Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (419 page)

At first all was obscurity; but when he had been gone about ten minutes lights began to move to and fro in the hollow where the house stood, and shouts occasionally mingled with the wind, which retained some violence yet, playing over the trees beneath her as on the strings of a lyre.  But not a bough of them was visible, a cloak of blackness covering everything netherward; while overhead the windy sky looked down with a strange and disguised face, the three or four stars that alone were visible being so dissociated by clouds that she knew not which they were.  Under any other circumstances Lady Constantine might have felt a nameless fear in thus sitting aloft on a lonely column, with a forest groaning under her feet, and palæolithic dead men feeding its roots; but the recent passionate decision stirred her pulses to an intensity beside which the ordinary tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain.  The apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not inharmonious, and afforded an appropriate background to her intentions.

After what seemed to her an interminable space of time, quick steps in the staircase became audible above the roar of the firs, and in a few instants St. Cleeve again stood beside her.

The case of the homestead was serious.  Hannah’s account had not been exaggerated in substance: the gable end of the house was open to the garden; the joists, left without support, had dropped, and with them the upper floor.  By the help of some labourers, who lived near, and Lady Constantine’s man Anthony, who was passing at the time, the homestead had been propped up, and protected for the night by some rickcloths; but Swithin felt that it would be selfish in the highest degree to leave two lonely old women to themselves at this juncture.  ‘In short,’ he concluded despondently, ‘I cannot go to stay in Bath or London just now; perhaps not for another fortnight!’

‘Never mind,’ she said.  ‘A fortnight hence will do as well.’

‘And I have these for you,’ he continued.  ‘Your man Green was passing my grandmother’s on his way back from Warborne, where he had been, he says, for any letters that had come for you by the evening post.  As he stayed to assist the other men I told him I would go on to your house with the letters he had brought.  Of course I did not tell him I should see you here.’

‘Thank you.  Of course not.  Now I’ll return at once.’

In descending the column her eye fell upon the superscription of one of the letters, and she opened and glanced over it by the lantern light.  She seemed startled, and, musing, said, ‘The postponement of our — intention must be, I fear, for a long time.  I find that after the end of this month I cannot leave home safely, even for a day.’  Perceiving that he was about to ask why, she added, ‘I will not trouble you with the reason now; it would only harass you.  It is only a family business, and cannot be helped.’

‘Then we cannot be married till — God knows when!’ said Swithin blankly.  ‘I cannot leave home till after the next week or two; you cannot leave home unless within that time.  So what are we to do?’

‘I do not know.’

‘My dear, dear one, don’t let us be beaten like this!  Don’t let a well-considered plan be overthrown by a mere accident!  Here’s a remedy.  Do
you
go and stay the requisite time in the parish we are to be married in, instead of me.  When my grandmother is again well housed I can come to you, instead of you to me, as we first said.  Then it can be done within the time.’

Reluctantly, shyly, and yet with a certain gladness of heart, she gave way to his proposal that they should change places in the programme.  There was much that she did not like in it, she said.  It seemed to her as if she were taking the initiative by going and attending to the preliminaries.  It was the man’s part to do that, in her opinion, and was usually undertaken by him.

‘But,’ argued Swithin, ‘there are cases in which the woman does give the notices, and so on; that is to say, when the man is absolutely hindered from doing so; and ours is such a case.  The seeming is nothing; I know the truth, and what does it matter?  You do not refuse — retract your word to be my wife, because, to avoid a sickening delay, the formalities require you to attend to them in place of me?’

She did not refuse, she said.  In short she agreed to his entreaty.  They had, in truth, gone so far in their dream of union that there was no drawing back now.  Whichever of them was forced by circumstances to be the protagonist in the enterprise, the thing must be done.  Their intention to become husband and wife, at first halting and timorous, had accumulated momentum with the lapse of hours, till it now bore down every obstacle in its course.

