Two on a Tower

by Thomas Hardy

  This etext was prepared from the 1923 Macmillan edition by Les Bowler.

  TWO ON A TOWER

  BYTHOMAS HARDY.

  'Ah, my heart! her eyes and she Have taught thee new astrology. Howe'er Love's native hours were set, Whatever starry synod met, 'Tis in the mercy of her eye, If poor Love shall live or die.'

  CRASHAW: _Love's Horoscope_.

  WITH A MAP OF WESSEX.

  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON1923

  COPYRIGHT

  _First published by Macmillan and Co._, _Crown_ 8_vo,_ 1902

  _Reprinted_ 1907, 1911, 1916, 1923

  _Pocket Edition_ 1906. _Reprinted_ 1909, 1912, 1915, 1918 1919, 1920,1922, 1923

  _Wessex Edition_ (_8vo_) 1912

  _Reprinted_ 1920

  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

  PREFACE.

  This slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set theemotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendousbackground of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers thesentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be thegreater to them as men.

  But, on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck withthese high aims of the author than with their own opinion, first, thatthe novel was an 'improper' one in its morals, and, secondly, that it wasintended to be a satire on the Established Church of this country. I wasmade to suffer in consequence from several eminent pens.

  That, however, was thirteen years ago, and, in respect of the firstopinion, I venture to think that those who care to read the story nowwill be quite astonished at the scrupulous propriety observed therein onthe relations of the sexes; for though there may be frivolous, and evengrotesque touches on occasion, there is hardly a single caress in thebook outside legal matrimony, or what was intended so to be.

  As for the second opinion, it is sufficient to draw attention, as I didat the time, to the fact that the Bishop is every inch a gentleman, andthat the parish priest who figures in the narrative is one of its mostestimable characters.

  However, the pages must speak for themselves. Some few readers, Itrust--to take a serious view--will be reminded by this imperfect story,in a manner not unprofitable to the growth of the social sympathies, ofthe pathos, misery, long-suffering, and divine tenderness which in reallife frequently accompany the passion of such a woman as Viviette for alover several years her junior.

  The scene of the action was suggested by two real spots in the part ofthe country specified, each of which has a column standing upon it.Certain surrounding peculiarities have been imported into the narrativefrom both sites.

  T. H.

  _July_ 1895.

  TWO ON A TOWER.

  I

  On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetableworld was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shonefreely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill inWessex. The spot was where the old Melchester Road, which the carriagehad hitherto followed, was joined by a drive that led round into a parkat no great distance off.

  The footman alighted, and went to the occupant of the carriage, a ladyabout eight- or nine-and-twenty. She was looking through the openingafforded by a field-gate at the undulating stretch of country beyond. Inpursuance of some remark from her the servant looked in the samedirection.

  The central feature of the middle distance, as they beheld it, was acircular isolated hill, of no great elevation, which placed itself instrong chromatic contrast with a wide acreage of surrounding arable bybeing covered with fir-trees. The trees were all of one size and age, sothat their tips assumed the precise curve of the hill they grew upon.This pine-clad protuberance was yet further marked out from the generallandscape by having on its summit a tower in the form of a classicalcolumn, which, though partly immersed in the plantation, rose above thetree-tops to a considerable height. Upon this object the eyes of ladyand servant were bent.

  'Then there is no road leading near it?' she asked.

  'Nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady.'

  'Then drive home,' she said after a moment. And the carriage rolled onits way.

  A few days later, the same lady, in the same carriage, passed that spotagain. Her eyes, as before, turned to the distant tower.

  'Nobbs,' she said to the coachman, 'could you find your way home throughthat field, so as to get near the outskirts of the plantation where thecolumn is?'

  The coachman regarded the field. 'Well, my lady,' he observed, 'in dryweather we might drive in there by inching and pinching, and so getacross by Five-and-Twenty Acres, all being well. But the ground is soheavy after these rains that perhaps it would hardly be safe to try itnow.'

