Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (440 page)

CHAPTER XLI

Three years passed away, and Swithin still remained at the Cape, quietly pursuing the work that had brought him there.  His memoranda of observations had accumulated to a wheelbarrow load, and he was beginning to shape them into a treatise which should possess some scientific utility.

He had gauged the southern skies with greater results than even he himself had anticipated.  Those unfamiliar constellations which, to the casual beholder, are at most a new arrangement of ordinary points of light, were to this professed astronomer, as to his brethren, a far greater matter.

It was below the surface that his material lay.  There, in regions revealed only to the instrumental observer, were suns of hybrid kind — fire-fogs, floating nuclei, globes that flew in groups like swarms of bees, and other extraordinary sights — which, when decomposed by Swithin’s equatorial, turned out to be the beginning of a new series of phenomena instead of the end of an old one.

There were gloomy deserts in those southern skies such as the north shows scarcely an example of; sites set apart for the position of suns which for some unfathomable reason were left uncreated, their places remaining ever since conspicuous by their emptiness.

The inspection of these chasms brought him a second pulsation of that old horror which he had used to describe to Viviette as produced in him by bottomlessness in the north heaven.  The ghostly finger of limitless vacancy touched him now on the other side.  Infinite deeps in the north stellar region had a homely familiarity about them, when compared with infinite deeps in the region of the south pole.  This was an even more unknown tract of the unknown.  Space here, being less the historic haunt of human thought than overhead at home, seemed to be pervaded with a more lonely loneliness.

Were there given on paper to these astronomical exercitations of St. Cleeve a space proportionable to that occupied by his year with Viviette at Welland, this narrative would treble its length; but not a single additional glimpse would be afforded of Swithin in his relations with old emotions.  In these experiments with tubes and glasses, important as they were to human intellect, there was little food for the sympathetic instincts which create the changes in a life.  That which is the foreground and measuring base of one perspective draught may be the vanishing-point of another perspective draught, while yet they are both draughts of the same thing.  Swithin’s doings and discoveries in the southern sidereal system were, no doubt, incidents of the highest importance to him; and yet from an intersocial point of view they served but the humble purpose of killing time, while other doings, more nearly allied to his heart than to his understanding, developed themselves at home.

In the intervals between his professional occupations he took walks over the sand-flats near, or among the farms which were gradually overspreading the country in the vicinity of Cape Town.  He grew familiar with the outline of Table Mountain, and the fleecy ‘Devil’s Table-Cloth’ which used to settle on its top when the wind was south-east.  On these promenades he would more particularly think of Viviette, and of that curious pathetic chapter in his life with her which seemed to have wound itself up and ended for ever.  Those scenes were rapidly receding into distance, and the intensity of his sentiment regarding them had proportionately abated.  He felt that there had been something wrong therein, and yet he could not exactly define the boundary of the wrong.  Viviette’s sad and amazing sequel to that chapter had still a fearful, catastrophic aspect in his eyes; but instead of musing over it and its bearings he shunned the subject, as we shun by night the shady scene of a disaster, and keep to the open road.

He sometimes contemplated her apart from the past — leading her life in the Cathedral Close at Melchester; and wondered how often she looked south and thought of where he was.

On one of these afternoon walks in the neighbourhood of the Royal Observatory he turned and gazed towards the signal-post on the Lion’s Rump.  This was a high promontory to the north-west of Table Mountain, and overlooked Table Bay.  Before his eyes had left the scene the signal was suddenly hoisted on the staff.  It announced that a mail steamer had appeared in view over the sea.  In the course of an hour he retraced his steps, as he had often done on such occasions, and strolled leisurely across the intervening mile and a half till he arrived at the post-office door.

There was no letter from England for him; but there was a newspaper, addressed in the seventeenth century handwriting of his grandmother, who, in spite of her great age, still retained a steady hold on life.  He turned away disappointed, and resumed his walk into the country, opening the paper as he went along.

