Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (423 page)

She silently entered on the scene from the same window which had given her passage in months gone by.  They met with a concerted embrace, and St. Cleeve spoke his greeting in whispers.

‘We are quite safe, dearest,’ said she.

‘But the servants?’

‘My meagre staff consists of only two women and the boy; and they are away in the other wing.  I thought you would like to see the inside of my house, after showing me the inside of yours.  So we will walk through it instead of staying out here.’

She let him in through the casement, and they strolled forward softly, Swithin with some curiosity, never before having gone beyond the library and adjoining room.  The whole western side of the house was at this time shut up, her life being confined to two or three small rooms in the south-east corner.  The great apartments through which they now whisperingly walked wore already that funereal aspect that comes from disuse and inattention.  Triangular cobwebs already formed little hammocks for the dust in corners of the wainscot, and a close smell of wood and leather, seasoned with mouse-droppings, pervaded the atmosphere.  So seldom was the solitude of these chambers intruded on by human feet that more than once a mouse stood and looked the twain in the face from the arm of a sofa, or the top of a cabinet, without any great fear.

Swithin had no residential ambition whatever, but he was interested in the place.  ‘Will the house ever be thrown open to gaiety, as it was in old times?’ said he.

‘Not unless you make a fortune,’ she replied laughingly.  ‘It is mine for my life, as you know; but the estate is so terribly saddled with annuities to Sir Blount’s distant relatives, one of whom will succeed me here, that I have practically no more than my own little private income to exist on.’

‘And are you bound to occupy the house?’

‘Not bound to.  But I must not let it on lease.’

‘And was there any stipulation in the event of your re-marriage?’

‘It was not mentioned.’

‘It is satisfactory to find that you lose nothing by marrying me, at all events, dear Viviette.’

‘I hope you lose nothing either — at least, of consequence.’

‘What have I to lose?’

‘I meant your liberty.  Suppose you become a popular physicist (popularity seems cooling towards art and coquetting with science now-a-days), and a better chance offers, and one who would make you a newer and brighter wife than I am comes in your way.  Will you never regret this?  Will you never despise me?’

Swithin answered by a kiss, and they again went on; proceeding like a couple of burglars, lest they should draw the attention of the cook or Green.

In one of the upper rooms his eyes were attracted by an old chamber organ, which had once been lent for use in the church.  He mentioned his recollection of the same, which led her to say, ‘That reminds me of something.  There is to be a confirmation in our parish in the spring, and you once told me that you had never been confirmed.  What shocking neglect!  Why was it?’

‘I hardly know.  The confusion resulting from my father’s death caused it to be forgotten, I suppose.’

‘Now, dear Swithin, you will do this to please me, — be confirmed on the present occasion?’

‘Since I have done without the virtue of it so long, might I not do without it altogether?’

‘No, no!’ she said earnestly.  ‘I do wish it, indeed.  I am made unhappy when I think you don’t care about such serious matters.  Without the Church to cling to, what have we?’

‘Each other.  But seriously, I should be inverting the established order of spiritual things; people ought to be confirmed before they are married.’

‘That’s really of minor consequence.  Now, don’t think slightingly of what so many good men have laid down as necessary to be done.  And, dear Swithin, I somehow feel that a certain levity which has perhaps shown itself in our treatment of the sacrament of marriage — by making a clandestine adventure of what is, after all, a solemn rite — would be well atoned for by a due seriousness in other points of religious observance.  This opportunity should therefore not be passed over.  I thought of it all last night; and you are a parson’s son, remember, and he would have insisted on it if he had been alive.  In short, Swithin, do be a good boy, and observe the Church’s ordinances.’

Lady Constantine, by virtue of her temperament, was necessarily either lover or
dévote
, and she vibrated so gracefully between these two conditions that nobody who had known the circumstances could have condemned her inconsistencies.  To be led into difficulties by those mastering emotions of hers, to aim at escape by turning round and seizing the apparatus of religion — which could only rightly be worked by the very emotions already bestowed elsewhere — it was, after all, but Nature’s well-meaning attempt to preserve the honour of her daughter’s conscience in the trying quandary to which the conditions of sex had given rise.  As Viviette could not be confirmed herself, and as Communion Sunday was a long way off, she urged Swithin thus.

