rest of her days? I don't want to be unrevealed into her ladyship, but I really don't think she's meanin' any such waste of a Christian carcass. I say she's rather meanin' to commit flat matrimony with somebody or other, and one young gentleman, in particular. But the young man himself? Planned, cut out, and finished for the delight of woman. Yet he must be willin'. That would soon come. If they get up this tower rollin' planners together much longer, their planners will soon rule them together, in my way of thinkin'. If she have a disposition towards the knot, she can soon teach him. True, true, and lawfully. What before might have been a wrong desire, is now a holy wish. The scales fell from Swithin St. Cleave's eyes as he heard the words of his neighbours. How sudden he 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 were 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 halfway to the top, standing by a loophole, 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, it 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 lent 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, Samuel, and Nat, how are you? he said boldly. — Well, sir, it is much as before with me, replied Nat. One hour a week we got all mighty, and the rest with the devil, as the chap may say. And really, now your poor father's gone, or it is leave that that Sunday hour shall pass like the rest, for passing, tarcing them to teas of fellers, conscience that much, that church is no holiday at all to the limbs, as it was in your reverent father's time. But we've been waiting here, Mr. Sinclave, supposing you had not come. — I have been staying at the top and fasten the door not to be disturbed. Now, I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have another engagement this evening, so that it will be inconvenient to admit you. Tomorrow 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. Sinclave strolled off under the furs. The next moment there was a rustling through the trees at another point, and a man and a 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 there a ladyship here? asked the man. — No. A regular ladyship keeps more kissable company, replied Matt Chapman. — Pack a 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 over clothes and umbrella. I've suffered horstless traipsing up and down, and can't find her nowhere. Lord, Lord, where can she be? And two months' wage is owing to me. Why so anxious, Anthony Green, as I think your name is shaped? — You be not a married man, said Hezzy. — It is what they call me, neighbours, whether or no. But surely he was a bachelor chap, boy, late. A four-hour ladyship got rid of the regular servants, and took ye. I wear, but that's past. — And how come ye to bow your head to it, Anthony? — It is what you never was inclined to. He was by no means a doubting man in my time. — Well, had I been left to my own free choice. — It is as like as not I should have shunned form and such kindred, being at that time a poor day-man, or weakly at my highest look and hiring. But his wear and work to hold out against the custom of the country, and the woman wanting ye to stand by her and save her from the unborn shame. Since common ye she'd would have it, I let myself be carried away by opinion and tugger. Though she never once thanked me for covering her confusion, that's true. But is the way of the loss when safe, and I don't complain. Here she is, just behind under the tree, if ye'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 general-man, to his mother might place his word to loser, come forward, Christina, and talk nicely to the work-folk. Whilst the woman was talking, the rain increased so much that they all retreated further into the hut. St. Cleave, who had impatiently stood a little way off, now saw his opportunity, and, putting in his head, said, The rain beats in, and ye 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 on scene, he gave her his arm. Thus he conducted her, across the front of the hut, into the shadows of the furs. I would 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 Ringshill Spear. The workfolk 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. Cleave's sudden sense of new relations with that sweet patroness had taken away, in one half hour, his natural ingenuousness. Henceforth he could act apart. 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 locked his door, and bring the key to my house. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of Two on a Tower This Lib of Ox recording is in the public domain, recording by Tige Hines, Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 14. The laboured resistance which Lady Constantine's judgment had offered to her rebellious affection, ere she learned that she was a widow, now passed into a bashfulness that rendered her almost as unstable of mood as before. She was at one of that metal, 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 narrow 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. Cleave, the tardiness of his awakening was the natural result of inexperience, combined with devotion to a hobby. But like a spring-bud, hard and bursting, the delay was compensated by after-speed, at once breathlessly recognising in his 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 under 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 and abstracted astronomer into an eager lover, and, it must be said, spoiled a promising young physicist to produce a commonplace in Amorato, may be almost described as working its change in one's 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 intense tones of his mental condition, to register his assertion in her heart before any of those accidents which creep in, twist 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 rated 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 she had learned 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 longed 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 the telescope, and saw her passing along that way. She receded in the donkey carriage that had now taken the place of her landow, 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 gamble, and the whole turnout resembled in dignity a dwarfed state possession. 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 servant 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 followed, he ran hastily down the staircase across the barley, which now cover the field, by a 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 the boy nor the 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. Cleve had become a man, and as he greeted her with this new and mature light in his eyes, she could not hide her embarrassment or meet their fire. I had 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 I am a little tired. I have been looking out for you night and day. Why do you turn your face aside? You use 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 have never thought of you before? Yes, I know it. How do 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, you 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 of this. Some proof, a little sign, that we are in one 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 a scant 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 or spoil the instrument, destroy my papers, anything so that he would stay there and leave us alone. She glanced up with the species of pained pleasure. You never used to feel like that, she said, and there was a keen self-reproach in her voice. You are once so devoted to your science that the thought of an intruder to 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 emphasise it. In expressing even to myself my thoughts of you, I find that if all into phrases which, as a critic, I should hitherto have heartily despised for all that commonest. What is 