Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (240 page)

The boatmen retired to their position under the wall, to lounge again in silence.  Conversation was not considered necessary: their sense of each other’s presence formed a kind of conversation.  Meanwhile Picotee and Ethelberta went up the hill.

‘If your wedding were going to be a public one, what a misfortune this delay of the packages would be,’ said Picotee.

‘Yes,’ replied the elder.

‘I think the bracelet the prettiest of all the presents he brought to-day — do you?’

‘It is the most valuable.’

‘Lord Mountclere is very kind, is he not?  I like him a great deal better than I did — do you, Berta?’

‘Yes, very much better,’ said Ethelberta, warming a little.  ‘If he were not so suspicious at odd moments I should like him exceedingly.  But I must cure him of that by a regular course of treatment, and then he’ll be very nice.’

‘For an old man.  He likes you better than any young man would take the trouble to do.  I wish somebody else were old too.’

‘He will be some day.’

‘Yes, but — ’

‘Never mind: time will straighten many crooked things.’

‘Do you think Lord Mountclere has reached home by this time?’

‘I should think so: though I believe he had to call at the parsonage before leaving Knollsea.’

‘Had he?  What for?’

‘Why, of course somebody must — ’

‘O yes.  Do you think anybody in Knollsea knows it is going to be except us and the parson?’

‘I suppose the clerk knows.’

‘I wonder if a lord has ever been married so privately before.’

‘Frequently: when he marries far beneath him, as in this case.  But even if I could have had it, I should not have liked a showy wedding.  I have had no experience as a bride except in the private form of the ceremony.’

‘Berta, I am sometimes uneasy about you even now and I want to ask you one thing, if I may.  Are you doing this for my sake?  Would you have married Mr. Julian if it had not been for me?’

‘It is difficult to say exactly.  It is possible that if I had had no relations at all, I might have married him.  And I might not.’

‘I don’t intend to marry.’

‘In that case you will live with me at Enckworth.  However, we will leave such details till the ground-work is confirmed.  When we get indoors will you see if the boxes have been properly corded, and are quite ready to be sent for?  Then come in and sit by the fire, and I’ll sing some songs to you.’

‘Sad ones, you mean.’

‘No, they shall not be sad.’

‘Perhaps they may be the last you will ever sing to me.’

‘They may be.  Such a thing has occurred.’

‘But we will not think so.  We’ll suppose you are to sing many to me yet.’

‘Yes.  There’s good sense in that, Picotee.  In a world where the blind only are cheerful we should all do well to put out our eyes.  There, I did not mean to get into this state: forgive me, Picotee.  It is because I have had a thought — why I cannot tell — that as much as this man brings to me in rank and gifts he may take out of me in tears.’

‘Berta!’

‘But there’s no reason in it — not any; for not in a single matter does what has been supply us with any certain ground for knowing what will be in the world.  I have seen marriages where happiness might have been said to be ensured, and they have been all sadness afterwards; and I have seen those in which the prospect was black as night, and they have led on to a time of sweetness and comfort.  And I have seen marriages neither joyful nor sorry, that have become either as accident forced them to become, the persons having no voice in it at all.  Well, then, why should I be afraid to make a plunge when chance is as trustworthy as calculation?’

‘If you don’t like him well enough, don’t have him, Berta.  There’s time enough to put it off even now.’

‘O no.  I would not upset a well-considered course on the haste of an impulse.  Our will should withstand our misgivings.  Now let us see if all has been packed, and then we’ll sing.’

That evening, while the wind was wheeling round and round the dwelling, and the calm eye of the lighthouse afar was the single speck perceptible of the outside world from the door of Ethelberta’s temporary home, the music of songs mingled with the stroke of the wind across the iron railings, and was swept on in the general tide of the gale, and the noise of the rolling sea, till not the echo of a tone remained.

An hour before this singing, an old gentleman might have been seen to alight from a little one-horse brougham, and enter the door of Knollsea parsonage.  He was bent upon obtaining an entrance to the vicar’s study without giving his name.

