Two on a Tower
barley (which now covered the field) by the path not more than a foot
wide that he had trodden for himself, and got into the lane at the other
end. By slowly walking along in the direction of the turnpike-road he
soon had the satisfaction of seeing her coming. To his surprise he also
had the satisfaction of perceiving that neither boy nor dog was in her
company.
They both blushed as they approached, she from sex, he from inexperience.
One thing she seemed to see in a moment, that in the interval of her
absence St. Cleeve had become a man; and as he greeted her with this new
and maturer light in his eyes she could not hide her embarrassment, or
meet their fire.
'I have just sent my page across to the column with your book on Cometary
Nuclei,' she said softly; 'that you might not have to come to the house
for it. I did not know I should meet you here.'
'Didn't you wish me to come to the house for it?'
'I did not, frankly. You know why, do you not?'
'Yes, I know. Well, my longing is at rest. I have met you again. But
are you unwell, that you drive out in this chair?'
'No; I walked out this morning, and am a little tired.'
'I have been looking for you night and day. Why do you turn your face
aside? You used not to be so.' Her hand rested on the side of the
chair, and he took it. 'Do you know that since we last met, I have been
thinking of you--daring to think of you--as I never thought of you
before?'
'Yes, I know it.'
'How did you know?'
'I saw it in your face when you came up.'
'Well, I suppose I ought not to think of you so. And yet, had I not
learned to, I should never fully have felt how gentle and sweet you are.
Only think of my loss if I had lived and died without seeing more in you
than in astronomy! But I shall never leave off doing so now. When you
talk I shall love your understanding; when you are silent I shall love
your face. But how shall I know that you care to be so much to me?'
Her manner was disturbed as she recognized the impending self-surrender,
which she knew not how to resist, and was not altogether at ease in
welcoming.
'O, Lady Constantine,' he continued, bending over her, 'give me some
proof more than mere seeming and inference, which are all I have at
present, that you don't think this I tell you of presumption in me! I
have been unable to do anything since I last saw you for pondering
uncertainly on this. Some proof, or little sign, that we are one in
heart!'
A blush settled again on her face; and half in effort, half in
spontaneity, she put her finger on her cheek. He almost devotionally
kissed the spot.
'Does that suffice?' she asked, scarcely giving her words voice.
'Yes; I am convinced.'
'Then that must be the end. Let me drive on; the boy will be back again
soon.' She spoke hastily, and looked askance to hide the heat of her
cheek.
'No; the tower door is open, and he will go to the top, and waste his
time in looking through the telescope.'
'Then you should rush back, for he will do some damage.'
'No; he may do what he likes, tinker and spoil the instrument, destroy my
papers,--anything, so that he will stay there and leave us alone.'
She glanced up with a species of pained pleasure.
'You never used to feel like that!' she said, and there was keen self-
reproach in her voice. 'You were once so devoted to your science that
the thought of an intruder into your temple would have driven you wild.
Now you don't care; and who is to blame? Ah, not you, not you!'
The animal ambled on with her, and he, leaning on the side of the little
vehicle, kept her company.
'Well, don't let us think of that,' he said. 'I offer myself and all my
energies, frankly and entirely, to you, my dear, dear lady, whose I shall
be always! But my words in telling you this will only injure my meaning
instead of emphasize it. In expressing, even to myself, my thoughts of
you, I find that I fall into phrases which, as a critic, I should
hitherto have heartily despised for their commonness. What's the use of
saying, for instance, as I have just said, that I give myself entirely to
you, and shall be yours always,--that you have my devotion, my highest
homage? Those words have been used so frequently in a flippant manner
that honest use of them is not distinguishable from the unreal.' He
turned to her, and added, smiling, 'Your eyes are to be my stars for the
future.'
'Yes, I know it,--I know it, and all you would say! I dreaded even while
I hoped for this, my dear young friend,' she replied, her eyes being full
of tears. 'I am injuring you; who knows that I am not ruining your
future,--I who ought to know better? Nothing can come of this, nothing
must,--and I am only wasting your time. Why have I drawn you off from a
grand celestial study to study poor lonely me? Say you will never
despise me, when you get older, for this episode in our lives. But you
will,--I know you will! All men do, when they have been attracted in
their unsuspecting youth, as I have attracted you. I ought to have kept
my resolve.'
'What was that?'
'To bear anything rather than draw you from your high purpose; to be like
the noble citizen of old Greece, who, attending a sacrifice, let himself
be burnt to the bone by a coal that jumped into his sleeve rather than
disturb the sacred ceremony.'
'But can I not study and love both?'
'I hope so,--I earnestly hope so. But you'll be the first if you do, and
I am the responsible one if you do not.'
'You speak as if I were quite a child, and you immensely older. Why, how
old do you think I am? I am twenty.'
'You seem younger. Well, that's so much the better. Twenty sounds
strong and firm. How old do you think I am?'
'I have never thought of considering.' He innocently turned to
scrutinize her face. She winced a little. But the instinct was
premature. Time had taken no liberties with her features as yet; nor had
trouble very roughly handled her.