‘Since you beg me to, — since there is no alternative between my going and a long postponement,’ she said, as they stood in the dark porch of Welland House before parting, — ’since I am to go first, and seem to be the pioneer in this adventure, promise me, Swithin, promise your Viviette, that in years to come, when perhaps you may not love me so warmly as you do now — ’

‘That will never be.’

‘Well, hoping it will not, but supposing it should, promise me that you will never reproach me as the one who took the initiative when it should have been yourself, forgetting that it was at your request; promise that you will never say I showed immodest readiness to do so, or anything which may imply your obliviousness of the fact that I act in obedience to necessity and your earnest prayer.’

Need it be said that he promised never to reproach her with that or any other thing as long as they should live?  The few details of the reversed arrangement were soon settled, Bath being the place finally decided on.  Then, with a warm audacity which events had encouraged, he pressed her to his breast, and she silently entered the house.  He returned to the homestead, there to attend to the unexpected duties of repairing the havoc wrought by the gale.

* * * * *

That night, in the solitude of her chamber, Lady Constantine reopened and read the subjoined letter — one of those handed to her by St. Cleeve: —

“ — - Street, Piccadilly,

October 15, 18 — .

‘Dear Viviette, — You will be surprised to learn that I am in England, and that I am again out of harness — unless you should have seen the latter in the papers.  Rio Janeiro may do for monkeys, but it won’t do for me.  Having resigned the appointment I have returned here, as a preliminary step to finding another vent for my energies; in other words, another milch cow for my sustenance.  I knew nothing whatever of your husband’s death till two days ago; so that any letter from you on the subject, at the time it became known, must have miscarried.  Hypocrisy at such a moment is worse than useless, and I therefore do not condole with you, particularly as the event, though new to a banished man like me, occurred so long since.  You are better without him, Viviette, and are now just the limb for doing something for yourself, notwithstanding the threadbare state in which you seem to have been cast upon the world.  You are still young, and, as I imagine (unless you have vastly altered since I beheld you), good-looking: therefore make up your mind to retrieve your position by a match with one of the local celebrities; and you would do well to begin drawing neighbouring covers at once.  A genial squire, with more weight than wit, more realty than weight, and more personalty than realty (considering the circumstances), would be best for you.  You might make a position for us both by some such alliance; for, to tell the truth, I have had but in-and-out luck so far.  I shall be with you in little more than a fortnight, when we will talk over the matter seriously, if you don’t object. — Your affectionate brother,

Louis.’

It was this allusion to her brother’s coming visit which had caught her eye in the tower staircase, and led to a modification in the wedding arrangement.

Having read the letter through once Lady Constantine flung it aside with an impatient little stamp that shook the decaying old floor and casement.  Its contents produced perturbation, misgiving, but not retreat.  The deep glow of enchantment shed by the idea of a private union with her beautiful young lover killed the pale light of cold reasoning from an indifferently good relative.

‘Oh, no,’ she murmured, as she sat, covering her face with her hand.  ‘Not for wealth untold could I give him up now!’

No argument, short of Apollo in person from the clouds, would have influenced her.  She made her preparations for departure as if nothing had intervened.

CHAPTER XVII

In her days of prosperity Lady Constantine had often gone to the city of Bath, either frivolously, for shopping purposes, or musico-religiously, to attend choir festivals in the abbey; so there was nothing surprising in her reverting to an old practice.  That the journey might appear to be of a somewhat similar nature she took with her the servant who had been accustomed to accompany her on former occasions, though the woman, having now left her service, and settled in the village as the wife of Anthony Green, with a young child on her hands, could with some difficulty leave home.  Lady Constantine overcame the anxious mother’s scruples by providing that young Green should be well cared for; and knowing that she could count upon this woman’s fidelity, if upon anybody’s, in case of an accident (for it was chiefly Lady Constantine’s exertions that had made an honest wife of Mrs. Green), she departed for a fortnight’s absence.

