by Thomas Hardy
XXXVIII
Viviette's determination to hamper Swithin no longer had led her, as hasbeen shown, to balk any weak impulse to entreat his return, by forbiddinghim to furnish her with his foreign address. His ready disposition, hisfear that there might be other reasons behind, made him obey her only tooliterally. Thus, to her terror and dismay, she had placed a gratuitousdifficulty in the way of her present endeavour.
She was ready before Green, and urged on that factotum so wildly as toleave him no time to change his corduroys and 'skitty-boots' in which hehad been gardening; he therefore turned himself into a coachman as fardown as his waist merely--clapping on his proper coat, hat, andwaistcoat, and wrapping a rug over his horticultural half below. In thiscompromise he appeared at the door, mounted, and reins in hand.
Seeing how sad and determined Viviette was, Louis pitied her so far as toput nothing in the way of her starting, though he forbore to help her. Hethought her conduct sentimental foolery, the outcome of mistaken pity and'such a kind of gain-giving as would trouble a woman;' and he decidedthat it would be better to let this mood burn itself out than to keep itsmouldering by obstruction.
'Do you remember the date of his sailing?' she said finally, as the pony-carriage turned to drive off.
'He sails on the 25th, that is, to-day. But it may not be till late inthe evening.'
With this she started, and reached Warborne in time for the up-train. Howmuch longer than it really is a long journey can seem to be, was fullylearnt by the unhappy Viviette that day. The changeful procession ofcountry seats past which she was dragged, the names and memories of theirowners, had no points of interest for her now. She reached Southamptonabout midday, and drove straight to the docks.
On approaching the gates she was met by a crowd of people and vehiclescoming out--men, women, children, porters, police, cabs, and carts. TheOccidental had just sailed.
The adverse intelligence came upon her with such odds after her morning'stension that she could scarcely crawl back to the cab which had broughther. But this was not a time to succumb. As she had no luggage shedismissed the man, and, without any real consciousness of what she wasdoing, crept away and sat down on a pile of merchandise.
After long thinking her case assumed a more hopeful complexion. Muchmight probably be done towards communicating with him in the time at hercommand. The obvious step to this end, which she should have thought ofsooner, would be to go to his grandmother in Welland Bottom, and thereobtain his itinerary in detail--no doubt well known to Mrs. Martin. Therewas no leisure for her to consider longer if she would be home again thatnight; and returning to the railway she waited on a seat without eatingor drinking till a train was ready to take her back.
By the time she again stood in Warborne the sun rested his chin upon themeadows, and enveloped the distant outline of the Rings-Hill column inhis humid rays. Hiring an empty fly that chanced to be at the stationshe was driven through the little town onward to Welland, which sheapproached about eight o'clock. At her request the man set her down atthe entrance to the park, and when he was out of sight, instead ofpursuing her way to the House, she went along the high road in thedirection of Mrs. Martin's.
Dusk was drawing on, and the bats were wheeling over the green basincalled Welland Bottom by the time she arrived; and had any other errandinstigated her call she would have postponed it till the morrow. Nobodyresponded to her knock, but she could hear footsteps going hither andthither upstairs, and dull noises as of articles moved from their places.She knocked again and again, and ultimately the door was opened by Hannahas usual.
'I could make nobody hear,' said Lady Constantine, who was so weary shecould scarcely stand.
'I am very sorry, my lady,' said Hannah, slightly awed on beholding hervisitor. 'But we was a putting poor Mr. Swithin's room to rights, nowthat he is, as a woman may say, dead and buried to us; so we didn't hearyour ladyship. I'll call Mrs. Martin at once. She is up in the roomthat used to be his work-room.'
Here Hannah's voice implied moist eyes, and Lady Constantine's instantlyoverflowed.
'No, I'll go up to her,' said Viviette; and almost in advance of Hannahshe passed up the shrunken ash stairs.
The ebbing light was not enough to reveal to Mrs. Martin's aged gaze thepersonality of her visitor, till Hannah explained.
'I'll get a light, my lady,' said she.
'No, I would rather not. What are you doing, Mrs. Martin?'
'Well, the poor misguided boy is gone--and he's gone for good to me! Iam a woman of over four-score years, my Lady Constantine; my junkettingdays are over, and whether 'tis feasting or whether 'tis sorrowing in theland will soon be nothing to me. But his life may be long and active,and for the sake of him I care for what I shall never see, and wish tomake pleasant what I shall never enjoy. I am setting his room in order,as the place will be his own freehold when I am gone, so that when hecomes back he may find all his poor jim-cracks and trangleys as he left'em, and not feel that I have betrayed his trust.'