'I will tell you,' she replied, speaking almost with physical pain, yet
as if determination should carry her through. 'I am
eight-and-twenty--nearly--I mean a little more, a few months more. Am I
not a fearful deal older than you?'
'At first it seems a great deal,' he answered, musing. 'But it doesn't
seem much when one gets used to it.'
'Nonsense!' she exclaimed. 'It _is_ a good deal.'
'Very well, then, sweetest Lady Constantine, let it be,' he said gently.
'You should not let it be! A polite man would have flatly contradicted
me. . . . O I am ashamed of this!' she added a moment after, with a
subdued, sad look upon the ground. 'I am speaking by the card of the
outer world, which I have left behind utterly; no such lip service is
known in your sphere. I care nothing for those things, really; but that
which is called the Eve in us will out sometimes. Well, we will forget
that now, as we must, at no very distant date, forget all the rest of
this.'
He walked beside her thoughtfully awhile, with his eyes also bent on the
road. 'Why must we forget it all?' he inquired.
'It is only an interlude.'
'An interlude! It is no interlude to me. O how can you talk so lightly
of this, Lady Constantine? And yet, if I were to go away from here, I
might, perhaps, soon reduce it to an interlude! Yes,' he resumed
impulsively, 'I will go away. Love dies, and it is just as well to
strangle it in its birth; it can only die once! I'll go.'
'No, no!' she said, looking up apprehensively. 'I misled you. It is no
interlude to me,--it is tragical. I only meant that from a worldly point
of view it is an interlude, which we should try to forget. But the world
is not all. You will not go away?'
But he continued drearily, 'Yes, yes, I see it all; you have enlightened
me. It will be hurting your prospects even more than mine, if I stay.
Now Sir Blount is dead, you are free again,--may marry where you will,
but for this fancy of ours. I'll leave Welland before harm comes of my
staying.'
'Don't decide to do a thing so rash!' she begged, seizing his hand, and
looking miserable at the effect of her words. 'I shall have nobody left
in the world to care for! And now I have given you the great telescope,
and lent you the column, it would be ungrateful to go away! I was wrong;
believe me that I did not mean that it was a mere interlude to _me_. O
if you only knew how very, very far it is from that! It is my doubt of
the result to you that makes me speak so slightingly.'
They were now approaching cross-roads, and casually looking up they
beheld, thirty or forty yards beyond the crossing, Mr. Torkingham, who
was leaning over a gate, his back being towards them. As yet he had not
recognized their approach.
The master-passion had already supplanted St. Cleeve's natural
ingenuousness by subtlety.
'Would it be well for us to meet Mr. Torkingham just now?' he began.
'Certainly not,' she said hastily, and pulling the rein she instantly
drove down the right-hand road. 'I cannot meet anybody!' she murmured.
'Would it not be better that you leave me now?--not for my pleasure, but
that there may arise no distressing tales about us before we know--how to
act in this--this'--(she smiled faintly at him) 'heartaching extremity!'
They were passing under a huge oak-tree, whose limbs, irregular with
shoulders, knuckles, and elbows, stretched horizontally over the lane in
a manner recalling Absalom's death. A slight rustling was perceptible
amid the leafage as they drew out from beneath it, and turning up his
eyes Swithin saw that very buttoned page whose advent they had dreaded,
looking down with interest at them from a perch not much higher than a
yard above their heads. He had a bunch of oak-apples in one hand,
plainly the object of his climb, and was furtively watching Lady
Constantine with the hope that she might not see him. But that she had
already done, though she did not reveal it, and, fearing that the latter
words of their conversation had been overheard, they spoke not till they
had passed the next turning.
She stretched out her hand to his. 'This must not go on,' she said
imploringly. 'My anxiety as to what may be said of such methods of
meeting makes me too unhappy. See what has happened!' She could not
help smiling. 'Out of the frying-pan into the fire! After meanly
turning to avoid the parson we have rushed into a worse publicity. It is
too humiliating to have to avoid people, and lowers both you and me. The
only remedy is not to meet.'
'Very well,' said Swithin, with a sigh. 'So it shall be.'
And with smiles that might more truly have been tears they parted there
and then.
XV
The summer passed away, and autumn, with its infinite suite of tints,
came creeping on. Darker grew the evenings, tearfuller the moonlights,
and heavier the dews. Meanwhile the comet had waxed to its largest
dimensions,--so large that not only the nucleus but a portion of the tail
had been visible in broad day. It was now on the wane, though every
night the equatorial still afforded an opportunity of observing the
singular object which would soon disappear altogether from the heavens
for perhaps thousands of years.
But the astronomer of the Rings-Hill Speer was no longer a match for his
celestial materials. Scientifically he had become but a dim vapour of
himself; the lover had come into him like an armed man, and cast out the
student, and his intellectual situation was growing a life-and-death
matter.
The resolve of the pair had been so far kept: they had not seen each
other in private for three months. But on one day in October he ventured
to write a note to her:--
'I can do nothing! I have ceased to study, ceased to observe. The