The next day found mistress and maid settled in lodgings in an old plum-coloured brick street, which a hundred years ago could boast of rank and fashion among its residents, though now the broad fan-light over each broad door admitted the sun to the halls of a lodging-house keeper only.  The lamp-posts were still those that had done duty with oil lights; and rheumatic old coachmen and postilions, that once had driven and ridden gloriously from London to Land’s End, ornamented with their bent persons and bow legs the pavement in front of the chief inn, in the sorry hope of earning sixpence to keep body and soul together.

‘We are kept well informed on the time o’ day, my lady,’ said Mrs. Green, as she pulled down the blinds in Lady Constantine’s room on the evening of their arrival.  ‘There’s a church exactly at the back of us, and I hear every hour strike.’

Lady Constantine said she had noticed that there was a church quite near.

‘Well, it is better to have that at the back than other folks’ winders.  And if your ladyship wants to go there it won’t be far to walk.’

‘That’s what occurred to me,’ said Lady Constantine, ‘
if
I should want to go.’

During the ensuing days she felt to the utmost the tediousness of waiting merely that time might pass.  Not a soul knew her there, and she knew not a soul, a circumstance which, while it added to her sense of secrecy, intensified her solitude.  Occasionally she went to a shop, with Green as her companion.  Though there were purchases to be made, they were by no means of a pressing nature, and but poorly filled up the vacancies of those strange, speculative days, — days surrounded by a shade of fear, yet poetized by sweet expectation.

On the thirteenth day she told Green that she was going to take a walk, and leaving the house she passed by the obscurest streets to the Abbey.  After wandering about beneath the aisles till her courage was screwed to its highest, she went out at the other side, and, looking timidly round to see if anybody followed, walked on till she came to a certain door, which she reached just at the moment when her heart began to sink to its very lowest, rendering all the screwing up in vain.

Whether it was because the month was October, or from any other reason, the deserted aspect of the quarter in general sat especially on this building.  Moreover the pavement was up, and heaps of stone and gravel obstructed the footway.  Nobody was coming, nobody was going, in that thoroughfare; she appeared to be the single one of the human race bent upon marriage business, which seemed to have been unanimously abandoned by all the rest of the world as proven folly.  But she thought of Swithin, his blonde hair, ardent eyes, and eloquent lips, and was carried onward by the very reflection.

Entering the surrogate’s room Lady Constantine managed, at the last juncture, to state her errand in tones so collected as to startle even herself to which her listener replied also as if the whole thing were the most natural in the world.  When it came to the affirmation that she had lived fifteen days in the parish, she said with dismay —

‘O no!  I thought the fifteen days meant the interval of residence before the marriage takes place.  I have lived here only thirteen days and a half.  Now I must come again!’

‘Ah — well — I think you need not be so particular,’ said the surrogate.  ‘As a matter of fact, though the letter of the law requires fifteen days’ residence, many people make five sufficient.  The provision is inserted, as you doubtless are aware, to hinder runaway marriages as much as possible, and secret unions, and other such objectionable practices.  You need not come again.’

That evening Lady Constantine wrote to Swithin St. Cleeve the last letter of the fortnight: —

‘My Dearest, — Do come to me as soon as you can.  By a sort of favouring blunder I have been able to shorten the time of waiting by a day.  Come at once, for I am almost broken down with apprehension.  It seems rather rash at moments, all this, and I wish you were here to reassure me.  I did not know I should feel so alarmed.  I am frightened at every footstep, and dread lest anybody who knows me should accost me, and find out why I am here.  I sometimes wonder how I could have agreed to come and enact your part, but I did not realise how trying it would be.  You ought not to have asked me, Swithin; upon my word, it was too cruel of you, and I will punish you for it when you come!  But I won’t upbraid.  I hope the homestead is repaired that has cost me all this sacrifice of modesty.  If it were anybody in the world but
you
in question I would rush home, without waiting here for the end of it, — I really think I would!  But, dearest, no.  I must show my strength now, or let it be for ever hid.  The barriers of ceremony are broken down between us, and it is for the best that I am here.’