Lady Constantine crossed the field and the park beyond, and found on
passing the church that the congregation was still within. There was no
hurry for getting indoors, the open windows enabling her to hear that Mr.
Torkingham had only just given out his text. So instead of entering the
house she went through the garden-door to the old bowling-green, and sat
down in the arbour that Louis had occupied when he overheard the
interview between Swithin and the Bishop. Not until then did she find
courage to draw out the letter and papers relating to the bequest, which
Swithin in a critical moment had handed to her.
Had he been ever so little older he would not have placed that
unconsidered confidence in Viviette which had led him to give way to her
curiosity. But the influence over him which eight or nine outnumbering
years lent her was immensely increased by her higher position and wider
experiences, and he had yielded the point, as he yielded all social
points; while the same conditions exempted him from any deep
consciousness that it was his duty to protect her even from herself.
The preamble of Dr. St. Cleeve's letter, in which he referred to his
pleasure at hearing of the young man's promise as an astronomer,
disturbed her not at all--indeed, somewhat prepossessed her in favour of
the old gentleman who had written it. The first item of what he called
'unfavourable news,' namely, the allusion to the inadequacy of Swithin's
income to the wants of a scientific man, whose lines of work were not
calculated to produce pecuniary emolument for many years, deepened the
cast of her face to concern. She reached the second item of the
so-called unfavourable news; and her face flushed as she read how the
doctor had learnt 'that there was something in your path worse than
narrow means, and that something is a woman.'
'To save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads,' she read on, 'I
take the preventive measures entailed below.'
And then followed the announcement of the 600 pounds a year settled on
the youth for life, on the single condition that he remained unmarried
till the age of twenty-five--just as Swithin had explained to her. She
next learnt that the bequest was for a definite object--that he might
have resources sufficient to enable him to travel in an inexpensive way,
and begin a study of the southern constellations, which, according to the
shrewd old man's judgment, were a mine not so thoroughly worked as the
northern, and therefore to be recommended. This was followed by some
sentences 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. 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. . . . She has, in addition to her original disqualification
as a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two special
drawbacks: she is much older than yourself--'
Lady Constantine's indignant flush forsook her, and pale despair
succeeded 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 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 more.' (Viviette's face by this time
tingled hot again.) '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 fool; 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.'
Leaving him to himself! She paled again, as if chilled by a conviction
that in this the old man was right.
'She'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her
acquaintance, and make you 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. . . .
'An experienced 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.'
* * * * *
Thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. The flushes of
indignation which had passed over her, as she gathered this man's opinion
of herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she considered
that Swithin--her dear Swithin--was perfectly acquainted with this
cynical view of her nature; that, reject it as he might, and as he
unquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, and
lay in him. Stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep
for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and
aerate into life.
The humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure; the
mortification--she had known nothing like it till now. But this was not
all. There succeeded a feeling in comparison with which resentment and
mortification were happy moods--a miserable conviction that this old man
who spoke from the grave was not altogether wrong in his speaking; that
he was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. Only
those persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem for
others' positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fully
experience the deep smart of such convictions against self--the wish for
annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that
at 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 of
the garden wall. Their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away;
the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. But her life during that
morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. Knowing the full
circumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she had never
before known them--ought she to make herself the legal wife of Swithin
St. Cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such was
the formidable question which Lady Constantine propounded to her startled
understanding. As a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her
charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. Save Thyself was
sound Old Testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the
New. But was there a line of conduct which transcended mere
self-preservation? and would it not be an excellent thing to put it in
practice now?
That she had wronged St. Cleeve by marrying him--that she would wrong him
infinitely more by completing the marriage--there was, in her opinion, no
doubt. She in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, and
had 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 to
go for the license and take up residence in the parish in which they were
wedded. He was now just one-and-twenty. Without her, he had all the
world before him, six hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a road
to fame as he should choose: with her, this story was negatived.
No money from his uncle; no power of advancement; but a bondage with a
woman whose disparity of years, though immaterial just now, would operate
in the future as a wet blanket upon his social ambitions; and that
content with life as it was which she had noticed more than once in him
latterly, a content imperilling his scientific spirit by abstracting his
zeal for progress.
It was impossible, in short, to blind herself to the inference that
marriage with her had not benefited him. Matters might improve in the
future; 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 offered, was a
fearful responsibility. How could she, an unendowed woman, replace such
assistance? His recent visit to Greenwich, which had momentarily revived
that zest for his pursuit that was now less constant than heretofore,
should by rights be supplemented by other such expeditions. It would be
true benevolence not to deprive him of means to continue them, so as to
keep his ardour alive, regardless of the cost to herself.
It could be done. By the extraordinary favour of a unique accident she
had now an opportunity of redeeming Swithin's seriously compromised
future, and restoring him to a state no worse than his first. His
annuity could be enjoyed by him, his travels undertaken, his studies
pursued, his high vocation initiated, by one little sacrifice--that of
herself. She only had to refuse to legalize their marriage, to part from
him for ever, and all would be well with him thenceforward. The pain to
him would after all be but slight, whatever it might be to his wretched
Viviette.
