The silence of Swithin was to be accounted for by the circumstance that
neither to the Mediterranean nor to America had he in the first place
directed his steps. Feeling himself absolutely free he had, on arriving
at Southampton, decided to make straight for the Cape, and hence had not
gone aboard the Occidental at all. His object was to leave his heavier
luggage there, examine the capabilities of the spot for his purpose, find
out the necessity or otherwise of shipping over his own equatorial, and
then cross to America as soon as there was a good opportunity. Here he
might inquire the movements of the Transit expedition to the South
Pacific, and join it at such a point as might be convenient.
Thus, though wrong in her premisses, Viviette had intuitively decided
with sad precision. There was, as a matter of fact, a great possibility
of her not being able to communicate with him for several months,
notwithstanding that he might possibly communicate with her.
This excursive time was an awakening for Swithin. To altered
circumstances inevitably followed altered views. That such changes
should have a marked effect upon a young man who had made neither grand
tour nor petty one--who had, in short, scarcely been away from home in
his life--was nothing more than natural. New ideas struggled to disclose
themselves and with the addition of strange twinklers to his southern
horizon came an absorbed attention that way, and a corresponding
forgetfulness of what lay to the north behind his back, whether human or
celestial. Whoever may deplore it few will wonder that Viviette, who
till then had stood high in his heaven, if she had not dominated it,
sank, like the North Star, lower and lower with his retreat southward.
Master of a large advance of his first year's income in circular notes,
he perhaps too readily forgot that the mere act of honour, but for her
self-suppression, would have rendered him penniless.
Meanwhile, to come back and claim her at the specified time, four years
thence, if she should not object to be claimed, was as much a part of his
programme as were the exploits abroad and elsewhere that were to prelude
it. The very thoroughness of his intention for that advanced date
inclined him all the more readily to shelve the subject now. Her unhappy
caution to him not to write too soon was a comfortable license in his
present state of tension about sublime scientific things, which knew not
woman, nor her sacrifices, nor her fears. In truth he was not only too
young in years, but too literal, direct, and uncompromising in nature to
understand such a woman as Lady Constantine; and she suffered for that
limitation in him as it had been antecedently probable that she would do.
He stayed but a little time at Cape Town on this his first reconnoitring
journey; and on that account wrote to no one from the place. On leaving
he found there remained some weeks on his hands before he wished to cross
to America; and feeling an irrepressible desire for further studies in
navigation on shipboard, and under clear skies, he took the steamer for
Melbourne; returning thence in due time, and pursuing his journey to
America, where he landed at Boston.
Having at last had enough of great circles and other nautical reckonings,
and taking no interest in men or cities, this indefatigable scrutineer of
the universe went immediately on to Cambridge; and there, by the help of
an introduction he had brought from England, he revelled for a time in
the glories of the gigantic refractor (which he was permitted to use on
occasion), and in the pleasures of intercourse with the scientific group
around. This brought him on to the time of starting with the Transit
expedition, when he and his kind became lost to the eye of civilization
behind the horizon of the Pacific Ocean.
To speak of their doings on this pilgrimage, of ingress and egress, of
tangent and parallax, of external and internal contact, would avail
nothing. Is it not all written in the chronicles of the Astronomical
Society? More to the point will it be to mention that Viviette's letter
to Cambridge had been returned long before he reached that place, while
her missive to Marseilles was, of course, misdirected altogether. On
arriving in America, uncertain of an address in that country at which he
would stay long, Swithin wrote his first letter to his grandmother; and
in this he ordered that all communications should be sent to await him at
Cape Town, as the only safe spot for finding him, sooner or later. The
equatorial he also directed to be forwarded to the same place. At this
time, too, he ventured to break Viviette's commands, and address a letter
to her, not knowing of the strange results that had followed his absence
from home.
It was February. The Transit was over, the scientific company had broken
up, and Swithin had steamed towards the Cape to take up his permanent
abode there, with a view to his great task of surveying, charting and
theorizing on those exceptional features in the southern skies which had
been but partially treated by the younger Herschel. Having entered Table
Bay and landed on the quay, he called at once at the post-office.
Two letters were handed him, and he found from the date that they had
been waiting there for some time. One of these epistles, which had a
weather-worn look as regarded the ink, and was in old-fashioned
penmanship, he knew to be from his grandmother. He opened it before he
had as much as glanced at the superscription of the second.