‘The equatorial is fixed6, and the man gone,’ he said, half in doubt as to his speech, for her commands to him not to recognize her agency or patronage7 still puzzled him. ‘I respectfully wish — you could come and see it, Lady Constantine.’
‘I would rather not; I cannot.’
‘Saturn is lovely; Jupiter is simply sublime8; I can see double stars in the Lion and in the Virgin9, where I had seen only a single one before. It is 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 the instrument. Afterwards you must be content to pursue your studies alone.’
Swithin seemed but little affected10 at this announcement. ‘Hilton and Pimm’s man handed me the bill,’ he continued.
‘How much is it?’
He told her. ‘And the man who has built the hut and dome11, and done the other fixing, has sent in his.’ He named this amount also.
‘Very well. They shall be settled with. My debts must be paid with my money, which you shall have at once — in cash, since a cheque would hardly do. Come to the house for it this evening. But no, no — you must not come openly; such is the world. Come to the window — the window that is exactly in a line with the long snowdrop bed, in the south front — at eight 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 upon the terrace to seek out the spot she had designated. The equatorial had so entirely12 absorbed his thoughts that he did not trouble himself seriously to conjecture13 the why and wherefore of her secrecy14. If he casually15 thought of it, he set it down in a general way to an intensely generous wish on her part not to lessen16 his influence among the poorer inhabitants by making him appear the object of patronage.
While he stood by the long snowdrop bed, which looked up at him like a nether17 Milky18 Way, the French casement19 of the window opposite softly opened, and a hand bordered by a glimmer20 of lace was stretched forth21, from which he received a crisp little parcel — bank-notes, apparently22. He knew the hand, and held it long enough to press it to his lips, the only form which had ever occurred to him of expressing his gratitude23 to her without the incumbrance of clumsy words, a vehicle at the best of times but rudely suited to such delicate merchandise. The hand was hastily withdrawn24, as if the treatment had been unexpected. Then seemingly moved by second thoughts she bent25 forward and said, ‘Is the night good for observations?’
‘Perfect.’
She paused. ‘Then I’ll come to-night,’ she at last said. ‘It makes no difference to me, after all. Wait just one moment.’
He waited, and she presently emerged, muffled26 up like a nun27; whereupon they left the terrace and struck across the park together.
Very little was said by either till they were crossing the fallow, when he asked if his arm would help her. She did not take the offered support just then; but when they were ascending28 the prehistoric29 earthwork, under the heavy gloom of the fir-trees, she seized it, as if rather influenced by the oppressive solitude30 than by fatigue31.
Thus they reached the foot of the column, ten thousand spirits in prison seeming to gasp32 their griefs from the funereal33 boughs34 overhead, and a few twigs35 scratching the pillar with the drag of impish claws as tenacious36 as those figuring in St. Anthony’s temptation.
‘How intensely dark it is just here!’ she whispered. ‘I wonder you can keep in the path. Many ancient Britons lie buried there doubtless.’
He led her round to the other side, where, feeling his way with his hands, 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 a bathing-machine without wheels.
‘I have kept lights ready here,’ he went on, ‘as I thought you might come any evening, and possibly bring company.’
‘Don’t criticize me for coming alone,’ she exclaimed with sensitive promptness. ‘There are social reasons for what I do of which you know nothing.’
‘Perhaps it is much to my discredit37 that I don’t know.’
‘Not at all. You are all the better for it. Heaven forbid that I should enlighten you. Well, I see this is the hut. But I am more curious to go to the top of the tower, and make discoveries.’
He brought a little lantern from the cabin, and lighted her up the winding38 staircase to the temple of that sublime mystery on whose threshold he stood as priest.
The top of the column was quite changed. The tub-shaped space within the parapet, formerly39 open to the air and sun, was now arched over by a light dome of lath-work covered with felt. But this dome was not fixed. At the line where its base descended40 to the parapet there were half a dozen iron balls, precisely41 like cannon-shot, standing42 loosely in a groove43, and on these the dome rested its whole weight. In the side of the dome was a slit44, through which the wind blew and the North Star beamed, and towards it the end of the great telescope was directed. This latter magnificent object, with its circles, axes, and handles complete, was securely fixed in the middle of the floor.
‘But you can only see one part of the sky through that slit,’ said she.
The astronomer45 stretched out his arm, and the whole dome turned horizontally round, running on the balls with a rumble46 like thunder. Instead of the star Polaris, which had first been peeping in through the slit, there now appeared the countenances47 of Castor and Pollux. Swithin then manipulated the equatorial, and put it through its capabilities48 in like manner.
She was enchanted49; being rather excitable she even clapped her hands just once. 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. When is 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 everything that has been put here for this astronomical50 purpose. The possession of these apparatus51 would only compromise me. Already they are reputed to be yours, 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 — from this place, I mean — and marry, and settle in a new home elsewhere for good, and forget me, you must take these things, equatorial and all, and never tell your wife or anybody how they came to be yours.’
‘I wish I could do something more for you!’ exclaimed the much-moved astronomer. ‘If you could but share my fame — supposing I get any, which I may die before doing — it would be a little compensation. As to my going away and marrying, I certainly shall not. I may go away, but I shall never marry.’
‘Why not?’
‘A beloved science is enough wife for me — combined, perhaps, with a little 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 I a man,’ she replied, with dry melancholy52.
‘Why I a woman, or you a man, dear Lady Constantine?’