But it happened that the vicar’s wife was sitting in the front room, making a pillow-case for the children’s bed out of an old surplice which had been excommunicated the previous Easter; she heard the newcomer’s voice through the partition, started, and went quickly to her husband, who was where he ought to have been, in his study.  At her entry he looked up with an abstracted gaze, having been lost in meditation over a little schooner which he was attempting to rig for their youngest boy.  At a word from his wife on the suspected name of the visitor, he resumed his earlier occupation of inserting a few strong sentences, full of the observation of maturer life, between the lines of a sermon written during his first years of ordination, in order to make it available for the coming Sunday.  His wife then vanished with the little ship in her hand, and the visitor appeared.  A talk went on in low tones.

After a ten minutes’ stay he departed as secretly as he had come.  His errand was the cause of much whispered discussion between the vicar and his wife during the evening, but nothing was said concerning it to the outside world.

CHAPTER 44.

SANDBOURNE — A LONELY HEATH — THE ‘RED LION’ — THE HIGHWAY

It was half-past eleven before the
Spruce
, with Mountclere and Sol Chickerel on board, had steamed back again to Sandbourne.  The direction and increase of the wind had made it necessary to keep the vessel still further to sea on their return than in going, that they might clear without risk the windy, sousing, thwacking, basting, scourging Jack Ketch of a corner called Old-Harry Point, which lay about halfway along their track, and stood, with its detached posts and stumps of white rock, like a skeleton’s lower jaw, grinning at British navigation.  Here strong currents and cross currents were beginning to interweave their scrolls and meshes, the water rising behind them in tumultuous heaps, and slamming against the fronts and angles of cliff, whence it flew into the air like clouds of flour.  Who could now believe that this roaring abode of chaos smiled in the sun as gently as an infant during the summer days not long gone by, every pinnacle, crag, and cave returning a doubled image across the glassy sea?

They were now again at Sandbourne, a point in their journey reached more than four hours ago.  It became necessary to consider anew how to accomplish the difficult remainder.  The wind was not blowing much beyond what seamen call half a gale, but there had been enough unpleasantness afloat to make landsmen glad to get ashore, and this dissipated in a slight measure their vexation at having failed in their purpose.  Still, Mountclere loudly cursed their confidence in that treacherously short route, and Sol abused the unknown Sandbourne man who had brought the news of the steamer’s arrival to them at the junction.  The only course left open to them now, short of giving up the undertaking, was to go by the road along the shore, which, curving round the various little creeks and inland seas between their present position and Knollsea, was of no less length than thirty miles.  There was no train back to the junction till the next morning, and Sol’s proposition that they should drive thither in hope of meeting the mail-train, was overruled by Mountclere.

‘We will have nothing more to do with chance,’ he said.  ‘We may miss the train, and then we shall have gone out of the way for nothing.  More than that, the down mail does not stop till it gets several miles beyond the nearest station for Knollsea; so it is hopeless.’

‘If there had only been a telegraph to the confounded place!’

‘Telegraph — we might as well telegraph to the devil as to an old booby and a damned scheming young widow.  I very much question if we shall do anything in the matter, even if we get there.  But I suppose we had better go on now?’

‘You can do as you like.  I shall go on, if I have to walk every step o’t.’

‘That’s not necessary.  I think the best posting-house at this end of the town is Tempett’s — we must knock them up at once.  Which will you do — attempt supper here, or break the back of our journey first, and get on to Anglebury?  We may rest an hour or two there, unless you feel really in want of a meal.’

‘No.  I’ll leave eating to merrier men, who have no sister in the hands of a cursed old Vandal.’

‘Very well,’ said Mountclere.  ‘We’ll go on at once.’

An additional half-hour elapsed before they were fairly started, the lateness and abruptness of their arrival causing delay in getting a conveyance ready: the tempestuous night had apparently driven the whole town, gentle and simple, early to their beds.  And when at length the travellers were on their way the aspect of the weather grew yet more forbidding.  The rain came down unmercifully, the booming wind caught it, bore it across the plain, whizzed it against the carriage like a sower sowing his seed.  It was precisely such weather, and almost at the same season, as when Picotee traversed the same moor, stricken with her great disappointment at not meeting Christopher Julian.

