Mr. Torkingham seated himself. His boots, which had seemed elegant in the farm-house, appeared rather clumsy here, and his coat, that was a model of tailoring when he stood amid the choir, now exhibited decidedly strained relations with his limbs. Three years had pa.s.sed since his induction to the living of Welland, but he had never as yet found means to establish that reciprocity with Lady Constantine which usually grows up, in the course of time, between parsonage and manor-house,--unless, indeed, either side should surprise the other by showing respectively a weakness for awkward modern ideas on landownership, or on church formulas, which had not been the case here. The present meeting, however, seemed likely to initiate such a reciprocity.
There was an appearance of confidence on Lady Constantine"s face; she said she was so very glad that he had come, and looking down at the letter in her hand was on the point of pulling it from its envelope; but she did not. After a moment she went on more quickly: "I wanted your advice, or rather your opinion, on a serious matter,--on a point of conscience." Saying which she laid down the letter and looked at the cards.
It might have been apparent to a more penetrating eye than the vicar"s that Lady Constantine, either from timidity, misgiving, or reconviction, had swerved from her intended communication, or perhaps decided to begin at the other end.
The parson, who had been expecting a question on some local business or intelligence, at the tenor of her words altered his face to the higher branch of his profession.
"I hope I may find myself of service, on that or any other question," he said gently.
"I hope so. You may possibly be aware, Mr. Torkingham, that my husband, Sir Blount Constantine, was, not to mince matters, a mistaken--somewhat jealous man. Yet you may hardly have discerned it in the short time you knew him."
"I had some little knowledge of Sir Blount"s character in that respect."
"Well, on this account my married life with him was not of the most comfortable kind." (Lady Constantine"s voice dropped to a more pathetic note.) "I am sure I gave him no cause for suspicion; though had I known his disposition sooner I should hardly have dared to marry him. But his jealousy and doubt of me were not so strong as to divert him from a purpose of his,--a mania for African lion-hunting, which he dignified by calling it a scheme of geographical discovery; for he was inordinately anxious to make a name for himself in that field. It was the one pa.s.sion that was stronger than his mistrust of me. Before going away he sat down with me in this room, and read me a lecture, which resulted in a very rash offer on my part. When I tell it to you, you will find that it provides a key to all that is unusual in my life here. He bade me consider what my position would be when he was gone; hoped that I should remember what was due to him,--that I would not so behave towards other men as to bring the name of Constantine into suspicion; and charged me to avoid levity of conduct in attending any ball, rout, or dinner to which I might be invited. I, in some contempt for his low opinion of me, volunteered, there and then, to live like a cloistered nun during his absence; to go into no society whatever,--scarce even to a neighbour"s dinner-party; and demanded bitterly if that would satisfy him. He said yes, held me to my word, and gave me no loophole for retracting it. The inevitable fruits of precipitancy have resulted to me: my life has become a burden. I get such invitations as these" (holding up the cards), "but I so invariably refuse them that they are getting very rare. . . . I ask you, can I honestly break that promise to my husband?"
Mr. Torkingham seemed embarra.s.sed. "If you promised Sir Blount Constantine to live in solitude till he comes back, you are, it seems to me, bound by that promise. I fear that the wish to be released from your engagement is to some extent a reason why it should be kept. But your own conscience would surely be the best guide, Lady Constantine?"
"My conscience is quite bewildered with its responsibilities," she continued, with a sigh. "Yet it certainly does sometimes say to me that--that I ought to keep my word. Very well; I must go on as I am going, I suppose."
"If you respect a vow, I think you must respect your own," said the parson, acquiring some further firmness. "Had it been wrung from you by compulsion, moral or physical, it would have been open to you to break it. But as you proposed a vow when your husband only required a good intention, I think you ought to adhere to it; or what is the pride worth that led you to offer it?"
"Very well," she said, with resignation. "But it was quite a work of supererogation on my part."
"That you proposed it in a supererogatory spirit does not lessen your obligation, having once put yourself under that obligation. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, says, "An oath for confirmation is an end of all strife." And you will readily recall the words of Ecclesiastes, "Pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay." Why not write to Sir Blount, tell him the inconvenience of such a bond, and ask him to release you?"
"No; never will I. The expression of such a desire would, in his mind, be a sufficient reason for disallowing it. I"ll keep my word."
Mr. Torkingham rose to leave. After she had held out her hand to him, when he had crossed the room, and was within two steps of the door, she said, "Mr. Torkingham." He stopped. "What I have told you is only the least part of what I sent for you to tell you."
Mr. Torkingham walked back to her side. "What is the rest of it, then?"
he asked, with grave surprise.
"It is a true revelation, as far as it goes; but there is something more.
I have received this letter, and I wanted to say--something."
"Then say it now, my dear lady."
"No," she answered, with a look of utter inability. "I cannot speak of it now! Some other time. Don"t stay. Please consider this conversation as private. Good-night."
IV
It was a bright starlight night, a week or ten days later. There had been several such nights since the occasion of Lady Constantine"s promise to Swithin St. Cleeve to come and study astronomical phenomena on the Rings-Hill column; but she had not gone there. This evening she sat at a window, the blind of which had not been drawn down. Her elbow rested on a little table, and her cheek on her hand. Her eyes were attracted by the brightness of the planet Jupiter, as he rode in the ecliptic opposite, beaming down upon her as if desirous of notice.