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 an 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 dread it 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? You say you'll 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 call that jumped into his sleeve, rather than disturb the sacred ceremony. But can I not study and love both? I hope so, I honestly hope so, but you be the first, if you do, and I am the responsible one, if you do not. You speak to me 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 honestly 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 seemed a great deal. He answered amusing, but it doesn't say 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. Oh, 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 evenness will out sometimes. Well, we will forget that now, as we must to a very distant date forget all the rest of this. He walked beside her thoughtfully a while, with his eyes also bent on the ground. Why must we forget it all? He inquired. It is only an interlude. An interlude? It is no interlude to me. Oh, 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 hurt in your prospects even more than mine if I stay. Now Sir Blount is dead. You are free again. You may marry where you will. But for this fancy of ours. I'll leave well and before harm comes of me 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. Oh, 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 a crossroads, and casually looking up, they beheld thirty or forty yards beyond the crossing, Mr. Talkingham, 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. Cleaves's natural ingenuousness by subtlety. Would it be well for us to meet Mr. Talkingham just now? He began. Certainly not. She said hastily, and pulling the reins, 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, heart-taking 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 leaf-each as they drew out from beneath it, and turning up his eyes, Sweden 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 lords 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 truly have been tears that parted there and then. CHAPTER XV The summer passed away, and autumn, with its infinite suite of tints, came creeping on. Darker grew the evenings, tearful of the moon-lights, and heavier the Jews. 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 Ringshill's spear was no longer a match for his celestial materials. Scientifically he had become but a dim vapor 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 Monday 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 enter 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 bodily, 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 and 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 needed a power to work, nor the delight of your company. But your remedy, oh, I cannot help guessing it, yes, you are going away. Let us ascend the column, we could speak more of these 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 far. 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 great risk. If I am seen here at this time, I am ruined forever. But what would I not do for you? Oh, 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 labour stands still. Now for the remedy, dear Lady Constantine. Allow me to marry you. She started, and the winds without shook the building, sending up a yet intense remone from the furs. 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 cannot possibly acknowledge me as your husband publicly. But by marrying at once, we secure this 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 vigor, 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. Cleave breathed heavily. It would be a long weary time, he said, and even with your promise I shall work but half heartedly. Every hour of study would be interrupted with, suppose this or this happens, suppose somebody persuades her to break our 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 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. What a God! he burst out, that I might perish here, like wind-stanly in his lighthouse, then the difficulty would be solved for you. You are so wrong, so very wrong in saying so, she exclaimed passionately. He made out 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's my idea. Quite privately, you say. How could the marriage be quite private? I would go to London and get a licence, then you would 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 would then assist me in my efforts to plumb these deeps above us. Any feelings 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 here it came out excellently. But she sat on with suspended breath, her heart wildly beating, while he waited in open-mouth 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 in 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 useful 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 her 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 would vaguely have done so, the courage of a protégé coolly to advance it, without a hint from herself that such a proposal would be tolerated, showed her that there was more in this character than she had reckoned on, and the discovery almost frightened her. The humour, attitude, and tenor of her attachment had been quite of unpremeditated quality, unsuggestive of any such odacious solution to their distresses as this. I repeat my question, dearest, he said after a 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 sunk upon his shoulder, as he pressed his two lips continually upon hers. To such have 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 you 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— Oh, you can't understand it. You will not put an end to the absolute secrecy of our relationship without my full assent, and 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 what 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 for the present, I, for a long time hence, that I should 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 manner, 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, and inconvenience without any compensating advantage. I am so glad you assumed 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 for seeing a contingency which had not occurred to him. Or till you request it, he repeated. It is agreed, murmured Lady Constantine. CHAPTER 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 hide away to the same place and be met at the station by St. Cleave, armed with a marriage-licence, whence they would 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 the heaven continued, as before, to beat about the tower, though their onsets appeared to be somewhat lessening in force. Himself now calmed and satisfied, swithing, as is the want of humanity, took serene reviews of nature's crushing mechanics without, and said, The wind doesn't seem disposed to put the tragic period to our hopes of 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 Sweden's assumption, a circular hurricane, exceeding in violence any that had preceded it, seized hold upon Ring's Hillspear 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. Sweden beheld around and above them, 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, Sweden stretched out his arms toward 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, then fearing that something further would happen, they took shelter in the staircase. The dearest, what an escape, he said, still holding her. What is the accident, she asked, has the whole top really gone? The dome was blown off the roof. As soon as it was practicable, he relifted the extinguished lantern, and they emerged again upon the leds, 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 Sweden expressed it, as a moth motion, denied 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. Sweden