Further on for several miles the drive lay through an open heath, dotted occasionally with fir plantations, the trees of which told the tale of their species without help from outline or colour; they spoke in those melancholy moans and sobs which give to their sound a solemn sadness surpassing even that of the sea.  From each carriage-lamp the long rays stretched like feelers into the air, and somewhat cheered the way, until the insidious damp that pervaded all things above, around, and underneath, overpowered one of them, and rendered every attempt to rekindle it ineffectual.  Even had the two men’s dislike to each other’s society been less, the general din of the night would have prevented much talking; as it was, they sat in a rigid reticence that was almost a third personality.  The roads were laid hereabouts with a light sandy gravel, which, though not clogging, was soft and friable.  It speedily became saturated, and the wheels ground heavily and deeply into its substance.

At length, after crossing from ten to twelve miles of these eternal heaths under the eternally drumming storm, they could discern eyelets of light winking to them in the distance from under a nebulous brow of pale haze.  They were looking on the little town of Havenpool.  Soon after this cross-roads were reached, one of which, at right angles to their present direction, led down on the left to that place.  Here the man stopped, and informed them that the horses would be able to go but a mile or two further.

‘Very well, we must have others that can,’ said Mountclere.  ‘Does our way lie through the town?’

‘No, sir — unless we go there to change horses, which I thought to do.  The direct road is straight on.  Havenpool lies about three miles down there on the left.  But the water is over the road, and we had better go round.  We shall come to no place for two or three miles, and then only to Flychett.’

‘What’s Flychett like?’

‘A trumpery small bit of a village.’

‘Still, I think we had better push on,’ said Sol.  ‘I am against running the risk of finding the way flooded about Havenpool.’

‘So am I,’ returned Mountclere.

‘I know a wheelwright in Flychett,’ continued Sol, ‘and he keeps a beer-house, and owns two horses.  We could hire them, and have a bit of sommat in the shape of victuals, and then get on to Anglebury.  Perhaps the rain may hold up by that time.  Anything’s better than going out of our way.’

‘Yes.  And the horses can last out to that place,’ said Mountclere.  ‘Up and on again, my man.’

On they went towards Flychett.  Still the everlasting heath, the black hills bulging against the sky, the barrows upon their round summits like warts on a swarthy skin.  The storm blew huskily over bushes of heather and furze that it was unable materially to disturb, and the travellers proceeded as before.  But the horses were now far from fresh, and the time spent in reaching the next village was quite half as long as that taken up by the previous heavy portion of the drive.  When they entered Flychett it was about three.

‘Now, where’s the inn?’ said Mountclere, yawning.

‘Just on the knap,’ Sol answered.  ‘‘Tis a little small place, and we must do as well as we can.’

They pulled up before a cottage, upon the whitewashed front of which could be seen a square board representing the sign.  After an infinite labour of rapping and shouting, a casement opened overhead, and a woman’s voice inquired what was the matter.  Sol explained, when she told them that the horses were away from home.

‘Now we must wait till these are rested,’ growled Mountclere.  ‘A pretty muddle!’

‘It cannot be helped,’ answered Sol; and he asked the woman to open the door.  She replied that her husband was away with the horses and van, and that they could not come in.

Sol was known to her, and he mentioned his name; but the woman only began to abuse him.

‘Come, publican, you’d better let us in, or we’ll have the law for’t,’ rejoined Sol, with more spirit.  ‘You don’t dare to keep nobility waiting like this.’

‘Nobility!’

‘My mate hev the title of Honourable, whether or no; so let’s have none of your slack,’ said Sol.

‘Don’t be a fool, young chopstick,’ exclaimed Mountclere.  ‘Get the door opened.’

‘I will — in my own way,’ said Sol testily.  ‘You mustn’t mind my trading upon your quality, as ‘tis a case of necessity.  This is a woman nothing will bring to reason but an appeal to the higher powers.  If every man of title was as useful as you are to-night, sir, I’d never call them lumber again as long as I live.’