Swithin jumped out, and nature never painted in a woman’s face more devotion than appeared in my lady’s at that moment. To both the situation seemed like a beautiful allegory, not to be examined too closely, lest its defects of correspondence with real life should be apparent.
They almost feared to shake hands in public, so much depended upon their passing that morning without molestation2. A fly was called and they drove away.
‘Take this,’ she said, handing him a folded paper. ‘It belongs to you rather than to me.’
At crossings, and other occasional pauses, pedestrians3 turned their faces and looked at the pair (for no reason but that, among so many, there were naturally a few of the sort who have eyes to note what incidents come in their way as they plod4 on); but the two in the vehicle could not but fear that these innocent beholders had special detective designs on them.
‘You look so dreadfully young!’ she said with humorous fretfulness, as they drove along (Swithin’s cheeks being amazingly fresh from the morning air). ‘Do try to appear a little haggard, that the parson mayn’t ask us awkward questions!’
Nothing further happened, and they were set down opposite a shop about fifty yards from the church door, at five minutes to eleven.
‘We will dismiss the fly,’ she said. ‘It will only attract idlers.’
On turning the corner and reaching the church they found the door ajar; but the building contained only two persons, a man and a woman — the clerk and his wife, as they learnt. Swithin asked when the clergyman would arrive.
The clerk looked at his watch, and said, ‘At just on eleven o’clock.’
‘He ought to be here,’ said Swithin.
‘Yes,’ replied the clerk, as the hour struck. ‘The fact is, sir, he is a deppity, and apt to be rather wandering in his wits as regards time and such like, which hev stood in the way of the man’s getting a benefit. But no doubt he’ll come.’
‘The regular incumbent5 is away, then?’
‘He’s gone for his bare pa’son’s fortnight — that’s all; and we was forced to put up with a weak-talented man or none. The best men goes into the brewing6, or into the shipping7 now-a-days, you see, sir; doctrines8 being rather shaddery at present, and your money’s worth not sure in our line. So we church officers be left poorly provided with men for odd jobs. I’ll tell ye what, sir; I think I’d better run round to the gentleman’s lodgings9, and try to find him?’
‘Pray do,’ said Lady Constantine.
The clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at the further end, and Swithin and Viviette were left to themselves. The imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman’s forethought is so assumptive, that the clerk’s departure had no sooner doomed10 them to inaction than it was borne in upon Lady Constantine’s mind that she would not become the wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, either today or on any other day. Her divinations were continually misleading her, she knew: but a hitch11 at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in it.
‘Ah — the marriage is not to be!’ she said to herself. ‘This is a fatality12.’
It was twenty minutes past, and no parson had arrived. Swithin took her hand.
‘If it cannot be today, it can be tomorrow,’ he whispered.
‘I cannot say,’ she answered. ‘Something tells me no.’
It was almost impossible that she could know anything of the deterrent13 force exercised on Swithin by his dead uncle that morning. Yet her manner tallied14 so curiously15 well with such knowledge that he was struck by it, and remained silent.
‘You have a black tie,’ she continued, looking at him.
‘Yes,’ replied Swithin. ‘I bought it on my way here.’
‘Why could it not have been less sombre in colour?’
‘My great-uncle is dead.’
‘You had a great-uncle? You never told me.’
‘I never saw him in my life. I have only heard about him since his death.’
He spoke16 in as quiet and measured a way as he could, but his heart was sinking. She would go on questioning; he could not tell her an untruth. She would discover particulars of that great-uncle’s provision for him, which he, Swithin, was throwing away for her sake, and she would refuse to be his for his own sake. His conclusion at this moment was precisely17 what hers had been five minutes sooner: they were never to be husband and wife.
But she did not continue her questions, for the simplest of all reasons: hasty footsteps were audible in the entrance, and the parson was seen coming up the aisle18, the clerk behind him wiping the beads19 of perspiration20 from his face. The somewhat sorry clerical specimen21 shook hands with them, and entered the vestry; and the clerk came up and opened the book.
