Part 69

There was, indeed, every probability that, moving about as he was doing, and cautioned as he had been by her very self against listening to her too readily, she would receive no reply of any sort from him for three or perhaps four months. This would be on the eve of the Transit; and what likelihood was there that a young man, full of ardour for that spectacle, would forego it at the last moment to return to a humdrum domesticity with a woman who was no longer a novelty?

If she could only leave him to his career, and save her own situation also! But at that moment the proposition seemed as impossible as to construct a triangle of two straight lines.

In her walk home, pervaded by these hopeless views, she passed near the dark and deserted tower. Night in that solitary place, which would have caused her some uneasiness in her years of blitheness, had no terrors for her now. She went up the winding path, and, the door being unlocked, felt her way to the top. The open sky greeted her as in times previous to the dome-and-equatorial period; but there was not a star to suggest to her in which direction Swithin had gone. The absence of the dome suggested a way out of her difficulties. A leap in the dark, and all would be over. But she had not reached that stage of action as yet, and the thought was dismissed as quickly as it had come.

The new consideration which at present occupied her mind was whether she could have the courage to leave Swithin to himself, as in the original plan, and singly meet her impending trial, despising the shame, till he should return at five-and-twenty and claim her? Yet was this assumption of his return so very safe? How altered things would be at that time! At twenty-five he would still be young and handsome; she would be three-and- thirty, fading to middle-age and homeliness, from a junior's point of view. A fear sharp as a frost settled down upon her, that in any such scheme as this she would be building upon the sand.

She hardly knew how she reached home that night. Entering by the lawn door she saw a red coal in the direction of the arbour. Louis was smoking there, and he came forward.

He had not seen her since the morning and was naturally anxious about her. She blessed the chance which enveloped her in night and lessened the weight of the encounter one half by depriving him of vision.

'Did you accomplish your object?' he asked.

'No,' said she.

'How was that?'

'He has sailed.'

'A very good thing for both, I say. I believe you would have married him, if you could have overtaken him.'

'That would I!' she said.

'Good God!'

'I would marry a tinker for that matter; I have reasons for being any man's wife,' she said recklessly, 'only I should prefer to drown myself.'

Louis held his breath, and stood rigid at the meaning her words conveyed.

'But Louis, you don't know all!' cried Viviette. 'I am not so bad as you think; mine has been folly--not vice. I thought I had married him--and then I found I had not; the marriage was invalid--Sir Blount was alive! And now Swithin has gone away, and will not come back for my calling! How can he? His fortune is left him on condition that he forms no legal tie. O will he--will he, come again?'

'Never, if that's the position of affairs,' said Louis firmly, after a pause.

'What then shall I do?' said Viviette.

Louis escaped the formidable difficulty of replying by pretending to continue his Havannah; and she, bowed down to dust by what she had revealed, crept from him into the house. Louis's cigar went out in his hand as he stood looking intently at the ground.

XXXIX

Louis got up the next morning with an idea in his head. He had dressed for a journey, and breakfasted hastily.

Before he had started Viviette came downstairs. Louis, who was now greatly disturbed about her, went up to his sister and took her hand.

'Aux grands maux les grands remedes,' he said, gravely. 'I have a plan.'

'I have a dozen!' said she.

'You have?'

'Yes. But what are they worth? And yet there must--there must be a way!'

'Viviette,' said Louis, 'promise that you will wait till I come home to- night, before you do anything.'

Her distracted eyes showed slight comprehension of his request as she said 'Yes.'