Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (422 page)

‘But, Swithin, don’t you see my new trouble?  If I go to Welland House to-night, and find my brother just arrived there, and he sees this cut on my face, which I suppose you described to him — ’

‘I did.’

‘He will know I was the lady with you!’

‘Whom he called my wife.  I wonder why we look husband and wife already!’

‘Then what am I to do?  For the ensuing three or four days I bear in my face a clue to his discovery of our secret.’

‘Then you must not be seen.  We must stay at an inn here.’

‘O no!’ she said timidly.  ‘It is too near home to be quite safe.  We might not be known; but
if
we were!’

‘We can’t go back to Bath now.  I’ll tell you, dear Viviette, what we must do.  We’ll go on to Warborne in separate carriages; we’ll meet outside the station; thence we’ll walk to the column in the dark, and I’ll keep you a captive in the cabin till the scar has disappeared.’

As there was nothing which better recommended itself this course was decided on; and after taking from her trunk the articles that might be required for an incarceration of two or three days they left the said trunk at the cloak-room, and went on by the last train, which reached Warborne about ten o’clock.

It was only necessary for Lady Constantine to cover her face with the thick veil that she had provided for this escapade, to walk out of the station without fear of recognition.  St. Cleeve came forth from another compartment, and they did not rejoin each other till they had reached a shadowy bend in the old turnpike road, beyond the irradiation of the Warborne lamplight.

The walk to Welland was long.  It was the walk which Swithin had taken in the rain when he had learnt the fatal forestalment of his stellar discovery; but now he was moved by a less desperate mood, and blamed neither God nor man.  They were not pressed for time, and passed along the silent, lonely way with that sense rather of predestination than of choice in their proceedings which the presence of night sometimes imparts.  Reaching the park gate, they found it open, and from this they inferred that her brother Louis had arrived.

Leaving the house and park on their right they traced the highway yet a little further, and, plunging through the stubble of the opposite field, drew near the isolated earthwork bearing the plantation and tower, which together rose like a flattened dome and lantern from the lighter-hued plain of stubble.  It was far too dark to distinguish firs from other trees by the eye alone, but the peculiar dialect of sylvan language which the piny multitude used would have been enough to proclaim their class at any time.  In the lovers’ stealthy progress up the slopes a dry stick here and there snapped beneath their feet, seeming like a shot of alarm.

On being unlocked the hut was found precisely as Swithin had left it two days before.  Lady Constantine was thoroughly wearied, and sat down, while he gathered a handful of twigs and spikelets from the masses strewn without and lit a small fire, first taking the precaution to blind the little window and relock the door.

Lady Constantine looked curiously around by the light of the blaze.  The hut was small as the prophet’s chamber provided by the Shunammite: in one corner stood the stove, with a little table and chair, a small cupboard hard by, a pitcher of water, a rack overhead, with various articles, including a kettle and a gridiron; while the remaining three or four feet at the other end of the room was fitted out as a dormitory, for Swithin’s use during late observations in the tower overhead.

‘It is not much of a palace to offer you,’ he remarked, smiling.  ‘But at any rate, it is a refuge.’

The cheerful firelight dispersed in some measure Lady Constantine’s anxieties.  ‘If we only had something to eat!’ she said.

‘Dear me,’ cried St. Cleeve, blankly.  ‘That’s a thing I never thought of.’

‘Nor I, till now,’ she replied.

He reflected with misgiving.

‘Beyond a small loaf of bread in the cupboard I have nothing.  However, just outside the door there are lots of those little rabbits, about the size of rats, that the keepers call runners.  And they are as tame as possible.  But I fear I could not catch one now.  Yet, dear Viviette, wait a minute; I’ll try.  You must not be starved.’

He softly let himself out, and was gone some time.  When he reappeared, he produced, not a rabbit, but four sparrows and a thrush.

‘I could do nothing in the way of a rabbit without setting a wire,’ he said.  ‘But I have managed to get these by knowing where they roost.’

He showed her how to prepare the birds, and, having set her to roast them by the fire, departed with the pitcher, to replenish it at the brook which flowed near the homestead in the neighbouring Bottom.

‘They are all asleep at my grandmother’s,’ he informed her when he re-entered, panting, with the dripping pitcher.  ‘They imagine me to be a hundred miles off.’

The birds were now ready, and the table was spread.  With this fare, eked out by dry toast from the loaf, and moistened with cups of water from the pitcher, to which Swithin added a little wine from the flask he had carried on his journey, they were forced to be content for their supper.

CHAPTER XX

When Lady Constantine awoke the next morning Swithin was nowhere to be seen.  Before she was quite ready for breakfast she heard the key turn in the door, and felt startled, till she remembered that the comer could hardly be anybody but he.  He brought a basket with provisions, an extra cup-and-saucer, and so on.  In a short space of time the kettle began singing on the stove, and the morning meal was ready.

The sweet resinous air from the firs blew in upon them as they sat at breakfast; the birds hopped round the door (which, somewhat riskily, they ventured to keep open); and at their elbow rose the lank column into an upper realm of sunlight, which only reached the cabin in fitful darts and flashes through the trees.

‘I could be happy here for ever,’ said she, clasping his hand.  ‘I wish I could never see my great gloomy house again, since I am not rich enough to throw it open, and live there as I ought to do.  Poverty of this sort is not unpleasant at any rate.  What are you thinking of?’

‘I am thinking about my outing this morning.  On reaching my grandmother’s she was only a little surprised to see me.  I was obliged to breakfast there, or appear to do so, to divert suspicion; and this food is supposed to be wanted for my dinner and supper.  There will of course be no difficulty in my obtaining an ample supply for any length of time, as I can take what I like from the buttery without observation.  But as I looked in my grandmother’s face this morning, and saw her looking affectionately in mine, and thought how she had never concealed anything from me, and had always had my welfare at heart, I felt — that I should like to tell her what we have done.’

