Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (132 page)

‘O Elfride! and have I found you at last? Are these your tricks, madam? When will you get rid of your idiocies, and conduct yourself like a decent woman? Is my family name and house to be disgraced by acts that would be a scandal to a washerwoman’s daughter? Come along, madam; come!’

‘She is so weary!’ said Knight, in a voice of intensest anguish. ‘Mr. Swancourt, don’t be harsh with her — let me beg of you to be tender with her, and love her!’

‘To you, sir,’ said Mr. Swancourt, turning to him as if by the sheer pressure of circumstances, ‘I have little to say. I can only remark, that the sooner I can retire from your presence the better I shall be pleased. Why you could not conduct your courtship of my daughter like an honest man, I do not know. Why she — a foolish inexperienced girl — should have been tempted to this piece of folly, I do not know. Even if she had not known better than to leave her home, you might have, I should think.’

‘It is not his fault: he did not tempt me, papa! I came.’

‘If you wished the marriage broken off, why didn’t you say so plainly? If you never intended to marry, why could you not leave her alone? Upon my soul, it grates me to the heart to be obliged to think so ill of a man I thought my friend!’

Knight, soul-sick and weary of his life, did not arouse himself to utter a word in reply. How should he defend himself when his defence was the accusation of Elfride? On that account he felt a miserable satisfaction in letting her father go on thinking and speaking wrongfully. It was a faint ray of pleasure straying into the great gloominess of his brain to think that the vicar might never know but that he, as her lover, tempted her away, which seemed to be the form Mr. Swancourt’s misapprehension had taken.

‘Now, are you coming?’ said Mr. Swancourt to her again. He took her unresisting hand, drew it within his arm, and led her down the stairs. Knight’s eyes followed her, the last moment begetting in him a frantic hope that she would turn her head. She passed on, and never looked back.

He heard the door open — close again. The wheels of a cab grazed the kerbstone, a murmured direction followed. The door was slammed together, the wheels moved, and they rolled away.

From that hour of her reappearance a dreadful conflict raged within the breast of Henry Knight. His instinct, emotion, affectiveness — or whatever it may be called — urged him to stand forward, seize upon Elfride, and be her cherisher and protector through life. Then came the devastating thought that Elfride’s childlike, unreasoning, and indiscreet act in flying to him only proved that the proprieties must be a dead letter with her; that the unreserve, which was really artlessness without ballast, meant indifference to decorum; and what so likely as that such a woman had been deceived in the past? He said to himself, in a mood of the bitterest cynicism: ‘The suspicious discreet woman who imagines dark and evil things of all her fellow-creatures is far too shrewd to be deluded by man: trusting beings like Elfride are the women who fall.’

Hours and days went by, and Knight remained inactive. Lengthening time, which made fainter the heart-awakening power of her presence, strengthened the mental ability to reason her down. Elfride loved him, he knew, and he could not leave off loving her but marry her he would not. If she could but be again his own Elfride — the woman she had seemed to be — but that woman was dead and buried, and he knew her no more! And how could he marry this Elfride, one who, if he had originally seen her as she was, would have been barely an interesting pitiable acquaintance in his eyes — no more?

It cankered his heart to think he was confronted by the closest instance of a worse state of things than any he had assumed in the pleasant social philosophy and satire of his essays.

The moral rightness of this man’s life was worthy of all praise; but in spite of some intellectual acumen, Knight had in him a modicum of that wrongheadedness which is mostly found in scrupulously honest people. With him, truth seemed too clean and pure an abstraction to be so hopelessly churned in with error as practical persons find it. Having now seen himself mistaken in supposing Elfride to be peerless, nothing on earth could make him believe she was not so very bad after all.

He lingered in town a fortnight, doing little else than vibrate between passion and opinions. One idea remained intact — that it was better Elfride and himself should not meet.

When he surveyed the volumes on his shelves — few of which had been opened since Elfride first took possession of his heart — their untouched and orderly arrangement reproached him as an apostate from the old faith of his youth and early manhood. He had deserted those never-failing friends, so they seemed to say, for an unstable delight in a ductile woman, which had ended all in bitterness. The spirit of self-denial, verging on asceticism, which had ever animated Knight in old times, announced itself as having departed with the birth of love, with it having gone the self-respect which had compensated for the lack of self-gratification. Poor little Elfride, instead of holding, as formerly, a place in his religion, began to assume the hue of a temptation. Perhaps it was human and correctly natural that Knight never once thought whether he did not owe her a little sacrifice for her unchary devotion in saving his life.

