VIII
Lady Constantine then had the pleasure of beholding a waggon, laden withpacking-cases, moving across the field towards the pillar; and not manydays later Swithin, who had never come to the Great House since theluncheon, met her in a path which he knew to be one of her promenades.
'The equatorial is fixed, and the man gone,' he said, half in doubt as tohis speech, for her commands to him not to recognize her agency orpatronage still puzzled him. 'I respectfully wish--you could come andsee it, Lady Constantine.'
'I would rather not; I cannot.'
'Saturn is lovely; Jupiter is simply sublime; I can see double stars inthe Lion and in the Virgin, where I had seen only a single one before. Itis all I required to set me going!'
'I'll come. But--you need say nothing about my visit. I cannot come to-night, but I will some time this week. Yet only this once, to try theinstrument. Afterwards you must be content to pursue your studiesalone.'
Swithin seemed but little affected at this announcement. 'Hilton andPimm's man handed me the bill,' he continued.
'How much is it?'
He told her. 'And the man who has built the hut and dome, and done theother fixing, has sent in his.' He named this amount also.
'Very well. They shall be settled with. My debts must be paid with mymoney, which you shall have at once,--in cash, since a cheque wouldhardly do. Come to the house for it this evening. But no, no--you mustnot come openly; such is the world. Come to the window--the window thatis exactly in a line with the long snowdrop bed, in the south front--ateight to-night, and I will give you what is necessary.'
'Certainly, Lady Constantine,' said the young man.
At eight that evening accordingly, Swithin entered like a spectre uponthe terrace to seek out the spot she had designated. The equatorial hadso entirely absorbed his thoughts that he did not trouble himselfseriously to conjecture the why and wherefore of her secrecy. If hecasually thought of it, he set it down in a general way to an intenselygenerous wish on her part not to lessen his influence among the poorerinhabitants by making him appear the object of patronage.
While he stood by the long snowdrop bed, which looked up at him like anether Milky Way, the French casement of the window opposite softlyopened, and a hand bordered by a glimmer of lace was stretched forth,from which he received a crisp little parcel,--bank-notes, apparently. Heknew the hand, and held it long enough to press it to his lips, the onlyform which had ever occurred to him of expressing his gratitude to herwithout the incumbrance of clumsy words, a vehicle at the best of timesbut rudely suited to such delicate merchandise. The hand was hastilywithdrawn, as if the treatment had been unexpected. Then seemingly movedby second thoughts she bent forward and said, 'Is the night good forobservations?'
'Perfect.'
She paused. 'Then I'll come to-night,' she at last said. 'It makes nodifference to me, after all. Wait just one moment.'
He waited, and she presently emerged, muffled up like a nun; whereuponthey left the terrace and struck across the park together.
Very little was said by either till they were crossing the fallow, whenhe asked if his arm would help her. She did not take the offered supportjust then; but when they were ascending the prehistoric earthwork, underthe heavy gloom of the fir-trees, she seized it, as if rather influencedby the oppressive solitude than by fatigue.
Thus they reached the foot of the column, ten thousand spirits in prisonseeming to gasp their griefs from the funereal boughs overhead, and a fewtwigs scratching the pillar with the drag of impish claws as tenacious asthose figuring in St. Anthony's temptation.
'How intensely dark it is just here!' she whispered. 'I wonder you cankeep in the path. Many ancient Britons lie buried there doubtless.'
He led her round to the other side, where, feeling his way with hishands, he suddenly left her, appearing a moment after with a light.
'What place is this?' she exclaimed.
'This is the new wood cabin,' said he.
She could just discern the outline of a little house, not unlike abathing-machine without wheels.
'I have kept lights ready here,' he went on, 'as I thought you might comeany evening, and possibly bring company.'
'Don't criticize me for coming alone,' she exclaimed with sensitivepromptness. 'There are social reasons for what I do of which you knownothing.'
'Perhaps it is much to my discredit that I don't know.'
'Not at all. You are all the better for it. Heaven forbid that I shouldenlighten you. Well, I see this is the hut. But I am more curious to goto the top of the tower, and make discoveries.'
He brought a little lantern from the cabin, and lighted her up thewinding staircase to the temple of that sublime mystery on whosethreshold he stood as priest.
The top of the column was quite changed. The tub-shaped space within theparapet, formerly open to the air and sun, was now arched over by a lightdome of lath-work covered with felt. But this dome was not fixed. Atthe line where its base descended to the parapet there were half a dozeniron balls, precisely like cannon-shot, standing loosely in a groove, andon these the dome rested its whole weight. In the side of the dome was aslit, through which the wind blew and the North Star beamed, and towardsit the end of the great telescope was directed. This latter magnificentobject, with its circles, axes, and handles complete, was securely fixedin the middle of the floor.
'But you can only see one part of the sky through that slit,' said she.
The astronomer stretched out his arm, and the whole dome turnedhorizontally round, running on the balls with a rumble like thunder.Instead of the star Polaris, which had first been peeping in through theslit, there now appeared the countenances of Castor and Pollux. Swithinthen manipulated the equatorial, and put it through its capabilities inlike manner.
