Two on a Tower
intruding at Welland House, and to keep the marriage concealed till I
have won a position worthy of her.'
'Or till I request it to be made known,' she added, possibly foreseeing a
contingency which had not occurred to him.
'Or till you request it,' he repeated.
'It is agreed,' murmured Lady Constantine,
XVI
After this there only remained to be settled between them the practical
details of the project.
These were that he should leave home in a couple of days, and take
lodgings either in the distant city of Bath or in a convenient suburb of
London, till a sufficient time should have elapsed to satisfy legal
requirements; that on a fine morning at the end of this time she should
hie away to the same place, and be met at the station by St. Cleeve,
armed with the marriage license; whence they should at once proceed to
the church fixed upon for the ceremony; returning home independently in
the course of the next two or three days.
While these tactics were under discussion the two-and-thirty winds of
heaven continued, as before, to beat about the tower, though their onsets
appeared to be somewhat lessening in force. Himself now calmed and
satisfied, Swithin, as is the wont of humanity, took serener views of
Nature's crushing mechanics without, and said, 'The wind doesn't seem
disposed to put the tragic period to our hopes and fears that I spoke of
in my momentary despair.'
'The disposition of the wind is as vicious as ever,' she answered,
looking into his face with pausing thoughts on, perhaps, other subjects
than that discussed. 'It is your mood of viewing it that has changed.
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."'
And, as if flatly to stultify Swithin's assumption, a circular hurricane,
exceeding in violence any that had preceded it, seized hold upon Rings-
Hill Speer at that moment with the determination of a conscious agent.
The first sensation of a resulting catastrophe was conveyed to their
intelligence by the flapping of the candle-flame against the
lantern-glass; then the wind, which hitherto they had heard rather than
felt, rubbed past them like a fugitive. Swithin beheld around and above
him, in place of the concavity of the dome, the open heaven, with its
racing clouds, remote horizon, and intermittent gleam of stars. The dome
that had covered the tower had been whirled off bodily; and they heard it
descend crashing upon the trees.
Finding himself untouched Swithin stretched out his arms towards Lady
Constantine, whose apparel had been seized by the spinning air, nearly
lifting her off her legs. She, too, was as yet unharmed. Each held the
other for a moment, when, fearing that something further would happen,
they took shelter in the staircase.
'Dearest, what an escape!' he said, still holding her.
'What is the accident?' she asked. 'Has the whole top really gone?'
'The dome has been blown off the roof.'
As soon as it was practicable he relit the extinguished lantern, and they
emerged again upon the leads, where the extent of the disaster became at
once apparent. Saving the absence of the enclosing hemisphere all
remained the same. The dome, being constructed of wood, was light by
comparison with the rest of the structure, and the wheels which allowed
it horizontal, or, as Swithin expressed it, azimuth motion, denied it a
firm hold upon the walls; so that it had been lifted off them like a
cover from a pot. The equatorial stood in the midst as it had stood
before.
Having executed its grotesque purpose the wind sank to comparative
mildness. Swithin took advantage of this lull by covering up the
instruments with cloths, after which the betrothed couple prepared to go
downstairs.
But the events of the night had not yet fully disclosed themselves. At
this moment there was a sound of footsteps and a knocking at the door
below.
'It can't be for me!' said Lady Constantine. 'I retired to my room
before leaving the house, and told them on no account to disturb me.'
She remained at the top while Swithin went down the spiral. In the gloom
he beheld Hannah.
'O Master Swithin, can ye come home! The wind have blowed down the
chimley that don't smoke, and the pinning-end with it; and the old
ancient house, that have been in your family so long as the memory of
man, is naked to the world! It is a mercy that your grammer were not
killed, sitting by the hearth, poor old soul, and soon to walk wi'
God,--for 'a 's getting wambling on her pins, Mr. Swithin, as aged folks
do. As I say, 'a was all but murdered by the elements, and doing no more
harm than the babes in the wood, nor speaking one harmful word. And the
fire and smoke were blowed all across house like a chapter in Revelation;
and your poor reverent father's features scorched to flakes, looking like
the vilest ruffian, and the gilt frame spoiled! Every flitch, every eye-
piece, and every chine is buried under the walling; and I fed them pigs
with my own hands, Master Swithin, little thinking they would come to
this end. Do ye collect yourself, Mr. Swithin, and come at once!'
'I will,--I will. I'll follow you in a moment. Do you hasten back again
and assist.'
When Hannah had departed the young man ran up to Lady Constantine, to
whom he explained the accident. After sympathizing with old Mrs. Martin
Lady Constantine added, 'I thought something would occur to mar our
scheme!'
'I am not quite sure of that yet.'
On a short consideration with him, she agreed to wait at the top of the
tower till he could come back and inform her if the accident were really
so serious as to interfere with his plan for departure. He then left
her, and there she sat in the dark, alone, looking over the parapet, and
straining her eyes in the direction of the homestead.
