 2. On a Tower, Prithas. Ah! my heart, her eyes, and she, have taught the newest astrology. How ere love's native hours were set, whatever starry synod met, Tis in the mercy of her eye, if poor love shall live or die. Krasha loves horoscope. Prithas This slightly built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe and to empower to readers the sentiment that of those contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men. But on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck with these high aims of the author than with their own opinion, first that the novel was an improper one in its morals and secondly that it was intended to be a satire on the established church of this country. I was made to suffer in consequence from several eminent pens. That, however, was thirteen years ago and in respect of the first opinion I venture to think that those who care to read the story now will be quite astonished at the scrupulous propriety observed therein on the relations of the sexes for though there may be frivolous and even grotesque touches on occasion there is hardly a single caress in the book outside legal matrimony or what is intended so to be. As for the second opinion it is sufficient to draw attention as I did at the time to the fact that a bishop is every inch a gentleman and that the parish priest who figures in the narrative is one of the most estimable characters. However the pages must speak for themselves. Some few readers I trust to take a serious view will be reminded by this imperfect story in a manner not unprofitable to the growth of the social sympathies of the pathos, misery, long suffering and divine tenderness which in real life frequently accompany the passion of such a woman as Viviet for a lover several years her junior. The scene of the action was suggested by two real spots in the part of the country specified each of which has a column standing upon it. Certain surrounding peculiarities have been imported into the narrative from both sites. Thomas Hardy, July 1895 End of Preface Chapter 1 of Two on a Tower This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ty Gheins Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy Chapter 1 On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold when the vegetable world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely a gleaming land now came to a pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex. The spot was where the old Melchester Road which the carriage had hitherto followed was joined by a drive that led round to a park at no great distance off. The footman alighted and went to the occupant of the carriage, a lady about eight or nine and twenty. She was looking through the opening afforded by a field gate at the undulating stretch of country beyond. In pursuance of some remark from her the servant looked in the same direction. The central feature of the middle distance, as they beheld it, was a circular isolated hill of no great elevation which placed itself in strong chromatic contrast with the wide acreage of surrounding arable by being covered with fir trees. The trees were all of one size and age so that her tips assumed a precise curve of the hill they grew upon. This pint-lad protuberance was yet further marked out from the general landscape by having on its summit a tower in the form of a classical column which though partly immersed in the plantation rose above the treetops to a considerable height. Upon this object the eyes of the lady and servant were bent. Then there was no road leading near it, she asked. Nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady. Then drive home, she said after a moment, and the carriage rolled on its way. A few days later the same lady and the same carriage passed that spot again, her eyes as before turned to the distant tower. Nobs, she said to the coachman, could you find your way home through that field so as to get near the outskirts of the plantation where the column is? The coachman regarded the field. Well, my lady, he observed, in dry weather we might drive there by inching and pinching, and so get across by five and twenty acres all being well, but the ground is so heavy after these rains that perhaps it would be hardly safe to try it now. Perhaps not, she assented indifferently. Remember it will you, at a drier time. And again the carriage sped along the road, the lady's eyes resting on the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it and the column that formed its apex till they were out of sight. A long time elapsed before that lady drove over the hill again. It was February. The soil was now unquestionably dry, the weather and scene being in other respects much as they had been before. The familiar shape of the column seemed to remind her that at last an opportunity for close inspection had arrived. Giving her direction she saw the gate opened, and after a little maneuvering the carriage swayed slowly into the uneven field. Although the pillar stood upon the hereditary state of her husband, the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nigh impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods to wait for her on the nearest edge of the field. She then ascended beneath the trees on foot. The column now showed itself as a much more important erection than it had appeared from the road, or the park, or the windows of Welland House, her residence hard by, whence she had surveyed hundreds of times without ever feeling a sufficient interest in its details to investigate them. The column had been erected in the last century, as a substantial memorial to her husband's great-grandfather, a respectable officer who had fallen in the American War, and the reason for her lack of interest was partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more and on. It was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do, the chronic desire of a curiously lonely life that had brought her here now. She was in a mood to welcome anything that would, in some measure, disperse an almost killing ennui. She would have welcomed even a misfortune. She had heard that from the summit of the pillar four counties could be seen. Whatever pleasurable effect was to be derived from looking into four counties, she resolved to enjoy today. The first shrouded hill-top was, according to some antiquaries, an old Roman camp. If it were not us, others insisted, an old British castle, or, as the rest swore, an old Saxon field of Witton Agamote, with remains of an outer and inner Valum, a winding path leading up between their overlapping ends by an easy ascent. The spiklets from the trees formed a soft carpet over the route, and occasionally a break of brambles barred the interspaces of the trunks. Soon she stood immediately at the foot of the column. It had been built in the Tuscan order of classical architecture, and was really a tower being hollow with steps inside. The gloom and solitude which prevailed around the base were remarkable. The sob of the enviring trees was here expressively manifest, and moved by the light breeze at thin straight stems rocked in seconds, like inverted pendulums, while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar's sides, or occasionally clipped in catching each other. Below the level of their summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mill-jewed, for the sun never pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. Pads of moss grew in the joints of the stonework, and here and there shade-loving insects had engraved on the mortar patterns of no human style or meaning, but curious and suggestive. Above the trees the case was different. The pillar rose into the sky, a bright and cheerful thing, unimpeded, clean and flushed with sunlight. The spot was seldom visited by a pedestrian, except perhaps in the shooting season. The rarity of human intrusion was evidenced by the maze of rabbit-runs, the feathers of shy birds, the exuviae of reptiles, and also by the well-worn paths of squirrels down the sides of trunks, and thence horizontally away. The fact of the plantation being an island in the midst of an arable plain sufficiently accounted for this lack of visitors. Few unaccustomed to such places can be aware of the insulating effect of plowed ground when no necessity compels people to traverse it. This rotund hill of trees and brambles, standing in the centre of a plowed field of some ninety or a hundred acres, was probably visited less frequently than a rock would have been visited in a lake of equal extent. She walked round a column to the other side where she found the door through which the interior was reached. The paint, if it had ever had any, was all washed from the wood, and down the decaying surface of the board's liquid rust from the nails and hinges had run in red stains. Over the door was a stone tablet bearing apparently letters or words, but the inscription whatever it was had been smoothed over with a plaster of lichen. Here stood this aspiring piece of masonry, erected as the most conspicuous and ineffacable reminder of a man that could be thought of, and yet the whole aspect of the memorial be token forgetfulness. Probably not a dozen people within the district knew the name of the person commemorated, while perhaps not a soul remembered whether the column were hollow or solid, whether with or without a tablet explaining its date and purpose. She herself had lived within a mile of it for the last five years, and had never come nearer till now. She hesitated to ascend alone, but finding that the door was not fastened, she pushed it open with her foot and entered. A scrap of writing paper lay within, and arrested her attention by its freshness. Some human being then knew the spot, despite her semises. But as the paper had nothing on it, no clue was afforded, yet feeling herself the proprietor of the column and of all around it, her self-assertiveness was sufficient to lead her on. The staircase was lighted by slits in the wall, and there was no difficulty in reaching the top, the steps being quite unworn. The trap-door leading to the roof was open, and on looking through it, an interesting spectacle met her eye. A youth who was sitting on the stool in the centre of the lead flat which formed the summit of the column, his eye being applied to the end of a large telescope that stood before him on a tripod. This sort of presence was unexpected, and the lady started back into the shade of the opening. The only effect produced on him by her footfall was an impatient wave of the hand, which he did without removing his eye from the instrument as if to forbid her to interrupt him. Pausing where she stood, the lady examined the aspect of the individual, who thus made himself so completely at home, on a building which she deemed her own questioned property. He was a youth who might properly have been characterised by a word the judicious chronicler would not readily use in such a connection, preferring to reserve it for raising images of the opposite sex. Whether because no deep felicity is likely to arise from the condition, or for many other reason, to say in these days that a youth is beautiful is not to award him that amount of credit which the expression would have carried with it if he had lived in the times of the classical dictionary. So much indeed is the reverse the case that the assertion creates an awkwardness in saying anything more about him. The beautiful youth usually verges so perilously on the incipient coxcomb, who is about to become the lethario or Juan, among the neighbouring maidens, that for the due understanding of a present young man, his sublime innocence of any thought concerning his own material aspect, or that of others, is most fervently asserted, and must be as fervently believed. Such as he was, there the lad sat. The sun shone full in his face, and on his head he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to view below it a curly margin of very light shining hair, which accorded well with a flush upon his cheek. He had such a complexion as that with which Raphael enriches the countenance of the youthful son of Zacharias, a complexion which, though clear, is far enough removed from virgin delicacy, and suggests plenty of sun and wind as its accompaniment. His features were sufficiently straight in the contours to correct the beholder's first impression that the head was the head of a girl, beside him stood a little oak table, and in front was the telescope. His visitor had ample time to make these observations, and she may have done so all the more keenly through being herself of a totally opposite type. Her hair was black as midnight, her eyes had no less deepish shade, and her complexion show the richness demanded as a support to these decided features. As she continued to look at the pretty fellow before her, apparently so far abstracted in some speculative