‘O no, — please not, Swithin!’ she exclaimed piteously.

‘Very well,’ he answered.  ‘On no consideration will I do so without your consent.’  And no more was said on the matter.

The morning was passed in applying wet rag and other remedies to the purple line on Viviette’s cheek; and in the afternoon they set up the equatorial under the replaced dome, to have it in order for night observations.

The evening was clear, dry, and remarkably cold by comparison with the daytime weather.  After a frugal supper they replenished the stove with charcoal from the homestead, which they also burnt during the day, — an idea of Viviette’s, that the smoke from a wood fire might not be seen more frequently than was consistent with the occasional occupation of the cabin by Swithin, as heretofore.

At eight o’clock she insisted upon his ascending the tower for observations, in strict pursuance of the idea on which their marriage had been based, namely, that of restoring regularity to his studies.

The sky had a new and startling beauty that night.  A broad, fluctuating, semicircular arch of vivid white light spanned the northern quarter of the heavens, reaching from the horizon to the star Eta in the Greater Bear.  It was the Aurora Borealis, just risen up for the winter season out of the freezing seas of the north, where every autumn vapour was now undergoing rapid congelation.

‘O, let us sit and look at it!’ she said; and they turned their backs upon the equatorial and the southern glories of the heavens to this new beauty in a quarter which they seldom contemplated.

The lustre of the fixed stars was diminished to a sort of blueness.  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.  To-morrow night there will be no interruption.  I shall be gone.’

‘You leave me to-morrow, Viviette?’

‘Yes; to-morrow morning.’

The truth was that, with the progress of the hours and days, the conviction had been borne in upon Viviette more and more forcibly that not for kingdoms and principalities could she afford to risk the discovery of her presence here by any living soul.

‘But let me see your face, dearest,’ he said.  ‘I don’t think it will be safe for you to meet your brother yet.’

As it was too dark to see her face on the summit where they sat they descended the winding staircase, and in the cabin Swithin examined the damaged cheek.  The line, though so far attenuated as not to be observable by any one but a close observer, had not quite disappeared.  But in consequence of her reiterated and almost tearful anxiety to go, and as there was a strong probability that her brother had left the house, Swithin decided to call at Welland next morning, and reconnoitre with a view to her return.

Locking her in he crossed the dewy stubble into the park.  The house was silent and deserted; and only one tall stalk of smoke ascended from the chimneys.  Notwithstanding that the hour was nearly nine he knocked at the door.

‘Is Lady Constantine at home?’ asked Swithin, with a disingenuousness now habitual, yet unknown to him six months before.

‘No, Mr. St. Cleeve; my lady has not returned from Bath.  We expect her every day.’

‘Nobody staying in the house?’

‘My lady’s brother has been here; but he is gone on to Budmouth.  He will come again in two or three weeks, I understand.’

This was enough.  Swithin said he would call again, and returned to the cabin, where, waking Viviette, who was not by nature an early riser, he waited on the column till she was ready to breakfast.  When this had been shared they prepared to start.

A long walk was before them.  Warborne station lay five miles distant, and the next station above that nine miles.  They were bound for the latter; their plan being that she should there take the train to the junction where the whip accident had occurred, claim her luggage, and return with it to Warborne, as if from Bath.

The morning was cool and the walk not wearisome.  When once they had left behind the stubble-field of their environment and the parish of Welland, they sauntered on comfortably, Lady Constantine’s spirits rising as she withdrew further from danger.

They parted by a little brook, about half a mile from the station; Swithin to return to Welland by the way he had come.

Lady Constantine telegraphed from the junction to Warborne for a carriage to be in readiness to meet her on her arrival; and then, waiting for the down train, she travelled smoothly home, reaching Welland House about five minutes sooner than Swithin reached the column hard by, after footing it all the way from where they had parted.

CHAPTER XXI

From that day forward their life resumed its old channel in general outward aspect.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature in their exploit was its comparative effectiveness as an expedient for the end designed, — that of restoring calm assiduity to the study of astronomy.  Swithin took up his old position as the lonely philosopher at the column, and Lady Constantine lapsed back to immured existence at the house, with apparently not a friend in the parish.  The enforced narrowness of life which her limited resources necessitated was now an additional safeguard against the discovery of her relations with St. Cleeve.  Her neighbours seldom troubled her; as much, it must be owned, from a tacit understanding that she was not in a position to return invitations as from any selfish coldness engendered by her want of wealth.

At the first meeting of the secretly united pair after their short honeymoon they were compelled to behave as strangers to each other.  It occurred in the only part of Welland which deserved the name of a village street, and all the labourers were returning to their midday meal, with those of their wives who assisted at outdoor work.  Before the eyes of this innocent though quite untrustworthy group, Swithin and his Viviette could only shake hands in passing, though she contrived to say to him in an undertone, ‘My brother does not return yet for some time.  He has gone to Paris.  I will be on the lawn this evening, if you can come.’  It was a fluttered smile that she bestowed on him, and there was no doubt that every fibre of her heart vibrated afresh at meeting, with such reserve, one who stood in his close relation to her.

The shades of night fell early now, and Swithin was at the spot of appointment about the time that he knew her dinner would be over.  It was just where they had met at the beginning of the year, but many changes had resulted since then.  The flower-beds that had used to be so neatly edged were now jagged and leafy; black stars appeared on the pale surface of the gravel walks, denoting tufts of grass that grew unmolested there.  Lady Constantine’s external affairs wore just that aspect which suggests that new blood may be advantageously introduced into the line; and new blood had been introduced, in good sooth, — with what social result remained to be seen.