A cross in black ink attracted his attention; and it was opposite a name among the ‘Deaths.’  His blood ran icily as he discerned the words ‘The Palace, Melchester.’  But it was not she.  Her husband, the Bishop of Melchester, had, after a short illness, departed this life at the comparatively early age of fifty years.

All the enactments of the bygone days at Welland now started up like an awakened army from the ground.  But a few months were wanting to the time when he would be of an age to marry without sacrificing the annuity which formed his means of subsistence.  It was a point in his life that had had no meaning or interest for him since his separation from Viviette, for women were now no more to him than the inhabitants of Jupiter.  But the whirligig of time having again set Viviette free, the aspect of home altered, and conjecture as to her future found room to work anew.

But beyond the simple fact that she was a widow he for some time gained not an atom of intelligence concerning her.  There was no one of whom he could inquire but his grandmother, and she could tell him nothing about a lady who dwelt far away at Melchester.

Several months slipped by thus; and no feeling within him rose to sufficient strength to force him out of a passive attitude.  Then by the merest chance his granny stated in one of her rambling epistles that Lady Constantine was coming to live again at Welland in the old house, with her child, now a little boy between three and four years of age.

Swithin, however, lived on as before.

But by the following autumn a change became necessary for the young man himself.  His work at the Cape was done.  His uncle’s wishes that he should study there had been more than observed.  The materials for his great treatise were collected, and it now only remained for him to arrange, digest, and publish them, for which purpose a return to England was indispensable.

So the equatorial was unscrewed, and the stand taken down; the astronomer’s barrow-load of precious memoranda, and rolls upon rolls of diagrams, representing three years of continuous labour, were safely packed; and Swithin departed for good and all from the shores of Cape Town.

He had long before informed his grandmother of the date at which she might expect him; and in a reply from her, which reached him just previous to sailing, she casually mentioned that she frequently saw Lady Constantine; that on the last occasion her ladyship had shown great interest in the information that Swithin was coming home, and had inquired the time of his return.

* * * * *

On a late summer day Swithin stepped from the train at Warborne, and, directing his baggage to be sent on after him, set out on foot for old Welland once again.

It seemed but the day after his departure, so little had the scene changed.  True, there was that change which is always the first to arrest attention in places that are conventionally called unchanging — a higher and broader vegetation at every familiar corner than at the former time.

He had not gone a mile when he saw walking before him a clergyman whose form, after consideration, he recognized, in spite of a novel whiteness in that part of his hair that showed below the brim of his hat.  Swithin walked much faster than this gentleman, and soon was at his side.

‘Mr. Torkingham!  I knew it was,’ said Swithin.

Mr. Torkingham was slower in recognizing the astronomer, but in a moment had greeted him with a warm shake of the hand.

‘I have been to the station on purpose to meet you!’ cried Mr. Torkingham, ‘and was returning with the idea that you had not come.  I am your grandmother’s emissary.  She could not come herself, and as she was anxious, and nobody else could be spared, I came for her.’

Then they walked on together.  The parson told Swithin all about his grandmother, the parish, and his endeavours to enlighten it; and in due course said, ‘You are no doubt aware that Lady Constantine is living again at Welland?’

Swithin said he had heard as much, and added, what was far within the truth, that the news of the Bishop’s death had been a great surprise to him.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Torkingham, with nine thoughts to one word.  ‘One might have prophesied, to look at him, that Melchester would not lack a bishop for the next forty years.  Yes; pale death knocks at the cottages of the poor and the palaces of kings with an impartial foot!’

‘Was he a particularly good man?’ asked Swithin.

‘He was not a Ken or a Heber.  To speak candidly, he had his faults, of which arrogance was not the least.  But who is perfect?’

Swithin, somehow, felt relieved to hear that the Bishop was not a perfect man.

