Two on a Tower
affairs that would not bear discussion at all, and the unsophisticated
view he took of his course seemed to increase her responsibility.
'Why did your uncle attach such a cruel condition to his bounty?' she
cried bitterly. 'O, he little thinks how hard he hits me from the
grave--me, who have never done him wrong; and you, too! Swithin, are you
sure that he makes that condition indispensable? Perhaps he meant that
you should not marry beneath you; perhaps he did not mean to object in
such a case as your marrying (forgive me for saying it) a little above
you.'
'There is no doubt that he did not contemplate a case which has led to
such happiness as this has done,' the youth murmured with hesitation; for
though he scarcely remembered a word of his uncle's letter of advice, he
had a dim apprehension that it was couched in terms alluding specifically
to Lady Constantine.
'Are you sure you cannot retain the money, and be my lawful husband too?'
she asked piteously. 'O, what a wrong I am doing you! I did not dream
that it could be as bad as this. I knew I was wasting your time by
letting you love me, and hampering your projects; but I thought there
were compensating advantages. This wrecking of your future at my hands I
did not contemplate. You are sure there is no escape? Have you his
letter with the conditions, or the will? Let me see the letter in which
he expresses his wishes.'
'I assure you it is all as I say,' he pensively returned. 'Even if I
were not legally bound by the conditions I should be morally.'
'But how does he put it? How does he justify himself in making such a
harsh restriction? Do let me see the letter, Swithin. I shall think it
a want of confidence if you do not. I may discover some way out of the
difficulty if you let me look at the papers. Eccentric wills can be
evaded in all sorts of ways.'
Still he hesitated. 'I would rather you did not see the papers,' he
said.
But she persisted as only a fond woman can. Her conviction was that she
who, as a woman many years his senior, should have shown her love for him
by guiding him straight into the paths he aimed at, had blocked his
attempted career for her own happiness. This made her more intent than
ever to find out a device by which, while she still retained him, he
might also retain the life-interest under his uncle's will.
Her entreaties were at length too potent for his resistance. Accompanying
her downstairs to the cabin, he opened the desk from which the other
papers had been taken, and against his better judgment handed her the
ominous communication of Jocelyn St. Cleeve which lay in the envelope
just as it had been received three-quarters of a year earlier.
'Don't read it now,' he said. 'Don't spoil our meeting by entering into
a subject which is virtually past and done with. Take it with you, and
look it over at your leisure--merely as an old curiosity, remember, and
not as a still operative document. I have almost forgotten what the
contents are, beyond the general advice and stipulation that I was to
remain a bachelor.'
'At any rate,' she rejoined, 'do not reply to the note I have seen from
the solicitors till I have read this also.'
He promised. 'But now about our public wedding,' he said. 'Like certain
royal personages, we shall have had the religious rite and the civil
contract performed on independent occasions. Will you fix the day? When
is it to be? and shall it take place at a registrar's office, since there
is no necessity for having the sacred part over again?'
'I'll think,' replied she. 'I'll think it over.'
'And let me know as soon as you can how you decide to proceed.'
'I will write to-morrow, or come. I do not know what to say now. I
cannot forget how I am wronging you. This is almost more than I can
bear!'
To divert her mind he began talking about Greenwich Observatory, and the
great instruments therein, and how he had been received by the
astronomers, and the details of the expedition to observe the Transit of
Venus, together with many other subjects of the sort, to which she had
not power to lend her attention.
'I must reach home before the people are out of church,' she at length
said wearily. 'I wish nobody to know I have been out this morning.' And
forbidding Swithin to cross into the open in her company she left him on
the edge of the isolated plantation, which had latterly known her tread
so well.
XXXV
Lady Constantine crossed the field and the park beyond, and found on
passing the church that the congregation was still within. There was no
hurry for getting indoors, the open windows enabling her to hear that Mr.
Torkingham had only just given out his text. So instead of entering the
house she went through the garden-door to the old bowling-green, and sat
down in the arbour that Louis had occupied when he overheard the
interview between Swithin and the Bishop. Not until then did she find
courage to draw out the letter and papers relating to the bequest, which
Swithin in a critical moment had handed to her.