At first all was obscurity; but when he had been gone about ten minutes
lights began to move to and fro in the hollow where the house stood, and
shouts occasionally mingled with the wind, which retained some violence
yet, playing over the trees beneath her as on the strings of a lyre. But
not a bough of them was visible, a cloak of blackness covering everything
netherward; while overhead the windy sky looked down with a strange and
disguised face, the three or four stars that alone were visible being so
dissociated by clouds that she knew not which they were. Under any other
circumstances Lady Constantine might have felt a nameless fear in thus
sitting aloft on a lonely column, with a forest groaning under her feet,
and palaeolithic dead men feeding its roots; but the recent passionate
decision stirred her pulses to an intensity beside which the ordinary
tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain. The
apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not
inharmonious, and afforded an appropriate background to her intentions.
After what seemed to her an interminable space of time, quick steps in
the staircase became audible above the roar of the firs, and in a few
instants St. Cleeve again stood beside her.
The case of the homestead was serious. Hannah's account had not been
exaggerated in substance: the gable end of the house was open to the
garden; the joists, left without support, had dropped, and with them the
upper floor. By the help of some labourers, who lived near, and Lady
Constantine's man Anthony, who was passing at the time, the homestead had
been propped up, and protected for the night by some rickcloths; but
Swithin felt that it would be selfish in the highest degree to leave two
lonely old women to themselves at this juncture. 'In short,' he
concluded despondently, 'I cannot go to stay in Bath or London just now;
perhaps not for another fortnight!'
'Never mind,' she said. 'A fortnight hence will do as well.'
'And I have these for you,' he continued. 'Your man Green was passing my
grandmother's on his way back from Warborne, where he had been, he says,
for any letters that had come for you by the evening post. As he stayed
to assist the other men I told him I would go on to your house with the
letters he had brought. Of course I did not tell him I should see you
here.'
'Thank you. Of course not. Now I'll return at once.'
In descending the column her eye fell upon the superscription of one of
the letters, and she opened and glanced over it by the lantern light. She
seemed startled, and, musing, said, 'The postponement of our--intention
must be, I fear, for a long time. I find that after the end of this
month I cannot leave home safely, even for a day.' Perceiving that he
was about to ask why, she added, 'I will not trouble you with the reason
now; it would only harass you. It is only a family business, and cannot
be helped.'
'Then we cannot be married till--God knows when!' said Swithin blankly.
'I cannot leave home till after the next week or two; you cannot leave
home unless within that time. So what are we to do?'
'I do not know.'
'My dear, dear one, don't let us be beaten like this! Don't let a well-
considered plan be overthrown by a mere accident! Here's a remedy. Do
_you_ go and stay the requisite time in the parish we are to be married
in, instead of me. When my grandmother is again well housed I can come
to you, instead of you to me, as we first said. Then it can be done
within the time.'
Reluctantly, shyly, and yet with a certain gladness of heart, she gave
way to his proposal that they should change places in the programme.
There was much that she did not like in it, she said. It seemed to her
as if she were taking the initiative by going and attending to the
preliminaries. It was the man's part to do that, in her opinion, and was
usually undertaken by him.
'But,' argued Swithin, 'there are cases in which the woman does give the
notices, and so on; that is to say, when the man is absolutely hindered
from doing so; and ours is such a case. The seeming is nothing; I know
the truth, and what does it matter? You do not refuse--retract your word
to be my wife, because, to avoid a sickening delay, the formalities
require you to attend to them in place of me?'
She did not refuse, she said. In short she agreed to his entreaty. They
had, in truth, gone so far in their dream of union that there was no
drawing back now. Whichever of them was forced by circumstances to be
the protagonist in the enterprise, the thing must be done. Their
intention to become husband and wife, at first halting and timorous, had
accumulated momentum with the lapse of hours, till it now bore down every
obstacle in its course.
'Since you beg me to,--since there is no alternative between my going and
a long postponement,' she said, as they stood in the dark porch of
Welland House before parting,--'since I am to go first, and seem to be
the pioneer in this adventure, promise me, Swithin, promise your
Viviette, that in years to come, when perhaps you may not love me so
warmly as you do now--'
'That will never be.'
'Well, hoping it will not, but supposing it should, promise me that you
will never reproach me as the one who took the initiative when it should
have been yourself, forgetting that it was at your request; promise that
you will never say I showed immodest readiness to do so, or anything
which may imply your obliviousness of the fact that I act in obedience to
necessity and your earnest prayer.'
Need it be said that he promised never to reproach her with that or any
other thing as long as they should live? The few details of the reversed
arrangement were soon settled, Bath being the place finally decided on.
Then, with a warm audacity which events had encouraged, he pressed her to
his breast, and she silently entered the house. He returned to the
homestead, there to attend to the unexpected duties of repairing the