Thomas Hardy

“ There had been several such nights since the occasion of Lady Constantine’s promise to Swithin St. Cleeve to come and study astronomical phenomena on the Rings-Hill column; but she had not gone there. This evening she sat at a window, the blind of which had not been drawn down. Her elbow rested on a little table, and her cheek on her hand. Her eyes were attracted by the brightness of the planet Jupiter, as he rode in the ecliptic opposite, beaming down upon her as if desirous of notice.
Beneath the planet could be still discerned the dark edges of the park landscape against the sky. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Lady Constantine reappeared at the top, and saw the parcel still untouched and Swithin asleep as before, she exhibited some disappointment; but she did not retreat.
Looking again at him, her eyes became so sentimentally fixed on his face that it seemed as if she could not withdraw them. There lay, in the shape of an Antinous, no amoroso, no gallant, but a guileless philosopher. His parted lips were lips which spoke, not of love, but of millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. ”

“ Lady Constantine blushed. ‘There was a lack of self-consciousness, too, in his manner of presenting himself, which very much won me. A Mr. St. Cleeve, do you say? A curate’s son? His father must have been St. Cleeve of All Angels, whom I knew. How comes he to be staying on here? What is he doing?’
Mr. Torkingham, who kept one ear on the Bishop all the lunch-time, finding that Lady Constantine was not ready with an answer, hastened to reply: ‘Your lordship is right. His father was an All Angels’ man. The youth is rather to be pitied.’
‘He was a man of talent,’ affirmed the Bishop. ”

“ The clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at the further end, and Swithin and Viviette were left to themselves. The imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman’s forethought is so assumptive, that the clerk’s departure had no sooner doomed them to inaction than it was borne in upon Lady Constantine’s mind that she would not become the wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, either to-day or on any other day. Her divinations were continually misleading her, she knew: but a hitch at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in it. ”

“ How are you to keep yourself in sight of him?’
‘Heavens, Louis! You don’t seriously mean that the Bishop of Melchester has any feelings for me other than friendly?’
‘Viviette, this is affectation. You know he has as well as I do.’
She sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I own I had a suspicion of the same thing. What a misfortune!’
‘A misfortune? Surely the world is turned upside down! You will drive me to despair about our future if you see things so awry. Exert yourself to do something, so as to make of this accident a stepping-stone to higher things. ”

“ The first object that met his eyes was the parcel on the table, and, seeing his name inscribed thereon, he made no scruple to open it.
The sun flashed upon a lens of surprising magnitude, polished to such a smoothness that the eye could scarcely meet its reflections. Here was a crystal in whose depths were to be seen more wonders than had been revealed by the crystals of all the Cagliostros.
Swithin, hot with joyousness, took this treasure to his telescope manufactory at the homestead; then he started off for the Great House. ”

“ Is it nothing to you that, after all our vows for life, you have thought it right to—flirt with a village girl?’
‘O Viviette!’ interrupted Swithin, taking her hand, which was hot and trembling. ‘You who are full of noble and generous feelings, and regard me with devoted tenderness that has never been surpassed by woman,—how can you be so greatly at fault? I flirt, Viviette? By thinking that you injure yourself in my eyes. ”

“ At this moment there was a sound of footsteps and a knocking at the door below.
‘It can’t be for me!’ said Lady Constantine. ‘I retired to my room before leaving the house, and told them on no account to disturb me.’
She remained at the top while Swithin went down the spiral. In the gloom he beheld Hannah.
‘O Master Swithin, can ye come home! The wind have blowed down the chimley that don’t smoke, and the pinning-end with it; and the old ancient house, that have been in your family so long as the memory of man, is naked to the world! ”

“ Well, little Freddy, you don’t wish in the morning that ’twere evening, and at evening that ’twere morning again, do you, Freddy, trust ye for it?’
‘Now, who might wish such a thing as that, Mrs Martin?—nobody in this parish?’ asked Sammy Blore curiously.
‘My lady is always wishing it,’ spoke up Miss Tabitha Lark.
‘Oh, she! Nobody can be answerable for the wishes of that onnatural tribe of mankind. Not but that the woman’s heart-strings is tried in many aggravating ways.’
‘Ah, poor woman!’ said granny. ”

“ Little by little the arch grew higher against the dark void, like the form of the Spirit-maiden in the shades of Glenfinlas, till its crown drew near the zenith, and threw a tissue over the whole waggon and horses of the great northern constellation. Brilliant shafts radiated from the convexity of the arch, coming and going silently. The temperature fell, and Lady Constantine drew her wrap more closely around her.
‘We’ll go down,’ said Swithin. ‘The cabin is beautifully warm. Why should we try to observe to-night? Indeed, we cannot; the Aurora light overpowers everything.’
‘Very well. ”

“ There is to be a regular expedition fitted out. How I should like to join it!’
He spoke enthusiastically, and with eyes sparkling at the mental image of the said expedition; and as it was rather gloomy in the dome he rolled it round on its axis, till the shuttered slit for the telescope directly faced the morning sun, which thereupon flooded the concave interior, touching the bright metal-work of the equatorial, and lighting up her pale, troubled face.
‘But Swithin!’ she faltered; ‘my letter to you—our marriage!’
‘O yes, this marriage question,’ he added. ”

