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Two on a Tower

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Two on a Tower




The idea that some family skeleton, like those he had read of in
memoirs, had been unearthed by Louis, and held before her terrified
understanding as a matter which rendered Swithin's departure, and
the neutralization of the marriage, no less indispensable to them
than it was an advantage to himself, seemed a very plausible one to
Swithin just now. Viviette might have taken Louis into her
confidence at last, for the sake of his brotherly advice. Swithin
knew that of her own heart she would never wish to get rid of him;
but coerced by Louis, might she not have grown to entertain views of
its expediency? Events made such a supposition on St. Cleeve's part
as natural as it was inaccurate, and, conjoined with his own
excitement at the thought of seeing a new heaven overhead,
influenced him to write but the briefest and most hurried final note
to her, in which he fully obeyed her sensitive request that he would
omit all reference to his plans. These at the last moment had been
modified to fall in with the winter expedition formerly mentioned,
to observe the Transit of Venus at a remote southern station.

The business being done, and himself fairly plunged into the
preliminaries of an important scientific pilgrimage, Swithin
acquired that lightness of heart which most young men feel in
forsaking old love for new adventure, no matter how charming may be
the girl they leave behind them. Moreover, in the present case, the
man was endowed with that schoolboy temperament which does not see,
or at least consider with much curiosity, the effect of a given
scheme upon others than himself. The bearing upon Lady Constantine
of what was an undoubted predicament for any woman, was forgotten in
his feeling that she had done a very handsome and noble thing for
him, and that he was therefore bound in honour to make the most of
it.

His going had resulted in anything but lightness of heart for her.
Her sad fancy could, indeed, indulge in dreams of her yellow-haired
laddie without that formerly besetting fear that those dreams would
prompt her to actions likely to distract and weight him. She was
wretched on her own account, relieved on his. She no longer stood
in the way of his advancement, and that was enough. For herself she
could live in retirement, visit the wood, the old camp, the column,
and, like OEnone, think of the life they had led there--

'Mournful OEnone, wandering forlorn
Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills,'

leaving it entirely to his goodness whether he would come and claim
her in the future, or desert her for ever.

She was diverted for a time from these sad performances by a letter
which reached her from Bishop Helmsdale. To see his handwriting
again on an envelope, after thinking so anxiously of making a
father-confessor of him, started her out of her equanimity. She
speedily regained it, however, when she read his note.


'THE PALACE, MELCHESTER,
July 30, 18--.
MY DEAR LADY CONSTANTINE,--I am shocked and grieved that, in the
strange dispensation of things here below, my offer of marriage
should have reached you almost simultaneously with the intelligence
that your widowhood had been of several months less duration than
you and I, and the world, had supposed. I can quite understand
that, viewed from any side, the news must have shaken and disturbed
you; and your unequivocal refusal to entertain any thought of a new
alliance at such a moment was, of course, intelligible, natural, and
praiseworthy. At present I will say no more beyond expressing a
hope that you will accept my assurances that I was quite ignorant of
the news at the hour of writing, and a sincere desire that in due
time, and as soon as you have recovered your equanimity, I may be
allowed to renew my proposal.--I am, my dear Lady Constantine, yours
ever sincerely,
C. MELCHESTER.'


She laid the letter aside, and thought no more about it, beyond a
momentary meditation on the errors into which people fall in
reasoning from actions to motives. Louis, who was now again with
her, became in due course acquainted with the contents of the
letter, and was satisfied with the promising position in which
matters seemingly stood all round.

Lady Constantine went her mournful ways as she had planned to do,
her chief resort being the familiar column, where she experienced
the unutterable melancholy of seeing two carpenters dismantle the
dome of its felt covering, detach its ribs, and clear away the
enclosure at the top till everything stood as it had stood before
Swithin had been known to the place. The equatorial had already
been packed in a box, to be in readiness if he should send for it
from abroad. The cabin, too, was in course of demolition, such
having been his directions, acquiesced in by her, before he started.
Yet she could not bear the idea that these structures, so germane to
the events of their romance, should be removed as if removed for
ever. Going to the men she bade them store up the materials intact,
that they might be re-erected if desired. She had the junctions of
the timbers marked with figures, the boards numbered, and the
different sets of screws tied up in independent papers for
identification. She did not hear the remarks of the workmen when
she had gone, to the effect that the young man would as soon think
of buying a halter for himself as come back and spy at the moon from
Rings-Hill Speer, after seeing the glories of other nations and the
gold and jewels that were found there, or she might have been more
unhappy than she was.