‘And the new bishop is such a good man,’ she continued.  ‘I used to have a slight acquaintance with him when he was a parish priest.’

‘Very well, dearest.  To please you I’ll be confirmed.  My grandmother, too, will be delighted, no doubt.’

They continued their ramble: Lady Constantine first advancing into rooms with the candle, to assure herself that all was empty, and then calling him forward in a whisper.  The stillness was broken only by these whispers, or by the occasional crack of a floor-board beneath their tread.  At last they sat down, and, shading the candle with a screen, she showed him the faded contents of this and that drawer or cabinet, or the wardrobe of some member of the family who had died young early in the century, when muslin reigned supreme, when waists were close to arm-pits, and muffs as large as smugglers’ tubs.  These researches among habilimental hulls and husks, whose human kernels had long ago perished, went on for about half an hour; when the companions were startled by a loud ringing at the front-door bell.

CHAPTER XXII

Lady Constantine flung down the old-fashioned lacework, whose beauties she had been pointing out to Swithin, and exclaimed, ‘Who can it be?  Not Louis, surely?’

They listened.  An arrival was such a phenomenon at this unfrequented mansion, and particularly a late arrival, that no servant was on the alert to respond to the call; and the visitor rang again, more loudly than before.  Sounds of the tardy opening and shutting of a passage-door from the kitchen quarter then reached their ears, and Viviette went into the corridor to hearken more attentively.  In a few minutes she returned to the wardrobe-room in which she had left Swithin.

‘Yes; it is my brother!’ she said with difficult composure.  ‘I just caught his voice.  He has no doubt come back from Paris to stay.  This is a rather vexatious, indolent way he has, never to write to prepare me!’

‘I can easily go away,’ said Swithin.

By this time, however, her brother had been shown into the house, and the footsteps of the page were audible, coming in search of Lady Constantine.

‘If you will wait there a moment,’ she said, directing St. Cleeve into a bedchamber which adjoined; ‘you will be quite safe from interruption, and I will quickly come back.’  Taking the light she left him.

Swithin waited in darkness.  Not more than ten minutes had passed when a whisper in her voice came through the keyhole.  He opened the door.

‘Yes; he is come to stay!’ she said.  ‘He is at supper now.’

‘Very well; don’t be flurried, dearest.  Shall I stay too, as we planned?’

‘O, Swithin, I fear not!’ she replied anxiously.  ‘You see how it is.  To-night we have broken the arrangement that you should never come here; and this is the result.  Will it offend you if — I ask you to leave?’

‘Not in the least.  Upon the whole, I prefer the comfort of my little cabin and homestead to the gauntness and alarms of this place.’

‘There, now, I fear you are offended!’ she said, a tear collecting in her eye.  ‘I wish I was going back with you to the cabin!  How happy we were, those three days of our stay there!  But it is better, perhaps, just now, that you should leave me.  Yes, these rooms are oppressive.  They require a large household to make them cheerful. . . .  Yet, Swithin,’ she added, after reflection, ‘I will not request you to go.  Do as you think best.  I will light a night-light, and leave you here to consider.  For myself, I must go downstairs to my brother at once, or he’ll wonder what I am doing.’

She kindled the little light, and again retreated, closing the door upon him.

Swithin stood and waited some time; till he considered that upon the whole it would be preferable to leave.  With this intention he emerged and went softly along the dark passage towards the extreme end, where there was a little crooked staircase that would conduct him down to a disused side door.  Descending this stair he duly arrived at the other side of the house, facing the quarter whence the wind blew, and here he was surprised to catch the noise of rain beating against the windows.  It was a state of weather which fully accounted for the visitor’s impatient ringing.