The ineptness of retaining him at her side lay not only in the fact
itself of injury to him, but in the likelihood of his living to see it as
such, and reproaching her for selfishness in not letting him go in this
unprecedented opportunity for correcting a move proved to be false. He
wished to examine the southern heavens--perhaps his uncle's letter was
the father of the wish--and there was no telling what good might not
result to mankind at large from his exploits there. Why should she, to
save her narrow honour, waste the wide promise of his ability?
That in immolating herself by refusing him, and leaving him free to work
wonders for the good of his fellow-creatures, she would in all
probability add to the sum of human felicity, consoled her by its breadth
as an idea even while it tortured her by making herself the scapegoat or
single unit on whom the evil would fall. Ought a possibly large number,
Swithin included, to remain unbenefited because the one individual to
whom his release would be an injury chanced to be herself? Love between
man and woman, which in Homer, Moses, and other early exhibitors of life,
is mere desire, had for centuries past so far broadened as to include
sympathy and friendship; surely it should in this advanced stage of the
world include benevolence also. If so, it was her duty to set her young
man free.
Thus she laboured, with a generosity more worthy even than its object, to
sink her love for her own decorum in devotion to the world in general,
and to Swithin in particular. To counsel her activities by her
understanding, rather than by her emotions as usual, was hard work for a
tender woman; but she strove hard, and made advance. The self-centred
attitude natural to one in her situation was becoming displaced by the
sympathetic attitude, which, though it had to be artificially fostered at
first, gave her, by degrees, a certain sweet sense that she was rising
above self-love. That maternal element which had from time to time
evinced itself in her affection for the youth, and was imparted by her
superior ripeness in experience and years, appeared now again, as she
drew nearer the resolve not to secure propriety in her own social
condition 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 Lady
Constantine an altruism whose thoroughness would probably have amazed
that queer old gentleman into a withdrawal of the conditions that had
induced it. To love St. Cleeve so far better than herself as this was to
surpass the love of women as conventionally understood, and as mostly
existing.
Before, however, clinching her decision by any definite step she worried
her little brain by devising every kind of ingenious scheme, in the hope
of lighting on one that might show her how that decision could be avoided
with 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 at
length she jumped at an idea which promised some sort of improvement on
that design. She would propose that reunion should not be entirely
abandoned, but simply postponed--namely, till after his twenty-fifth
birthday--when he might be her husband without, at any rate, the loss to
him of the income. By this time he would approximate to a man's full
judgment, and that painful aspect of her as one who had deluded his raw
immaturity would have passed for ever.
The plan somewhat appeased her disquieted honour. To let a marriage sink
into abeyance for four or five years was not to nullify it; and though
she would leave it to him to move its substantiation at the end of that
time, without present stipulations, she had not much doubt upon the
issue.
The clock struck five. This silent mental debate had occupied her whole
afternoon. Perhaps it would not have ended now but for an unexpected
incident--the entry of her brother Louis. He came into the room where
she was sitting, or rather writhing, and after a few words to explain how
he 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, but
in essence they were bitterness itself.
'Viviette,' he said, 'I am sorry for my hasty words to you when I last
left this house. I readily withdraw them. My suspicions took a wrong
direction. I think now that I know the truth. You have been even madder
than I supposed!'
'In what way?' she asked distantly.
'I lately thought that unhappy young man was only your too-favoured
lover.'
'You thought wrong: he is not.'
'He is not--I believe you--for he is more. I now am persuaded that he is
your 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 of
relief. 'I was not so positive as I pretended to be--but I wanted to
know the truth of this mystery. Since you are not fettered to him in
that way I care nothing.'
Louis turned away; and that afforded her an opportunity for leaving the
room. 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 clamour
for that consummation. The morning's mortification, the afternoon's
benevolence, and the evening's instincts of evasion had joined to carry
the point.
Accordingly she sat down, and wrote to Swithin a summary of the thoughts
above detailed.
'We shall separate,' she concluded. 'You to obey your uncle's orders and
explore the southern skies; I to wait as one who can implicitly trust
you. Do not see me again till the years have expired. You will find me
still the same. I am your wife through all time; the letter of the law
is not needed to reassert it at present; while the absence of the letter
secures your fortune.'
Nothing can express what it cost Lady Constantine to marshal her
arguments; but she did it, and vanquished self-comfort by a sense of the
general expediency. It may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the only
ignoble reason which might have dictated such a step was non-existent;
that is to say, a serious decline in her affection. Tenderly she had
loved the youth at first, and tenderly she loved him now, as time and her
after-conduct proved.
Women the most delicate get used to strange moral situations. Eve
probably regained her normal sweet composure about a week after the Fall.
On first learning of her anomalous position Lady Constantine had blushed
hot, and her pure instincts had prompted her to legalize her marriage
without a moment's delay. Heaven and earth were to be moved at once to
effect 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 young
man's sake.