On returning from one of these walks to the column a curious
circumstance occurred. It was evening, and she was coming as usual
down through the sighing plantation, choosing her way between the
ramparts of the camp towards the outlet giving upon the field, when
suddenly in a dusky vista among the fir-trunks she saw, or thought
she saw, a golden-haired, toddling child. The child moved a step or
two, and vanished behind a tree. Lady Constantine, fearing it had
lost its way, went quickly to the spot, searched, and called aloud.
But no child could she perceive or hear anywhere around. She
returned to where she had stood when first beholding it, and looked
in the same direction, but nothing reappeared. The only object at
all resembling a little boy or girl was the upper tuft of a bunch of
fern, which had prematurely yellowed to about the colour of a fair
child's hair, and waved occasionally in the breeze. This, however,
did not sufficiently explain the phenomenon, and she returned to
make inquiries of the man whom she had left at work, removing the
last traces of Swithin's cabin. But he had gone with her departure
and the approach of night. Feeling an indescribable dread she
retraced her steps, and hastened homeward doubting, yet half
believing, what she had seemed to see, and wondering if her
imagination had played her some trick.

The tranquil mournfulness of her night of solitude terminated in a
most unexpected manner.

The morning after the above-mentioned incident Lady Constantine,
after meditating a while, arose with a strange personal conviction
that bore curiously on the aforesaid hallucination. She realized a
condition of things that she had never anticipated, and for a moment
the discovery of her state so overwhelmed her that she thought she
must die outright. In her terror she said she had sown the wind to
reap the whirlwind. Then the instinct of self-preservation flamed
up in her like a fire. Her altruism in subjecting her self-love to
benevolence, and letting Swithin go away from her, was demolished by
the new necessity, as if it had been a gossamer web.

There was no resisting or evading the spontaneous plan of action
which matured in her mind in five minutes. Where was Swithin? how
could he be got at instantly?--that was her ruling thought. She
searched about the room for his last short note, hoping, yet
doubting, that its contents were more explicit on his intended
movements than the few meagre syllables which alone she could call
to mind. She could not find the letter in her room, and came
downstairs to Louis as pale as a ghost.

He looked up at her, and with some concern said, 'What's the
matter?'

'I am searching everywhere for a letter--a note from Mr. St. Cleeve-
-just a few words telling me when the Occidental sails, that I think
he goes in.'

'Why do you want that unimportant document?'

'It is of the utmost importance that I should know whether he has
actually sailed or not!' said she in agonized tones. 'Where CAN
that letter be?'

Louis knew where that letter was, for having seen it on her desk he
had, without reading it, torn it up and thrown it into the waste-
paper basket, thinking the less that remained to remind her of the
young philosopher the better.

'I destroyed it,' he said.

'O Louis! why did you?' she cried. 'I am going to follow him; I
think it best to do so; and I want to know if he is gone--and now
the date is lost!'

'Going to run after St. Cleeve? Absurd!'

'Yes, I am!' she said with vehement firmness. 'I must see him; I
want to speak to him as soon as possible.'

'Good Lord, Viviette! Are you mad?'

'O what was the date of that ship! But it cannot be helped. I
start at once for Southampton. I have made up my mind to do it. He
was going to his uncle's solicitors in the North first; then he was
coming back to Southampton. He cannot have sailed yet.'

'I believe he has sailed,' muttered Louis sullenly.

She did not wait to argue with him, but returned upstairs, where she
rang to tell Green to be ready with the pony to drive her to
Warborne station in a quarter of an hour.



XXXVIII

Viviette's determination to hamper Swithin no longer had led her, as
has been shown, to balk any weak impulse to entreat his return, by
forbidding him to furnish her with his foreign address. His ready
disposition, his fear that there might be other reasons behind, made
him obey her only too literally. Thus, to her terror and dismay,
she had placed a gratuitous difficulty in the way of her present
endeavour.

