Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (417 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, I know it.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I saw it in your face when you came up.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes; I am convinced.’

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

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

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

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

She glanced up with a species of pained pleasure.

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

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

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

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

‘What was that?’

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

‘But can I not study and love both?’

‘I hope so, — I earnestly hope so.  But you’ll be the first if you do, and I am the responsible one if you do not.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Nonsense!’ she exclaimed.  ‘It
is
a good deal.’

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

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

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

‘It is only an interlude.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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