world as scourgely to know a real one, a warmer wave of a warm temperament glowed visibly through her, and a qualified observer might from this have hazarded a guess that there was romance blood in her veins. But even the interest attaching to the youth could not arrest her attention for ever, and as he made no further signs of moving his eye from the instrument she broke the silence with. What do you see? Something happening somewhere? Yes, quite a catastrophe he automatically murmured without moving round. What? A cyclone in the sun. The lady paused, as if to consider the weight of that event in the scale of Turin life. Will it make any difference to us here? She asked. The young man by this time seemed to be awakened to the consciousness that somebody unusual was talking to him. He turned and started. I beg your pardon, he said. I thought it was my relative come to look after me. She often comes about this time. He continued to look at her and forget the sun, just as your reciprocity of influence as might have been expected between a dark lady and a flax-inherred youth, making itself apparent in the faces of each. Don't let me interrupt your observation, she said. Ah, no! he said again, applying his eye, whereupon his face lost the animation which her presence had lent it, and became immutable as that of a bust, though super-adding to the serenity of repose, the sensitiveness of life. The expression that settled on him was one of all. Not an aptly might it have been said that he was worshipping the sun. Among the various intensities of that worship, which have prevailed since the first intelligent being saw the luminary decline westward, as the young man now beheld it doing, his was not the weakest. He was engaged in what may be called a very chastened or schooled form of that first and most natural of adoration. Would you like to see it? He recommended. It is an event that is witnessed only about once in two or three years, though it may occur often enough. She ascended and looked through the shaded eyepiece, and saw a whirling mass in the centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be laid bare to its core. It was a peep into a maelstrom of fire, taking place where nobody had ever been or ever would be. It's the strangest thing I ever beheld, she said. Then he looked again, till wondering who her companion could be, she asked, Are you often here? Every night when it's not cloudy, and often in the day? At night, of course. The heavens must be beautiful from this point. They are rather more than that. Indeed, have you entirely taken possession of this column? Entirely. But it is my column, she said, with smiling asperity. Then you are Lady Constantine, the wife of absence or Blount Constantine? I am Lady Constantine. Ah, then I agree that it is your ladyships, but will you allow me to rent it for a time, Lady Constantine? You have taken it, whether I allow it or not. However, in the interest of science it is advisable that you continue your tenancy. Nobody knows you are here, I suppose. Hardly anybody? Then he took her down a few steps into the interior, and showed her some ingenious contrivances for stowing articles away. Nobody ever comes near a column, or as it's called here, rings hill spear, he continued. And when I first came up, had nobody had been here for thirty or forty years, the staircase was choked with doors, nests and feathers, but I cleared them out. I understood the column was always kept locked. Yes, it has been so. When it was built in 1782, the key was given to my great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors should happen to want it. He lived just down there where I live now. He denoted by a nod a little dell lying immediately beyond the plowed land which environment him. He kept it in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my grandfather and my mother and myself, the key descended with it. After the first thirty or forty years, nobody ever asked for it. One day I saw it lying rusty in its niche, and finding that it belonged to this column, I took it and came up. I stayed here till it was dark and the stars came out, and that night I resolved to become an astronomer. I came back here from school several months ago, and I mean to be an astronomer still. He lowered his voice and added, I aim at nothing less than a dignity and office of astronomer royal if I live, or perhaps I shall not live. I don't see why you should suppose that, she said. How long are you going to make this your observatory? About a year longer, till I have obtained a practical familiarity with the heavens. Ah, if I only had a good equatorial. What is that? A proper instrument for my pursuit. But time is short, and science is infinite. How infinite, only those who study astronomy fully realize, and perhaps I shall be worn out before I make my mark. She seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture of scientific eagerness and melancholy mistrust of all things human. Perhaps it was owing to the nature of the studies. You were often on this tower alone at night, she said. Yes, at this time of the year particularly, and while there's no moon, I observe from seven or eight till about two in the morning, with a view to my great work on variable stars. But with such a telescope as this, well, I must put up with it. Can you see Saturn rings in Jupiter's moons? He said dryly that he could manage to do that, not without some contempt for the state of our knowledge. I have never seen any planet or star through a telescope. If you wish to come the first clear night, Lady Constantine, I will show you any number. I mean, at your express wish, not otherwise. I should like to come, and possibly may at some time. The stars at very so much, sometimes evening stars, sometimes morning stars, sometimes in the east and sometimes in the west, have always interested me. Ah, now there's a reason for your not coming. Your ignorance of the realities of astronomy is so satisfactory that I will not disturb it except at your serious request. But I wish to be enlightened. Let me caution you against it. Is enlightenment on the subject then so terrible? Oh, yes, indeed. She laughingly declared that nothing could have so peaked her curiosity as his statement, and turned to descend. He helped her down the stairs, and through the briars. He should have gone further and crossed the open cornland with her, but she preferred to go alone. He then retraced his way to the top of the column, but instead of looking longer at the sun, watched her diminishing towards the distant fence, behind which waited the carriage. When in the midst of the field, a dark spot on an area of brown, there crossed her path a moving figure, whom it was difficult to distinguish from the earthy trod as the caterpillar from its leaf, by reason of the excellent match between his clothes and the claws. He was one of the dying-out generation who retained the principle, nearly unlearned now, that a man's habiliments should be in harmony with his environment. Lady Constantine and his figure halted beside each other for some minutes, then they went on their several ways. The brown person was a laboring man known to the world of Welland as Hamos, the encusted form of the word Amos to adopt the phrase of philologists. The reason of the halt had been some enquiries addressed to him by Lady Constantine. "'Who is that, Amos Frey, I think?' she had asked. "'Yes, my lady,' said Hamos, a homely barley-driller born under the aves of her ladyship's outbuildings in a manner of speaking, though your ladyship was neither born nor tempted at the time. "'Who lives in the old house behind the plantation?' "'Oh, Grandma Martin, my lady, and her grandson. "'He is neither a father nor a mother, then. Not a single one, my lady.' "'Where was he educated?' "'At Warborne, a place where they draw up young gamsters' brains like Grubarb under a nine-penny pan-malady, excuse them a common way. They hit so much learning into it that I could talk like the day at Pentecost, which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only the plainest, ciphering woman in the world. Warborne Grammar School—that's where it was I went to. His father, the Reverend Parsons St. Cleave, made a terrible brookle-hit in his marion in the sight of the High. He was a curate here, my lady, for a length of time. "'Oh, a curate,' said Lady Constantine. "'It was before I knew the village.' "'Ah, very long, and merry you go.' And he married Farmer Martin's daughter, Giles Martin, a limbrish man, who used to go rather bad upon his legs, if you can mind. I know the man well enough, who should know him better. The maid was a poor, windlin' thing, and though a playward piece of flesh, he married her, a socked and sighed, and went off like a snuff. "'Yes, my lady.' Well, when Parsons St. Cleave married this home-spwn woman, the top of most folk wouldn't speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he'd no longer get his livin' by curing their two-penny souls as such damn nonsense as that—excuse me, common way—and he took the Farmer straight away. And then a drop down dead in an outwest thunderstorm, being said, that Master God was in tantrums with him for leavin' his service. Hey, they'd given me story as I heard it, my lady, but be days if I believe such trumpery of folks in the sky. Not a nothin' else that's saidin' them, good or bad. Well, sweeten the boy was sent to the grammar school, as I say, for— but what with havin' two stations in life in his blood, he's good for nothin', my lady. He mopes about sometimes here and sometimes there. Nobody troubles about him.' Constantine thanked her informant and proceeded onward. To her, as a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's incident was that this lad of striking beauty, scientific attainments and cultivated bearing, should be linked on the maternal side with a local agricultural family through his father's matrimonial eccentricity. A more attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capable of being ruined by flattery, blandishment, pleasure, even gross prosperity, should at present be living on a primitive Eden of unconsciousness, with aims towards whose accomplishment the caliban shape would have been as effective as his own. The penguin birds of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter anxieties, piped a short evening hymn to the vanishing sun. The landscape was gently concave, with the exception of tower and hill, there were no points on which laid rays might linger, and hence the disshaped ninety acres of tilled land assumed a uniform hue of shade quite suddenly. The one or two stars that appeared were quickly clouded over, and it was soon obvious that there would be no sweeping the heavens that night. After tying a piece of tarpolin, which had once seen service on his maternal grandfather's farm, over all the apparatus about him, he went down the stairs in the dark and locked the door. With a key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the side of the slope opposite to that trodden by Lady Constantine, and crossed the field in a line mathematically straight, in a manner that left no traces by keeping in the same furrow all the way on tiptoe. In a few minutes he reached a little dell, which occurred quite unexpectedly on the other side of the field fence, and descended to a venerable-tatched house whose enormous roof, broken up by dormers as big as hay-cocks, could be seen even in the twilight. Over the white walls, built of chalk in the lump, outlines of creepers formed dark patterns as if drawn in charcoal. Inside the house his maternal grandmother was sitting by a wood fire, before it stood a pipkin in which something was evidently keeping warm. An eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was laid for a meal. This woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under which she wore a little cap to keep the other clean, retained faculties but little blunted. She was gazing into the flames with her hands upon her knees, immediately re-enacting in her brain certain of the long chain of episodes, pathetic, tragical and humorous, which had constituted the Paris history for the last sixty years. On Sweden's entry she looked up at him in a sideways direction. "'You should not have waited for me, Granny,' he said. "'It is a no-account, my child. I've had a little nap while sitting here. Yes, I've had a nap, and went straight up to my old country again as usual. The place is as natural as when I left it, in just three score years ago. All the folks on my old aunt were there, as when I was a child. Yet we suppose if I were really to set out and go there hardly a soul would be left alive to say to me, Dog, how art? But tell Hannah to store our stumps and serve the supper, though it feign to do it myself. The poor old soul is getting so unhandy.' Hannah revealed herself to be