XXXV
Lady Constantine crossed the field and the park beyond, and found onpassing the church that the congregation was still within. There was nohurry for getting indoors, the open windows enabling her to hear that Mr.Torkingham had only just given out his text. So instead of entering thehouse she went through the garden-door to the old bowling-green, and satdown in the arbour that Louis had occupied when he overheard theinterview between Swithin and the Bishop. Not until then did she findcourage to draw out the letter and papers relating to the bequest, whichSwithin in a critical moment had handed to her.
Had he been ever so little older he would not have placed thatunconsidered confidence in Viviette which had led him to give way to hercuriosity. But the influence over him which eight or nine outnumberingyears lent her was immensely increased by her higher position and widerexperiences, and he had yielded the point, as he yielded all socialpoints; while the same conditions exempted him from any deepconsciousness that it was his duty to protect her even from herself.
The preamble of Dr. St. Cleeve's letter, in which he referred to hispleasure at hearing of the young man's promise as an astronomer,disturbed her not at all--indeed, somewhat prepossessed her in favour ofthe old gentleman who had written it. The first item of what he called'unfavourable news,' namely, the allusion to the inadequacy of Swithin'sincome to the wants of a scientific man, whose lines of work were notcalculated to produce pecuniary emolument for many years, deepened thecast of her face to concern. She reached the second item of theso-called unfavourable news; and her face flushed as she read how thedoctor had learnt 'that there was something in your path worse thannarrow means, and that something is a woman.'
'To save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads,' she read on, 'Itake the preventive measures entailed below.'
And then followed the announcement of the 600 pounds a year settled onthe youth for life, on the single condition that he remained unmarriedtill the age of twenty-five--just as Swithin had explained to her. Shenext learnt that the bequest was for a definite object--that he mighthave resources sufficient to enable him to travel in an inexpensive way,and begin a study of the southern constellations, which, according to theshrewd old man's judgment, were a mine not so thoroughly worked as thenorthern, and therefore to be recommended. This was followed by somesentences 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. Ifyour studies are to be worth anything, believe me they must be carried onwithout the help of a woman. Avoid her, and every one of the sex, if youmean to achieve any worthy thing. Eschew all of that sort for many ayear yet. Moreover, I say, the lady of your acquaintance avoid inparticular. . . . She has, in addition to her original disqualificationas a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two specialdrawbacks: she is much older than yourself--'
Lady Constantine's indignant flush forsook her, and pale despairsucceeded 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 thinkwell of her. I don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a manyounger than herself. . . . To care to be the first fancy of a youngfellow like you shows no great common sense in her. If she were worthher salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth inyour unassured position, to say no more.' (Viviette's face by this timetingled hot again.) 'She is old enough to know that a liaison with hermay, and almost certainly would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand,that a marriage would be preposterous--unless she is a complete fool; andin that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she werein her few senses.
'A woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do nothing tohinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in your way mostcertainly will. Yet I hear that she professes a great anxiety on thissame future of yours as a physicist. The best way in which she can showthe reality of her anxiety is by leaving you to yourself.'
Leaving him to himself! She paled again, as if chilled by a convictionthat in this the old man was right.
'She'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of heracquaintance, and make you appear ridiculous by announcing them beforethey are matured. If you attempt to study with a woman, you'll be ruledby her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead ofintentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions instead ofreasoned conclusions. . . .
'An experienced woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment whenhe is endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little less thancommitting a crime.'
* * * * *
Thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. The flushes ofindignation which had passed over her, as she gathered this man's opinionof herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she consideredthat Swithin--her dear Swithin--was perfectly acquainted with thiscynical view of her nature; that, reject it as he might, and as heunquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, andlay in him. Stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deepfor germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface andaerate into life.
The humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure; themortification--she had known nothing like it till now. But this was notall. There succeeded a feeling in comparison with which resentment andmortification were happy moods--a miserable conviction that this old manwho spoke from the grave was not altogether wrong in his speaking; thathe was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. Onlythose persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem forothers' positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fullyexperience the deep smart of such convictions against self--the wish forannihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling thatat 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 ofthe garden wall. Their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away;the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. But her life during thatmorning and afternoon was wholly introspective. Knowing the fullcircumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she had neverbefore known them--ought she to make herself the legal wife of SwithinSt. Cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such wasthe formidable question which Lady Constantine propounded to her startledunderstanding. As a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning hercharity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. Save Thyself wassound Old Testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in theNew. But was there a line of conduct which transcended mereself-preservation? and would it not be an excellent thing to put it inpractice now?
That she had wronged St. Cleeve by marrying him--that she would wrong himinfinitely more by completing the marriage--there was, in her opinion, nodoubt. She in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, andhad led him like a child. She remembered--as if it had been her fault,though it was in fact only her misfortune--that she had been the one togo for the license and take up residence in the parish in which they werewedded. He was now just one-and-twenty. Without her, he had all theworld before him, six hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a roadto fame as he should choose: with her, this story was negatived.
No money from his uncle; no power of advancement; but a bondage with awoman whose disparity of years, though immaterial just now, would operatein the future as a wet blanket upon his social ambitions; and thatcontent with life as it was which she had noticed more than once in himlatterly, a content imperilling his scientific spirit by abstracting hiszeal for progress.
It was impossible, in short, to blind herself to the inference thatmarriage with her had not benefited him. Matters might improve in thefuture; but to take upon herself the whole liability of Swithin's life,as she would do by depriving him of the help his uncle had o
ffered, was afearful responsibility. How could she, an unendowed woman, replace suchassistance? His recent visit to Greenwich, which had momentarily revivedthat zest for his pursuit that was now less constant than heretofore,should by rights be supplemented by other such expeditions. It would betrue benevolence not to deprive him of means to continue them, so as tokeep his ardour alive, regardless of the cost to herself.
It could be done. By the extraordinary favour of a unique accident shehad now an opportunity of redeeming Swithin's seriously compromisedfuture, and restoring him to a state no worse than his first. Hisannuity could be enjoyed by him, his travels undertaken, his studiespursued, his high vocation initiated, by one little sacrifice--that ofherself. She only had to refuse to legalize their marriage, to part fromhim for ever, and all would be well with him thenceforward. The pain tohim would after all be but slight, whatever it might be to his wretchedViviette.
The ineptness of retaining him at her side lay not only in the factitself of injury to him, but in the likelihood of his living to see it assuch, and reproaching her for selfishness in not letting him go in thisunprecedented opportunity for correcting a move proved to be false. Hewished to examine the southern heavens--perhaps his uncle's letter wasthe father of the wish--and there was no telling what good might notresult to mankind at large from his exploits there. Why should she, tosave her narrow honour, waste the wide promise of his ability?
That in immolating herself by refusing him, and leaving him free to workwonders for the good of his fellow-creatures, she would in allprobability add to the sum of human felicity, consoled her by its breadthas an idea even while it tortured her by making herself the scapegoat orsingle unit on whom the evil would fall. Ought a possibly large number,Swithin included, to remain unbenefited because the one individual towhom his release would be an injury chanced to be herself? Love betweenman and woman, which in Homer, Moses, and other early exhibitors of life,is mere desire, had for centuries past so far broadened as to includesympathy and friendship; surely it should in this advanced stage of theworld include benevolence also. If so, it was her duty to set her youngman free.
Thus she laboured, with a generosity more worthy even than its object, tosink her love for her own decorum in devotion to the world in general,and to Swithin in particular. To counsel her activities by herunderstanding, rather than by her emotions as usual, was hard work for atender woman; but she strove hard, and made advance. The self-centredattitude natural to one in her situation was becoming displaced by thesympathetic attitude, which, though it had to be artificially fostered atfirst, gave her, by degrees, a certain sweet sense that she was risingabove self-love. That maternal element which had from time to timeevinced itself in her affection for the youth, and was imparted by hersuperior ripeness in experience and years, appeared now again, as shedrew nearer the resolve not to secure propriety in her own socialcondition at the expense of this youth's earthly utility.