She was ready before Green, and urged on that factotum so wildly as
to leave him no time to change his corduroys and 'skitty-boots' in
which he had been gardening; he therefore turned himself into a
coachman as far down as his waist merely--clapping on his proper
coat, hat, and waistcoat, and wrapping a rug over his horticultural
half below. In this compromise he appeared at the door, mounted,
and reins in hand.

Seeing how sad and determined Viviette was, Louis pitied her so far
as to put nothing in the way of her starting, though he forbore to
help her. He thought her conduct sentimental foolery, the outcome
of mistaken pity and 'such a kind of gain-giving as would trouble a
woman;' and he decided that it would be better to let this mood burn
itself out than to keep it smouldering by obstruction.

'Do you remember the date of his sailing?' she said finally, as the
pony-carriage turned to drive off.

'He sails on the 25th, that is, to-day. But it may not be till late
in the evening.'

With this she started, and reached Warborne in time for the up-
train. How much longer than it really is a long journey can seem to
be, was fully learnt by the unhappy Viviette that day. The
changeful procession of country seats past which she was dragged,
the names and memories of their owners, had no points of interest
for her now. She reached Southampton about midday, and drove
straight to the docks.

On approaching the gates she was met by a crowd of people and
vehicles coming out--men, women, children, porters, police, cabs,
and carts. The Occidental had just sailed.

The adverse intelligence came upon her with such odds after her
morning's tension that she could scarcely crawl back to the cab
which had brought her. But this was not a time to succumb. As she
had no luggage she dismissed the man, and, without any real
consciousness of what she was doing, crept away and sat down on a
pile of merchandise.

After long thinking her case assumed a more hopeful complexion.
Much might probably be done towards communicating with him in the
time at her command. The obvious step to this end, which she should
have thought of sooner, would be to go to his grandmother in Welland
Bottom, and there obtain his itinerary in detail--no doubt well
known to Mrs. Martin. There was no leisure for her to consider
longer if she would be home again that night; and returning to the
railway she waited on a seat without eating or drinking till a train
was ready to take her back.

By the time she again stood in Warborne the sun rested his chin upon
the meadows, and enveloped the distant outline of the Rings-Hill
column in his humid rays. Hiring an empty fly that chanced to be at
the station she was driven through the little town onward to
Welland, which she approached about eight o'clock. At her request
the man set her down at the entrance to the park, and when he was
out of sight, instead of pursuing her way to the House, she went
along the high road in the direction of Mrs. Martin's.

Dusk was drawing on, and the bats were wheeling over the green basin
called Welland Bottom by the time she arrived; and had any other
errand instigated her call she would have postponed it till the
morrow. Nobody responded to her knock, but she could hear footsteps
going hither and thither upstairs, and dull noises as of articles
moved from their places. She knocked again and again, and
ultimately the door was opened by Hannah as usual.

'I could make nobody hear,' said Lady Constantine, who was so weary
she could scarcely stand.

'I am very sorry, my lady,' said Hannah, slightly awed on beholding
her visitor. 'But we was a putting poor Mr. Swithin's room to
rights, now that he is, as a woman may say, dead and buried to us;
so we didn't hear your ladyship. I'll call Mrs. Martin at once.
She is up in the room that used to be his work-room.'

Here Hannah's voice implied moist eyes, and Lady Constantine's
instantly overflowed.

'No, I'll go up to her,' said Viviette; and almost in advance of
Hannah she passed up the shrunken ash stairs.

The ebbing light was not enough to reveal to Mrs. Martin's aged gaze
the personality of her visitor, till Hannah explained.

'I'll get a light, my lady,' said she.

'No, I would rather not. What are you doing, Mrs. Martin?'

'Well, the poor misguided boy is gone--and he's gone for good to me!
I am a woman of over four-score years, my Lady Constantine; my
junketting days are over, and whether 'tis feasting or whether 'tis
sorrowing in the land will soon be nothing to me. But his life may
be long and active, and for the sake of him I care for what I shall
never see, and wish to make pleasant what I shall never enjoy. I am
setting his room in order, as the place will be his own freehold
when I am gone, so that when he comes back he may find all his poor
jim-cracks and trangleys as he left 'em, and not feel that I have
betrayed his trust.'

