A more beautiful October morning than that of the next day never beamed
into the Welland valleys. The yearly dissolution of leafage was setting
in apace. The foliage of the park trees rapidly resolved itself into the
multitude of complexions which mark the subtle grades of decay,
reflecting wet lights of such innumerable hues that it was a wonder to
think their beauties only a repetition of scenes that had been exhibited
there on scores of previous Octobers, and had been allowed to pass away
without a single dirge from the imperturbable beings who walked among
them. Far in the shadows semi-opaque screens of blue haze made mysteries
of the commonest gravel-pit, dingle, or recess.
The wooden cabin at the foot of Rings-Hill Speer had been furnished by
Swithin as a sitting and sleeping apartment, some little while before
this time; for he had found it highly convenient, during night
observations at the top of the column, to remain on the spot all night,
not to disturb his grandmother by passing in and out of the house, and to
save himself the labour of incessantly crossing the field.
He would much have liked to tell her the secret, and, had it been his own
to tell, would probably have done so; but sharing it with an objector who
knew not his grandmother's affection so well as he did himself, there was
no alternative to holding his tongue. The more effectually to guard it
he decided to sleep at the cabin during the two or three nights previous
to his departure, leaving word at the homestead that in a day or two he
was going on an excursion.
It was very necessary to start early. Long before the great eye of the
sun was lifted high enough to glance into the Welland valley, St. Cleeve
arose from his bed in the cabin and prepared to depart, cooking his
breakfast upon a little stove in the corner. The young rabbits, littered
during the foregoing summer, watched his preparations through the open
door from the grey dawn without, as he bustled, half dressed, in and out
under the boughs, and among the blackberries and brambles that grew
around.
It was a strange place for a bridegroom to perform his toilet in, but,
considering the unconventional nature of the marriage, a not
inappropriate one. What events had been enacted in that earthen camp
since it was first thrown up, nobody could say; but the primitive
simplicity of the young man's preparations accorded well with the
prehistoric spot on which they were made. Embedded under his feet were
possibly even now rude trinkets that had been worn at bridal ceremonies
of the early inhabitants. Little signified those ceremonies to-day, or
the happiness or otherwise of the contracting parties. That his own
rite, nevertheless, signified much, was the inconsequent reasoning of
Swithin, as it is of many another bridegroom besides; and he, like the
rest, went on with his preparations in that mood which sees in his stale
repetition the wondrous possibilities of an untried move.
Then through the wet cobwebs, that hung like movable diaphragms on each
blade and bough, he pushed his way down to the furrow which led from the
secluded fir-tree island to the wide world beyond the field.
He was not a stranger to enterprise, and still less to the contemplation
of enterprise; but an enterprise such as this he had never even outlined.
That his dear lady was troubled at the situation he had placed her in by
not going himself on that errand, he could see from her letter; but,
believing an immediate marriage with her to be the true way of restoring
to both that equanimity necessary to serene philosophy, he held it of
little account how the marriage was brought about, and happily began his
journey towards her place of sojourn.
He passed through a little copse before leaving the parish, the smoke
from newly lit fires rising like the stems of blue trees out of the few
cottage chimneys. Here he heard a quick, familiar footstep in the path
ahead of him, and, turning the corner of the bushes, confronted the foot-
post on his way to Welland. In answer to St. Cleeve's inquiry if there
was anything for himself the postman handed out one letter, and proceeded
on his route.
Swithin opened and read the letter as he walked, till it brought him to a
standstill by the importance of its contents.
They were enough to agitate a more phlegmatic youth than he. He leant
over the wicket which came in his path, and endeavoured to comprehend the
sense of the whole.
The large long envelope contained, first, a letter from a solicitor in a
northern town, informing him that his paternal great-uncle, who had
recently returned from the Cape (whither he had gone in an attempt to
repair a broken constitution), was now dead and buried. This
great-uncle's name was like a new creation to Swithin. He had held no
communication with the young man's branch of the family for innumerable
years,--never, in fact, since the marriage of Swithin's father with the
simple daughter of Welland Farm. He had been a bachelor to the end of
his life, and had amassed a fairly good professional fortune by a long
and extensive medical practice in the smoky, dreary, manufacturing town
in which he had lived and died. Swithin had always been taught to think
of him as the embodiment of all that was unpleasant in man. He was
narrow, sarcastic, and shrewd to unseemliness. That very shrewdness had
enabled him, without much professional profundity, to establish his large
and lucrative connexion, which lay almost entirely among a class who
neither looked nor cared for drawing-room courtesies.
However, what Dr. St. Cleeve had been as a practitioner matters little.
He was now dead, and the bulk of his property had been left to persons
with whom this story has nothing to do. But Swithin was informed that
out of it there was a bequest of 600 pounds a year to himself,--payment
of which was to begin with his twenty-first year, and continue for his
life, unless he should marry before reaching the age of twenty-five. In
the latter precocious and objectionable event his annuity would be
forfeited. The accompanying letter, said the solicitor, would explain
all.
This, the second letter, was from his uncle to himself, written about a
month before the former's death, and deposited with his will, to be
forwarded to his nephew when that event should have taken place. Swithin
read, with the solemnity that such posthumous epistles inspire, the
following words from one who, during life, had never once addressed him:--
'DEAR NEPHEW,--You will doubtless experience some astonishment at
receiving a communication from one whom you have never personally
known, and who, when this comes into your hands, will be beyond the
reach of your knowledge. Perhaps I am the loser by this life-long
mutual ignorance. Perhaps I am much to blame for it; perhaps not. But
such reflections are profitless at this date: I have written with
quite other views than to work up a sentimental regret on such an
amazingly remote hypothesis as that the fact of a particular pair of
people not meeting, among the millions of other pairs of people who
have never met, is a great calamity either to the world in general or
to themselves.