‘The poor gentleman’s memory is a bit topsy-turvy,’ whispered the latter. ‘He had got it in his mind that ’twere a funeral, and I found him wandering about the cemetery22 a-looking for us. However, all’s well as ends well.’ And the clerk wiped his forehead again.
‘How ill-omened!’ murmured Viviette.
But the parson came out robed at this moment, and the clerk put on his ecclesiastical countenance23 and looked in his book. Lady Constantine’s momentary24 languor25 passed; her blood resumed its courses with a new spring. The grave utterances26 of the church then rolled out upon the palpitating pair, and no couple ever joined their whispers thereto with more fervency27 than they.
Lady Constantine (as she continued to be called by the outside world, though she liked to think herself the Mrs. St. Cleeve that she legally was) had told Green that she might be expected at Welland in a day, or two, or three, as circumstances should dictate28. Though the time of return was thus left open it was deemed advisable, by both Swithin and herself, that her journey back should not be deferred29 after the next day, in case any suspicions might be aroused. As for St. Cleeve, his comings and goings were of no consequence. It was seldom known whether he was at home or abroad, by reason of his frequent seclusion30 at the column.
Late in the afternoon of the next day he accompanied her to the Bath station, intending himself to remain in that city till the following morning. But when a man or youth has such a tender article on his hands as a thirty-hour bride it is hardly in the power of his strongest reason to set her down at a railway, and send her off like a superfluous31 portmanteau. Hence the experiment of parting so soon after their union proved excruciatingly severe to these. The evening was dull; the breeze of autumn crept fitfully through every slit32 and aperture33 in the town; not a soul in the world seemed to notice or care about anything they did. Lady Constantine sighed; and there was no resisting it — he could not leave her thus. He decided34 to get into the train with her, and keep her company for at least a few stations on her way.
It drew on to be a dark night, and, seeing that there was no serious risk after all, he prolonged his journey with her so far as to the junction35 at which the branch line to Warborne forked off. Here it was necessary to wait a few minutes, before either he could go back or she could go on. They wandered outside the station doorway36 into the gloom of the road, and there agreed to part.
While she yet stood holding his arm a phaeton sped towards the station-entrance, where, in ascending37 the slope to the door, the horse suddenly jibbed. The gentleman who was driving, being either impatient, or possessed38 with a theory that all jibbers may be started by severe whipping, applied39 the lash40; as a result of it, the horse thrust round the carriage to where they stood, and the end of the driver’s sweeping41 whip cut across Lady Constantine’s face with such severity as to cause her an involuntary cry. Swithin turned her round to the lamplight, and discerned a streak42 of blood on her cheek.
By this time the gentleman who had done the mischief43, with many words of regret, had given the reins44 to his man and dismounted.
‘I will go to the waiting-room for a moment,’ whispered Viviette hurriedly; and, loosing her hand from his arm, she pulled down her veil and vanished inside the building.
The stranger came forward and raised his hat. He was a slightly built and apparently45 town-bred man of twenty-eight or thirty; his manner of address was at once careless and conciliatory.
‘I am greatly concerned at what I have done,’ he said. ‘I sincerely trust that your wife’— but observing the youthfulness of Swithin, he withdrew the word suggested by the manner of Swithin towards Lady Constantine —‘I trust the young lady was not seriously cut?’
‘I trust not,’ said Swithin, with some vexation.
‘Where did the lash touch her?’
‘Straight down her cheek.’
‘Do let me go to her, and learn how she is, and humbly46 apologize.’
‘I’ll inquire.’
He went to the ladies’ room, in which Viviette had taken refuge. She met him at the door, her handkerchief to her cheek, and Swithin explained that the driver of the phaeton had sent to make inquiries47.
‘I cannot see him!’ she whispered. ‘He is my brother Louis! He is, no doubt, going on by the train to my house. Don’t let him recognize me! We must wait till he is gone.’