With a consciousness of having thus, like Antony, kissed away kingdoms and provinces, he next considered how he had revealed his higher secrets and intentions to her, an unreserve he would never have allowed himself with any man living. How was it that he had not been able to refrain from telling her of adumbrations heretofore locked in the closest strongholds of his mind?

Knight’s was a robust intellect, which could escape outside the atmosphere of heart, and perceive that his own love, as well as other people’s, could be reduced by change of scene and circumstances. At the same time the perception was a superimposed sorrow:

      ‘O last regret, regret can die!’

But being convinced that the death of this regret was the best thing for him, he did not long shrink from attempting it. He closed his chambers, suspended his connection with editors, and left London for the Continent. Here we will leave him to wander without purpose, beyond the nominal one of encouraging obliviousness of Elfride.

CHAPTER XXXVI

     ‘The pennie’s the jewel that beautifies a’.’

‘I can’t think what’s coming to these St. Launce’s people at all at all.’

‘With their “How-d’ye-do’s,” do you mean?’

‘Ay, with their “How-d’ye-do’s,” and shaking of hands, asking me in, and tender inquiries for you, John.’

These words formed part of a conversation between John Smith and his wife on a Saturday evening in the spring which followed Knight’s departure from England. Stephen had long since returned to India; and the persevering couple themselves had migrated from Lord Luxellian’s park at Endelstow to a comfortable roadside dwelling about a mile out of St. Launce’s, where John had opened a small stone and slate yard in his own name.

‘When we came here six months ago,’ continued Mrs. Smith, ‘though I had paid ready money so many years in the town, my friskier shopkeepers would only speak over the counter. Meet ‘em in the street half-an-hour after, and they’d treat me with staring ignorance of my face.’

‘Look through ye as through a glass winder?’

‘Yes, the brazen ones would. The quiet and cool ones would glance over the top of my head, past my side, over my shoulder, but never meet my eye. The gentle-modest would turn their faces south if I were coming east, flit down a passage if I were about to halve the pavement with them. There was the spruce young bookseller would play the same tricks; the butcher’s daughters; the upholsterer’s young men. Hand in glove when doing business out of sight with you; but caring nothing for a’ old woman when playing the genteel away from all signs of their trade.’

‘True enough, Maria.’

‘Well, to-day ‘tis all different. I’d no sooner got to market than Mrs. Joakes rushed up to me in the eyes of the town and said, “My dear Mrs. Smith, now you must be tired with your walk! Come in and have some lunch! I insist upon it; knowing you so many years as I have! Don’t you remember when we used to go looking for owls’ feathers together in the Castle ruins?” There’s no knowing what you may need, so I answered the woman civilly. I hadn’t got to the corner before that thriving young lawyer, Sweet, who’s quite the dandy, ran after me out of breath. “Mrs. Smith,” he says, “excuse my rudeness, but there’s a bramble on the tail of your dress, which you’ve dragged in from the country; allow me to pull it off for you.” If you’ll believe me, this was in the very front of the Town Hall. What’s the meaning of such sudden love for a’ old woman?’

‘Can’t say; unless ‘tis repentance.’

‘Repentance! was there ever such a fool as you. John? Did anybody ever repent with money in’s pocket and fifty years to live?’

‘Now, I’ve been thinking too,’ said John, passing over the query as hardly pertinent, ‘that I’ve had more loving-kindness from folks to-day than I ever have before since we moved here. Why, old Alderman Tope walked out to the middle of the street where I was, to shake hands with me — so ‘a did. Having on my working clothes, I thought ‘twas odd. Ay, and there was young Werrington.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Why, the man in Hill Street, who plays and sells flutes, trumpets, and fiddles, and grand pehanners. He was talking to Egloskerry, that very small bachelor-man with money in the funds. I was going by, I’m sure, without thinking or expecting a nod from men of that glib kidney when in my working clothes —  — ’

‘You always will go poking into town in your working clothes. Beg you to change how I will, ‘tis no use.’

