XV

The summer passed away, and autumn, with its infinite suite of tints,

came creeping on. Darker grew the evenings, tearfuller the moonlights,

and heavier the dews. Meanwhile the comet had waxed to its largest

dimensions,--so large that not only the nucleus but a portion of the tail

had been visible in broad day. It was now on the wane, though every

night the equatorial still afforded an opportunity of observing the

singular object which would soon disappear altogether from the heavens

for perhaps thousands of years.

But the astronomer of the Rings-Hill Speer was no longer a match for his

celestial materials. Scientifically he had become but a dim vapour of

himself; the lover had come into him like an armed man, and cast out the

student, and his intellectual situation was growing a life-and-death

matter.

The resolve of the pair had been so far kept: they had not seen each

other in private for three months. But on one day in October he ventured

to write a note to her:--

'I can do nothing! I have ceased to study, ceased to observe. The

equatorial is useless to me. This affection I have for you absorbs my

life, and outweighs my intentions. The power to labour in this

grandest of fields has left me. I struggle against the weakness till

I think of the cause, and then I bless her. But the very desperation

of my circumstances has suggested a remedy; and this I would inform

you of at once.

'Can you come to me, since I must not come to you? I will wait to-

morrow night at the edge of the plantation by which you would enter to

the column. I will not detain you; my plan can be told in ten words.'

The night after posting this missive to her he waited at the spot

mentioned.

It was a melancholy evening for coming abroad. A blusterous wind had

risen during the day, and still continued to increase. Yet he stood

watchful in the darkness, and was ultimately rewarded by discerning a

shady muffled shape that embodied itself from the field, accompanied by

the scratching of silk over stubble. There was no longer any disguise as

to the nature of their meeting. It was a lover's assignation, pure and

simple; and boldly realizing it as such he clasped her in his arms.

'I cannot bear this any longer!' he exclaimed. 'Three months since I saw

you alone! Only a glimpse of you in church, or a bow from the distance,

in all that time! What a fearful struggle this keeping apart has been!'

'Yet I would have had strength to persist, since it seemed best,' she

murmured when she could speak, 'had not your words on your condition so

alarmed and saddened me. This inability of yours to work, or study, or

observe,--it is terrible! So terrible a sting is it to my conscience

that your hint about a remedy has brought me instantly.'

'Yet I don't altogether mind it, since it is you, my dear, who have

displaced the work; and yet the loss of time nearly distracts me, when I

have neither the power to work nor the delight of your company.'

'But your remedy! O, I cannot help guessing it! Yes; you are going

away!'

'Let us ascend the column; we can speak more at ease there. Then I will

explain all. I would not ask you to climb so high but the hut is not yet

furnished.'

He entered the cabin at the foot, and having lighted a small lantern,

conducted her up the hollow staircase to the top, where he closed the

slides of the dome to keep out the wind, and placed the observing-chair

for her.

'I can stay only five minutes,' she said, without sitting down. 'You

said it was important that you should see me, and I have come. I assure

you it is at a great risk. If I am seen here at this time I am ruined

for ever. But what would I not do for you? O Swithin, your remedy--is

it to go away? There is no other; and yet I dread that like death!'

'I can tell you in a moment, but I must begin at the beginning. All this

ruinous idleness and distraction is caused by the misery of our not being

able to meet with freedom. The fear that something may snatch you from

me keeps me in a state of perpetual apprehension.'

'It is too true also of me! I dread that some accident may happen, and

waste my days in meeting the trouble half-way.'

'So our lives go on, and our labours stand still. Now for the remedy.

Dear Lady Constantine, allow me to marry you.'

She started, and the wind without shook the building, sending up a yet

intenser moan from the firs.

'I mean, marry you quite privately. Let it make no difference whatever

to our outward lives for years, for I know that in my present position

you could not possibly acknowledge me as husband publicly. But by

marrying at once we secure the certainty that we cannot be divided by

accident, coaxing, or artifice; and, at ease on that point, I shall

embrace my studies with the old vigour, and you yours.'

Lady Constantine was so agitated at the unexpected boldness of such a

proposal from one hitherto so boyish and deferential that she sank into

the observing-chair, her intention to remain for only a few minutes being

quite forgotten.

She covered her face with her hands. 'No, no, I dare not!' she

whispered.

'But is there a single thing else left to do?' he pleaded, kneeling down

beside her, less in supplication than in abandonment. 'What else can we

do?'

'Wait till you are famous.'

'But I cannot be famous unless I strive, and this distracting condition

prevents all striving!'

'Could you not strive on if I--gave you a promise, a solemn promise, to

be yours when your name is fairly well known?'

St. Cleeve breathed heavily. 'It will be a long, weary time,' he said.

'And even with your promise I shall work but half-heartedly. Every hour

of study will be interrupted with "Suppose this or this happens;"

"Suppose somebody persuades her to break her promise;" worse still,

"Suppose some rival maligns me, and so seduces her away." No, Lady

Constantine, dearest, best as you are, that element of distraction would

still remain, and where that is, no sustained energy is possible. Many

erroneous things have been written and said by the sages, but never did

they float a greater fallacy than that love serves as a stimulus to win

the loved one by patient toil.'

'I cannot argue with you,' she said weakly.