Swithin thereupon went out again, and told the young man that the cut on her face was not serious, but that she could not see him; after which they parted. St. Cleeve then heard him ask for a ticket for Warborne, which confirmed Lady Constantine’s view that he was going on to her house. When the branch train had moved off Swithin returned to his bride, who waited in a trembling state within.
On being informed that he had departed she showed herself much relieved.
‘Where does your brother come from?’ said Swithin.
‘From London, immediately. Rio before that. He has a friend or two in this neighbourhood, and visits here occasionally. I have seldom or never spoken to you of him, because of his long absence.’
‘Is he going to settle near you?’
‘No, nor anywhere, I fear. He is, or rather was, in the diplomatic service. He was first a clerk in the Foreign Office, and was afterwards appointed attache at Rio Janeiro. But he has resigned the appointment. I wish he had not.’
Swithin asked why he resigned.
‘He complained of the banishment48, and the climate, and everything that people complain of who are determined49 to be dissatisfied — though, poor fellow, there is some ground for his complaints. Perhaps some people would say that he is idle. But he is scarcely that; he is rather restless than idle, so that he never persists in anything. Yet if a subject takes his fancy he will follow it up with exemplary patience till something diverts him.’
‘He is not kind to you, is he, dearest?’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Your manner seems to say so.’
‘Well, he may not always be kind. But look at my face; does the mark show?’
A streak, straight as a meridian50, was visible down her cheek. The blood had been brought almost to the surface, but was not quite through, that which had originally appeared thereon having possibly come from the horse. It signified that tomorrow the red line would be a black one.
Swithin informed her that her brother had taken a ticket for Warborne, and she at once perceived that he was going on to visit her at Welland, though from his letter she had not expected him so soon by a few days. ‘Meanwhile,’ continued Swithin, ‘you can now get home only by the late train, having missed that one.’
‘But, Swithin, don’t you see my new trouble? If I go to Welland House to-night, and find my brother just arrived there, and he sees this cut on my face, which I suppose you described to him —’
‘I did.’
‘He will know I was the lady with you!’
‘Whom he called my wife. I wonder why we look husband and wife already!’
‘Then what am I to do? For the ensuing three or four days I bear in my face a clue to his discovery of our secret.’
‘Then you must not be seen. We must stay at an inn here.’
‘O no!’ she said timidly. ‘It is too near home to be quite safe. We might not be known; but IF we were!’
‘We can’t go back to Bath now. I’ll tell you, dear Viviette, what we must do. We’ll go on to Warborne in separate carriages; we’ll meet outside the station; thence we’ll walk to the column in the dark, and I’ll keep you a captive in the cabin till the scar has disappeared.’
As there was nothing which better recommended itself this course was decided on; and after taking from her trunk the articles that might be required for an incarceration51 of two or three days they left the said trunk at the cloak-room, and went on by the last train, which reached Warborne about ten o’clock.
It was only necessary for Lady Constantine to cover her face with the thick veil that she had provided for this escapade, to walk out of the station without fear of recognition. St. Cleeve came forth52 from another compartment53, and they did not rejoin each other till they had reached a shadowy bend in the old turnpike road, beyond the irradiation of the Warborne lamplight.
The walk to Welland was long. It was the walk which Swithin had taken in the rain when he had learnt the fatal forestalment54 of his stellar discovery; but now he was moved by a less desperate mood, and blamed neither God nor man. They were not pressed for time, and passed along the silent, lonely way with that sense rather of predestination than of choice in their proceedings55 which the presence of night sometimes imparts. Reaching the park gate, they found it open, and from this they inferred that her brother Louis had arrived.
Leaving the house and park on their right they traced the highway yet a little further, and, plunging56 through the stubble of the opposite field, drew near the isolated57 earthwork bearing the plantation58 and tower, which together rose like a flattened59 dome60 and lantern from the lighter-hued plain of stubble. It was far too dark to distinguish firs from other trees by the eye alone, but the peculiar61 dialect of sylvan62 language which the piny multitude used would have been enough to proclaim their class at any time. In the lovers’ stealthy progress up the slopes a dry stick here and there snapped beneath their feet, seeming like a shot of alarm.
