Two on a Tower - Page 120/147

Next morning Viviette received a visit from Mr. Cecil himself. He

informed her that the box spoken of by the servant had arrived quite

unexpectedly just after the departure of his clerk on the previous

evening. There had not been sufficient time for him to thoroughly

examine it as yet, but he had seen enough to enable him to state that it

contained letters, dated memoranda in Sir Blount's handwriting, notes

referring to events which had happened later than his supposed death, and

other irrefragable proofs that the account in the newspapers was correct

as to the main fact--the comparatively recent date of Sir Blount's

decease.

She looked up, and spoke with the irresponsible helplessness of a child.

'On reviewing the circumstances, I cannot think how I could have allowed

myself to believe the first tidings!' she said.

'Everybody else believed them, and why should you not have done so?' said

the lawyer.

'How came the will to be permitted to be proved, as there could, after

all, have been no complete evidence?' she asked. 'If I had been the

executrix I would not have attempted it! As I was not, I know very

little about how the business was pushed through. In a very unseemly

way, I think.' 'Well, no,' said Mr. Cecil, feeling himself morally called upon to defend

legal procedure from such imputations. 'It was done in the usual way in

all cases where the proof of death is only presumptive. The evidence,

such as it was, was laid before the court by the applicants, your

husband's cousins; and the servants who had been with him deposed to his

death with a particularity that was deemed sufficient. Their error was,

not that somebody died--for somebody did die at the time affirmed--but

that they mistook one person for another; the person who died being not

Sir Blount Constantine. The court was of opinion that the evidence led

up to a reasonable inference that the deceased was actually Sir Blount,

and probate was granted on the strength of it. As there was a doubt

about the exact day of the month, the applicants were allowed to swear

that he died on or after the date last given of his existence--which, in

spite of their error then, has really come true, now, of course.' 'They little think what they have done to me by being so ready to swear!'

she murmured.

Mr. Cecil, supposing her to allude only to the pecuniary straits in which

she had been prematurely placed by the will taking effect a year before

its due time, said, 'True. It has been to your ladyship's loss, and to

their gain. But they will make ample restitution, no doubt: and all will

be wound up satisfactorily.' Lady Constantine was far from explaining that this was not her meaning;

and, after some further conversation of a purely technical nature, Mr.

Cecil left her presence.

When she was again unencumbered with the necessity of exhibiting a proper

bearing, the sense that she had greatly suffered in pocket by the undue

haste of the executors weighed upon her mind with a pressure quite

inappreciable beside the greater gravity of her personal position.

What was her position as legatee to her situation as a woman? Her face

crimsoned with a flush which she was almost ashamed to show to the

daylight, as she hastily penned the following note to Swithin at

Greenwich--certainly one of the most informal documents she had ever

written.

'WELLAND, _Thursday_.

'O Swithin, my dear Swithin, what I have to tell you is so sad and so

humiliating that I can hardly write it--and yet I must. Though we are

dearer to each other than all the world besides, and as firmly united

as if we were one, I am not legally your wife! Sir Blount did not die

till some time after we in England supposed. The service must be

repeated instantly. I have not been able to sleep all night. I feel

so frightened and ashamed that I can scarcely arrange my thoughts.

The newspapers sent with this will explain, if you have not seen

particulars. Do come to me as soon as you can, that we may consult on

what to do. Burn this at once.

'Your VIVIETTE.'

When the note was despatched she remembered that there was another hardly

less important question to be answered--the proposal of the Bishop for

her hand. His communication had sunk into nothingness beside the

momentous news that had so greatly distressed her. The two replies lay

before her--the one she had first written, simply declining to become Dr.

Helmsdale's wife, without giving reasons; the second, which she had

elaborated with so much care on the previous day, relating in

confidential detail the history of her love for Swithin, their secret

marriage, and their hopes for the future; asking his advice on what their

procedure should be to escape the strictures of a censorious world. It

was the letter she had barely finished writing when Mr. Cecil's clerk

announced news tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife at all.