Mrs. Martin's voice revealed that she had burst into such few tears
as were left her, and then Hannah began crying likewise; whereupon
Lady Constantine, whose heart had been bursting all day (and who,
indeed, considering her coming trouble, had reason enough for
tears), broke into bitterer sobs than either--sobs of absolute pain,
that could no longer be concealed.

Hannah was the first to discover that Lady Constantine was weeping
with them; and her feelings being probably the least intense among
the three she instantly controlled herself.

'Refrain yourself, my dear woman, refrain!' she said hastily to Mrs.
Martin; 'don't ye see how it do raft my lady?' And turning to
Viviette she whispered, 'Her years be so great, your ladyship, that
perhaps ye'll excuse her for busting out afore ye? We know when the
mind is dim, my lady, there's not the manners there should be; but
decayed people can't help it, poor old soul!'

'Hannah, that will do now. Perhaps Lady Constantine would like to
speak to me alone,' said Mrs. Martin. And when Hannah had retreated
Mrs. Martin continued: 'Such a charge as she is, my lady, on
account of her great age! You'll pardon her biding here as if she
were one of the family. I put up with such things because of her
long service, and we know that years lead to childishness.'

'What are you doing? Can I help you?' Viviette asked, as Mrs.
Martin, after speaking, turned to lift some large article.

'Oh, 'tis only the skeleton of a telescope that's got no works in
his inside,' said Swithin's grandmother, seizing the huge pasteboard
tube that Swithin had made, and abandoned because he could get no
lenses to suit it. 'I am going to hang it up to these hooks, and
there it will bide till he comes again.'

Lady Constantine took one end, and the tube was hung up against the
whitewashed wall by strings that the old woman had tied round it.

'Here's all his equinoctial lines, and his topics of Capricorn, and
I don't know what besides,' Mrs. Martin continued, pointing to some
charcoal scratches on the wall. 'I shall never rub 'em out; no,
though 'tis such untidiness as I was never brought up to, I shall
never rub 'em out.'

'Where has Swithin gone to first?' asked Viviette anxiously. 'Where
does he say you are to write to him?'

'Nowhere yet, my lady. He's gone traipsing all over Europe and
America, and then to the South Pacific Ocean about this Transit of
Venus that's going to be done there. He is to write to us first--
God knows when!--for he said that if we didn't hear from him for six
months we were not to be gallied at all.'

At this intelligence, so much worse than she had expected, Lady
Constantine stood mute, sank down, and would have fallen to the
floor if there had not been a chair behind her. Controlling herself
by a strenuous effort, she disguised her despair and asked vacantly:
'From America to the South Pacific--Transit of Venus?' (Swithin's
arrangement to accompany the expedition had been made at the last
moment, and therefore she had not as yet been informed.)

'Yes, to a lone island, I believe.'

'Yes, a lone islant, my lady!' echoed Hannah, who had crept in and
made herself one of the family again, in spite of Mrs. Martin.

'He is going to meet the English and American astronomers there at
the end of the year. After that he will most likely go on to the
Cape.'

'But before the end of the year--what places did he tell you of
visiting?'

'Let me collect myself; he is going to the observatory of Cambridge,
United States, to meet some gentlemen there, and spy through the
great refractor. Then there's the observatory of Chicago; and I
think he has a letter to make him beknown to a gentleman in the
observatory at Marseilles--and he wants to go to Vienna--and
Poulkowa, too, he means to take in his way--there being great
instruments and a lot of astronomers at each place.'

'Does he take Europe or America first?' she asked faintly, for the
account seemed hopeless.

Mrs. Martin could not tell till she had heard from Swithin. It
depended upon what he had decided to do on the day of his leaving
England.

Lady Constantine bade the old people good-bye, and dragged her weary
limbs homeward. The fatuousness of forethought had seldom been
evinced more ironically. Had she done nothing to hinder him, he
would have kept up an unreserved communication with her, and all
might have been well.

For that night she could undertake nothing further, and she waited
for the next day. Then at once she wrote two letters to Swithin,
directing one to Marseilles observatory, one to the observatory of
Cambridge, U.S., as being the only two spots on the face of the
globe at which they were likely to intercept him. Each letter
stated to him the urgent reasons which existed for his return, and
contained a passionately regretful intimation that the annuity on
which his hopes depended must of necessity be sacrificed by the
completion of their original contract without delay.