Unexpectedly grand fruits are sometimes forced forth by harsh pruning.The illiberal letter of Swithin's uncle was suggesting to LadyConstantine an altruism whose thoroughness would probably have amazedthat queer old gentleman into a withdrawal of the conditions that hadinduced it. To love St. Cleeve so far better than herself as this was tosurpass the love of women as conventionally understood, and as mostlyexisting.
Before, however, clinching her decision by any definite step she worriedher little brain by devising every kind of ingenious scheme, in the hopeof lighting on one that might show her how that decision could be avoidedwith the same good result. But to secure for him the advantages offered,and to retain him likewise; reflection only showed it to be impossible.
Yet to let him go _for ever_ was more than she could endure, and atlength she jumped at an idea which promised some sort of improvement onthat design. She would propose that reunion should not be entirelyabandoned, but simply postponed--namely, till after his twenty-fifthbirthday--when he might be her husband without, at any rate, the loss tohim of the income. By this time he would approximate to a man's fulljudgment, and that painful aspect of her as one who had deluded his rawimmaturity would have passed for ever.
The plan somewhat appeased her disquieted honour. To let a marriage sinkinto abeyance for four or five years was not to nullify it; and thoughshe would leave it to him to move its substantiation at the end of thattime, without present stipulations, she had not much doubt upon theissue.
The clock struck five. This silent mental debate had occupied her wholeafternoon. Perhaps it would not have ended now but for an unexpectedincident--the entry of her brother Louis. He came into the room whereshe was sitting, or rather writhing, and after a few words to explain howhe had got there and about the mistake in the date of Sir Blount's death,he walked up close to her. His next remarks were apologetic in form, butin essence they were bitterness itself.
'Viviette,' he said, 'I am sorry for my hasty words to you when I lastleft this house. I readily withdraw them. My suspicions took a wrongdirection. I think now that I know the truth. You have been even madderthan I supposed!'
'In what way?' she asked distantly.
'I lately thought that unhappy young man was only your too-favouredlover.'
'You thought wrong: he is not.'
'He is not--I believe you--for he is more. I now am persuaded that he isyour lawful husband. Can you deny it!'
'I can.'
'On your sacred word!'
'On my sacred word he is not that either.'
'Thank heaven for that assurance!' said Louis, exhaling a breath ofrelief. 'I was not so positive as I pretended to be--but I wanted toknow the truth of this mystery. Since you are not fettered to him inthat way I care nothing.'
Louis turned away; and that afforded her an opportunity for leaving theroom. Those few words were the last grains that had turned the balance,and settled her doom.
She would let Swithin go. All the voices in her world seemed to clamourfor that consummation. The morning's mortification, the afternoon'sbenevolence, and the evening's instincts of evasion had joined to carrythe point.
Accordingly she sat down, and wrote to Swithin a summary of the thoughtsabove detailed.
'We shall separate,' she concluded. 'You to obey your uncle's orders andexplore the southern skies; I to wait as one who can implicitly trustyou. Do not see me again till the years have expired. You will find mestill the same. I am your wife through all time; the letter of the lawis not needed to reassert it at present; while the absence of the lettersecures your fortune.'
Nothing can express what it cost Lady Constantine to marshal herarguments; but she did it, and vanquished self-comfort by a sense of thegeneral expediency. It may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the onlyignoble reason which might have dictated such a step was non-existent;that is to say, a serious decline in her affection. Tenderly she hadloved the youth at first, and tenderly she loved him now, as time and herafter-conduct proved.
Women the most delicate get used to strange moral situations. Eveprobably regained her normal sweet composure about a week after the Fall.On first learning of her anomalous position Lady Constantine had blushedhot, and her pure instincts had prompted her to legalize her marriagewithout a moment's delay. Heaven and earth were to be moved at once toeffect it. Day after day had passed; her union had remained unsecured,and the idea of its nullity had gradually ceased to be strange to her;till it became of little account beside her bold resolve for the youngman's sake.