  'Perhaps not,' she assented indifferently. 'Remember it, will you, at adrier time?'

  And again the carriage sped along the road, the lady's eyes resting onthe segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, and the column thatformed its apex, till they were out of sight.

  A long time elapsed before that lady drove over the hill again. It wasFebruary; the soil was now unquestionably dry, the weather and scenebeing in other respects much as they had been before. The familiar shapeof the column seemed to remind her that at last an opportunity for aclose inspection had arrived. Giving her directions she saw the gateopened, and after a little manoeuvring the carriage swayed slowly intothe uneven field.

  Although the pillar stood upon the hereditary estate of her husband thelady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nighimpracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious andjerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriageshould be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for her on thenearest edge of the field. She then ascended beneath the trees on foot.

  The column now showed itself as a much more important erection than ithad appeared from the road, or the park, or the windows of Welland House,her residence hard by, whence she had surveyed it hundreds of timeswithout ever feeling a sufficient interest in its details to investigatethem. The column had been erected in the last century, as a substantialmemorial of her husband's great-grandfather, a respectable officer whohad fallen in the American war, and the reason of her lack of interestwas partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more anon.It was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do--the chronicdesire of her curiously lonely life--that had brought her here now. Shewas in a mood to welcome anything that would in some measure disperse analmost killing _ennui_. She would have welcomed even a misfortune. Shehad heard that from the summit of the pillar four counties could be seen.Whatever pleasurable effect was to be derived from looking into fourcounties she resolved to enjoy to-day.

  The fir-shrouded hill-top was (according to some antiquaries) an oldRoman camp,--if it were not (as others insisted) an old British castle,or (as the rest swore) an old Saxon field of Witenagemote,--with remainsof an outer and an inner vallum, a winding path leading up between theiroverlapping ends by an easy ascent. The spikelets from the trees formeda soft carpet over the route, and occasionally a brake of brambles barredthe interspaces of the trunks. Soon she stood immediately at the foot ofthe column.

  It had been built in the Tuscan order of classic architecture, and wasreally a tower, being hollow with steps inside. The gloom and solitudewhich prevailed round the base were remarkable. The sob of theenvironing trees was here expressively manifest; and moved by the lightbreeze their thin straight stems rocked in seconds, like invertedpendulums; while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar's sides, oroccasionally clicked in catching each other. Below the level of theirsummits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun neverpierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. Pads of moss grewi
n the joints of the stone-work, and here and there shade-loving insectshad engraved on the mortar patterns of no human style or meaning; butcurious and suggestive. Above the trees the case was different: thepillar rose into the sky a bright and cheerful thing, unimpeded, clean,and flushed with the sunlight.

  The spot was seldom visited by a pedestrian, except perhaps in theshooting season. The rarity of human intrusion was evidenced by themazes of rabbit-runs, the feathers of shy birds, the exuviae of reptiles;as also by the well-worn paths of squirrels down the sides of trunks, andthence horizontally away. The fact of the plantation being an island inthe midst of an arable plain sufficiently accounted for this lack ofvisitors. Few unaccustomed to such places can be aware of the insulatingeffect of ploughed ground, when no necessity compels people to traverseit. This rotund hill of trees and brambles, standing in the centre of aploughed field of some ninety or a hundred acres, was probably visitedless frequently than a rock would have been visited in a lake of equalextent.

  She walked round the column to the other side, where she found the doorthrough which the interior was reached. The paint, if it had ever hadany, was all washed from the wood, and down the decaying surface of theboards liquid rust from the nails and hinges had run in red stains. Overthe door was a stone tablet, bearing, apparently, letters or words; butthe inscription, whatever it was, had been smoothed over with a plasterof lichen.

  Here stood this aspiring piece of masonry, erected as the mostconspicuous and ineffaceable reminder of a man that could be thought of;and yet the whole aspect of the memorial betokened forgetfulness.Probably not a dozen people within the district knew the name of theperson commemorated, while perhaps not a soul remembered whether thecolumn were hollow or solid, whether with or without a tablet explainingits date and purpose. She herself had lived within a mile of it for thelast five years, and had never come near it till now.