much nimbler and several years younger than Granny, though of this the latter seemed to be oblivious. When the meal was nearly over Mrs. Martin produced the contents of the mysterious vessel by the fire, saying that she had caused it to be brought in from the back kitchen, because Hannah was hardly to be trusted with such things she was becoming so childish. "'What is it, then?' said Sweden. "'One of your special puddings?' "'At sight of it, however,' he added reproachfully. "'Now, Granny!' Instead of being round it was in shape an irregular bowler that had been exposed to the weather for centuries. A little scrap peered off here and a little piece broken away there, the general aim being nevertheless to avoid destroying the symmetry of the pudding while taking as much as possible of its substance. "'The fact is,' added Sweden, the pudding is half gone. "'I've only sliced off the nearest pear and once or twice to taste if it was well done,' pleaded Granny Martin with wounded feelings. I said to Hannah, when she took it up, "'Put it there to keep it warm, as there's a better fire than in the back kitchen.' "'Well, I'm not going to eat any of it,' said Sweden decisively as he rose from the table, pushed away his chair and went upstairs. The other station of life that was in his blood and which had been brought out by the grammar school, probably stimulating him. The world is an ungrateful place. To the pity I didn't take my poor name off this earthly calendar and creep underground sixty long years ago, instead of leaving my own county to come here.' More and all, Mrs. Martin. But I told his mother how it would be, marrying so many notches above her, the child was sure to chahoy like his father. When Sweden had been upstairs a minute or two, however, he altered his mind and came down again, ate all the pudding, with the aspect of a person undertaking a deed of great magnanimity. The relish with which he did so restored the unison that knew no more serious interruptions than such as this. "'Mr. Talkingham has been here this afternoon,' said his grandmother, and he wants me to let him meet some of the choir here tonight for practice. They who live at this end of the parish won't go to his house to try over the tunes, because to so far they say, and so to his poor men. So he's going to see what coming to them will do. He asks if you would like to join. I would have had not so much to do. But it's cloudy tonight. Yes, but I have calculations without end, Granny. Now, don't you tell him I'm in the house, will you? And then he'll not ask for me. But if he should, must I then tell a lie, Lord, forgive me? No, you can say I'm upstairs. He must think what he likes. Not a word about the astronomy to any of them, whatever you do, or should we call it visionary and all sorts. So, thou beest, child, why can't ye do something that's a use? At the sound of footsteps Swithin beat a hasty retreat upstairs, where he struck a light and revealed a table covered with books and papers, while round the walls hung star-maps and other diagrams illustrative of celestial phenomena. In the corners stood a huge paste-board tube, which a close inspection would have shown to be intended for a telescope. Swithin hung a thick cloth over the window, in addition to the curtains, and sat down to his papers. On the ceiling was a black stain of smoke, and under this he placed his lamp, evidencing that the midnight oil was consumed on that precise spot very often. Meanwhile, there had entered the room below a personage who, to judge from her voice, and the quick pit-pad of her feet, was a maiden young and blithe. Mrs. Martin welcomed her by the title of Miss Tabitha Lark and inquired what wind had brought her that way, to which the visitor replied that she had come for the singing. "'Sit ye down, then,' said Granny. "'And do ye still go to the house to read to my lady?' "'Yes, I go and read, Miss Martin, but as to getting my lady to Harkin, that's more than a team of six horses could force her to do.' The girl had a remarkably smart and fluent utterance, which was probably a cause or a consequence of her vocation. "'Tis the same story, then.' Said Grandmother Martin. "'Yes, eating out with listlessness. She's neither sitting or sorry, but how dull and dreary she is, only herself can tell. When I get there in the morning, there she is, sitting up in bed, for my lady don't care to get up, and then she makes me bring this book and that book till the bed is heaped up with immense volumes at half-burier, making her look as she leans upon her elbow like the stoning of Stephen. She yawns, then she looks towards the tall glass, then she looks out at the weather, moaning her great black eyes and fixing them on the sky as if they stuck there. While my tongue goes flick-flack along a hundred and fifty words a minute, then she looks at the clock, then she asks me what I've been reading.' "'Ah, poor soul,' said Granny. No doubt she says in the morning, would God it were evening, and in the evening would God it were morning like the disobedient woman in Deuteronomy.' Swithin, in the room overhead, had suspended his calculations, for the duolog interested him. There now crunched heavier steps outside the door, and his grandmother could be heard greeting sundry local representatives of the bass and tenor voice, who lent a cheerful and well-known personality to the names Sammy Bloor, Nat Chapman, Hezekiah Biles, and Hamos Frye, the latter being one with whom the reader has already a distant acquaintance. Besides these came small producers of treble, who had not yet developed into such distinctive units of society as to require particularising. "'Is the good man a come?' asked Nat Chapman. "'No, I see we're here to forum. And how is it with aged women to-night, Mrs. Martin?' "'Tedious traipsing enough with this one, Nat, sit ye down. Well, little Freddy, you don't wish that in the morning to an evening, and an evening to a morning again, dear Freddy, I trust ye for it.' "'Now, who might wish such a thing as that, Mrs. Martin? Nobody in this parish,' asked Sammy Bloor curiously. "'My lady is always wishing it,' spoke up Miss Tabitha Lark. "'Oh, she, nobody can be answerable for the wishes of that unnatural tribe of mankind. Not that but the woman's heartstrings is tried in many a-grieving ways.' "'Ah, poor woman,' said Granny. "'The stage she finds herself in, neither maid, wife nor widow, as ye may say. It's not the primest form of life for keeping and good spirits. How long is it since ye has heard from Sir Blount Tabitha?' "'Two years and more,' said the young woman. He went into one side of Africa as it might be three St. Martin's days back. I come mind it because it was my birthday, and he meant to come out the other side, but he didn't, and has never come out at all.' "'For all the world, like losing a rat in a barley-mow,' said Ezekia. "'He's lost, though ye know where he is.' His comrades nodded. "'Aye, my lady is a walk in weariness. I see to yawn just at the very moment when the fox was hallowed away by long-turned-cops, and the hounds round and all were past her carriage-wales. If I were she, I'd see a little life, though there's no fair, club-walk, and there are feasts to speak of. Till least a week, that's true. She dares not. She's under solemn oath to do no such thing. There will cost the void-keep any such a note. But here's the parson, if my ears don't deceive me.' There was a noise of horses' hooves without, a stumbling against the door-scraper, a tethering to the window-shutter, a creaking of the door on its hinges, and a voice which Swithin recognized as Mr. Tarkingham's. He greeted each of the previous arrivals by name, and stated that he was glad to see them all so punctually assembled. "'Aye, sir,' said Hamoth's fry. "'It is only my joints that have kept me from assembling myself long ago. I'd assemble upon the top a well and steeple, if weren't for my joints. I assure you, parson, Tarkingham, that in the clinch of my knees, where the rain used to come through when I was cutting plots for the new lawn, in old Milady's time, it is as if rats were gnawn every now and then. When I fell as young, he's too small in the brain to see how soon a constitution can be squandered worse luck.' "'True,' said Biles, to fill the time while the parson was engaged in finding the psalms. A man's a-full to least forty. Often have I taught when hay-pitching, and the smaller my back seemin' no stouter than a harness. The devil said that I had but the makin' of labourer men for a twelve want. I gave every man Jack two good back-bones, even if the alteration was as wrong as forgery. "'Four? Four back-bones?' said Hamoth decisively. "'Yes, four,' threw in Sammy Bloor with additional weight of experience, for he'd want one in front for breast-ploughin' and such like, and one at the right side for ground-dressin' and one at the left for tornin' mixins. Well, then next I'd move every man's wind-pipe a good span away from his dutch-pipe, so that at harvest time he could fetch breath in his drinkin' without bein' choked and strangled as he is now. I think so when I feel the victual's goin'. Now we begin," interrupted Mr. Torkingham, his mind returning to this world again on concluding his search for a hymn. Thereupon the racket of chair-legs on the floor signified that they were settling into their seats, a disturbance which Swithin took advantage of by going a tip-toe across the floor above and putting sheets of paper over knotholes in the boarding at points where carpet was lacking, that his land-light might not shine down. The absence of a ceiling beneath rendered his position virtually that of once suspended in the same apartment. The parson announced a tune, and his voice burst forth with — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — and the base contingent at last got on the way with a time of its own. "'Onward, Christian soldiers!' Ah! that's where we are so defective. The pronunciation interrupted the parson. Now, repeat after me. Onward, Christian soldiers!' The choir repeated like an exaggerated echo. "'Onward, Christian soldiers!' "'Better,' said the parson, in the strenuously sanguine tones of a man who got his living by discovering a bright side in things where it was not very perceptible to other people. But it should not be given with quite so extreme an accent, or we may be called affected by other parishes. And, Nathaniel Chapman, there's a jauntiness in your manner of singing which is not quite becoming. Why don't you sing more earnestly?' Oh! my conscience won't let me soar. They say every man for himself, but, thank God, I'm not so mean as to lessen old folk's chances by being earnest at my time of life, and they so much nearer the need of it.' "'It's bad reasoning that, I fear. Now, perhaps we are better Saul's father, June. Eyes on your books, please.' "'Saul's all far far me!' "'Are you cancelling like that?' "'Not I,' said Sammy Bloor, with condemnatory astonishment. I can see in genuine music, like F and J, but not anything so much out of the order of nature as that.' "'Perhaps you brought the wrong book, sir,' chimed in Hamas kindly. I've known music early and night and late. In short, ever since Luke's sneak broke his new fiddle-bow in the Weddon's Sam, when Passon Wilton brought home his bride. You can mind the time, Sammy, when we sung, his wife, like a fair, fertile vine, her lovely fruit shall bring, when the young woman turned as red as a rose, not known to us coming. "'I've known music ever since then, sir,' I say, and never heard the like of that. Every mortal note, at his name, A, B, and C at that time.' "'Yes, yes, ma'am, but this is a more recent system.' "'Still, you can't alter an old established note that's A or B by nature,' rejoined Hamas, with yet deeper conviction that Mr. Talkingham was getting off his head. "'Now, sound, eh, neighbour, Sammy, and let's have a slap at Christian soldiers again, and show the Passon the true way.' Sammy produced a private tuning-fork, black and grimy, which being about seventy years of age, and wrought before piano-forte builders had set up the pitch to make their instruments brilliant, was nearly a note flattered than the Parsons. While an argument as to the true pitch was in progress, there came a knocking without. "'Somebody's at the door,' said a little treble-girl. "'Though I heard a knock-a-fore,' said the relieved choir. "'The lecture's lifted, and the man asks from the darkness. "'Is Mr. Talkingham there?' "'Yes, mills, what do you want?' "'It was a Parsons man.' "'Oh, if you please,' said mills, showing an advanced margin of himself round the door. "'Lady Constantine wants to see you very particular, sir, and could you call on her after dinner, if you've been to engage with poor folks?' "'She just had a letter, so they say, and it's about that, I believe.' Finding and looking at his watch that