by Thomas Hardy
XXXIII
Next morning Viviette received a visit from Mr. Cecil himself. Heinformed her that the box spoken of by the servant had arrived quiteunexpectedly just after the departure of his clerk on the previousevening. There had not been sufficient time for him to thoroughlyexamine it as yet, but he had seen enough to enable him to state that itcontained letters, dated memoranda in Sir Blount's handwriting, notesreferring to events which had happened later than his supposed death, andother irrefragable proofs that the account in the newspapers was correctas to the main fact--the comparatively recent date of Sir Blount'sdecease.
She looked up, and spoke with the irresponsible helplessness of a child.
'On reviewing the circumstances, I cannot think how I could have allowedmyself to believe the first tidings!' she said.
'Everybody else believed them, and why should you not have done so?' saidthe lawyer.
'How came the will to be permitted to be proved, as there could, afterall, have been no complete evidence?' she asked. 'If I had been theexecutrix I would not have attempted it! As I was not, I know verylittle about how the business was pushed through. In a very unseemlyway, I think.'
'Well, no,' said Mr. Cecil, feeling himself morally called upon to defendlegal procedure from such imputations. 'It was done in the usual way inall cases where the proof of death is only presumptive. The evidence,such as it was, was laid before the court by the applicants, yourhusband's cousins; and the servants who had been with him deposed to hisdeath with a particularity that was deemed sufficient. Their error was,not that somebody died--for somebody did die at the time affirmed--butthat they mistook one person for another; the person who died being notSir Blount Constantine. The court was of opinion that the evidence ledup to a reasonable inference that the deceased was actually Sir Blount,and probate was granted on the strength of it. As there was a doubtabout the exact day of the month, the applicants were allowed to swearthat he died on or after the date last given of his existence--which, inspite 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 whichshe had been prematurely placed by the will taking effect a year beforeits due time, said, 'True. It has been to your ladyship's loss, and totheir gain. But they will make ample restitution, no doubt: and all willbe 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 properbearing, the sense that she had greatly suffered in pocket by the unduehaste of the executors weighed upon her mind with a pressure quiteinappreciable beside the greater gravity of her personal position. Whatwas her position as legatee to her situation as a woman? Her facecrimsoned with a flush which she was almost ashamed to show to thedaylight, as she hastily penned the following note to Swithin atGreenwich--certainly one of the most informal documents she had everwritten.
'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 hardlyless important question to be answered--the proposal of the Bishop forher hand. His communication had sunk into nothingness beside themomentous news that had so greatly distressed her. The two replies laybefore her--the one she had first written, simply declining to become Dr.Helmsdale's wife, without giving reasons; the second, which she hadelaborated with so much care on the previous day, relating inconfidential detail the history of her love for Swithin, their secretmarriage, and their hopes for the future; asking his advice on what theirprocedure should be to escape the strictures of a censorious world. Itwas the letter she had barely finished writing when Mr. Cecil's clerkannounced news tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife at all.
This epistle she now destroyed--and with the less reluctance in knowingthat Swithin had been somewhat averse to the confession as soon as hefound that Bishop Helmsdale was also a victim to tender sentimentconcerning her. The first, in which, at the time of writing, the_suppressio veri_ was too strong for her conscience, had now become anhonest letter, and sadly folding it she sent the missive on its way.
The sense of her undefinable position kept her from much repose on thesecond night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letterfrom Swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, and itcomforted her much.
He had seen the account in the papers almost as soon as it had come toher knowledge, and sent this line to reassure her in the perturbation shemust naturally feel. She was not to be alarmed at all. They two werehusband and wife in moral intent and antecedent belief, and the legalflaw 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 wouldprobably be far advanced, he would ask her to meet him by slipping out ofthe house to the tower any time during service on Sunday morning, whenthere would be few persons about likely to observe them. Meanwhile hemight provisionally state that their best course in the emergency wouldbe, instead of confessing to anybody that there had already been asolemnization of marriage between them, to arrange their re-marriage inas open a manner as possible--as if it were the just-reached climax of asudden affection, instead of a harking back to an old departure--prefacingit by a public announcement in the usual way.
This plan of approaching their second union with all the show andcircumstance of a new thing, recommended itself to her strongly, but forone objection--that by such a course the wedding could not, withoutappearing like an act of unseemly haste, take place so quickly as shedesired for her own moral satisfaction. It might take place somewhatearly, say in the course of a month or two, without bringing down uponher 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. Butwhat she naturally desired was that there should be no more delay thanwas positively necessary for obtaining a new license--two or three daysat longest; and in view of this celerity it was next to impossible tomake due preparation for a wedding of ordinary publicity, performed inher own church, from her own house, with a feast and amusements for thevillagers, a tea for the school children, a bonfire, and other of thoseproclamatory accessories which, by meeting wonder half-way, deprive it ofmuch of its intensity. It must be admitted, too, that she even nowshrank from the shock of surprise that would inevitably be caused by heropenly taking for husband such a mere youth of no position as Swithinstill appeared, notwithstanding that in years he was by this time withina trifle of one-and-twenty.
The straightforward course had, nevertheless, so much to recommend it, sowell avoided the disadvantage of future revelation which a privaterepetition of the ceremony would entail, that assuming she could dependupon Swithin, as she knew she could do, good sense counselled its seriousconsideration.
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 godown upon her present improper state--was quite controllable. She couldregard the strange contingency that had arisen with something likephilosophy. The day slipped by: she thought of the awkwardness of theaccident rather than of its humiliation and, loving
Swithin now in a farcalmer spirit than at that past date when they had rushed into eachother's arms and vowed to be one for the first time, she ever and anoncaught herself reflecting, 'Were it not that for my honour's sake I mustre-marry him, I should perhaps be a nobler woman in not allowing him toencumber his bright future by a union with me at all.'
This thought, at first artificially raised, as little more than a mentalexercise, became by stages a genuine conviction and while her heartenforced, her reason regretted the necessity of abstaining fromself-sacrifice--the being obliged, despite his curious escape from thefirst attempt, to lime Swithin's young wings again solely for hercredit'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 evenobligatory. Taking brighter views, she hoped that upon the whole thisyoking of the young fellow with her, a portionless woman and his senior,would not greatly endanger his career. In such a mood night overtookher, and she went to bed conjecturing that Swithin had by this timearrived in the parish, was perhaps even at that moment passing homewardbeneath her walls, and that in less than twelve hours she would have methim, have ventilated the secret which oppressed her, and havesatisfactorily arranged with him the details of their reunion.