'The occasion of my addressing you is briefly this: Nine months ago a
report casually reached me that your scientific studies were pursued
by you with great ability, and that you were a young man of some
promise as an astronomer. My own scientific proclivities rendered the
report more interesting than it might otherwise have been to me; and
it came upon me quite as a surprise that any issue of your father's
marriage should have so much in him, or you might have seen more of me
in former years than you are ever likely to do now. My health had
then begun to fail, and I was starting for the Cape, or I should have
come myself to inquire into your condition and prospects. I did not
return till six months later, and as my health had not improved I sent
a trusty friend to examine into your life, pursuits, and
circumstances, without your own knowledge, and to report his
observations to me. This he did. Through him I learnt, of favourable
news:--
'(1) That you worked assiduously at the science of astronomy.
'(2) That everything was auspicious in the career you had chosen.
'Of unfavourable news:--
'(1) That the small income at your command, even when eked out by the
sum to which you would be entitled on your grandmother's death and the
freehold of the homestead, would be inadequate to support you
becomingly as a scientific man, whose lines of work were of a nature
not calculated to produce emoluments for many years, if ever.
'(2) That there was something in your path worse than narrow means,
and that that something was a _woman_.
'To save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads, I take the
preventive measures detailed below.
'The chief step is, as my solicitor will have informed you, that, at
the age of twenty-five, the sum of 600 pounds a year be settled on you
for life, provided you have not married before reaching that age;--a
yearly gift of an equal sum to be also provisionally made to you in
the interim--and, vice versa, that if you do marry before reaching the
age of twenty-five you will receive nothing from the date of the
marriage.
'One object of my bequest is that you may have resources sufficient to
enable you to travel and study the Southern constellations. When at
the Cape, after hearing of your pursuits, I was much struck with the
importance of those constellations to an astronomer just pushing into
notice. There is more to be made of the Southern hemisphere than ever
has been made of it yet; the mine is not so thoroughly worked as the
Northern, and thither your studies should tend.
'The only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation, at
which I am not an adept. Nevertheless, I say to you, 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. I have heard nothing against her moral character
hitherto; I have no doubt it has been excellent. She may have many
good qualities, both of heart and of mind. But she has, in addition
to her original disqualification as a companion for you (that is, that
of sex), these two serious drawbacks: she is much older than
yourself--'
'_Much_ older!' said Swithin resentfully.
'--and she is so impoverished that the title she derives from her late
husband is a positive objection. 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 worse. 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 goose, 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.
Perhaps she persuades herself that she is doing you no harm. Well,
let her have the benefit of the possible belief; but depend upon it
that in truth she gives the lie to her conscience by maintaining such
a transparent fallacy. Women's brains are not formed for assisting at
any profound science: they lack the power to see things except in the
concrete. She'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every
one of her acquaintance--'
'She's got none!' said Swithin, beginning to get warm.
'--and make them 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. Your wide heaven of study, young man, will
soon reduce itself to the miserable narrow expanse of her face, and
your myriad of stars to her two trumpery eyes.
'A 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.
'Like a certain philosopher I would, upon my soul, have all young men
from eighteen to twenty-five kept under barrels; seeing how often, in
the lack of some such sequestering process, the woman sits down before
each as his destiny, and too frequently enervates his purpose, till he
abandons the most promising course ever conceived!
'But no more. I now leave your fate in your own hands. Your well-
wishing relative,
'JOCELYN ST. CLEEVE,
_Doctor in Medicine_.'
As coming from a bachelor and hardened misogynist of seventy-two, the
opinions herein contained were nothing remarkable: but their practical
result in restricting the sudden endowment of Swithin's researches by
conditions which turned the favour into a harassment was, at this unique
moment, discomfiting and distracting in the highest degree.
Sensational, however, as the letter was, the passionate intention of the
day was not hazarded for more than a few minutes thereby. The truth was,
the caution and bribe came too late, too unexpectedly, to be of
influence. They were the sort of thing which required fermentation to
render them effective. Had St. Cleeve received the exhortation a month
earlier; had he been able to run over in his mind, at every wakeful hour
of thirty consecutive nights, a private catechism on the possibilities
opened up by this annuity, there is no telling what might have been the
stress of such a web of perplexity upon him, a young man whose love for
celestial physics was second to none. But to have held before him, at
the last moment, the picture of a future advantage that he had never once
thought of, or discounted for present staying power, it affected him
about as much as the view of horizons shown by sheet-lightning. He saw
an immense prospect; it went, and the world was as before.
He caught the train at Warborne, and moved rapidly towards Bath; not
precisely in the same key as when he had dressed in the hut at dawn, but,
as regarded the mechanical part of the journey, as unhesitatingly as
before.
And with the change of scene even his gloom left him; his bosom's lord
sat lightly in his throne. St. Cleeve was not sufficiently in mind of
poetical literature to remember that wise poets are accustomed to read
that lightness of bosom inversely. Swithin thought it an omen of good
fortune; and as thinking is causing in not a few such cases, he was
perhaps, in spite of poets, right.