it was necessary to start at once if he meant to see her that night, the Parsons cut short the practicing, and, naming another night for the meeting, he withdrew. All the singers assisted him unto his cob, and watched him till he disappeared over the edge of the bottom. CHAPTER III Mr. Talkingham trotted briskly onward to his house, a distance of about a mile. Each cottage, as it revealed its half-buried position by a single light, appeared like a one-eyed night-creature watching him from an ambush. Leaving his horse at the parsonage, he performed the remainder of the journey on foot, crossing the park towards Welland House by a style and path, till he struck into the drive near the north door of the mansion. This drive, it may be remarked, was also the common highway to the lower village, and hence Lady Constantine's residence and park, as is occasionally the case with old-fashioned manners, possessed none of the exclusiveness found in some aristocratic settlements. The parishioners looked upon the park avenue as their natural thoroughfare, particularly for christenings, weddings, and funerals which passed the Squires mansion with due considerations as to the scenic effect of the same from the manor windows. Hence the house of Constantine, when going out from its breakfast, had been continually crossed on the doorsteps for the last two hundred years by the houses of hodge and giles in full cry to dinner. At present these collisions were but too infrequent, for though the villagers passed the north front door as regularly as ever, they seldom met at Constantine. Only one was there to be met, and she had no zest for outings before noon. The long, low front of the great house, as it was called by the parish, stretching from end to end of the terrace, was in darkness as the vicar slackened his pace before it, and only the distant fall of water disturbed the stillness of the menorial precincts. On gaining admittance he found Lady Constantine waiting to receive him. She wore a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and being the only person in the spacious apartment she looked small and isolated. In her left hand she held a letter and a couple of at-home cards. The soft dark eyes which she raised to him as he entered, large and melancholy by circumstance, far more than by quality, were the natural indices of a warm and affectionate, perhaps slightly voluptuous temperament languishing for want of something to do, cherish, or suffer for. Mr. Talkingham seated himself. His boots, which had seemed elegant in the farmhouse, appeared rather clumsy here, and his coat, that was a model of tailoring when he stood amid the choir, now exhibited decidedly strained relations with his limbs. Three years had passed since his induction to the living of Welland, but he had never as yet found means to establish that reciprocity with Lady Constantine which usually grows up in the course of time between Parsonage and Manor House, unless indeed either side should surprise the other by showing respectively a weakness for awkward modern ideas on land ownership or on church formulas which had not been the case here. The present meeting, however, seemed likely to initiate such a reciprocity. There was an appearance of confidence on Lady Constantine's face. She said she was so very glad that he had come, and looking down at the letter in her hand was on the point of pulling it from its envelope, but she did not. After a moment she went on more quickly. I wanted your advice, or rather your opinion, on a serious matter, on a point of conscience, saying which she lay down the letter and looked at the cards. It might have been apparent to a more penetrating eye than the vickers that Lady Constantine, either from timidity, misgiving or reconviction, had swerved from her intended communication, or perhaps decided to begin at the other end. The person who had been expecting a question on some local business or intelligence at the tenor of her words altered his face to the higher branch of his profession. I hope I may find myself of service on that or any other question," he said gently. I hope so. You may possibly be aware, Mr. Talkingham, that my husband, Sir Blount Constantine, was not a mince-matters, a mistaken, somewhat jealous man. Yet you may hardly have discerned it in the short time you knew him. I had some little knowledge of Sir Blount's character in that respect. Well, on this account my married life with him was not of the most comfortable kind. Lady Constantine's voice dropped to a more pathetic note. I am sure I gave him no cause for suspicion, though had I known his disposition sooner I should hardly have dared to marry him. But his jealousy and doubt of me were not so strong as to divert him from a purpose of his. A mania for African lion-hunting, which he dignified by calling it a scheme of geographical discovery, for he was inordinately anxious to make a name for himself in that field. It is the one passion that was stronger than his mistrust of me. Before going away he sat down with me in this room and read me a lecture, which resulted in a very rash offer on my part. When I tell it to you you will find that it provides a key to all that is unusual in my life here. He bade me consider what my position would be when he was gone, hoped that I should remember what was due to him, that I should not so behave towards other men as to bring the name of Constantine into suspicion, and charged me to avoid levity of conduct in attending any ball, route, or dinner to which I might be invited. I, in some contempt for his low opinion of me, volunteered there and then to live like a cloistered nun during his absence, to go into no society, whatever, scarce even to a neighbour's dinner-party, and demanded bitterly if that would satisfy him. He said yes, held me to my word, and gave me no loophole for retracting it. The possible fruits of resipitancy have resulted to me. My life has become a burden. I get such invitations as these, holding up the cards, but I so invariably refuse them that they are getting very rare. I ask you, can I honestly break that promise to my husband? Mr. Talkingham seemed embarrassed. If you promise Sir Blount Constantine to live in solitude till he comes back, you are, it seems, to me, bound by that promise. I fear that the wish to be released from your engagement is to some extent a reason why it should be kept, but your own conscience would surely be the best guide, Lady Constantine. My conscience is quite bewildered with its responsibilities, she continued with his sigh, yet it certainly does sometimes say to me that I ought to keep my word. Very well, I must go on as I am going, I suppose. If you respect a vow, I think you must respect your own, said the person acquiring some further firmness. Had it been wrong for me by compulsion, moral or physical, it would have been open to you to break it, but as you propose a vow when your husband only required a good intention, I think you ought to adhere to it, or what is the pride worth that led you to offer it. Very well, she said with resignation, but it was quite a work of super-elegation on my part. That you propose it in a super-erogatory spirit is not lessen your obligation, having once put yourself under that obligation. St. Paul in his epistle to the Hebrew says, An oath for confirmation is an end of all strife. And you will readily recall the words of Ecclesiastes. Pay that which thou hast vowed. Better it is that thou shouldst not vow than thou shouldst vow and not pay. Why not write to Sir Blount, tell him of the inconvenience of such a bond, and ask him to release you? No, never will I. The expression of such a desire would, in his mind, be a sufficient reason for disallowing it. I'll keep my word. Mr. Talkingham rose to leave. After she had held out her hand to him when he had crossed the room and was within two steps of the door, she said, Mr. Talkingham, he stopped. What I have told you is only the least part of what I sent for you to tell you. Mr. Talkingham walked back to her side. What is the rest of it, then? He asked, with grave surprise. It's a true revelation, as far as it goes, but there is something more. I have received this letter, and I wanted to say something. Then say it now, my dear lady. No, she answered, with a look of utter inability. I cannot speak of it now. Some other time. Don't stay. Please consider this conversation as private. Good night. End of chapter 3 Chapter 4 It was a bright starlight night, a week or ten days later. There had been several such nights since the occasion of Lady Constantine's promise to Swith and St. Cleave to come and study astronomical phenomena on the rings-hill column, but she had not gone there. This evening she sat at a window, the blind of which had not been drawn down. Her elbow rested on a little table at her cheek on her hand. Her eyes were attracted by the brightness of the planet Jupiter, as he rode in the ecliptic opposite, beaming down upon her as if desirous of notice. Beneath the planet could still be discerned the dark edges of the park landscape against the sky. As one of its features, though nearly screened by the trees which had been planted to shut out the fallow tracts of the estate, rose the upper part of the column. It was hardly visible now, even if visible at all, but Lady Constantine knew from daytime experience its exact bearing from the window at which she leaned. The knowledge that there it still was, despite its rapid envelopment by the shade, led her mind to the late meeting on its summit with the young astronomer and to her promise to honour him with a visit for learning some secrets about the scintillating bodies overhead. The curious juxtaposition of youthful ardour and old despair that she had found in the lad would have made him interesting to a woman of perception, apart from his fair hair and early Christian face. But such is the heightening touch of memory that his beauty was probably richer in her imagination than in the real. It was a moot point to consider whether the temptations that would be brought to bear upon him in his course would exceed the staying power of his nature. Had he been a wealthy youth he would have seemed one to tremble for. Despite of his attractive ambitions and gentlemanly bearing she thought it would possibly be better for him if he never became known outside his lonely tower. Forgetting that he had received such intellectual enlargement as would probably make his continuance in well and seem, in his own eye, a slight upon his father's branch of his family, whose social standing had been only a few years earlier but little removed from her own. Suddenly she flung a cloak about her and went out on the terrace. She passed down the steps to the lower lawn, through the door to the open park, and there stood still. The tower was now discernible. As the words in which a thought is expressed develop a further thought, so did the fact of her having got so far influenced her to go further. A person who had casually observed her gate would have thought it a regular, and the lessening than increasing the speed with which she proceeded in the direction of the pillar could be accounted for only by a mode of much more disturbing than an intention to look through a telescope. Though she went on till leaving the park she crossed the turnpike road and entered the large field, in the middle of which the fur-clad hill stood like months on the shell in its bay. The stars were so bright as distinctly to show her the place, and now she could see a faint light at the top of the collium which rose like a shadowy finger pointing to the upper constellations. There was no wind in a human sense, but a steady statorious breathing from the fir trees show that, now as always, there was movement in apparent stagnation. Nothing but an absolute vacuum could paralyze their utterance. The door of the tower was shut. It was something more than a freakishness which is engendered by a sickening monotony that had led Lady Constantine thus far, and hence she made no adieu about admitting herself. Three years ago, when her every action was a thing of propriety, she had known of no possible purpose which could have led her abroad in a manner such as this. She ascended the tower noiselessly. Unraising her head above the hatchway she beheld Swithin bending over a scroll of paper which lay on a little table beside him. The small lantern that illuminated it showed also that he was warmly wrapped up in a coat and thick cap behind him standing the telescope on its frame. What was he doing? She looked over his shoulder upon the paper and saw figures and signs. When he had jotted down something he went to the telescope again. What are you doing to-night? She said in a low voice. Swithin started and turned. The faint lamplight was sufficient to reveal her face to him. Not hideous work, Lady