Two on a Tower

by Thomas Hardy

Here stood this aspiring piece of masonry, erected as the most conspicuous and ineffaceable reminder of a man that could be thought of; and yet the whole aspect of the memorial betokened forgetfulness.

supererogatory

stertorous

His vast and romantic endeavours lent him a personal force and charm which she could not but apprehend.

In the presence of the immensities that his young mind had, as it were, brought down from above to hers, they became unconsciously equal.

There was, moreover, an inborn liking in Lady Constantine to dwell less on her permanent position as a county lady than o...

Expectation could banish at cock-crow the eye-heaviness which apathy had been unable to disperse all the day long.

abacus

Thus, to his physical attractiveness was added the attractiveness of mental inaccessibility.

‘But you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. No person can see exactly what and where another’s horizon is.’

Swithin had, in fact, arisen as an attractive little intervention between herself and despair.

and a look overspread the lady’s face that was neither maternal, sisterly, nor amorous; but partook in an indescribable manner of all three kinds.

weir-hatch

In brief, Swithin St. Cleeve shall be Lady Constantine’s Astronomer Royal; and she—and she—’ ‘Shall be his Queen.’

Adonis-astronomer’s

‘Say some more of it to me,’ she continued, in a voice not far removed from coaxing.

ten thousand spirits in prison seeming to gasp their griefs from the funereal boughs overhead, and a few twigs scratching the pillar with the drag of impish claws as tenacious as those figuring in St. Anthony’s temptation.

sidereal

The warm interest she took in Swithin St. Cleeve—many would have said dangerously warm interest—made his hopes her hopes;

As astronomer and astronomer there was no harm in their meetings; but as woman and man she feared them.

she yet, every day, by the most ingenious and subtle means that could be devised by a woman who feared for herself, but could not refrain from tampering with danger, ascertained the state of her young friend’s health.

If he had died she might have mused on him as her dear departed saint without much sin: but his return to life was a delight that bewildered and dismayed.

They both blushed as they approached, she from sex, he from inexperience.

I care nothing for those things, really; but that which is called the Eve in us will out sometimes. Well,

Darker grew the evenings, tearfuller the moonlights, and heavier the dews.

Deeds in this connexion demand the particular kind of courage that such perfervid women are endowed with, the courage of their emotions, in which young men are often lamentably deficient.

The yearly dissolution of leafage was setting in apace.

It was plain that agitations of one sort and another had so weakened Viviette’s nerves as to lay her open to every impression.

On the tombstone still lay the coral bracelet which Dr. Helmsdale had flung down there in his indignation; for the agitated, introspective mood into which Swithin had been thrown had banished from his mind all thought of securing the trinket and putting it in his pocket.

The glorious light of this tender and refined passion seemed to have become debased to burlesque hues by pure accident, and his æsthetic no less than his ethic taste was offended by such an anti-climax.

Perhaps the actual tie between them, through being so much closer and of so much more practical a nature than even their critic supposed it, was in itself a protection against their exhibiting that ultra-reciprocity of manner which, if they had been merely lovers, might have betrayed them.

irrefragable

suppressio veri

It was as though her first husband had died that moment, and she was keeping an appointment with another in the presence of his corpse.

the distress of her personal relations with Swithin was the single force in the world which could have coerced her into abandoning to him the interval she would fain have set apart for getting over these new and painful impressions.

But the influence over him which eight or nine outnumbering years lent her was immensely increased by her higher position and wider experiences, and he had yielded the point, as he yielded all social points; while the same conditions exempted him from any deep consciousness that it was his duty to protect her even from herself.

Stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and aërate into life.

Only those persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem for others’ positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fully experience the deep smart of such convictions against self—the wish for annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that at length we, our best and firmest friend, cease to believe in our cause.

His annuity could be enjoyed by him, his travels undertaken, his studies pursued, his high vocation initiated, by one little sacrifice—that of herself.

it was her duty to set her young man free.

Unexpectedly grand fruits are sometimes forced forth by harsh pruning.

To love St. Cleeve so far better than herself as this was to surpass the love of women as conventionally understood, and as mostly existing.

she worried her little brain

Those few words were the last grains that had turned the balance, and settled her doom. She would let Swithin go.

cloudy mental weather

mollia tempora fandi

In truth he was not only too young in years, but too literal, direct, and uncompromising in nature to understand such a woman as Lady Constantine; and she suffered for that limitation in him as it had been antecedently probable that she would do.

he could not long afford to give to the past the days that were meant for the future.

giving to her the golden moments of cloudlessness he was losing his chance with the orbs above.

Space here, being less the historic haunt of human thought than overhead at home, seemed to be pervaded with a more lonely loneliness.