Mrs. Martin's voice revealed that she had burst into such few tears aswere left her, and then Hannah began crying likewise; whereupon LadyConstantine, whose heart had been bursting all day (and who, indeed,considering her coming trouble, had reason enough for tears), broke intobitterer sobs than either--sobs of absolute pain, that could no longer beconcealed.
Hannah was the first to discover that Lady Constantine was weeping withthem; and her feelings being probably the least intense among the threeshe instantly controlled herself.
'Refrain yourself, my dear woman, refrain!' she said hastily to Mrs.Martin; 'don't ye see how it do raft my lady?' And turning to Vivietteshe whispered, 'Her years be so great, your ladyship, that perhaps ye'llexcuse her for busting out afore ye? We know when the mind is dim, mylady, there's not the manners there should be; but decayed people can'thelp it, poor old soul!'
'Hannah, that will do now. Perhaps Lady Constantine would like to speakto me alone,' said Mrs. Martin. And when Hannah had retreated Mrs.Martin continued: 'Such a charge as she is, my lady, on account of hergreat age! You'll pardon her biding here as if she were one of thefamily. I put up with such things because of her long service, and weknow that years lead to childishness.'
'What are you doing? Can I help you?' Viviette asked, as Mrs. Martin,after speaking, turned to lift some large article.
'Oh, 'tis only the skeleton of a telescope that's got no works in hisinside,' said Swithin's grandmother, seizing the huge pasteboard tubethat Swithin had made, and abandoned because he could get no lenses tosuit it. 'I am going to hang it up to these hooks, and there it willbide till he comes again.'
Lady Constantine took one end, and the tube was hung up against thewhitewashed wall by strings that the old woman had tied round it.
'Here's all his equinoctial lines, and his topics of Capricorn, and Idon't know what besides,' Mrs. Martin continued, pointing to somecharcoal scratches on the wall. 'I shall never rub 'em out; no, though'tis such untidiness as I was never brought up to, I shall never rub 'emout.'
'Where has Swithin gone to first?' asked Viviette anxiously. 'Where doeshe say you are to write to him?'
'Nowhere yet, my lady. He's gone traipsing all over Europe and America,and then to the South Pacific Ocean about this Transit of Venus that'sgoing to be done there. He is to write to us first--God knows when!--forhe said that if we didn't hear from him for six months we were not to begallied at all.'
At this intelligence, so much worse than she had expected, LadyConstantine stood mute, sank down, and would have fallen to the floor ifthere had not been a chair behind her. Controlling herself by astrenuous effort, she disguised her despair and asked vacantly: 'FromAmerica to the South Pacific--Transit of Venus?' (Swithin's arrangementto accompany the expedition had been made at the last moment, andtherefore she had not as yet been informed.)
'Yes, to a lone island, I believe.'
'Yes, a lone islant, my lady!' echoed Hannah, who had crept in and madehers
elf one of the family again, in spite of Mrs. Martin.
'He is going to meet the English and American astronomers there at theend of the year. After that he will most likely go on to the Cape.'
'But before the end of the year--what places did he tell you ofvisiting?'
'Let me collect myself; he is going to the observatory of Cambridge,United States, to meet some gentlemen there, and spy through the greatrefractor. Then there's the observatory of Chicago; and I think he has aletter to make him beknown to a gentleman in the observatory atMarseilles--and he wants to go to Vienna--and Poulkowa, too, he means totake in his way--there being great instruments and a lot of astronomersat each place.'
'Does he take Europe or America first?' she asked faintly, for theaccount seemed hopeless.
Mrs. Martin could not tell till she had heard from Swithin. It dependedupon what he had decided to do on the day of his leaving England.
Lady Constantine bade the old people good-bye, and dragged her wearylimbs homeward. The fatuousness of forethought had seldom been evincedmore ironically. Had she done nothing to hinder him, he would have keptup an unreserved communication with her, and all might have been well.
For that night she could undertake nothing further, and she waited forthe next day. Then at once she wrote two letters to Swithin, directingone to Marseilles observatory, one to the observatory of Cambridge, U.S.,as being the only two spots on the face of the globe at which they werelikely to intercept him. Each letter stated to him the urgent reasonswhich existed for his return, and contained a passionately regretfulintimation that the annuity on which his hopes depended must of necessitybe sacrificed by the completion of their original contract without delay.
