by Thomas Hardy
XII
On the afternoon of the next day Mr. Torkingham, who occasionally droppedin to see St. Cleeve, called again as usual; after duly remarking on thestate of the weather, congratulating him on his sure though slowimprovement, and answering his inquiries about the comet, he said, 'Youhave heard, I suppose, of what has happened to Lady Constantine?'
'No! Nothing serious?'
'Yes, it is serious.' The parson informed him of the death of SirBlount, and of the accidents which had hindered all knowledge of thesame,--accidents favoured by the estrangement of the pair and thecessation of correspondence between them for some time.
His listener received the news with the concern of a friend, LadyConstantine's aspect in his eyes depending but little on her conditionmatrimonially.
'There was no attempt to bring him home when he died?'
'O no. The climate necessitates instant burial. We shall have moreparticulars in a day or two, doubtless.'
'Poor Lady Constantine,--so good and so sensitive as she is! I supposeshe is quite prostrated by the bad news.'
'Well, she is rather serious,--not prostrated. The household is goinginto mourning.'
'Ah, no, she would not be quite prostrated,' murmured Swithin,recollecting himself. 'He was unkind to her in many ways. Do you thinkshe will go away from Welland?'
That the vicar could not tell. But he feared that Sir Blount's affairshad been in a seriously involved condition, which might necessitate manyand unexpected changes.
Time showed that Mr. Torkingham's surmises were correct.
During the long weeks of early summer, through which the young man stilllay imprisoned, if not within his own chamber, within the limits of thehouse and garden, news reached him that Sir Blount's mismanagement andeccentric behaviour were resulting in serious consequences to LadyConstantine; nothing less, indeed, than her almost completeimpoverishment. His personalty was swallowed up in paying his debts, andthe Welland estate was so heavily charged with annuities to his distantrelatives that only a mere pittance was left for her. She was reducingthe establishment to the narrowest compass compatible with decentgentility. The horses were sold one by one; the carriages also; thegreater part of the house was shut up, and she resided in the smallestrooms. All that was allowed to remain of her former contingent of maleservants were an odd man and a boy. Instead of using a carriage she nowdrove about in a donkey-chair, the said boy walking in front to clear theway and keep the animal in motion while she wore, so his informantsreported, not an ordinary widow's cap or bonnet, but something evenplainer, the black material being drawn tightly round her face, givingher features a small, demure, devout cast, very pleasing to the eye.
'Now, what's the most curious thing in this, Mr. San Cleeve,' said SammyBlore, who, in calling to inquire after Swithin's health, had impartedsome of the above particulars, 'is that my lady seems not to mind being apore woman half so much as we do at seeing her so. 'Tis a wonderfulgift, Mr. San Cleeve, wonderful, to be able to guide yerself, and not letloose yer soul in blasting at such a misfortune. I should go and drinkneat regular, as soon as I had swallered my breakfast, till my innerdswas burnt out like a' old copper, if it had happened to me; but my lady'splan is best. Though I only guess how one feels in such losses, to besure, for I never had nothing to lose.'
Meanwhile the observatory was not forgotten; nor that visitant ofsingular shape and habits which had appeared in the sky from no one knewwhence, trailing its luminous streamer, and proceeding on its way in theface of a wondering world, till it should choose to vanish as suddenly asit had come.
When, about a month after the above dialogue took place, Swithin wasallowed to go about as usual, his first pilgrimage was to the Rings-HillSpeer. Here he studied at leisure what he had come to see.
On his return to the homestead, just after sunset, he found hisgrandmother and Hannah in a state of great concern. The former waslooking out for him against the evening light, her face showing itselfworn and rutted, like an old highway, by the passing of many days. Herinformation was that in his absence Lady Constantine had called in herdriving-chair, to inquire for him. Her ladyship had wished to observethe comet through the great telescope, but had found the door locked whenshe applied at the tower. Would he kindly leave the door unfastened to-morrow, she had asked, that she might be able to go to the column on thefollowing evening for the same purpose? She did not require him toattend.
During the next day he sent Hannah with the key to Welland House, notcaring to leave the tower open. As evening advanced and the comet grewdistinct, he doubted if Lady Constantine could handle the telescope alonewith any pleasure or profit to herself. Unable, as a devotee to science,to rest under this misgiving, he crossed the field in the furrow that hehad used ever since the corn was sown, and entered the plantation. Hisunpractised mind never once guessed that her stipulations against hiscoming might have existed along with a perverse hope that he would come.
On ascending he found her already there. She sat in the observing-chair:the warm light from the west, which flowed in through the opening of thedome, brightened her face, and her face only, her robes of sable lawnrendering the remainder of her figure almost invisible.