“ Their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away; the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. But her life during that morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. Knowing the full circumstances of his situation as she knew them now—as she had never before known them—ought she to make herself the legal wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such was the formidable question which Lady Constantine propounded to her startled understanding. As a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. ”

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

“ Swithin and some older ones were nearly the last. When, at the heels of Mr. Torkingham, he passed Lady Constantine’s pew, he lifted his eyes from the red lining of that gentleman’s hood sufficiently high to catch hers. She was abstracted, tearful, regarding him with all the rapt mingling of religion, love, fervour, and hope which such women can feel at such times, and which men know nothing of. How fervidly she watched the Bishop place his hand on her beloved youth’s head; how she saw the great episcopal ring glistening in the sun among Swithin’s brown curls ”

“ Now I am shorn of all that glory, such as it was, and am a widow, and am poorer than my tenants, and can no longer buy telescopes, and am unable, from the narrowness of my circumstances, to mix in circles that people formerly said I adorned, I fear I have lost the little hold I once had over you.’
‘You are as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,’ said St. Cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. ”

“ Darker grew the evenings, tearfuller the moonlights, and heavier the dews. Meanwhile the comet had waxed to its largest dimensions,—so large that not only the nucleus but a portion of the tail had been visible in broad day. It was now on the wane, though every night the equatorial still afforded an opportunity of observing the singular object which would soon disappear altogether from the heavens for perhaps thousands of years.
But the astronomer of the Rings-Hill Speer was no longer a match for his celestial materials. Scientifically he had become but a dim vapour of himself ”

“ Lady Constantine, in being eight or nine years his senior, was an object even better calculated to nourish a youth’s first passion than a girl of his own age, superiority of experience and ripeness of emotion exercising the same peculiar fascination over him as over other young men in their first ventures in this kind.
The alchemy which thus transmuted an abstracted astronomer into an eager lover—and, must it be said, spoilt a promising young physicist to produce a common-place inamorato—may be almost described as working its change in one short night. ”

“ At some instants she felt exultant at the idea of announcing her marriage and defying general opinion. At another her heart misgave her, and she was tormented by a fear lest Swithin should some day accuse her of having hampered his deliberately-shaped plan of life by her intrusive romanticism. That was often the trick of men who had sealed by marriage, in their inexperienced youth, a love for those whom their maturer judgment would have rejected as too obviously disproportionate in years. ”

“ The modern Eudoxus now rose above the embarrassing horizon of Lady Constantine’s great house, magnificent furniture, and awe-inspiring footman. He became quite natural, all his self-consciousness fled, and his eye spoke into hers no less than his lips to her ears, as he said, ‘How such a theory can have lingered on to this day beats conjecture! Francois Arago, as long as forty or fifty years ago, conclusively established the fact that scintillation is the simplest thing in the world,—merely a matter of atmosphere. ”

“ Let it make no difference whatever to our outward lives for years, for I know that in my present position you could not possibly acknowledge me as husband publicly. But by marrying at once we secure the certainty that we cannot be divided by accident, coaxing, or artifice; and, at ease on that point, I shall embrace my studies with the old vigour, and you yours.’
Lady Constantine was so agitated at the unexpected boldness of such a proposal from one hitherto so boyish and deferential that she sank into the observing-chair, her intention to remain for only a few minutes being quite forgotten. ”

“ She would go on questioning; he could not tell her an untruth. She would discover particulars of that great-uncle’s provision for him, which he, Swithin, was throwing away for her sake, and she would refuse to be his for his own sake. His conclusion at this moment was precisely what hers had been five minutes sooner: they were never to be husband and wife.
But she did not continue her questions, for the simplest of all reasons: hasty footsteps were audible in the entrance, and the parson was seen coming up the aisle, the clerk behind him wiping the beads of perspiration from his face. ”

“ You may think what you like in silence.’
‘We are forgetting the comet,’ said St. Cleeve. He turned, and set the instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome.
While she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filled so large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it, Swithin dropped his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number of labourers crossing directly towards the column.
‘What do you see?’ Lady Constantine asked, without ceasing to observe the comet.
‘Some of the work-folk are coming this way. ”

“ Only one was there to be met, and she had no zest for outings before noon.
The long, low front of the Great House, as it was called by the parish, stretching from end to end of the terrace, was in darkness as the vicar slackened his pace before it, and only the distant fall of water disturbed the stillness of the manorial precincts.
On gaining admittance he found Lady Constantine waiting to receive him. She wore a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and being the only person in the spacious apartment she looked small and isolated. In her left hand she held a letter and a couple of at-home cards. ”

“ Now Sir Blount is dead, you are free again,—may marry where you will, but for this fancy of ours. I’ll leave Welland before harm comes of my staying.’
‘Don’t decide to do a thing so rash!’ she begged, seizing his hand, and looking miserable at the effect of her words. ‘I shall have nobody left in the world to care for! And now I have given you the great telescope, and lent you the column, it would be ungrateful to go away! I was wrong; believe me that I did not mean that it was a mere interlude to me. ”

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