  She hesitated to ascend alone, but finding that the door was not fastenedshe pushed it open with her foot, and entered. A scrap of writing-paperlay within, and arrested her attention by its freshness. Some humanbeing, then, knew the spot, despite her surmises. But as the paper hadnothing on it no clue was afforded; yet feeling herself the proprietor ofthe column and of all around it her self-assertiveness was sufficient tolead her on. The staircase was lighted by slits in the wall, and therewas no difficulty in reaching the top, the steps being quite unworn. Thetrap-door leading on to the roof was open, and on looking through it aninteresting spectacle met her eye.

  A youth was sitting on a stool in the centre of the lead flat whichformed the summit of the column, his eye being applied to the end of alarge telescope that stood before him on a tripod. This sort of presencewas unexpected, and the lady started back into the shade of the opening.The only effect produced upon him by her footfall was an impatient waveof the hand, which he did without removing his eye from the instrument,as if to forbid her to interrupt him.

  Pausing where she stood the lady examined the aspect of the individualwho thus made himself so completely at home on a building which shedeemed her unquestioned property. He was a youth who might properly havebeen characterized by a word the judicious chronicler would not readilyuse in such a connexion, preferring to reserve it for raising images ofthe opposite sex. Whether because no deep felicity is likely to arisefrom the condition, or from any other reason, to say in these days that ayouth is beautiful is not to award him that amount of credit which theexpression would have carried with it if he had lived in the times of theClassical Dictionary. So much, indeed, is the reverse the case that theassertion creates an awkwardness in saying anything more about him. Thebeautiful youth usually verges so perilously on the incipient coxcomb,who is about to become the Lothario or Juan among the neighbouringmaidens, that, for the due understanding of our present young man, hissublime innocence of any thought concerning his own material aspect, orthat of others, is most fervently asserted, and must be as ferventlybelieved.

  Such as he was, there the lad sat. The sun shone full in his face, andon his head he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to view below it acurly margin of very light shining hair, which accorded well with theflush upon his cheek.

  He had such a complexion as that with which Raffaelle enriches thecountenance of the youthful son of Zacharias,--a complexion which, thoughclear, is far enough removed from virgin delicacy, and suggests plenty ofsun and wind as its accompaniment. His features were sufficientlystraight in the contours to correct the beholder's first impression thatthe head was the head of a girl. Beside him stood a little oak table,and in front was the telescope.

  His visitor had ample time to make these observations; and she may havedone so all the more keenly through being herself of a totally oppositetype. Her hair was black as midnight, her eyes had no less deep a shade,and her complexion showed the richness demanded as a support to thesedecided features. As she continued to look at the pretty fellow beforeher, apparently so far abstracted into some speculative world as scarcelyto know a real one, a warmer wave of her warm temperament glowed visiblythrough her, and a qualified observer might from this have hazarded aguess that there was Romance blood in her veins.

  But even the interest attaching to the youth could not arrest herattention for ever, and as he made no further signs of moving his eyefrom the instrument she broke the silence with--

  'What do you see?--something happening somewhere?'

  'Yes, quite a catastrophe!' he automatically murmured, without movinground.

  'What?'

  'A cyclone in the sun.'

  The lady paused, as if to consider the weight of that event in the scaleof terrene life.

  'Will it make any difference to us here?' she asked.

  The young man by this time seemed to be awakened to the consciousnessthat somebody unusual was talking to him; he turned, and started.

  'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'I thought it was my relative come to lookafter me! She often comes about this time.'

  He continued to look at her and forget the sun, just such a reciprocityof influence as might have been expected between a dark lady and a flaxen-haired youth making itself apparent in the faces of each.

  'Don't let me interrupt your observations,' said she.