But letter conveyance was too slow a process to satisfy her. To send anepitome of her epistles by telegraph was, after all, indispensable. Suchan imploring sentence as she desired to address to him it would behazardous to despatch from Warborne, and she took a dreary journey to astrange town on purpose to send it from an office at which she wasunknown.
There she handed in her message, addressing it to the port of arrival ofthe Occidental, and again returned home.
She waited; and there being no return telegram, the inference was that hehad somehow missed hers. For an answer to either of her letters shewould have to wait long enough to allow him time to reach one of theobservatories--a tedious while.
Then she considered the weakness, the stultifying nature of her attemptat recall.
Events mocked her on all sides. By the favour of an accident, and by herown immense exertions against her instincts, Swithin had been restored tothe rightful heritage that he had nearly forfeited on her account. Hehad just started off to utilize it; when she, without a moment's warning,was asking him again to cast it away. She had set a certain machinery inmotion--to stop it before it had revolved once.
A horrid apprehension possessed her. It had been easy for Swithin togive up what he had never known the advantages of keeping; but havingonce begun to enjoy his possession would he give it up now? Could he bedepended on for such self-sacrifice? Before leaving, he would have doneanything at her request; but the _mollia tempora fandi_ had now passed.Suppose there arrived no reply from him for the next three months; andthat when his answer came he were to inform her that, having now fullyacquiesced in her original decision, he found the life he was leading soprofitable as to be unable to abandon it, even to please her; that he wasvery sorry, but having embarked on this course by her advice he meant toadhere to it by his own.
There was, indeed, every probability that, moving about as he was doing,and cautioned as he had been by her very self against listening to hertoo readily, she would receive no reply of any sort from him for three orperhaps four months. This would be on the eve of the Transit; and whatlikelihood was there that a young man, full of ardour for that spectacle,would forego it at the last moment to return to a humdrum domesticitywith a woman who was no longer a novelty?
If she could only leave him to his career, and save her own situationalso! But at that moment the proposition seemed as impossible as toconstruct a triangle of two straight lines.
In her walk home, pervaded by these hopeless views, she passed near thedark and deserted tower. Night in that solitary place, which would havecaused her some uneasiness in her years of blitheness, had no terrors forher now. She went up the winding path, and, the door being unlocked,felt her way to the top. The open sky greeted her as in times previousto the dome-and-equatorial period; but there was not a star to suggest toher in which direction Swithin had gone. The absence of the domesuggested a way out of her difficulties. A leap in the dark, and allwould be over. But she had not reached that stage of action as yet, andthe thought was dismissed as quickly as it had come.
The new consideration which at present occupied her mind was whether shecould have the courage to leave Swithin to himself, as in the originalplan, and singly meet her impending trial, despising the shame, till heshould return at five-and-twenty and claim her? Yet was this assumptionof his return so very safe? How altered things would be at that time! Attwenty-five he would still be young and handsome; she would be three-and-thirty, fading to middle-age and homeliness, from a junior's point ofview. A fear sharp as a frost settled down upon her, that in any suchscheme as this she would be building upon the sand.
She hardly knew how she reached home that night. Entering by the lawndoor she saw a red coal in the direction of the arbour. Louis wassmoking there, and he came forward.
He had not seen her since the morning and was naturally anxious abouther. She blessed the chance which enveloped her in night and lessenedthe weight of the encounter one half by depriving him of vision.
'Did you accomplish your object?' he asked.
'No,' said she.
'How was that?'
'He has sailed.'
'A very good thing for both, I say. I believe you would have marriedhim, if you could have overtaken him.'
'That would I!' she said.
'Good God!'
'I would marry a tinker for that matter; I have reasons for being anyman's wife,' she said recklessly, 'only I should prefer to drown myself.'
Louis held his breath, and stood rigid at the meaning her words conveyed.
'But Louis, you don't know all!' cried Viviette. 'I am not so bad as youthink; mine has been folly--not vice. I thought I had married him--andthen I found I had not; the marriage was invalid--Sir Blount was alive!And now Swithin has gone away, and will not come back for my calling! Howcan he? His fortune is left him on condition that he forms no legal tie.O will he--will he, come again?'
'Never, if that's the position of affairs,' said Louis firmly, after apause.
'What then shall I do?' said Viviette.
Louis escaped the formidable difficulty of replying by pretending tocontinue his Havannah; and she, bowed down to dust by what she hadrevealed, crept from him into the house. Louis's cigar went out in hishand as he stood looking intently at the ground.