Constantine, he answered, without betraying much surprise. Doing my best to watch phenomenal stars, as I may call them. You said you would show me the heavens if I could come on a star-like night. I have come. Swithin, as a preliminary, swept round the telescope to Jupiter and exhibited to her the glory of that orb. Then he directed the instrument to the less bright shape of Saturn. Here, he said, warming up to the subject, we see a world which is, to my mind, by far the most wonderful in the solar system. Think of streams of satellites or meteors racing round and round the planet like a flywheel, so close together as to seem solid matter. He entered further and further into the subject, his ideas gathering momentum as he went on, like his pet heavenly bodies. When he paused for breath, she said, in tones very different from his own. I ought now to tell you that, though I am interested in the stars, they are not what I came to see you about. I first thought of disclosing the matter to Mr. Torquium, but I altered my mind and decided on you. She spoke in so low a voice that he might not have heard her. At all events, abstracted by his grand theme, he did not heed her. He continued, Well, we will get outside the solar system altogether, leave the whole group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in our flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole forest. Now what do you see, Lady Constantine? He leveled the acromatic at Sirius. She said that she saw bright star, though it only seemed a point of light now as before. That's because it's so distant that no magnifying would bring its size up to zero. They call it a fixed star. It is, like all fixed stars, moving with inconceivable velocity, but no magnifying would show that velocity is anything but rest. And thus they talked about Sirius and then about other stars, in the scrawl of all those beasts and fish and fowl, with which, like Indian plantations, the learned stock the constellations. Tilly asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at that moment. She looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their high position unfolded. Oh, thousands, hundreds of thousands, she said absently. No, there are only about three thousand. Now, how many do you think are brought with insight by the help of a powerful telescope? I won't guess. Twenty millions. But whatever the stars were made for, they were not made to please our eyes. It is just the same in everything. Nothing is made from man. Is it that notion which makes you so sad for your age? She asked with almost maternal solicitude. I think astronomy is a bad study for you. It makes you feel human insignificance too plainly. Perhaps it does. However, he added more cheerfully. Though I feel the study to be one almost tragic in its quality, I hope to be the new Copernicus. What he was to the solar system, I aim to be to the systems beyond. Then, by means of the instrument at hand, they travelled together from the earth to Uranus and the mysterious outskirts of the solar system, from the solar system to a star in the swan, the nearest fixed star in the northern sky, from the star in the swan to remote stars, thence to the remotest visible, till the ghastly chasm which they had bridged by a fragile line of sight was realised by Lady Constantine. We are now traversing distances beside which the immense line stretching from the earth to the sun is but an invisible point, said the youth. Well, just now we have reached a planet whose remoteness is a hundred times the remoteness of the sun from the earth. We were only a two thousand parts of the journey to that spot at which we have optically arrived now. Oh, pray don't. It overpowers me," she replied, not without seriousness. It makes me feel that it is not worthwhile to live. It quite annihilates me. Never annihilate your ladyship to roam over these yawn in spaces, just once. Think how it must annihilate me to be as it were in constant suspension amid them night after night. Yes. It was not really the subject that I came to see you upon, Mr. Sintleave. She began a second time. It was a personal matter. I am listening, Lady Constantine. I will tell it to you. Yet no, not this moment. Let us finish this grand subject first. It dwarfs mine. It would have been difficult to judge from her accents whether she were afraid to broach her own matter or really interested in his, or a certain youthful pride that he evidenced that being the elucidator of such a large theme and that having drawn her there to hear and observe it may have inclined her to indulge him for kindness's sake. Thereupon he took exception to her use of the word grand as the script of the actual universe. The imaginary picture of the sky is the concavity of a dome whose base extends from horizon to horizon of our earth is grand, simply grand, and I wish I had never got beyond looking at it in that way. But the actual sky is a horror. A new view of her old friend, the stars, she said, smiling up at them. But such an obviously true one, said the young man, you would hardly think at first that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any moderately penetrating mind, monsters to which those of the oceans bear no sort of comparison. What monsters may they be? Impersonal monsters, namely inensities, until a person has thought out the stars and their interspaces, he has hardly learnt that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape, namely monsters of magnitude without known shape. Such monsters are the voids and waste places of the sky. Look, for instance, at those pieces of darkness in the milky way. He went on pointing with his finger to where the galaxy stretched across over their heads with the luminousness of a frosted web. You see that dark opening in it near the swan. There is a still more remarkable one south of the equator, called the cold sack as a sort of nickname that is a farcical force from its very inadequacy. In these our sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we may have yet visited. Those are deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave alone the human body, and think of the side-coverns and secondary abysses to right and left as you pass on. Lady Constantine was heedful and silent. He tried to give her yet another idea of the size of the universe. Never was there a more ardent endeavour to bring down the immeasurable to human comprehension. By figures of speech and apt comparisons he took her mind into leading strings, compelling her to follow him into wildernesses of which she had never in her life even realised the existence. There is a size at which dignity begins, he exclaimed. Further on there is a size at which grandeur begins, further on there is a size at which solemnity begins, further on a size at which awfulness begins, further on a size at which gasiness begins. That size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe, so am I not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror. Standing as she stood in the presence of the stellar universe, under the very eyes of the constellations, Lady Constantine apprehended something of the earnest youth's argument. And to add a new weirdness to what the sky possesses in its size and formlessness there is involved a quality of decay. For all the wonder of these everlasting stars, eternal spheres and what not, they are not everlasting, they are not eternal, they burn out like candles. You see that dying one in the body of the greater bear? Two centuries ago it was as bright as the others. The senses may become terrified by plunging among them as they are, but there is a pitifulness even in their glory. Imagine them all extinguished, and your mind feeling its way through a heaven of total darkness, occasionally striking against the black invisible cinders of those stars. If you are cheerful and wish to remain so, leave the study of astronomy alone. Of all the sciences it alone deserves the character of the terrible. I am not altogether cheerful. If then on the other hand you are restless and anxious about the future, study astronomy at once. Your troubles will be reduced amazingly, in which your study will reduce them in a singular way by reducing the importance of everything, so that the science is still terrible even as a panacea. It is quite impossible to think at all adequately of the sky, of what the sky substantially is, without feeling it is a juxtaposed nightmare. It is better, far better for men to forget the universe than to bear it clearly in mind. Would you say the universe is not really what you came to see me about? What was it, may I ask, Lady Constantine? She mues and sighed, and turned to him with something pathetic in her. The immensity of the subject you have engaged me on has completely crushed my subject out of me. Yours is celestial. Mine, lamentably human, and the less must give way to the greater. But it is, in a human sense, and apart from macro-cosmic magnitudes, important. He inquired at last, attracted by her manner, for he began to perceive, in spite of his prepossession, that she had really something on her mind. It is as important as personal troubles usually are. Notwithstanding her preconceived notion of coming to swithin as employer to dependent, as chatterlane to page, she was falling into confidential intercourse with him. His vast and romantic endeavours lent him a personal force and charm which he could not but apprehend. In the presence of the immensities that this young mind had, as it were, brought down from above to hers, they became unconsciously equal. There was, moreover, an inborn liking in Lady Constantine to dwell less on her permanent position as a county lady than to her passing emotions as a woman. I would postpone the matter I came to charge with. She resumed, smiling. I must reconsider it. Now I will return. Allow me to show you out through the trees and across the fields. She said neither a distinct yes nor no, and, descending the tower, they threaded the furs and crossed the plowed field. By an odd coincidence he remarked when they drew near the great house. You may possibly be interested in knowing, Lady Constantine, that that medium-sized star you see over there, low down in the south, is precisely over-so-blown Constantine's head in the middle of Africa. How very strange that you should have said so, she answered. You have broached for me the very subject I have come to speak of. Not a domestic matter, he said with surprise. Yes, what a small matter it seems now after our astronomical stupendousness, and yet, on my way to you, it so far transcended the ordinary matters of my life as the subject you have led me up to transcends this. But, with a little laugh, I will endeavour to sink down to such ephemeral trivialities as human tragedy and explain, since I have come. The point is, I want a helper. No woman ever wanted one more. For days I have wanted a trusty friend who could go on a secret errand for me. It is necessary that my messenger should be educated, should be intelligent, and should be as silent as the grave. Do you give me your solemn promise as to the last point, if I confide in you? Most emphatically, Lady Constantine, your right hand upon the compact. He gave his hand and raised hers to his lips. In addition to his respect for her as the lady of the manor, there was the admiration of twenty years for twenty-eight or nine in such relations. I trust you, she said. Now, beyond the above conditions, it is especially necessary that my agent should have known Sir Blount Constantine well by sight when he was at home. For the errand is concerning my husband. I am much disturbed if I have heard about him. I am indeed sorry to know it. There are only two people in the parish who fulfil all the conditions. Mr. Talkingham and yourself. I sent for Mr. Talkingham, and he came. I could not tell him. I felt at the last moment that he wouldn't do. I have come to you because I think you will do. This is it. My husband has led me and all the world to believe that he is in Africa, hunting lions. I have had a mysterious letter informing me that he has been seen in London in very peculiar circumstances. The truth of this I want ascertained. Go on the journey. Personally, I would go to the end of the world for you, Lady Constantine, but no buts. How can I leave? Why not? I am preparing a work on Variable Stars. There is one of these which I have exceptionally observed for several months, and on this my great theory is mainly based. It has been hitherto called a regular, but I have detected a periodicity in its so-called regularities which, if proved, will add some very valuable facts to those known on this subject, one of the most interesting, perplexing and suggestive in the whole field of astronomy. Now, to clinch my theory, there should be a sudden variation this week, or at latest, next week, and I have to