'My only possible other chance would lie in going away,' he resumed after

a moment's reflection, with his eyes on the lantern flame, which waved

and smoked in the currents of air that leaked into the dome from the

fierce wind-stream without. 'If I might take away the equatorial,

supposing it possible that I could find some suitable place for observing

in the southern hemisphere,--say, at the Cape,--I _might_ be able to

apply myself to serious work again, after the lapse of a little time. The

southern constellations offer a less exhausted field for investigation. I

wonder if I might!'

'You mean,' she answered uneasily, 'that you might apply yourself to work

when your recollection of me began to fade, and my life to become a

matter of indifference to you? . . Yes, go! No,--I cannot bear it! The

remedy is worse than the disease. I cannot let you go away!'

'Then how can you refuse the only condition on which I can stay, without

ruin to my purpose and scandal to your name? Dearest, agree to my

proposal, as you love both me and yourself!'

He waited, while the fir-trees rubbed and prodded the base of the tower,

and the wind roared around and shook it; but she could not find words to

reply.

'Would to God,' he burst out, 'that I might perish here, like Winstanley

in his lighthouse! Then the difficulty would be solved for you.'

'You are so wrong, so very wrong, in saying so!' she exclaimed

passionately. 'You may doubt my wisdom, pity my short-sightedness; but

there is one thing you do know,--that I love you dearly!'

'You do,--I know it!' he said, softened in a moment. 'But it seems such

a simple remedy for the difficulty that I cannot see how you can mind

adopting it, if you care so much for me as I do for you.'

'Should we live . . . just as we are, exactly, . . . supposing I agreed?'

she faintly inquired.

'Yes, that is my idea.'

'Quite privately, you say. How could--the marriage be quite private?'

'I would go away to London and get a license. Then you could come to me,

and return again immediately after the ceremony. I could return at

leisure and not a soul in the world would know what had taken place.

Think, dearest, with what a free conscience you could then assist me in

my efforts to plumb these deeps above us! Any feeling that you may now

have against clandestine meetings as such would then be removed, and our

hearts would be at rest.'

There was a certain scientific practicability even in his love-making,

and it here came out excellently. But she sat on with suspended breath,

her heart wildly beating, while he waited in open-mouthed expectation.

Each was swayed by the emotion within them, much as the candle-flame was

swayed by the tempest without. It was the most critical evening of their

lives.

The pale rays of the little lantern fell upon her beautiful face, snugly

and neatly bound in by her black bonnet; but not a beam of the lantern

leaked out into the night to suggest to any watchful eye that human life

at its highest excitement was beating within the dark and isolated tower;

for the dome had no windows, and every shutter that afforded an opening

for the telescope was hermetically closed. Predilections and misgivings

so equally strove within her still youthful breast that she could not

utter a word; her intention wheeled this way and that like the balance of

a watch. His unexpected proposition had brought about the smartest

encounter of inclination with prudence, of impulse with reserve, that she

had ever known.

Of all the reasons that she had expected him to give for his urgent

request to see her this evening, an offer of marriage was probably the

last. Whether or not she had ever amused herself with hypothetical

fancies on such a subject,--and it was only natural that she should

vaguely have done so,--the courage in her _protege_ coolly to advance it,

without a hint from herself that such a proposal would be tolerated,

showed her that there was more in his character than she had reckoned on:

and the discovery almost frightened her. The humour, attitude, and tenor

of her attachment had been of quite an unpremeditated quality,

unsuggestive of any such audacious solution to their distresses as this.

'I repeat my question, dearest,' he said, after her long pause. 'Shall

it be done? Or shall I exile myself, and study as best I can, in some

distant country, out of sight and sound?'

'Are those the only alternatives? Yes, yes; I suppose they are!' She

waited yet another moment, bent over his kneeling figure, and kissed his

forehead. 'Yes; it shall be done,' she whispered. 'I will marry you.'

'My angel, I am content!'

He drew her yielding form to his heart, and her head sank upon his

shoulder, as he pressed his two lips continuously upon hers. To such had

the study of celestial physics brought them in the space of eight months,

one week, and a few odd days.

'I am weaker than you,--far the weaker,' she went on, her tears falling.

'Rather than lose you out of my sight I will marry without stipulation or

condition. But--I put it to your kindness--grant me one little request.'

He instantly assented.

'It is that, in consideration of my peculiar position in this county,--O,

you can't understand it!--you will not put an end to the absolute secrecy

of our relationship without my full assent. Also, that you will never

come to Welland House without first discussing with me the advisability

of the visit, accepting my opinion on the point. There, see how a timid

woman tries to fence herself in!'

'My dear lady-love, neither of those two high-handed courses should I

have taken, even had you not stipulated against them. The very essence

of our marriage plan is that those two conditions are kept. I see as

well as you do, even more than you do, how important it is that for the

present,--ay, for a long time hence--I should still be but the curate's

lonely son, unattached to anybody or anything, with no object of interest

but his science; and you the recluse lady of the manor, to whom he is

only an acquaintance.'

'See what deceits love sows in honest minds!'

'It would be a humiliation to you at present that I could not bear if a

marriage between us were made public; an inconvenience without any

compensating advantage.'

'I am so glad you assume it without my setting it before you! Now I know

you are not only good and true, but politic and trustworthy.'

'Well, then, here is our covenant. My lady swears to marry me; I, in

return for such great courtesy, swear never to compromise her by

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,