'You have come!' she said with shy pleasure. 'I did not require you. Butnever mind.' She extended her hand cordially to him.
Before speaking he looked at her with a great new interest in his eye. Itwas the first time that he had seen her thus, and she was altered in morethan dress. A soberly-sweet expression sat on her face. It was of arare and peculiar shade--something that he had never seen before inwoman.
'Have you nothing to say?' she continued. 'Your footsteps were audibleto me from the very bottom, and I knew they were yours. You look almostrestored.'
'I am almost restored,' he replied, respectfully pressing her hand. 'Areason for living arose, and I lived.'
'What reason?' she inquired, with a rapid blush.
He pointed to the rocket-like object in the western sky.
'Oh, you mean the comet. Well, you will never make a courtier! Youknow, of course, what has happened to me; that I have no longer ahusband--have had none for a year and a half. Have you also heard that Iam now quite a poor woman? Tell me what you think of it.'
'I have thought very little of it since I heard that you seemed to mindpoverty but little. There is even this good in it, that I may now beable to show you some little kindness for all those you have done me, mydear lady.'
'Unless for economy's sake, I go and live abroad, at Dinan, Versailles,or Boulogne.'
Swithin, who had never thought of such a contingency, was earnest in hisregrets; without, however, showing more than a sincere friend'sdisappointment.
'I did not say it was absolutely necessary,' she continued. 'I have, infact, grown so homely and home-loving, I am so interested in the placeand the people here, that, in spite of advice, I have almost determinednot to let the house; but to continue the less business-like butpleasanter alternative of living humbly in a part of it, and shutting upthe rest.'
'Your love of astronomy is getting as strong as mine!' he said ardently.'You could not tear yourself away from the observatory!'
'You might have supposed me capable of a little human feeling as well asscientific, in connection with the observatory.'
'Dear Lady Constantine, by admitting that your astronomer has also a partof your interest--'
'Ah, you did not find it out without my telling!' she said, with aplayfulness which was scarcely playful, a new accession of pinkness beingvisible in her face. 'I diminish myself in your esteem by remindingyou.'
'You might do anything in this world without diminishing yourself in myesteem, after the goodness you have shown. And more than that, nomisrepresentation, no rumour, no damning appearance whatever would evershake my loyalty to you.'
'But you put a very matter-of-fact construction on my motives sometimes.You see me in such a hard light that I have to drop hints in quite amanoeuvring mann
er to let you know I am as sympathetic as other people. Isometimes think you would rather have me die than have your equatorialstolen. Confess that your admiration for me was based on my house andposition in the county! Now I am shorn of all that glory, such as itwas, and am a widow, and am poorer than my tenants, and can no longer buytelescopes, and am unable, from the narrowness of my circumstances, tomix in circles that people formerly said I adorned, I fear I have lostthe little hold I once had over you.'
'You are as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,' said St.Cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, whichhe, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. Seizing her hand hecontinued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'I swear to you that Ihave but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, and two blessings inthis world, and that one of them is yourself!'
'And the other?'
'The pursuit of astronomy.'
'And astronomy stands first.'
'I have never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas. And why should youdeplore your altered circumstances, my dear lady? Your widowhood, if Imay take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though I suppose asadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. For though your pecuniary troubleshave been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness inmarriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are now leftfree as a bird to follow your own hobbies.'
'I wonder you recognize that.'
'But perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall aprey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and be lostto the scientific world after all.'
'If I fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire. Butdon't go on with this, for heaven's sake! You may think what you like insilence.'
'We are forgetting the comet,' said St. Cleeve. He turned, and set theinstrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome.
While she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filledso large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it, Swithin droppedhis gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number oflabourers crossing directly towards the column.
'What do you see?' Lady Constantine asked, without ceasing to observe thecomet.
'Some of the work-folk are coming this way. I know what they are comingfor,--I promised to let them look at the comet through the glass.'
'They must not come up here,' she said decisively.
'They shall await your time.'
'I have a special reason for wishing them not to see me here. If you askwhy, I can tell you. They mistakenly suspect my interest to be less inastronomy than in the astronomer, and they must have no showing for sucha wild notion. What can you do to keep them out?'
'I'll lock the door,' said Swithin. 'They will then think I am away.' Heran down the staircase, and she could hear him hastily turning the key.Lady Constantine sighed.
'What weakness, what weakness!' she said to herself. 'That envied powerof self-control, where is it? That power of concealment which a womanshould have--where? To run such risks, to come here alone,--oh, if itwere known! But I was always so,--always!'
She jumped up, and followed him downstairs.