watch every night not to let it pass. You see my reason for declining, Lady Constantine? Young men are always so selfish, she said. It might ruin the whole of my years' labour if I leave now, return to youth greatly hurt. Could you not wait a fortnight longer? No, no, don't think that I have asked you, pray. I have no wish to inconvenience you. Lady Constantine, don't be angry with me. Will you do this? Watch the star for me while I am gone. If you are prepared to do it effectively, I will go. Who will it be much trouble? There will be some trouble. You will have to come here every clear evening about nine. If the sky were not clear, then you would have to come at four in the morning, should the clouds have dispersed. Could not the telescope be brought to my house? Swithin shook his head. Perhaps he did not observe his real size, that it was fixed to a framework. I could not afford to buy an equatorial, and I have been obliged to rig up an apparatus of my own devising. So as to make it in some measure answer the purpose of an equatorial. It could be moved, but I would rather not touch it. Well, I'll go to the telescope. She went on with an emphasis that was not wholly playful. You were the most un-gallant youth I ever met with. I suppose I must set that down to science. Yes, I'll go to the tower at nine every night. And alone I should prefer to keep my pursuits there unknown. And alone, she answered, quite over-born by his inflexibility. You will not miss the morning observation if it should be necessary. I have given my word. And I give mine. I suppose I ought not to have been so exacting. He spoke with that sudden emotional sense of his own insignificance, which made these alterations of mood possible. I'll go anywhere, do anything for you, this moment, tomorrow, or at any time. But you must return with me to the tower and let me show you the observing process. They retraced their steps, the tender, hoarfrost taking the imprint of their feet, while two stars in the twins looked down upon their two persons through the trees, as if those two persons could bear some sort of comparison with them. On the tower the instructions were given. When all was over, and he was again conducting her to the great house, she said, When can you start? Now, said Swithin. So much the better. You shall go up by the night-mail. Though she had risen before four o'clock and crossed to the tower through the grey half-light, when every blade and twig were furred with rhyme, she felt no longer. Expectation could banish at cock-crow the eye-heaviness which apathy had been unable to disperse all the day long. There was, as she had hoped, a letter from Swithin St. Cleave. Dear Lady Constantine, I have quite succeeded in my mission, and shall return to-morrow at ten p.m. I hope you have not failed in the observations. Watching the stars through an oppleglass Sunday night, I fancied some change had taken place, but I could not make myself sure. Your memoranda for that night I await with impatience. Please don't neglect to write down, at the moment, all remarkable appearances, both as to colour and intensity, and be very exact as to time, which correct in the way I showed you. I am, dear Lady Constantine, yours most faithfully, Swithin St. Cleave. Not another word in the letter about his errand. His mind ran on nothing but his astronomical subject. He had succeeded in his mission, and yet he did not even say yes or no to the great question, whether or not her husband was masquerading in London at the address she had given. Was ever anything so provoking? She cried. However, the time was not long to wait. His way homeward would lie within his stone's throw of the manor-house, and though for certain reasons she had forbidden him to call at the late hour of his arrival, she could easily intercept him in the avenue. At twenty minutes past ten she went out into the drive, and stood in the dark. Seven minutes later she heard his footstep, and saw his outline in the slit of light between the avenue trees. He had a valise in one hand, a great coat on his arm, and under his arm a parcel which seemed to be very precious from the manner in which he held it. Lady Constantine? He asked softly. Yes, she said, in her excitement holding out both her hands, though he had plainly not expected her to offer one. Did you watch the star? I'll tell you everything in detail, but pray you're event first. Yes, it's all right. Did you watch every night, not missing one? I forgot to go twice, she murmured contritely. Oh, Lady Constantine, he cried in dismay. How could you serve me so? What shall I do? Please forgive me. Indeed, I could not help it. I had watched and watched, and nothing happened, and somehow my vigilance relaxed when I found nothing was likely to take place in the star. But the very circumstance of it not having happened made it all the more likely every day. Have you seen—she began imploring me. Swidon sighed, lowered his thoughts to sublunary things, and told briefly the story of his journey. Sir Blount Constantine was not in London at the address which had been anonymously sent her. It was a mistake of identity. The person who had been seen there, Swidon, had sought out. He resembled Sir Blount strongly, but he was a stranger. How can I reward you, she exclaimed, when he had done? In no way than by giving me your good wishes in what I am going to tell you on my own account. He spoke in tones of mysterious exultation. This parcel is going to make my fame. What is it? A huge object glass for a great telescope I am so busy about. Such a magnificent day to science has never entered this county before. You may depend. He produced from under his arm the carefully cuddled-up package, which was in shape a round flat disk, like a dinner-plate, tied in paper. Proceeding to explain his plans to her more fully, he walked with her towards the door by which he had emerged. It was a little side-wicket through a wall dividing the open park from the garden terraces. Here, for a moment, he placed his valise and parcel on the coping of the stone balustrade, till he had bidden her farewell. Then he turned, and in laying hold of his bag by the dim light, pushed the parcel over the parapet. It fell smashed upon the paved walk ten or a dozen feet beneath. Oh, good heavens! he cried in anguish. What? My object glass, broken. Is it of much value? It cost all I possess. He ran round by the steps to the lower lawn, Lady Constantine following, as he continued, It is a magnificent eight-inch first-quality object lens. I took advantage of my journey to London to get it. I have been six weeks making the tube of milled board, and as I had not enough money by twelve pounds for the lens, I borrowed it of my grandmother, out of her last annuity payment. What can be done, can be done? Perhaps it is not broken. He felt on the ground, found the parcel, and shook it. A clicking noise issued from inside. Swithin' smote his forehead with his hand and walked up and down like a madfellow. My telescope! I have waited nine months for this lens. Now the possibility of setting up a really powerful instrument is over. It is too cruel. How could it happen? Lady Constantine, I am ashamed of myself before you. Oh, but Lady Constantine, if you only knew what it is to a person engaged in science, to have the means of clinching a theory snatched away at the last moment, his eye against the world, and when the world has accidents on its side, in addition to its natural strength, what chance for me? The young astronomer lent against the wall and was silent. His misery was of an intensity and kind with that of policy, in these struggles with an adverse fate. Don't mind it, pray don't, said Lady Constantine. It is dreadfully unfortunate. You have my whole sympathy. Can it be mended? Mended? No, no. Can't you do with your present one a little longer? It is altogether inferior, cheap and bad. I'll get you another. Yes, indeed I will. Allow me to get you another one as soon as possible. I'll do anything to assist you out of your trouble, for I am most anxious to see you famous. I know you will be a great astronomer in spite of this mishap. Come, say I may get you a new one. Swithin took her hand. He could not trust himself to speak. Some days later a little box of peculiar kind came to the great house. It was addressed to Lady Constantine with great care. She had it partly opened and taken to her own little writing-room, and after lunch, when she had dressed for walking, she took from the box a paper parcel, like the one which had met with the accident. This she hid under her mantle, as if she had stolen it, and, going out slowly across the lawn, passed through the little door before spoken of, and was soon hastening in the direction of the ring's hill-column. There was a bright sun overhead on that afternoon of early spring, and its rays shed an unusual warmth on south-west aspects, though shady places still retain the look and feel of winter. Rooks were already beginning to build new nests or to mend up old ones, and clamorously called in neighbours to give opinions on difficulties in their architecture. Lady Constantine swerved once from her path, as if she had decided to go to the homestead where Swithin lived, but on second thoughts she bent her steps to the collume. Drawing near it she looked up, but by reason of the height of the parapet nobody could be seen thereon who did not stand on tiptoe. She thought, however, that her young friend might possibly see her, if he were there, and come down, and that he was there she soon ascertained by finding the door unlocked and the key inside. No movement, however, reached her ears from above, and she began to ascend. Meanwhile affairs at the top of the column had progressed as follows. The afternoon, being exceptionally fine, Swithin had ascended about two o'clock, and seating himself at the little table which he had constructed on the spot, he began reading over his notes and examining some astronomical journals that had reached him in the morning. The sun blazed into the hollow roof-space as into a tub, and the sides kept out every breeze. Though the month was February below, it was May in the abacus of the collume. This state of the atmosphere and the fact that on the previous night he had pursued his observations till past two o'clock produced in him at the end of half an hour an overpowering inclination to sleep. Spreading on the leadwork a thick rug which he kept up there he flung himself down against the parapet and was soon in a state of unconsciousness. It was about ten minutes afterwards that a soft rustle of silken clothes came up the spiral staircase, and, hesitating onwards, reached the orifice where appeared the form of Lady Constantine. She did not at first perceive that he was present and stood still to reconnoitre. Her eye glanced over his telescope now wrapped up, his table and papers, his observing chair, and his contrivances for making the best of a deficiency of instruments. All was warm, sunny, and silent, except that a solitary bee which had somehow got within the hollow of the abacus was singing round inquiringly, unable to discern that a scent was the only mode of escape. In another moment she beheld the astronomer lying in the sun like a sailor in the main-top. Lady Constantine coughed slightly. He did not awake. She then entered and, drawing the parcel from beneath her cloak, placed it on the table. After this she waited, looking for a long time at his sleeping face, which had a very interesting appearance. She seemed reluctant to leave, yet wanted resolution to wake him, and penciling his name on the parcel she withdrew to the staircase where the brushing of her dress decreased to silence as she receded round and round on a way to the base. Swithin still slept on, and presently the rustle began again in the far down interior of the column. The door could be heard closing, and the rustle came nearer showing that she had shut herself in, no doubt lessened the risk of any accidental surprise by a roaming villager. When Lady Constantine reappeared at the top and saw the parcel still untouched and Swithin asleep as before, she exhibited some disappointment, but she did not retreat. Looking at him again, her eyes became so sentimentally fixed on his face that it seemed as if she could not withdraw them. There lay, in the shape of an antinus, no Amoroso, no Gallant, but a guiless philosopher. His parted lips were lips which spoke not of love, but of millions of miles. Those were eyes which habitually gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. Within his temples dwell thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar aspects and the configuration of constellations. Thus, to his physical attractiveness, was added the attractiveness of mental inaccessibility. The ennobling influence of scientific pursuits was demonstrated by the speculative