  'Ah, no,' said he, again applying his eye; whereupon his face lost theanimation which her presence had lent it, and became immutable as that ofa bust, though superadding to the serenity of repose the sensitiveness oflife. The expression that settled on him was one of awe. Not unaptlymight it have been said that he was worshipping the sun. Among thevarious intensities of that worship which have prevailed since the firstintelligent being saw the luminary decline westward, as the young man nowbeheld it doing, his was not the weakest. He was engaged in what may becalled a very chastened or schooled form of that first and most naturalof adorations.

  'But would you like to see it?' he recommenced. 'It is an event that iswitnessed only about once in two or three years, though it may occuroften enough.'

  She assented, and looked through the shaded eyepiece, and saw a whirlingmass, in the centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be laid bare toits core. It was a peep into a maelstrom of fire, taking place wherenobody had ever been or ever would be.

  'It is the strangest thing I ever beheld,' she said. Then he lookedagain; till wondering who her companion could be she asked, 'Are youoften here?'

  'Every night when it is not cloudy, and often in the day.'

  'Ah, night, of course. The heavens must be beautiful from this point.'

  'They are rather more than that.'

  'Indeed! Have you entirely taken possession of this column?'

  'Entirely.'

  'But it is my column,' she said, with smiling asperity.

  'Then are you Lady Constantine, wife of the absent Sir BlountConstantine?'

  'I am Lady Constantine.'

  'Ah, then I agree that it is your ladyship's. But will you allow me torent it of you for a time, Lady Constantine?'
/>   'You have taken it, whether I allow it or not. However, in the interestsof science it is advisable that you continue your tenancy. Nobody knowsyou are here, I suppose?'

  'Hardly anybody.'

  He then took her down a few steps into the interior, and showed her someingenious contrivances for stowing articles away.

  'Nobody ever comes near the column,--or, as it's called here, Rings-HillSpeer,' he continued; 'and when I first came up it nobody had been herefor thirty or forty years. The staircase was choked with daws' nests andfeathers, but I cleared them out.'

  'I understood the column was always kept locked?'

  'Yes, it has been so. When it was built, in 1782, the key was given tomy great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors should happen towant it. He lived just down there where I live now.'

  He denoted by a nod a little dell lying immediately beyond the ploughedland which environed them.

  'He kept it in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my grandfather,my mother, and myself, the key descended with it. After the first thirtyor forty years, nobody ever asked for it. One day I saw it, lying rustyin its niche, and, finding that it belonged to this column, I took it andcame up. I stayed here till it was dark, and the stars came out, andthat night I resolved to be an astronomer. I came back here from schoolseveral months ago, and I mean to be an astronomer still.'

  He lowered his voice, and added:

  'I aim at nothing less than the dignity and office of Astronomer Royal,if I live. Perhaps I shall not live.'

  'I don't see why you should suppose that,' said she. 'How long are yougoing to make this your observatory?'

  'About a year longer--till I have obtained a practical familiarity withthe heavens. Ah, if I only had a good equatorial!'

  'What is that?'

  'A proper instrument for my pursuit. But time is short, and science isinfinite,--how infinite only those who study astronomy fully realize,--andperhaps I shall be worn out before I make my mark.'

  She seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture in him of scientificearnestness and melancholy mistrust of all things human. Perhaps it wasowing to the nature of his studies.

  'You are often on this tower alone at night?' she said.

  'Yes; at this time of the year particularly, and while there is no moon.I observe from seven or eight till about two in the morning, with a viewto my great work on variable stars. But with such a telescope asthis--well, I must put up with it!'

  'Can you see Saturn's ring and Jupiter's moons?'

  He said drily that he could manage to do that, not without some contemptfor the state of her knowledge.

  'I have never seen any planet or star through a telescope.'

  'If you will come the first clear night, Lady Constantine, I will showyou any number. I mean, at your express wish; not otherwise.'