‘Well, however, I was in my working clothes. Werrington saw me. “Ah, Mr. Smith! a fine morning; excellent weather for building,” says he, out as loud and friendly as if I’d met him in some deep hollow, where he could get nobody else to speak to at all. ‘Twas odd: for Werrington is one of the very ringleaders of the fast class.’

At that moment a tap came to the door. The door was immediately opened by Mrs. Smith in person.

‘You’ll excuse us, I’m sure, Mrs. Smith, but this beautiful spring weather was too much for us. Yes, and we could stay in no longer; and I took Mrs. Trewen upon my arm directly we’d had a cup of tea, and out we came. And seeing your beautiful crocuses in such a bloom, we’ve taken the liberty to enter. We’ll step round the garden, if you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ said Mrs. Smith; and they walked round the garden. She lifted her hands in amazement directly their backs were turned. ‘Goodness send us grace!’

‘Who be they?’ said her husband.

‘Actually Mr. Trewen, the bank-manager, and his wife.’

John Smith, staggered in mind, went out of doors and looked over the garden gate, to collect his ideas. He had not been there two minutes when wheels were heard, and a carriage and pair rolled along the road. A distinguished-looking lady, with the demeanour of a duchess, reclined within. When opposite Smith’s gate she turned her head, and instantly commanded the coachman to stop.

‘Ah, Mr. Smith, I am glad to see you looking so well. I could not help stopping a moment to congratulate you and Mrs. Smith upon the happiness you must enjoy. Joseph, you may drive on.’

And the carriage rolled away towards St. Launce’s.

Out rushed Mrs. Smith from behind a laurel-bush, where she had stood pondering.

‘Just going to touch my hat to her,’ said John; ‘just for all the world as I would have to poor Lady Luxellian years ago.’

‘Lord! who is she?’

‘The public-house woman — what’s her name? Mrs. — Mrs. — at the Falcon.’

‘Public-house woman. The clumsiness of the Smith family! You MIGHT say the landlady of the Falcon Hotel, since we are in for politeness. The people are ridiculous enough, but give them their due.’

The possibility is that Mrs. Smith was getting mollified, in spite of herself, by these remarkably friendly phenomena among the people of St. Launce’s. And in justice to them it was quite desirable that she should do so. The interest which the unpractised ones of this town expressed so grotesquely was genuine of its kind, and equal in intrinsic worth to the more polished smiles of larger communities.

By this time Mr. and Mrs. Trewen were returning from the garden.

‘I’ll ask ‘em flat,’ whispered John to his wife. ‘I’ll say, “We be in a fog — you’ll excuse my asking a question, Mr. and Mrs. Trewen. How is it you all be so friendly to-day?” Hey? ‘Twould sound right and sensible, wouldn’t it?’

‘Not a word! Good mercy, when will the man have manners!’

‘It must be a proud moment for you, I am sure, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, to have a son so celebrated,’ said the bank-manager advancing.

‘Ah, ‘tis Stephen — I knew it!’ said Mrs. Smith triumphantly to herself.

‘We don’t know particulars,’ said John.

‘Not know!’

‘No.’

‘Why, ‘tis all over town. Our worthy Mayor alluded to it in a speech at the dinner last night of the Every-Man-his-own-Maker Club.’

‘And what about Stephen?’ urged Mrs. Smith.

‘Why, your son has been feted by deputy-governors and Parsee princes and nobody-knows-who in India; is hand in glove with nabobs, and is to design a large palace, and cathedral, and hospitals, colleges, halls, and fortifications, by the general consent of the ruling powers, Christian and Pagan alike.’

‘‘Twas sure to come to the boy,’ said Mr. Smith unassumingly.

‘‘Tis in yesterday’s St. Launce’s Chronicle; and our worthy Mayor in the chair introduced the subject into his speech last night in a masterly manner.’

‘‘Twas very good of the worthy Mayor in the chair I’m sure,’ said Stephen’s mother. ‘I hope the boy will have the sense to keep what he’s got; but as for men, they are a simple sex. Some woman will hook him.’

‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the evening closes in, and we must be going; and remember this, that every Saturday when you come in to market, you are to make our house as your own. There will be always a tea-cup and saucer for you, as you know there has been for months, though you may have forgotten it. I’m a plain-speaking woman, and what I say I mean.’