St. Cleeve was in a minor kind of dilemma.  The rain reminded him that his hat and great-coat had been left downstairs, in the front part of the house; and though he might have gone home without either in ordinary weather it was not a pleasant feat in the pelting winter rain.  Retracing his steps to Viviette’s room he took the light, and opened a closet-door that he had seen ajar on his way down.  Within the closet hung various articles of apparel, upholstery lumber of all kinds filling the back part.  Swithin thought he might find here a cloak of hers to throw round him, but finally took down from a peg a more suitable garment, the only one of the sort that was there.  It was an old moth-eaten great-coat, heavily trimmed with fur; and in removing it a companion cap of sealskin was disclosed.

‘Whose can they be?’ he thought, and a gloomy answer suggested itself.  ‘Pooh,’ he then said (summoning the scientific side of his nature), ‘matter is matter, and mental association only a delusion.’  Putting on the garments he returned the light to Lady Constantine’s bedroom, and again prepared to depart as before.

Scarcely, however, had he regained the corridor a second time, when he heard a light footstep — seemingly Viviette’s — again on the front landing.  Wondering what she wanted with him further he waited, taking the precaution to step into the closet till sure it was she.

The figure came onward, bent to the keyhole of the bedroom door, and whispered (supposing him still inside), ‘Swithin, on second thoughts I think you may stay with safety.’

Having no further doubt of her personality he came out with thoughtless abruptness from the closet behind her, and looking round suddenly she beheld his shadowy fur-clad outline.  At once she raised her hands in horror, as if to protect herself from him; she uttered a shriek, and turned shudderingly to the wall, covering her face.

Swithin would have picked her up in a moment, but by this time he could hear footsteps rushing upstairs, in response to her cry.  In consternation, and with a view of not compromising her, he effected his retreat as fast as possible, reaching the bend of the corridor just as her brother Louis appeared with a light at the other extremity.

‘What’s the matter, for heaven’s sake, Viviette?’ said Louis.

‘My husband!’ she involuntarily exclaimed.

‘What nonsense!’

‘O yes, it is nonsense,’ she added, with an effort.  ‘It was nothing.’

‘But what was the cause of your cry?’

She had by this time recovered her reason and judgment.  ‘O, it was a trick of the imagination,’ she said, with a faint laugh.  ‘I live so much alone that I get superstitious — and — I thought for the moment I saw an apparition.’

‘Of your late husband?’

‘Yes.  But it was nothing; it was the outline of the — tall clock and the chair behind.  Would you mind going down, and leaving me to go into my room for a moment?’

She entered the bedroom, and her brother went downstairs.  Swithin thought it best to leave well alone, and going noiselessly out of the house plodded through the rain homeward.  It was plain that agitations of one sort and another had so weakened Viviette’s nerves as to lay her open to every impression.  That the clothes he had borrowed were some cast-off garments of the late Sir Blount had occurred to St. Cleeve in taking them; but in the moment of returning to her side he had forgotten this, and the shape they gave to his figure had obviously been a reminder of too sudden a sort for her.  Musing thus he walked along as if he were still, as before, the lonely student, dissociated from all mankind, and with no shadow of right or interest in Welland House or its mistress.

The great-coat and cap were unpleasant companions; but Swithin having been reared, or having reared himself, in the scientific school of thought, would not give way to his sense of their weirdness.  To do so would have been treason to his own beliefs and aims.

When nearly home, at a point where his track converged on another path, there approached him from the latter a group of indistinct forms.  The tones of their speech revealed them to be Hezzy Biles, Nat Chapman, Fry, and other labourers.  Swithin was about to say a word to them, till recollecting his disguise he deemed it advisable to hold his tongue, lest his attire should tell a too dangerous tale as to where he had come from.  By degrees they drew closer, their walk being in the same direction.

‘Good-night, strainger,’ said Nat.

The stranger did not reply.

All of them paced on abreast of him, and he could perceive in the gloom that their faces were turned inquiringly upon his form.  Then a whisper passed from one to another of them; then Chapman, who was the boldest, dropped immediately behind his heels, and followed there for some distance, taking close observations of his outline, after which the men grouped again and whispered.  Thinking it best to let them pass on Swithin slackened his pace, and they went ahead of him, apparently without much reluctance.