'You are as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,' said St. Cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. Seizing her hand he continued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'I swear to you that I have but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, and two blessings in this world, and that one of them is yourself!'
'And the other?'
'The pursuit of astronomy.'
'And astronomy stands first.'
'I have never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas. And why should you deplore your altered circumstances, my dear lady? Your widowhood, if I may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though I suppose a sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. For though your pecuniary troubles have been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness in marriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are now left free as a bird to follow your own hobbies.'
'I wonder you recognize that.'
'But perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall a prey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and be lost to the scientific world after all.'
'If I fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire. But don't go on with this, for heaven's sake! You may think what you like in silence.'
'We are forgetting the comet,' said St. Cleeve. He turned, and set the instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome.
While she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filled so large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it, Swithin dropped his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number of labourers crossing directly towards the column.
'What do you see?' Lady Constantine asked, without ceasing to observe the comet.
'Some of the work-folk are coming this way. I know what they are coming for,--I promised to let them look at the comet through the glass.'
'They must not come up here,' she said decisively.
'They shall await your time.'
'I have a special reason for wishing them not to see me here. If you ask why, I can tell you. They mistakenly suspect my interest to be less in astronomy than in the astronomer, and they must have no showing for such a wild notion. What can you do to keep them out?'
'I'll lock the door,' said Swithin. 'They will then think I am away.' He ran down the staircase, and she could hear him hastily turning the key. Lady Constantine sighed.
'What weakness, what weakness!' she said to herself. 'That envied power of self-control, where is it? That power of concealment which a woman should have--where? To run such risks, to come here alone,--oh, if it were known! But I was always so,--always!'
She jumped up, and followed him downstairs.
XIII
He was standing immediately inside the door at the bottom, though it was so dark she could hardly see him. The villagers were audibly talking just without.
'He's sure to come, rathe or late,' resounded up the spiral in the vocal note of Hezzy Biles. 'He wouldn't let such a fine show as the comet makes to-night go by without peeping at it,--not Master Cleeve! Did ye bring along the flagon, Haymoss? Then we'll sit down inside his little board-house here, and wait. He'll come afore bed-time. Why, his spy- glass will stretch out that there comet as long as Welland Lane!'
'I'd as soon miss the great peep-show that comes every year to Greenhill Fair as a sight of such a immortal spectacle as this!' said Amos Fry.
'"Immortal spectacle,"--where did ye get that choice mossel, Haymoss?' inquired Sammy Blore. 'Well, well, the Lord save good scholars--and take just a bit o' care of them that bain't! As 'tis so dark in the hut, suppose we draw out the bench into the front here, souls?'
The bench was accordingly brought forth, and in order to have a back to lean against, they placed it exactly across the door into the spiral staircase.
'Now, have ye got any backy? If ye haven't, I have,' continued Sammy Blore. A striking of matches followed, and the speaker concluded comfortably, 'Now we shall do very well.'
'And what do this comet mean?' asked Haymoss. 'That some great tumult is going to happen, or that we shall die of a famine?'
'Famine--no!' said Nat Chapman. 'That only touches such as we, and the Lord only consarns himself with born gentlemen. It isn't to be supposed that a strange fiery lantern like that would be lighted up for folks with ten or a dozen shillings a week and their gristing, and a load o' thorn faggots when we can get 'em. If 'tis a token that he's getting hot about the ways of anybody in this parish, 'tis about my Lady Constantine's, since she is the only one of a figure worth such a hint.'
'As for her income,--that she's now lost.'
'Ah, well; I don't take in all I hear.'
Lady Constantine drew close to St. Cleeve's side, and whispered, trembling, 'Do you think they will wait long? Or can we get out?'
Swithin felt the awkwardness of the situation. The men had placed the bench close to the door, which, owing to the stairs within, opened outwards; so that at the first push by the pair inside to release themselves the bench must have gone over, and sent the smokers sprawling on their faces. He whispered to her to ascend the column and wait till he came.
'And have the dead man left her nothing? Hey? And have he carried his inheritance into's grave? And will his skeleton lie warm on account o't? Hee-hee!' said Haymoss.
''Tis all swallered up,' observed Hezzy Biles. 'His goings-on made her miserable till 'a died, and if I were the woman I'd have my randys now. He ought to have bequeathed to her our young gent, Mr. St. Cleeve, as some sort of amends. I'd up and marry en, if I were she; since her downfall has brought 'em quite near together, and made him as good as she in rank, as he was afore in bone and breeding.'
'D'ye think she will?' asked Sammy Blore. 'Or is she meaning to enter upon a virgin life for the rest of her days?'
'I don't want to be unreverent to her ladyship; but I really don't think she is meaning any such waste of a Christian carcase. I say she's rather meaning to commit flat matrimony wi' somebody or other, and one young gentleman in particular.'
'But the young man himself?'
'Planned, cut out, and finished for the delight of 'ooman!'
'Yet he must be willing.'
'That would soon come. If they get up this tower ruling plannards together much longer, their plannards will soon rule them together, in my way o' thinking. If she've a disposition towards the knot, she can soon teach him.'
'True, true, and lawfully. What before mid ha' been a wrong desire is now a holy wish!'
The scales fell from Swithin St. Cleeve's eyes as he heard the words of his neighbours. How suddenly the truth dawned upon him; how it bewildered him, till he scarcely knew where he was; how he recalled the full force of what he had only half apprehended at earlier times, particularly of that sweet kiss she had impressed on his lips when she supposed him dying,--these vivid realizations are difficult to tell in slow verbiage. He could remain there no longer, and with an electrified heart he retreated up the spiral.
He found Lady Constantine half way to the top, standing by a loop-hole; and when she spoke he discovered that she was almost in tears. 'Are they gone?' she asked.
'I fear they will not go yet,' he replied, with a nervous fluctuation of manner that had never before appeared in his bearing towards her.
'What shall I do?' she asked. 'I ought not to be here; nobody knows that I am out of the house. Oh, this is a mistake! I must go home somehow.'
'Did you hear what they were saying?'
'No,' said she. 'What is the matter? Surely you are disturbed? What did they say?'
'It would be the exaggeration of frankness in me to tell you.'
'Is it what a woman ought not to be made acquainted with?'
'It is, in this case. It is so new and so indescribable an idea to me--that'--he leant against the concave wall, quite tremulous with strange incipient sentiments.
'What sort of an idea?' she asked gently.
'It is--an awakening. In thinking of the heaven above, I did not perceive--the--'
'Earth beneath?'
'The better heaven beneath. Pray, dear Lady Constantine, give me your hand for a moment.'
She seemed startled, and the hand was not given.
'I am so anxious to get home,' she repeated. 'I did not mean to stay here more than five minutes!'
'I fear I am much to blame for this accident,' he said. 'I ought not to have intruded here. But don't grieve! I will arrange for your escape, somehow. Be good enough to follow me down.'
They redescended, and, whispering to Lady Constantine to remain a few stairs behind, he began to rattle and unlock the door.
The men precipitately removed their bench, and Swithin stepped out, the light of the summer night being still enough to enable them to distinguish him.
'Well, Hezekiah, and Samuel, and Nat, how are you?' he said boldly.
'Well, sir, 'tis much as before wi' me,' replied Nat. 'One hour a week wi' God A'mighty and the rest with the devil, as a chap may say. And really, now yer poor father's gone, I'd as lief that that Sunday hour should pass like the rest; for Pa'son Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no hollerday at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's time! But we've been waiting here, Mr. San Cleeve, supposing ye had not come.'