‘His poor wife, I fear, had not a great deal more happiness with him than with her first husband.  But one might almost have foreseen it; the marriage was hasty — the result of a red-hot caprice, hardly becoming in a man of his position; and it betokened a want of temperate discretion which soon showed itself in other ways.  That’s all there was to be said against him, and now it’s all over, and things have settled again into their old course.  But the Bishop’s widow is not the Lady Constantine of former days.  No; put it as you will, she is not the same.  There seems to be a nameless something on her mind — a trouble — a rooted melancholy, which no man’s ministry can reach.  Formerly she was a woman whose confidence it was easy to gain; but neither religion nor philosophy avails with her now.  Beyond that, her life is strangely like what it was when you were with us.’

Conversing thus they pursued the turnpike road till their conversation was interrupted by a crying voice on their left.  They looked, and perceived that a child, in getting over an adjoining stile, had fallen on his face.

Mr. Torkingham and Swithin both hastened up to help the sufferer, who was a lovely little fellow with flaxen hair, which spread out in a frill of curls from beneath a quaint, close-fitting velvet cap that he wore.  Swithin picked him up, while Mr. Torkingham wiped the sand from his lips and nose, and administered a few words of consolation, together with a few sweet-meats, which, somewhat to Swithin’s surprise, the parson produced as if by magic from his pocket.  One half the comfort rendered would have sufficed to soothe such a disposition as the child’s.  He ceased crying and ran away in delight to his unconscious nurse, who was reaching up for blackberries at a hedge some way off.

‘You know who he is, of course?’ said Mr. Torkingham, as they resumed their journey.

‘No,’ said Swithin.

‘Oh, I thought you did.  Yet how should you?  It is Lady Constantine’s boy — her only child.  His fond mother little thinks he is so far away from home.’

‘Dear me! — Lady Constantine’s — ah, how interesting!’  Swithin paused abstractedly for a moment, then stepped back again to the stile, while he stood watching the little boy out of sight.

‘I can never venture out of doors now without sweets in my pocket,’ continued the good-natured vicar: ‘and the result is that I meet that young man more frequently on my rounds than any other of my parishioners.’

St. Cleeve was silent, and they turned into Welland Lane, where their paths presently diverged, and Swithin was left to pursue his way alone.  He might have accompanied the vicar yet further, and gone straight to Welland House; but it would have been difficult to do so then without provoking inquiry.  It was easy to go there now: by a cross path he could be at the mansion almost as soon as by the direct road.  And yet Swithin did not turn; he felt an indescribable reluctance to see Viviette.  He could not exactly say why.  True, before he knew how the land lay it might be awkward to attempt to call: and this was a sufficient excuse for postponement.

In this mood he went on, following the direct way to his grandmother’s homestead.  He reached the garden-gate, and, looking into the bosky basin where the old house stood, saw a graceful female form moving before the porch, bidding adieu to some one within the door.

He wondered what creature of that mould his grandmother could know, and went forward with some hesitation.  At his approach the apparition turned, and he beheld, developed into blushing womanhood, one who had once been known to him as the village maiden Tabitha Lark.  Seeing Swithin, and apparently from an instinct that her presence would not be desirable just then, she moved quickly round into the garden.

The returned traveller entered the house, where he found awaiting him poor old Mrs. Martin, to whose earthly course death stood rather as the asymptote than as the end.  She was perceptibly smaller in form than when he had left her, and she could see less distinctly.

A rather affecting greeting followed, in which his grandmother murmured the words of Israel: ‘“Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.”‘

The form of Hannah had disappeared from the kitchen, that ancient servant having been gathered to her fathers about six months before, her place being filled by a young girl who knew not Joseph.  They presently chatted with much cheerfulness, and his grandmother said, ‘Have you heard what a wonderful young woman Miss Lark has become? — a mere fleet-footed, slittering maid when you were last home.’

St. Cleeve had not heard, but he had partly seen, and he was informed that Tabitha had left Welland shortly after his own departure, and had studied music with great success in London, where she had resided ever since till quite recently; that she played at concerts, oratorios — had, in short, joined the phalanx of Wonderful Women who had resolved to eclipse masculine genius altogether, and humiliate the brutal sex to the dust.