On being unlocked the hut was found precisely as Swithin had left it two days before. Lady Constantine was thoroughly63 wearied, and sat down, while he gathered a handful of twigs64 and spikelets from the masses strewn without and lit a small fire, first taking the precaution to blind the little window and relock the door.
Lady Constantine looked curiously around by the light of the blaze. The hut was small as the prophet’s chamber65 provided by the Shunammite: in one corner stood the stove, with a little table and chair, a small cupboard hard by, a pitcher66 of water, a rack overhead, with various articles, including a kettle and a gridiron; while the remaining three or four feet at the other end of the room was fitted out as a dormitory, for Swithin’s use during late observations in the tower overhead.
‘It is not much of a palace to offer you,’ he remarked, smiling. ‘But at any rate, it is a refuge.’
The cheerful firelight dispersed67 in some measure Lady Constantine’s anxieties. ‘If we only had something to eat!’ she said.
‘Dear me,’ cried St. Cleeve, blankly. ‘That’s a thing I never thought of.’
‘Nor I, till now,’ she replied.
He reflected with misgiving68.
‘Beyond a small loaf of bread in the cupboard I have nothing. However, just outside the door there are lots of those little rabbits, about the size of rats, that the keepers call runners. And they are as tame as possible. But I fear I could not catch one now. Yet, dear Viviette, wait a minute; I’ll try. You must not be starved.’
He softly let himself out, and was gone some time. When he reappeared, he produced, not a rabbit, but four sparrows and a thrush.
‘I could do nothing in the way of a rabbit without setting a wire,’ he said. ‘But I have managed to get these by knowing where they roost.’
He showed her how to prepare the birds, and, having set her to roast them by the fire, departed with the pitcher, to replenish69 it at the brook70 which flowed near the homestead in the neighbouring Bottom.
‘They are all asleep at my grandmother’s,’ he informed her when he re-entered, panting, with the dripping pitcher. ‘They imagine me to be a hundred miles off.’
The birds were now ready, and the table was spread. With this fare, eked71 out by dry toast from the loaf, and moistened with cups of water from the pitcher, to which Swithin added a little wine from the flask72 he had carried on his journey, they were forced to be content for their supper.
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1
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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molestation
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| n.骚扰，干扰，调戏；折磨 | |
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pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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4
plod
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| v.沉重缓慢地走，孜孜地工作 | |
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5
incumbent
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| adj.成为责任的，有义务的；现任的，在职的 | |
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6
brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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7
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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8
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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9
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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10
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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11
hitch
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| v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉 | |
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12
fatality
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| n.不幸，灾祸，天命 | |
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13
deterrent
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| n.阻碍物，制止物；adj.威慑的，遏制的 | |
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14
tallied
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| v.计算，清点( tally的过去式和过去分词 )；加标签（或标记）于；（使）符合；（使）吻合 | |
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15
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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17
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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20
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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23
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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24
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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27
fervency
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| n.热情的；强烈的；热烈 | |
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dictate
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| v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令 | |
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deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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30
seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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31
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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32
slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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33
aperture
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| n.孔，隙，窄的缺口 | |
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34
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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38
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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40
lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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41
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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42
streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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43
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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44
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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45
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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46
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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47
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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48
banishment
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| n.放逐，驱逐 | |
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49
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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50
meridian
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| adj.子午线的；全盛期的 | |
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51
incarceration
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| n.监禁，禁闭；钳闭 | |
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52
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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53
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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54
forestalment
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| 林地 | |
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55
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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56
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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57
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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58
plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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59
flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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60
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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61
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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62
sylvan
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| adj.森林的 | |
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63
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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64
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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65
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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66
pitcher
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| n.(有嘴和柄的)大水罐；(棒球)投手 | |
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67
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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68
misgiving
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕 | |
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69
replenish
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| vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满 | |
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70
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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71
eked
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| v.（靠节省用量）使…的供应持久( eke的过去式和过去分词 )；节约使用；竭力维持生计；勉强度日 | |
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72
flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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