But letter conveyance was too slow a process to satisfy her. To
send an epitome of her epistles by telegraph was, after all,
indispensable. Such an imploring sentence as she desired to address
to him it would be hazardous to despatch from Warborne, and she took
a dreary journey to a strange town on purpose to send it from an
office at which she was unknown.

There she handed in her message, addressing it to the port of
arrival of the Occidental, and again returned home.

She waited; and there being no return telegram, the inference was
that he had somehow missed hers. For an answer to either of her
letters she would have to wait long enough to allow him time to
reach one of the observatories--a tedious while.

Then she considered the weakness, the stultifying nature of her
attempt at recall.

Events mocked her on all sides. By the favour of an accident, and
by her own immense exertions against her instincts, Swithin had been
restored to the rightful heritage that he had nearly forfeited on
her account. He had just started off to utilize it; when she,
without a moment's warning, was asking him again to cast it away.
She had set a certain machinery in motion--to stop it before it had
revolved once.

A horrid apprehension possessed her. It had been easy for Swithin
to give up what he had never known the advantages of keeping; but
having once begun to enjoy his possession would he give it up now?
Could he be depended on for such self-sacrifice? Before leaving, he
would have done anything at her request; but the mollia tempora
fandi had now passed. Suppose there arrived no reply from him for
the next three months; and that when his answer came he were to
inform her that, having now fully acquiesced in her original
decision, he found the life he was leading so profitable as to be
unable to abandon it, even to please her; that he was very sorry,
but having embarked on this course by her advice he meant to adhere
to it by his own.

There was, indeed, every probability that, moving about as he was
doing, and cautioned as he had been by her very self against
listening to her too readily, she would receive no reply of any sort
from him for three or perhaps four months. This would be on the eve
of the Transit; and what likelihood was there that a young man, full
of ardour for that spectacle, would forego it at the last moment to
return to a humdrum domesticity with a woman who was no longer a
novelty?

If she could only leave him to his career, and save her own
situation also! But at that moment the proposition seemed as
impossible as to construct a triangle of two straight lines.

In her walk home, pervaded by these hopeless views, she passed near
the dark and deserted tower. Night in that solitary place, which
would have caused her some uneasiness in her years of blitheness,
had no terrors for her now. She went up the winding path, and, the
door being unlocked, felt her way to the top. The open sky greeted
her as in times previous to the dome-and-equatorial period; but
there was not a star to suggest to her in which direction Swithin
had gone. The absence of the dome suggested a way out of her
difficulties. A leap in the dark, and all would be over. But she
had not reached that stage of action as yet, and the thought was
dismissed as quickly as it had come.

The new consideration which at present occupied her mind was whether
she could have the courage to leave Swithin to himself, as in the
original plan, and singly meet her impending trial, despising the
shame, till he should return at five-and-twenty and claim her? Yet
was this assumption of his return so very safe? How altered things
would be at that time! At twenty-five he would still be young and
handsome; she would be three-and-thirty, fading to middle-age and
homeliness, from a junior's point of view. A fear sharp as a frost
settled down upon her, that in any such scheme as this she would be
building upon the sand.

She hardly knew how she reached home that night. Entering by the
lawn door she saw a red coal in the direction of the arbour. Louis
was smoking there, and he came forward.

He had not seen her since the morning and was naturally anxious
about her. She blessed the chance which enveloped her in night and
lessened the weight of the encounter one half by depriving him of
vision.

'Did you accomplish your object?' he asked.

'No,' said she.

'How was that?'

'He has sailed.'

'A very good thing for both, I say. I believe you would have
married him, if you could have overtaken him.'

'That would I!' she said.

'Good God!'

'I would marry a tinker for that matter; I have reasons for being
any man's wife,' she said recklessly, 'only I should prefer to drown
myself.'

Louis held his breath, and stood rigid at the meaning her words
conveyed.

'But Louis, you don't know all!' cried Viviette. 'I am not so bad
as you think; mine has been folly--not vice. I thought I had
married him--and then I found I had not; the marriage was invalid--
Sir Blount was alive! And now Swithin has gone away, and will not
come back for my calling! How can he? His fortune is left him on
condition that he forms no legal tie. O will he--will he, come
again?'

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