She was enchanted; being rather excitable she even clapped her hands justonce. She turned to him: 'Now are you happy?'
'But it is all _yours_, Lady Constantine.'
'At this moment. But that's a defect which can soon be remedied. Whenis your birthday?'
'Next month,--the seventh.'
'Then it shall all be yours,--a birthday present.'
The young man protested; it was too much.
'No, you must accept it all,--equatorial, dome stand, hut, and everythingthat has been put here for this astronomical purpose. The possession ofthese apparatus would only compromise me. Already they are reputed to beyours, and they must be made yours. There is no help for it. If ever'(here her voice lost some firmness),--'if ever you go away from me,--fromthis place, I mean,--and marry, and settle in a new home elsewhere forgood, and forget me, you must take these things, equatorial and all, andnever tell your wife or anybody how they came to be yours.'
'I wish I could do something more for you!' exclaimed the much-movedastronomer. 'If you could but share my fame,--supposing I get any, whichI may die before doing,--it would be a little compensation. As to mygoing away and marrying, I certainly shall not. I may go away, but Ishall never marry.'
'Why not?'
'A beloved science is enough wife for me,--combined, perhaps, with alittle warm friendship with one of kindred pursuits.'
'Who is the friend of kindred pursuits?'
'Yourself I should like it to be.'
'You would have to become a woman before I could be that, publicly; or Ia man,' she replied, with dry melancholy.
'Why I a woman, or you a man, dear Lady Constantine?'
'I cannot explain. No; you must keep your fame and your science all toyourself, and I must keep my--troubles.'
Swithin, to divert her from melancholy--not knowing that in theexpression of her melancholy thus and now she found muchpleasure,--changed the subject by asking if they should take someobservations.
'Yes; the scenery is well hung to-night,' she said looking out upon theheavens.
Then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, fromsingle stars to double stars, from doub
le to coloured stars, in thecursory manner of the merely curious. They plunged down to that at othertimes invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial theatre:remote layers of constellations whose shapes were new and singular;pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their beams withoutcalling forth from a single earthly poet a single line, or being able tobestow a ray of comfort on a single benighted traveller.
'And to think,' said Lady Constantine, 'that the whole race of shepherds,since the beginning of the world,--even those immortal shepherds whowatched near Bethlehem,--should have gone into their graves withoutknowing that for one star that lighted them in their labours, there werea hundred as good behind trying to do so! . . . I have a feeling forthis instrument not unlike the awe I should feel in the presence of agreat magician in whom I really believed. Its powers are so enormous,and weird, and fantastical, that I should have a personal fear in beingwith it alone. Music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is thatto drawing down worlds!'
'I often experience a kind of fear of the sky after sitting in theobserving-chair a long time,' he answered. 'And when I walk homeafterwards I also fear it, for what I know is there, but cannot see, asone naturally fears the presence of a vast formless something that onlyreveals a very little of itself. That's partly what I meant by sayingthat magnitude, which up to a certain point has grandeur, has beyond itghastliness.'
Thus the interest of their sidereal observations led them on, till theknowledge that scarce any other human vision was travelling within ahundred million miles of their own gave them such a sense of theisolation of that faculty as almost to be a sense of isolation in respectof their whole personality, causing a shudder at its absoluteness. Atnight, when human discords and harmonies are hushed, in a general sense,for the greater part of twelve hours, there is nothing to moderate theblow with which the infinitely great, the stellar universe, strikes downupon the infinitely little, the mind of the beholder; and this was thecase now. Having got closer to immensity than their fellow-creatures,they saw at once its beauty and its frightfulness. They more and morefelt the contrast between their own tiny magnitudes and those among whichthey had recklessly plunged, till they were oppressed with the presenceof a vastness they could not cope with even as an idea, and which hungabout them like a nightmare.
He stood by her while she observed; she by him when they changed places.Once that Swithin's emancipation from a trammelling body had beeneffected by the telescope, and he was well away in space, she felt herinfluence over him diminishing to nothing. He was quite unconscious ofhis terrestrial neighbourings, and of herself as one of them. It stillfurther reduced her towards unvarnished simplicity in her manner to him.
The silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock-work which gavediurnal motion to the instrument. The stars moved on, the end of thetelescope followed, but their tongues stood still. To expect that he wasever voluntarily going to end the pause by speech was apparently futile.She laid her hand upon his arm.
He started, withdrew his eye from the telescope, and brought himself backto the earth by a visible--almost painful--effort.
'Do come out of it,' she coaxed, with a softness in her voice which anyman but unpractised Swithin would have felt to be exquisite. 'I feelthat I have been so foolish as to put in your hands an instrument toeffect my own annihilation. Not a word have you spoken for the last tenminutes.'
'I have been mentally getting on with my great theory. I hope soon to beable to publish it to the world. What, are you going? I will walk withyou, Lady Constantine. When will you come again?'
'When your great theory is published to the world.'