  'I should like to come, and possibly may at some time. These stars thatvary so much--sometimes evening stars, sometimes morning stars, sometimesin the east, and sometimes in the west--have always interested me.'

  'Ah--now there is a reason for your not coming. Your ignorance of therealities of astronomy is so satisfactory that I will not disturb itexcept at your serious request.'

  'But I wish to be enlightened.'

  'Let me caution you against it.'

  'Is enlightenment on the subject, then, so terrible?'

  'Yes, indeed.'

  She laughingly declared that nothing could have so piqued her curiosityas his statement, and turned to descend. He helped her down the stairsand through the briers. He would have gone further and crossed the opencorn-land with her, but she preferred to go alone. He then retraced hisway to the top of the column, but, instead of looking longer at the sun,watched her diminishing towards the distant fence, behind which waitedthe carriage. When in the midst of the field, a dark spot on an area ofbrown, there crossed her path a moving figure, whom it was as difficultto distinguish from the earth he trod as the caterpillar from its leaf,by reason of the excellent match between his clothes and the clods. Hewas one of a dying-out generation who retained the principle, nearlyunlearnt now, that a man's habiliments should be in harmony with hisenvironment. Lady Constantine and this figure halted beside each otherfor some minutes; then they went on their several ways.

  The brown person was a labouring man known to the world of Welland asHaymoss (the encrusted form of the word Amos, to adopt the phrase ofphilologists). The reason of the halt had been some inquiries addressedto him by Lady Constantine.

  'Who is that--Amos Fry, I think?' she had asked.

  'Yes my lady,' said Haymoss; 'a homely barley driller, born under theeaves of your ladyship's outbuildings, in a manner of speaking,--thoughyour ladyship was neither born nor 'tempted at that time.'

  'Who lives in the old house behind the plantation?'

  'Old Gammer Martin, my lady, and her grandson.'

  'He has neither father nor mother, then?'

  'Not a single one, my lady.'

  'Where was he educated?'

  'At Warborne,--a place where they draw up young gam'sters' brains likerhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, excusing my common way. They hitso much larning into en that 'a could talk like the day of Pentecost;which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only theplainest ciphering woman in the world. Warborne Grammar School--that'swhere 'twas 'a went to. His father, the reverent Pa'son St. Cleeve, madea terrible bruckle hit in 's marrying, in the sight of the high. He werethe curate here, my lady, for a length o' time.'

  'Oh, curate,' said Lady Constantine. 'It was before I knew the village.'

  'Ay, long and merry ago! And he married Farmer Martin's daughter--GilesMartin, a limberish man, who used to go rather bad upon his lags, if youcan mind. I knowed the man well enough; who should know en better! Themaid was a poor windling thing, and, though a playward piece o' fleshwhen he married her, 'a socked and sighed, and went out like a snoff!Yes, my lady. Well, when Pa'son St. Cleeve married this homespun womanthe toppermost folk wouldn't speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cussor two, and said he'd no longer get his living by curing their twopennysouls o' such d--- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he tookto farming straightway, and then 'a dropped down dead in a nor'-westthunderstorm; it being said--hee-hee!--that Master God was in tantrumswi'en for leaving his service,--hee-hee! I give the story as I heard it,my lady, but be dazed if I believe in such trumpery about folks in thesky, nor anything else that's said on 'em, good or bad. Well, Swithin,the boy, was sent to the grammar school, as I say for; but what withhaving two stations of life in his blood he's good for nothing, my lady.He mopes about--sometimes here, and sometimes there; nobody troublesabout en.'

  Lady Constantine thanked her informant, and proceeded onward. To her, asa woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's incident was thatthis lad, of striking beauty, scientific attainments, and cultivatedbearing, should be linked, on the maternal side, with a localagricultural family through his father's matrimonial eccentricity. Amore attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capableof being ruined by flattery, blandishment, pleasure, even grossprosperity, should be at present living on in a primitive Eden ofunconsciousness, with aims towards whose accomplishment a Caliban shapewould have been as effective as his own.