purity which expressed itself in his eyes whenever he looked at her in speaking, and in the childlike faults of manner which rose from his obstuousness to the difference of sex. He had never, since becoming a man, looked even so low as to the level of a lady Constantine. His heaven at present was truly in disguise and not in that only other place where they say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of Eve. Would any Cersei or Calypso, and if so, what one, ever check this pale-haired scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and stellar fire into limbo. Oh, the pity of it, if such should be the case. She became much absorbed in these very womanly reflections, and at last Lady Constantine's side. Perhaps she herself did not exactly know why. Then a very soft expression lighted on her lips and eyes, and she looked at one jump ten years more useful than before, quite a girl in aspect, younger than he. On the table lay his implements. Among them a pair of scissors, which, to judge from the shreds around, had been used in cutting curves in thick paper for some calculating process. What whim, agitation, or attraction prompted the impulse nobody knows, but she took the scissors, and bending over the sleeping youth, cut off one of the curls, or rather crux, for they hardly reached a curl, which each lock of his hair chose to twist itself in the last inch of its length. The hair fell upon the rug. She picked it up quickly, returned the scissors to the table, and, as if her dignity had suddenly become ashamed of her fantasies, hastened through the door, and descended the staircase. CHAPTER VI When his nap had naturally exhausted itself within a woke, he awoke without any surprise, for he not unfrequently gave to sleep in the daytime what he had stolen from it in the night watches. The first object that met his eyes was the parcel on the table, and seeing his name inscribed thereon he made no scruple to open it. The sun flashed upon a lens of surprising magnitude, polished to such a smoothness that the eye could scarcely meet its reflections. Here was a crystal in whose depths were to be seen more wonders than had been revealed by the crystals of all the cagliostrus. Swithin, hot with joyousness, took this treasure to his telescope manufacturing at the homestead, then he started off at the great house. On gaining its precincts he felt shy of calling, never having received any hint or permission to do so, yet he Constantine's mysterious manner of leaving the parcel seemed to demand the like mysteriousness in his approaches to her. All the afternoon he lingered about uncertainly, in the hope of intercepting her on her return from a drive, occasionally walking with an indifferent lounge across glades commanded by the windows, that if she were indoors she might know he was near. But she did not show herself during the daylight. Still impressed by her playful secrecy he carried on the same idea after dark, by returning to the house and passing through the garden door onto the lawn-front where he sat on the parapet that breasted the terrace. Now she frequently came out here for a melancholy saunter after dinner, and to-night was such an occasion. Swithin went forward and met her at nearly the spot where he had dropped the lens some nights earlier. I have come to see you, Lady Constantine. How did it last get on my table? She laughed as lightly as a girl, that he had come to her in this way was plainly no offence thus far. Perhaps it was dropped from the clouds by a bird. She said, Why should you be so good to me? He cried. One good turn deserves another, answered she. Dear Lady Constantine, whatever discoveries result from this shall be ascribed to you as much as to me. Where should I have been without your gift? You would probably have accomplished your purpose just the same, and have been so much the nobler for your struggle against ill luck. I hope that now you will be able to proceed with your large telescope, as if nothing had happened. Oh, yes, I will certainly. I am afraid I show too much feeling, the reverse of Stoical, when the accident occurred. That was not very noble of me. There is nothing unnatural in such a feeling at your age. When you are older, you will smile at such moods, and at the mishaps that give rise to them. Ha! I perceive you think me weak in the extreme. He said with just a shade of peak. But you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. No person can see exactly what and where another's horizon is. They soon parted, and she re-entered the house where she sat reflecting for some time till she seemed to fear that she had wounded his feelings. She awoke in the night and thought and thought on the same thing. Till she had worked herself into a feverish fret about it. When it was morning she looked across at the tower and sitting down and pulsively wrote the following note. Dear Mr. Sinclave, I cannot allow you to remain under the impression that I despise your scientific endeavours in speaking as I did last night. I think you are too sensitive to my remark. But perhaps you are agitated with the labours of the day, and I fear that watching so late at night must make you very weary. If I can help you again, please let me know. I never realised the grandeur of astronomy till you showed me how to do so. Also, let me know about the new telescope. Come and see me at any time. After your great kindness and being my messenger I can never do enough for you. I wish you had a mother, or sister, and pity your loneliness. I am lonely too. Yours truly, Viviette Constantine. She was so anxious that he should get this letter the same day that she ran across to the collium with it during the morning, preferring to be her own emissary in so curious a case. The door, as she had expected, was locked, and slipping the letter under it she went home again. During lunch her ardour in the cause of Swithin's hurt feelings cooled down till she exclaimed to herself as she sat at her lonely table. What could have possessed me to write in that way? After lunch she went faster to the tower than she had gone in the early morning and peeped eagerly into the chink under the door. She could discern no letter, and on trying the latch found that the door would open. The letter was gone, Swithin having obviously arrived in the interval. She blushed a blush, which seemed to say, I am getting foolishly interested in this young man, and had in short, in her own opinion, somewhat overstepped the bounds of dignity. Her instincts did not square well with the formalities of her existence, and she walked home despondently. Had a concert, bizarre, lecture, or dorkest meeting required the patronage and support of Lady Constantine at this juncture, the circumstance would probably have been sufficient to divert her mind from Swithin's St. Cleave, and astronomy for some little time. But as none of these incidents were within the range of expectation, well and house and parish lying far from large towns and watering-places, the void in her outer life continued, and with it the void in her life within. The youth had not answered her letter, neither had he called upon her in response to the invitation she had regretted with the rest of the epistle as being somewhat too warmly informal for black and white. To speak tenderly to him was one thing, to write another, that was a feeling immediately after the event, but his counter-move of silence and avoidance, though probably the result of pure unconsciousness on his part, completely dispersed such self-considerations now. Her eyes never fell upon the ring's hill column without a solicitous wonder arising as to what he was doing. A true woman she would assume the remotest possibility to be the most likely contingency if the possibility had the recommendation of being tragical. And she now feared that something was wrong with Swithin's St. Cleave, yet there was not the least doubt that he had become so immersed in the business of the new telescope as to forget everything else. On Sunday between the services she walked to Little Welland, chiefly for the sake of giving a run to a house-dog, a large St. Bernard, of whom she was fond. The distance was but short and she returned along a narrow lane divided from the river by a hedge through whose leafless twigs the ripples flashed silver lights into her eyes. Here she discovered Swithin leaning over a gate his eyes bent upon the stream. The dog first attracted his attention then he heard her and turned round. She had never seen him looking so despondent. You have never called though I invited you, said Lady Constantine. My great telescope won't work. He replied leguberously. I am sorry for that. So it has made you quite forget me. Ah, yes, you wrote me a very kind letter, which I ought to have answered. Well, I did forget Lady Constantine. My new telescope won't work and I don't know what to do about it at all. Can I assist you any further? No, I fear not. Besides, you have assisted me already. What would really help you out of all your difficulties? Something would surely. He shook his head. There must be some solution to them. Oh, yes. He replied with a hypothetical gaze into the stream. Some solution, of course. An equatorial, for instance. What's that? Briefly an impossibility. It is a splendid instrument with an object lens of say eight or nine inches aperture mounted with its axis parallel to the Earth's axis and fitted up with graduated circles for denoting right ascensions slide pieces, a finder, and all sorts of appliances. Clockwork, to make the telescope follow the motion and right ascension. I cannot tell you half the conveniences. Ah, an equatorial is a thing, indeed. An equatorial is the one instrument required to make you quite happy. Well, yes. I'll see what I can do. But Lady Constantine quite the amazed astronomer. An equatorial, such as I described costs as much as two grand pianos. She was rather staggered at this news, but she rallied gallantly and said, Never mind, I'll make inquiries. But it could not be put under tower without people seeing it. It would have to be fixed to the masonry and there must be a dome of some kind to keep off the rain. A tarpaulin might do. Lady Constantine reflected. It would be a great business, I see, she said. I would, of course, consent to you doing what you liked with the old column. My workmen could fix it, could they not? Oh, yes. But what would Sir Blount say if he came home and saw the goings on? Lady Constantine turned aside to hide a sudden displacement of blood from her cheek. Ha! my husband! she whispered. I am just now going to church. She added in a repressed and hurried tone. I will think of this matter. In church it was with Lady Constantine as with the Lord Angelo of Vienna in a similar situation. Heaven had her empty words only and her invention heard not her tongue. She soon recovered from the momentary consternation into which she had fallen at Sweden's abrupt query. The possibility of that young astronomer becoming a renowned scientist by her aid was a thought which gave her secret pleasure. The course of rendering him instant help began to have a great fascination for her. It was a new and unexpected channel for her cribbed and confined emotions. With experiences so much wider than his Lady Constantine saw that her chances were perhaps a million to one against Sweden's Enclave ever becoming astronomer royal or astronomer extraordinary of any sort. Yet the remaining chance in his favour was one of those possibilities which to a woman of bounding intellect are pleasanter to dwell on than likely issues that have no savor of high speculation in them. The Equatorial Question was a great one and she had caught such a large spark from his enthusiasm that she could think of nothing so peak on as how to obtain the important instrument. When Tabitha Lark arrived at a great house next day instead of finding Lady Constantine in bed as formerly she discovered her in the library pouring over what astronomical works she had been able to unearth from the war-meeting shelves. As these publications were for a science of such rapid development somewhat venerable there is not much help of a practical kind to be gained from them. Nevertheless the Equatorial retained a hold upon her fancy till she became as eager to see one on the Ringshill Collium as Sweden himself. The upshot of it was that Lady Constantine sent a messenger that evening to well on the bottom where the homestead situated requesting the young man's presence at the house at twelve o'clock next day. He hurriedly returned an obedient reply and the promise was enough to lend great freshness to our manor next morning. Instead of the leaden air which was too frequent with her before the sun reached the meridian and sometimes after, Sweden had in fact arisen as an attractive little intervention between herself and despair. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 7 A fog defaced all the trees of the park that morning. The white atmosphere adhered to the ground like a fungoid groat from it and made the turf tundalations look slimy and raw. But Lady Constantine settled down in her chair to await the coming of the late curate sun with a serenity which the vast blanks outside glimpsed through the window of the house. The room was filled with the serenity which the vast blanks outside could neither baffle nor destroy. At two minutes to twelve the doorbell rang and a look overspread the lady's face that was neither maternal, sisterly, nor amorous, but partook in an indescribable manner of all three kinds. The door was flung open and the young man was ushered in. The fog still clinging to his hair in which he could discern a little notch where she had nipped off the curl. A speechlessness that socially was a defect in him was to her view a peak-want attribute just now. He looked somewhat alarmed. Lady Constantine, have I done anything that you have sent? He began breathlessly as he gaze in her face with parted lips. Oh, no, of course not. I have decided to do something, nothing more. She smilingly said, holding out her hand which she rather gingerly touched. Concerned. Who makes equatorials? This remark was like the drawing of a weir-hatch, and she was speedily inundated with all she wished to know concerning astronomical opticians. When he had imparted the particulars, he waited, manifestly burning to know whether these inquiries tended. I am not going to buy you one, she said gently. He looked as if he would faint. Certainly not. I did not wish it. I could not have accepted it. Faulted the young man. But I am going to buy one for myself. I lack a hobby, and I shall choose astronomy. I shall fix my equatorial to the column. Swithin brightened up. And I shall let you have the use of it whenever you choose. In brief, Swithin St. Cleave shall be Lady Constantine's astronomer royal. And she and she shall be his queen. The words came not much the worse for being uttered only in the tone of one anxious to complete a tardy sentence. Well, that is what I have decided to do, resumed Lady Constantine. I shall write to these opticians at once. There seemed to be no more for him to do than to tangle for the privilege whenever it should be available, which he promptly did, and then made as if to go. But Lady Constantine detained him with, have you ever seen my library? No, never. You don't say you would like to see it? But I should. It is the third door on the right. You can find your way in, and you can stay there as long as you like. Swithin then left the morning-room for the apartment designated, and amused himself in that soul of the house as Cicero defined it, till he heard the lunch bell sounding from the turret, when he came down from the library steps and thought it time to go home. But I would not prefer to have his lunch brought to him there. Upon his replying in the affirmative, a large tray arrived on the stomach of a foot-man, and Swithin was greatly surprised to see a whole pheasant placed at his disposal. Having breakfast at eight that morning and having been much in the open air afterwards, the Adonis astronomer's appetite assumed grand proportions. How much of that pheasant he might consistently eat, without hurting his dear patroness Lady Constantine's when he could readily eat at all, was a problem in which the reasonableness of a larger and larger quantity argued itself inversely as a smaller and smaller quantity remained. When at length he had finally decided on a terminal point in the body of the bird, the door was gently opened. Oh, you have not yet finished. Came to him over his shoulder in a considerate voice. Oh yes, thank you, Lady Constantine, he said jumping up. Would you prefer to lunch in this awkward dusty place? I thought it would be better," said Swithin, simply. There is fruit in the other room, if you would like to come, but perhaps you would rather not. Oh yes, I should much like to," said Swithin, walking over his napkin and following her as she led the way to the adjoining apartment. Here, while she asked him what he had been reading, he modestly ventured on an apple in whose her old friends robbed from her husband's orchard in his childhood long before Lady Constantine's advent on the scene. She supposed he had confined a search to his own sublime subject, astronomy. Swithin suddenly became older to the eye, as his thoughts reverted to the topic thus reintroduced. Yes, he informed her. I seldom read any other subject. In these days the secret of productive study is to avoid well. Did you find any good treatise? None. The theories in your books are almost as obsolete as a tonnetic system. Only fancy that magnificent cyclopedia leatherbound and stamped and gilt and wide margin and bearing the blazing of your house in magnificent colours says that a twinkling of the stars is probably caused by heavenly bodies passing in front of them in their revolutions. And is it not so? That was what I learned when I was a girl. Even an exodus now rose above the embarrassing horizon of Lady Constantine's great house, magnificent furniture, and awe-inspiring footman. He became quite natural. All his self-consciousness fled, and his eyes spoke into hers no less than his lips to her ears, as he said, How such a theory can have lingered on to this day beats conjecture. François Aragot, as long as forty or fifty years ago, conclusively established the fact that scintillation is the simplest thing in the world, merely a matter of atmosphere. But I won't speak to you of this now. The comparative absence of scintillation in warm countries was noticed by Humboldt. There again the scintillations vary. No star flaps his wings like Sirius when he lies low. He flashes out emeralds and rubies, and the testines flames and suffering colours in a manner quite marvellous to behold. And this is only one star. So too do Actorus and Capella, and lesser luminaries, but I tarry you with this subject. On the contrary, you speak so beautifully that I could listen all day. The astronomer threw a searching glance upon her for a moment, but there was no satire in the warm soft eyes which met his own with a luxurious contemplative interest. Say some more of it to me, she continued, in a voice not far removed from coaxing. After some hesitation the subject turned again to his lips, and he said some more, indeed much more. Lady Constantine often throwing in an appreciative remark or question, often meditatively regarding him, in pursuance of ideas not exactly based on his words, and letting him go on as he would. Before he left the house, the new astronomical project was set in train. The top of the column was to be roofed in, to form a proper observatory, and on the ground that he knew better than anyone else to be carried out, she requested him to give precise directions on the point and to superintend the whole. A wooden cabin was to be erected at the foot of the tower, to provide a better accommodation for casual visitors to the observatory than the spiral staircase and lead flat afforded. As this cabin would be completely buried in the dense fur foliage which enveloped the lower part of the column and its pedestal, it would be no disfigurement to the general appearance. Finally a path was to be made across the surrounding fellow, by which she might easily approach the scene of her new study. When he was gone, she wrote to the firm of opticians concerning the equatorial for whose reception all this was designed. The undertaking was soon in full progress, and by degrees it became the talk of the hamlet's round that Lady Constantine had given up melancholy for astronomy to the great advantage of all who came in contact with her. One morning, when Tabitha Lark had come as usual to read, Lady Constantine chanced to be in a quarter of the house to which she seldom wandered, and while here she heard her maid talking confidentially to Tabitha in the adjoining room, on the curious and sudden interest which Lady Constantine had acquired in the moon and stars. They do say all sorts of trumpery, observed the handmaid. They say, adult is little better than mischief, to be sure, that it isn't the moon and it isn't the stars and it isn't the planners my lady cares for, but for the pretty lad who draws them down from the sky to please her, and being a married example, and what would sin and shame knock on every poor maid's door before you can say, hands off, my dear, to the civilised young man, she ought to set a better pattern. Lady Constantine's face flamed up vividly. But if so blout were to come back all of a sudden, oh, my! Lady Constantine grew cold as ice. There's nothing in it," said Tabitha scornfully. I could prove it any day. Well, I wish I had half or chance, sighed the ladies made, and no more was said on the subject then. Tabitha's remark showed that the suspicion was quite an embryo as yet. Nevertheless, saying nothing to reveal what she had overheard, immediately after the reading Lady Constantine flew like a bird to where she knew that swithin might be found. He was in, setting up little sticks to mark where the wooden cabin was to stand. She called him to a remote place under the funereal trees. I have altered my mind, she said. I can have nothing to do with this matter. Indeed, said swithin, surprised. Astronomy is not my hobby any longer, I knew, and not my astronomer royal. Oh, Lady Constantine! quite a youth, aghast. Why, the work has begun. I thought the material was ordered. She dropped her voice, though a Jericho shout would not have been overheard. Of course astronomy is my hobby privately, and you are to be my astronomer royal, and I still furnish the observatory, but not to the outer world. There is a reason against my indulgence in such scientific fancies openly, and the project must be arranged in this wise. The whole enterprise is yours, you rent the tower of me, and build a cabin, you get the equatorial. I simply give permission since you desire it. The path that was to be made from the hill to the park is not to be thought of, there is to be no communication between the house and the column. The equatorial will arrive addressed to you, and at its cost I will pay through you. My name must not appear, and I vanish entirely from the undertaking. This blind is necessary, she added, sighing. Goodbye. She said before, and it will be yours just the same, he said walking after her. He scarcely comprehended the subterfuge and was absolutely blind as to its reason. Can you doubt it? But I dare not do it openly. With this she went away, and in due time they circulated through the parish an assertion that it was a mistake to suppose Lady Constantine had anything to do with Swidon St. Cleave or her stargazing schemes. For you, says his observatory, and to put some temporary fixtures on it for that purpose. After this Lady Constantine lapsed into a former life of loneliness, and by these prompt measures the ghost of a rumour which had barely started into existence was speedily laid to rest. It had probably originated in her own dwelling and had gone but little further, yet despite her self-control a certain north window of the great house that commanded an uninterrupted view over ten feet of the column revealed her to be somewhat frequently gazing from it and a retundity which had begun to appear on the summit. To those with whom she came in contact she sometimes addressed such remarks as is young Mr. St. Cleave getting on with his observatory. I hope he will fix his instruments without damaging the column, which is so interesting to us as being in memory of my dear husband's great grandfather a truly brave man. On one occasion her building steward ventured against to her that Sir Blount having deputed to her the power to grant short leases in his absence. She should have a distinctive agreement with Swidon as being landlord and tenant with a stringent clause against his driving nails into the stonework of such an historical memorial. She replied that she did not wish to be severe on the last representative of such old and respected parishioners as St. Cleave's mother's family had been and of such a well-descended family as his father's, so that it would only be necessary for the steward to keep an eye on Mr. St. Cleave's doings. Further, when a letter arrived at the great-house from Hamilton and Pims the opticians, with information that the equatorial was ready and packed and that a man would be sent with it to fix it, she replied to that firm to the effect that their letter should have been addressed to Mr. St. Cleave, the local astronomer, on whose behalf she had made the inquiries. That she had nothing more to do with the matter that he would receive the instrument and the bill, her guarantee being given for the latter performance. End of chapter 7