This epistle she now destroyed--and with the less reluctance in knowing

that Swithin had been somewhat averse to the confession as soon as he

found that Bishop Helmsdale was also a victim to tender sentiment

concerning her. The first, in which, at the time of writing, the

_suppressio veri_ was too strong for her conscience, had now become an

honest letter, and sadly folding it she sent the missive on its way.

The sense of her undefinable position kept her from much repose on the

second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter

from Swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, and it

comforted her much.

He had seen the account in the papers almost as soon as it had come to

her knowledge, and sent this line to reassure her in the perturbation she

must naturally feel. She was not to be alarmed at all. They two were

husband and wife in moral intent and antecedent belief, and the legal

flaw which accident had so curiously uncovered could be mended in half-an-

hour. He would return on Saturday night at latest, but as the hour would

probably be far advanced, he would ask her to meet him by slipping out of

the house to the tower any time during service on Sunday morning, when

there would be few persons about likely to observe them. Meanwhile he

might provisionally state that their best course in the emergency would

be, instead of confessing to anybody that there had already been a

solemnization of marriage between them, to arrange their re-marriage in

as open a manner as possible--as if it were the just-reached climax of a

sudden affection, instead of a harking back to an old departure--prefacing

it by a public announcement in the usual way.

This plan of approaching their second union with all the show and

circumstance of a new thing, recommended itself to her strongly, but for

one objection--that by such a course the wedding could not, without

appearing like an act of unseemly haste, take place so quickly as she

desired for her own moral satisfaction. It might take place somewhat

early, say in the course of a month or two, without bringing down upon

her the charge of levity; for Sir Blount, a notoriously unkind husband,

had been out of her sight four years, and in his grave nearly one. But

what she naturally desired was that there should be no more delay than

was positively necessary for obtaining a new license--two or three days

at longest; and in view of this celerity it was next to impossible to

make due preparation for a wedding of ordinary publicity, performed in

her own church, from her own house, with a feast and amusements for the

villagers, a tea for the school children, a bonfire, and other of those

proclamatory accessories which, by meeting wonder half-way, deprive it of

much of its intensity. It must be admitted, too, that she even now

shrank from the shock of surprise that would inevitably be caused by her

openly taking for husband such a mere youth of no position as Swithin

still appeared, notwithstanding that in years he was by this time within

a trifle of one-and-twenty.

The straightforward course had, nevertheless, so much to recommend it, so

well avoided the disadvantage of future revelation which a private

repetition of the ceremony would entail, that assuming she could depend

upon Swithin, as she knew she could do, good sense counselled its serious

consideration.

She became more composed at her queer situation: hour after hour passed,

and the first spasmodic impulse of womanly decorum--not to let the sun go

down upon her present improper state--was quite controllable. She could

regard the strange contingency that had arisen with something like

philosophy. The day slipped by: she thought of the awkwardness of the

accident rather than of its humiliation; and, loving Swithin now in a far

calmer spirit than at that past date when they had rushed into each

other's arms and vowed to be one for the first time, she ever and anon

caught herself reflecting, 'Were it not that for my honour's sake I must

re-marry him, I should perhaps be a nobler woman in not allowing him to

encumber his bright future by a union with me at all.' This thought, at first artificially raised, as little more than a mental exercise, became by stages a genuine conviction; and while her heart

enforced, her reason regretted the necessity of abstaining from

self-sacrifice--the being obliged, despite his curious escape from the

first attempt, to lime Swithin's young wings again solely for her

credit's sake.

However, the deed had to be done; Swithin was to be made legally hers.

Selfishness in a conjuncture of this sort was excusable, and even

obligatory. Taking brighter views, she hoped that upon the whole this

yoking of the young fellow with her, a portionless woman and his senior,

would not greatly endanger his career. In such a mood night overtook

her, and she went to bed conjecturing that Swithin had by this time

arrived in the parish, was perhaps even at that moment passing homeward

beneath her walls, and that in less than twelve hours she would have met

him, have ventilated the secret which oppressed her, and have

satisfactorily arranged with him the details of their reunion.