Had he been ever so little older he would not have placed that
unconsidered confidence in Viviette which had led him to give way to her
curiosity. But the influence over him which eight or nine outnumbering
years lent her was immensely increased by her higher position and wider
experiences, and he had yielded the point, as he yielded all social
points; while the same conditions exempted him from any deep
consciousness that it was his duty to protect her even from herself.
The preamble of Dr. St. Cleeve's letter, in which he referred to his
pleasure at hearing of the young man's promise as an astronomer,
disturbed her not at all--indeed, somewhat prepossessed her in favour of
the old gentleman who had written it. The first item of what he called
'unfavourable news,' namely, the allusion to the inadequacy of Swithin's
income to the wants of a scientific man, whose lines of work were not
calculated to produce pecuniary emolument for many years, deepened the
cast of her face to concern. She reached the second item of the
so-called unfavourable news; and her face flushed as she read how the
doctor had learnt 'that there was something in your path worse than
narrow means, and that something is a woman.'
'To save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads,' she read on, 'I
take the preventive measures entailed below.'
And then followed the announcement of the 600 pounds a year settled on
the youth for life, on the single condition that he remained unmarried
till the age of twenty-five--just as Swithin had explained to her. She
next learnt that the bequest was for a definite object--that he might
have resources sufficient to enable him to travel in an inexpensive way,
and begin a study of the southern constellations, which, according to the
shrewd old man's judgment, were a mine not so thoroughly worked as the
northern, and therefore to be recommended. This was followed by some
sentences which hit her in the face like a switch:--
'The only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation. . . .
Swithin St. Cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your father did. If
your studies are to be worth anything, believe me they must be carried on
without the help of a woman. Avoid her, and every one of the sex, if you
mean to achieve any worthy thing. Eschew all of that sort for many a
year yet. Moreover, I say, the lady of your acquaintance avoid in
particular. . . . She has, in addition to her original disqualification
as a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two special
drawbacks: she is much older than yourself--'
Lady Constantine's indignant flush forsook her, and pale despair
succeeded in its stead. Alas, it was true. Handsome, and in her prime,
she might be; but she was too old for Swithin!
'And she is so impoverished. . . . Beyond this, frankly, I don't think
well of her. I don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a man
younger than herself. . . . To care to be the first fancy of a young
fellow like you shows no great common sense in her. If she were worth
her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth in
your unassured position, to say no more.' (Viviette's face by this time
tingled hot again.) 'She is old enough to know that a liaison with her
may, and almost certainly would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand,
that a marriage would be preposterous--unless she is a complete fool; and
in that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were
in her few senses.
'A woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do nothing to
hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in your way most
certainly will. Yet I hear that she professes a great anxiety on this
same future of yours as a physicist. The best way in which she can show
the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you to yourself.'
Leaving him to himself! She paled again, as if chilled by a conviction
that in this the old man was right.
'She'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her
acquaintance, and make you appear ridiculous by announcing them before
they are matured. If you attempt to study with a woman, you'll be ruled
by her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead of
intentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions instead of
reasoned conclusions. . . .
'An experienced woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment when
he is endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little less than
committing a crime.'
* * * * *
Thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. The flushes of
indignation which had passed over her, as she gathered this man's opinion
of herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she considered
that Swithin--her dear Swithin--was perfectly acquainted with this
cynical view of her nature; that, reject it as he might, and as he
unquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, and
lay in him. Stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep
for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and
aerate into life.
The humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure; the
mortification--she had known nothing like it till now. But this was not
all. There succeeded a feeling in comparison with which resentment and
mortification were happy moods--a miserable conviction that this old man
who spoke from the grave was not altogether wrong in his speaking; that
he was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. Only
those persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem for
others' positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fully
experience the deep smart of such convictions against self--the wish for
annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that
at length we, our best and firmest friend, cease to believe in our cause.
Viviette could hear the people coming out of church on the other side of
the garden wall. Their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away;
the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. But her life during that
morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. Knowing the full
circumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she had never
before known them--ought she to make herself the legal wife of Swithin
St. Cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such was
the formidable question which Lady Constantine propounded to her startled
understanding. As a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her
charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. Save Thyself was
sound Old Testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the