Beneath the planet could be still discerned the dark edges of the park landscape against the sky. As one of its features, though nearly screened by the trees which had been planted to shut out the fallow tracts of the estate, rose the upper part of the column. It was hardly visible now, even if visible at all; yet Lady Constantine knew from daytime experience its exact bearing from the window at which she leaned.
The knowledge that there it still was, despite its rapid envelopment by the shades, led her lonely mind to her late meeting on its summit with the young astronomer, and to her promise to honour him with a visit for learning some secrets about the scintillating bodies overhead. The curious juxtaposition of youthful ardour and old despair that she had found in the lad would have made him interesting to a woman of perception, apart from his fair hair and early-Christian face. But such is the heightening touch of memory that his beauty was probably richer in her imagination than in the real. It was a moot point to consider whether the temptations that would be brought to bear upon him in his course would exceed the staying power of his nature. Had he been a wealthy youth he would have seemed one to tremble for. In spite of his attractive ambitions and gentlemanly bearing, she thought it would possibly be better for him if he never became known outside his lonely tower,--forgetting that he had received such intellectual enlargement as would probably make his continuance in Welland seem, in his own eye, a slight upon his father"s branch of his family, whose social standing had been, only a few years earlier, but little removed from her own.
Suddenly she flung a cloak about her and went out on the terrace. She pa.s.sed down the steps to the lower lawn, through the door to the open park, and there stood still. The tower was now discernible. As the words in which a thought is expressed develop a further thought, so did the fact of her having got so far influence her to go further. A person who had casually observed her gait would have thought it irregular; and the lessenings and increasings of speed with which she proceeded in the direction of the pillar could be accounted for only by a motive much more disturbing than an intention to look through a telescope. Thus she went on, till, leaving the park, she crossed the turnpike-road, and entered the large field, in the middle of which the fir-clad hill stood like Mont St. Michel in its bay.
The stars were so bright as distinctly to show her the place, and now she could see a faint light at the top of the column, which rose like a shadowy finger pointing to the upper constellations. There was no wind, in a human sense; but a steady stertorous breathing from the fir-trees showed that, now as always, there was movement in apparent stagnation.
Nothing but an absolute vacuum could paralyze their utterance.
The door of the tower was shut. It was something more than the freakishness which is engendered by a sickening monotony that had led Lady Constantine thus far, and hence she made no ado about admitting herself. Three years ago, when her every action was a thing of propriety, she had known of no possible purpose which could have led her abroad in a manner such as this.
She ascended the tower noiselessly. On raising her head above the hatchway she beheld Swithin bending over a scroll of paper which lay on the little table beside him. The small lantern that illuminated it showed also that he was warmly wrapped up in a coat and thick cap, behind him standing the telescope on its frame.
What was he doing? She looked over his shoulder upon the paper, and saw figures and signs. When he had jotted down something he went to the telescope again.
"What are you doing to-night?" she said in a low voice.
Swithin started, and turned. The faint lamp-light was sufficient to reveal her face to him.
"Tedious work, Lady Constantine," he answered, without betraying much surprise. "Doing my best to watch phenomenal stars, as I may call them."
"You said you would show me the heavens if I could come on a starlight night. I have come."
Swithin, as a preliminary, swept round the telescope to Jupiter, and exhibited to her the glory of that orb. Then he directed the instrument to the less bright shape of Saturn.
"Here," he said, warming up to the subject, "we see a world which is to my mind by far the most wonderful in the solar system. Think of streams of satellites or meteors racing round and round the planet like a fly- wheel, so close together as to seem solid matter!" He entered further and further into the subject, his ideas gathering momentum as he went on, like his pet heavenly bodies.
When he paused for breath she said, in tones very different from his own, "I ought now to tell you that, though I am interested in the stars, they were not what I came to see you about. . . . I first thought of disclosing the matter to Mr. Torkingham; but I altered my mind, and decided on you."
She spoke in so low a voice that he might not have heard her. At all events, abstracted by his grand theme, he did not heed her. He continued,--
"Well, we will get outside the solar system altogether,--leave the whole group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in our flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole forest.
Now what do you see, Lady Constantine?" He levelled the achromatic at Sirius.
She said that she saw a bright star, though it only seemed a point of light now as before.
"That"s because it is so distant that no magnifying will bring its size up to zero. Though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed stars, moving with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will show that velocity as anything but rest."
And thus they talked on about Sirius, and then about other stars
. . . in the scrowl Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl, With which, like Indian plantations, The learned stock the constellations,
till he asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at that moment.
She looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their high position unfolded. "Oh, thousands, hundreds of thousands," she said absently.
"No. There are only about three thousand. Now, how many do you think are brought within sight by the help of a powerful telescope?"
"I won"t guess."
"Twenty millions. So that, whatever the stars were made for, they were not made to please our eyes. It is just the same in everything; nothing is made for man."
"Is it that notion which makes you so sad for your age?" she asked, with almost maternal solicitude. "I think astronomy is a bad study for you.
It makes you feel human insignificance too plainly."