‘I cannot explain. No; you must keep your fame and your science all to yourself, and I must keep my — troubles.’
Swithin, to divert her from melancholy — not knowing that in the expression of her melancholy thus and now she found much pleasure — changed the subject by asking if they should take some observations.
‘Yes; the scenery is well hung to-night,’ she said looking out upon the heavens.
Then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars, in the cursory53 manner of the merely curious. They plunged54 down to that at other times invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial55 theatre: remote layers of constellations56 whose shapes were new and singular; pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their beams without calling forth from a single earthly poet a single line, or being able to bestow57 a ray of comfort on a single benighted58 traveller.
‘And to think,’ said Lady Constantine, ‘that the whole race of shepherds, since the beginning of the world — even those immortal59 shepherds who watched near Bethlehem — should have gone into their graves without knowing that for one star that lighted them in their labours, there were a hundred as good behind trying to do so! . . . I have a feeling for this instrument not unlike the awe60 I should feel in the presence of a great magician in whom I really believed. Its powers are so enormous, and weird61, and fantastical, that I should have a personal fear in being with it alone. Music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is that to drawing down worlds!’
‘I often experience a kind of fear of the sky after sitting in the observing-chair a long time,’ he answered. ‘And when I walk home afterwards I also fear it, for what I know is there, but cannot see, as one naturally fears the presence of a vast formless something that only reveals a very little of itself. That’s partly what I meant by saying that magnitude, which up to a certain point has grandeur62, has beyond it ghastliness.’
Thus the interest of their sidereal63 observations led them on, till the knowledge that scarce any other human vision was travelling within a hundred million miles of their own gave them such a sense of the isolation64 of that faculty65 as almost to be a sense of isolation in respect of their whole personality, causing a shudder66 at its absoluteness. At night, when human discords67 and harmonies are hushed, in a general sense, for the greater part of twelve hours, there is nothing to moderate the blow with which the infinitely68 great, the stellar universe, strikes down upon the infinitely little, the mind of the beholder69; and this was the case now. Having got closer to immensity than their fellow-creatures, they saw at once its beauty and its frightfulness70. They more and more felt the contrast between their own tiny magnitudes and those among which they had recklessly plunged, till they were oppressed with the presence of a vastness they could not cope with even as an idea, and which hung about them like a nightmare.
He stood by her while she observed; she by him when they changed places. Once that Swithin’s emancipation71 from a trammelling body had been effected by the telescope, and he was well away in space, she felt her influence over him diminishing to nothing. He was quite unconscious of his terrestrial neighbourings, and of herself as one of them. It still further reduced her towards unvarnished simplicity72 in her manner to him.
The silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock-work which gave diurnal73 motion to the instrument. The stars moved on, the end of the telescope followed, but their tongues stood still. To expect that he was ever voluntarily going to end the pause by speech was apparently futile74. She laid her hand upon his arm.
He started, withdrew his eye from the telescope, and brought himself back to the earth by a visible — almost painful — effort.
‘Do come out of it,’ she coaxed75, with a softness in her voice which any man but unpractised Swithin would have felt to be exquisite76. ‘I feel that I have been so foolish as to put in your hands an instrument to effect my own annihilation. Not a word have you spoken for the last ten minutes.’
‘I have been mentally getting on with my great theory. I hope soon to be able to publish it to the world. What, are you going? I will walk with you, Lady Constantine. When will you come again?’
‘When your great theory is published to the world.’
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1
beholding
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| v.看，注视( behold的现在分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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2
waggon
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| n.运货马车，运货车；敞篷车箱 | |
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3
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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promenades
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| n.人行道( promenade的名词复数 )；散步场所；闲逛v.兜风( promenade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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7
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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8
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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9
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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10
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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11
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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12
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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13
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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14
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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15
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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16
lessen
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| vt.减少，减轻；缩小 | |
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17
nether
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| adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会 | |
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18
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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19
casement
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| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
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20
glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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21
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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22
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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23
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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24
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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25
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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26
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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27
nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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30
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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31
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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32
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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33
funereal
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| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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34
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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35
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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36
tenacious
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| adj.顽强的，固执的，记忆力强的，粘的 | |
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37
discredit
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| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
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38
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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39
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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40
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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41
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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42
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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43
groove
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| n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯 | |
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44
slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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45
astronomer
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| n.天文学家 | |
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46
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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47
countenances
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| n.面容( countenance的名词复数 )；表情；镇静；道义支持 | |
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48
capabilities
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| n.能力( capability的名词复数 )；可能；容量；[复数]潜在能力 | |
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49
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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50
astronomical
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| adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的 | |
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51
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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52
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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53
cursory
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| adj.粗略的；草率的；匆促的 | |
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54
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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55
celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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56
constellations
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| n.星座( constellation的名词复数 )；一群杰出人物；一系列（相关的想法、事物）；一群（相关的人） | |
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57
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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58
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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59
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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60
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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61
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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62
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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63
sidereal
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| adj.恒星的 | |
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64
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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65
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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66
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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67
discords
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| 不和（discord的复数形式） | |
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68
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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69
beholder
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| n.观看者，旁观者 | |
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70
frightfulness
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| 可怕； 丑恶； 讨厌； 恐怖政策 | |
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71
emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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72
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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73
diurnal
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| adj.白天的，每日的 | |
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74
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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75
coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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76
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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