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.