took advantage of this lull by covering up the instruments with cloths, after which to be thrown a 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 the 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 Sweden went down the spiral. In the gloom he beheld Hannah. Oh, Master Sweden, can you come home? The wind had blown down the chimney that owned smoke, and the pinning end with it, and the old ancient house that had been in your family so long as the memory of man is naked to the world, to the mercy that your grandma were not killed, sitting with a heart poor old soul, and soon to walk with God, for he's getting wamblin' on her pins, Mr. Sweden, as aged folks do. As I say, I was all but murdered by the elements, and doin' no more harm than the babes in the wood, nor speakin' one harmful word. And the fire and smoke would blow'd all across the house like a chapter in Revelation, and your poor reverent father's feature scorched the flakes, lookin' like the vilest Luffian and the gilt frame, spoiled. Every flitch, every eyed piece, and every china's burned under the wallin', and I fed them pigs with my own hands, Master Sweden, little thinkin' they would come to this end. They collect yourselves, Mr. Sweden, and come at once. I will, I will, I will 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 Mara's scheme. I'm not quite sure of that yet. In 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 really were 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 as on the strings of a lyre. But not a bow 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 cloud 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 paleolithic dead men feeding its roots. But the recent passionate decision stirred her pulses to an intensity besides which the ordinary tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain. The apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not unharmonious, 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 furs, and in a few instances Cleve 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 rick-cloths, but Swidden 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 to you by the evening post. And he stayed to assist the other men, so I told him I would go to your house with the letters he had brought. Of course I did not tell him I would 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 her 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 Swithan 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 don't 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 a man's part to do that, in her opinion, and was usually undertaken by him. But, argued Swithan, 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 there was such a case. The seeming is nothing. I know the truth. And what does it matter? You do not refuse. Retract your words to be my wife, because to avoid a sickening delay, the formalities require you to attend 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 circumstance 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 well-enthouse before parting. Since I am to go first, and seem to be the pioneer in this adventure, promise me, Swithan, 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 to 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 reverse 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. Cleave. Street, Piccadilly, October 18 something. Dear Viviet, 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. Real generic 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, and particularly as the event, though new to a banished man like me, occurred so long since. You are better without Viviet, and are now just a 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 neighbours covers at once. A genial squire with more weight than wit, more realty than weight, and more personality than realty, considering the circumstances, would be best for you. You might make a position for both of us by such an alliance, for, to tell you the truth, I have had but in and outlook so far. I shall be with you, in little more than a fortnight, when we will talk the matter over seriously if you do not object. Your affectionate brother, Louis. It was this allusion to a 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 content 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 and told could have given up now. No argument, short of Apollo and person from the clouds, would have influenced her. She made a preparation for departure as if nothing had intervened. End of CHAPTER XVI In her days of prosperity Lady Constantine had often gone to the city of Bath, either frivolously for shopping purposes, or musically religiously to attend choir festivals in the Abbey, so there was nothing surprising in her reverting to an old practice. That a 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-housekeeper only. The lamp-posts were still those that had done duty with oil-lights, and dramatic old coachmen and pastillions, that once had driven and ridden gloriously from London to land's end, ornamented with her 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. Well, well informed at the time of day, my lady, said Mrs. Green as she pulled down the blinds in Lady Constantine's room on the evening of their arrival. There is a church exactly at the back of us, and I hear every hour strike. Lady Constantine said that she had noticed that there was a church quite near. Well, it is better that we have that at the back than other folk's windows, 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 these 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 obscure streets to the Abbey. After wondering about beneath the aisles till her courage was screwed up to its highest, she went out at the other side, and looking timidly around 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 obscured the footway. Nobody was coming, nobody was going, in that thoroughfare. She appeared to be the single one of the human race spent 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 blond 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 errant and tone 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, Oh 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 not need 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 are doubtless aware, to hinder runaway marriages as much as possible, and seek with unions, and other such objectionable practices. You need not come again. That evening Lady Constantine wrote to Swithin St. Cleave the last letter of the fortnight. My dearest, do come 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 realise 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 forever 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 in this trying prelude need Lady Constantine have feared for her strength. Deeds in this connection demand a particular kind of courage that such perverted 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 unwanted 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 day as 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, Antony, her face as long as a fiddle. I hoped there is 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 come and put together, for he's been a good boy to his mother ever since twelve weeks before he was born. It was he, a tender deary, that made Antony marry me, and thereby turned herself from a little calamity to a little blessing, for, as you know, the man were a backward man in the church part of matrimony, my lady, though he'll do anything when he's forced by a bit of his manly feelings. And now to lose the child. Oh, what shall I do? 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 the directions to prepare for Lady Constantine's return in two or three days. But as the exact day of her return was uncertain, no courage 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.