Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (50 page)

It was dusk when Springrove reached his lodging. Entering his small sitting-room, the front apartment on the ground floor, he struck a light, and proceeded to learn if any scrap or mark within or upon his purchase rendered it of moment to the business in hand. Breaking open the cover with a small chisel, and lifting the tray, he glanced eagerly beneath, and found — nothing.

He next discovered that a pocket or portfolio was formed on the underside of the cover. This he unfastened, and slipping his hand within, found that it really contained some substance. First he pulled out about a dozen tangled silk and cotton threads. Under them were a short household account, a dry moss-rosebud, and an old pair of carte-de-visite photographs. One of these was a likeness of Mrs. Manston — ’Eunice’ being written under it in ink — the other of Manston himself.

He sat down dispirited. This was all the fruit of his task — not a single letter, date, or address of any kind to help him — and was it likely there would be?

However, thinking he would send the fragments, such as they were, to Graye, in order to satisfy him that he had done his best so far, he scribbled a line, and put all except the silk and cotton into an envelope. Looking at his watch, he found it was then twenty minutes to seven; by affixing an extra stamp he would be enabled to despatch them by that evening’s post. He hastily directed the packet, and ran with it at once to the post-office at Charing Cross.

On his return he took up the workbox again to examine it more leisurely. He then found there was also a small cavity in the tray under the pincushion, which was movable by a bit of ribbon. Lifting this he uncovered a flattened sprig of myrtle, and a small scrap of crumpled paper. The paper contained a verse or two in a man’s handwriting. He recognized it as Manston’s, having seen notes and bills from him at his father’s house. The stanza was of a complimentary character, descriptive of the lady who was now Manston’s wife.

                        ‘EUNICE.

          ‘Whoso for hours or lengthy days

           Shall catch her aspect’s changeful rays,

           Then turn away, can none recall

           Beyond a galaxy of all

               In hazy portraiture;

           Lit by the light of azure eyes

           Like summer days by summer skies:

           Her sweet transitions seem to be

           A kind of pictured melody,

               And not a set contour.

                                      ‘AE. M.’

To shake, pull, and ransack the box till he had almost destroyed it was now his natural action. But it contained absolutely nothing more.

‘Disappointed again,’ he said, flinging down the box, the bit of paper, and the withered twig that had lain with it.

Yet valueless as the new acquisition was, on second thoughts he considered that it would be worth while to make good the statement in his late note to Graye — that he had sent everything the box contained except the sewing-thread. Thereupon he enclosed the verse and myrtle-twig in another envelope, with a remark that he had overlooked them in his first search, and put it on the table for the next day’s post.

In his hurry and concentration upon the matter that occupied him, Springrove, on entering his lodging and obtaining a light, had not waited to pull down the blind or close the shutters. Consequently all that he had done had been visible from the street. But as on an average not one person a minute passed along the quiet pavement at this time of the evening, the discovery of the omission did not much concern his mind.

But the real state of the case was that a tall man had stood against the opposite wall and watched the whole of his proceeding. When Edward came out and went to the Charing Cross post-office, the man followed him and saw him drop the letter into the box. The stranger did not further trouble himself to follow Springrove back to his lodging again.

Manston now knew that there had been photographs of some kind in his wife’s workbox, and though he had not been near enough to see them, he guessed whose they were. The least reflection told him to whom they had been sent.

He paused a minute under the portico of the post-office, looking at the two or three omnibuses stopping and starting in front of him. Then he rushed along the Strand, through Holywell Street, and on to Old Boswell Court. Kicking aside the shoeblacks who began to importune him as he passed under the colonnade, he turned up the narrow passage to the publishing-office of the Post-Office Directory. He begged to be allowed to see the Directory of the south-west counties of England for a moment.

The shopman immediately handed down the volume from a shelf, and Manston retired with it to the window-bench. He turned to the county, and then to the parish of Tolchurch. At the end of the historical and topographical description of the village he read: —

‘Postmistress — Mrs. Hurston. Letters received at 6.30 A.M. by foot-post from Anglebury.’

Returning his thanks, he handed back the book and quitted the office, thence pursuing his way to an obscure coffee-house by the Strand, where he now partook of a light dinner. But rest seemed impossible with him. Some absorbing intention kept his body continually on the move. He paid his bill, took his bag in his hand, and went out to idle about the streets and over the river till the time should have arrived at which the night-mail left the Waterloo Station, by which train he intended to return homeward.

There exists, as it were, an outer chamber to the mind, in which, when a man is occupied centrally with the most momentous question of his life, casual and trifling thoughts are just allowed to wander softly for an interval, before being banished altogether. Thus, amid his concentration did Manston receive perceptions of the individuals about him in the lively thoroughfare of the Strand; tall men looking insignificant; little men looking great and profound; lost women of miserable repute looking as happy as the days are long; wives, happy by assumption, looking careworn and miserable. Each and all were alike in this one respect, that they followed a solitary trail like the inwoven threads which form a banner, and all were equally unconscious of the significant whole they collectively showed forth.

At ten o’clock he turned into Lancaster Place, crossed the river, and entered the railway-station, where he took his seat in the down mail-train, which bore him, and Edward Springrove’s letter to Graye, far away from London.

XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

1. MARCH THE THIRTEENTH. THREE TO SIX O’CLOCK A.M.

They entered Anglebury Station in the dead, still time of early morning, the clock over the booking-office pointing to twenty-five minutes to three. Manston lingered on the platform and saw the mail-bags brought out, noticing, as a pertinent pastime, the many shabby blotches of wax from innumerable seals that had been set upon their mouths. The guard took them into a fly, and was driven down the road to the post-office.

It was a raw, damp, uncomfortable morning, though, as yet, little rain was falling. Manston drank a mouthful from his flask and walked at once away from the station, pursuing his way through the gloom till he stood on the side of the town adjoining, at a distance from the last house in the street of about two hundred yards.

The station road was also the turnpike-road into the country, the first part of its course being across a heath. Having surveyed the highway up and down to make sure of its bearing, Manston methodically set himself to walk backwards and forwards a stone’s throw in each direction. Although the spring was temperate, the time of day, and the condition of suspense in which the steward found himself, caused a sensation of chilliness to pervade his frame in spite of the overcoat he wore. The drizzling rain increased, and drops from the trees at the wayside fell noisily upon the hard road beneath them, which reflected from its glassy surface the faint halo of light hanging over the lamps of the adjacent town.

Here he walked and lingered for two hours, without seeing or hearing a living soul. Then he heard the market-house clock strike five, and soon afterwards, quick hard footsteps smote upon the pavement of the street leading towards him. They were those of the postman for the Tolchurch beat. He reached the bottom of the street, gave his bags a final hitch-up, stepped off the pavement, and struck out for the country with a brisk shuffle.

Manston then turned his back upon the town, and walked slowly on. In two minutes a flickering light shone upon his form, and the postman overtook him.

The new-comer was a short, stooping individual of above five-and-forty, laden on both sides with leather bags large and small, and carrying a little lantern strapped to his breast, which cast a tiny patch of light upon the road ahead.

‘A tryen mornen for travellers!’ the postman cried, in a cheerful voice, without turning his head or slackening his trot.

‘It is, indeed,’ said Manston, stepping out abreast of him. ‘You have a long walk every day.’

‘Yes — a long walk — for though the distance is only sixteen miles on the straight — that is, eight to the furthest place and eight back, what with the ins and outs to the gentlemen’s houses, it makes two-and-twenty for my legs. Two-and-twenty miles a day, how many a year? I used to reckon it, but I never do now. I don’t care to think o’ my wear and tear, now it do begin to tell upon me.’

Thus the conversation was begun, and the postman proceeded to narrate the different strange events that marked his experience. Manston grew very friendly.

‘Postman, I don’t know what your custom is,’ he said, after a while; ‘but between you and me, I always carry a drop of something warm in my pocket when I am out on such a morning as this. Try it.’ He handed the bottle of brandy.

‘If you’ll excuse me, please. I haven’t took no stimmilents these five years.’

‘‘Tis never too late to mend.’

‘Against the regulations, I be afraid.’

‘Who’ll know it?’

‘That’s true — nobody will know it. Still, honesty’s the best policy.’

‘Ah — it is certainly. But, thank God, I’ve been able to get on without it yet. You’ll surely drink with me?’

‘Really, ‘tis a’most too early for that sort o’ thing — however, to oblige a friend, I don’t object to the faintest shadder of a drop.’ The postman drank, and Manston did the same to a very slight degree. Five minutes later, when they came to a gate, the flask was pulled out again.

‘Well done!’ said the postman, beginning to feel its effect; ‘but guide my soul, I be afraid ‘twill hardly do!’

‘Not unless ‘tis well followed, like any other line you take up,’ said Manston. ‘Besides, there’s a way of liking a drop of liquor, and of being good — even religious — at the same time.’

‘Ay, for some thimble-and-button in-an-out fellers; but I could never get into the knack o’ it; not I.’

‘Well, you needn’t be troubled; it isn’t necessary for the higher class of mind to be religious — they have so much common-sense that they can risk playing with fire.’

‘That hits me exactly.’

‘In fact, a man I know, who always had no other god but “Me;” and devoutly loved his neighbour’s wife, says now that believing is a mistake.’

‘Well, to be sure! However, believing in God is a mistake made by very few people, after all.’

‘A true remark.’

‘Not one Christian in our parish would walk half a mile in a rain like this to know whether the Scripture had concluded him under sin or grace.’

‘Nor in mine.’

‘Ah, you may depend upon it they’ll do away wi’ Goddymity altogether afore long, although we’ve had him over us so many years.’

‘There’s no knowing.’

‘And I suppose the Queen ‘ill be done away wi’ then. A pretty concern that’ll be! Nobody’s head to put on your letters; and then your honest man who do pay his penny will never be known from your scamp who don’t. O, ‘tis a nation!’

‘Warm the cockles of your heart, however. Here’s the bottle waiting.’

‘I’ll oblige you, my friend.’

The drinking was repeated. The postman grew livelier as he went on, and at length favoured the steward with a song, Manston himself joining in the chorus.

          ‘He flung his mallet against the wall,

           Said, “The Lord make churches and chapels to fall,

           And there’ll be work for tradesmen all!”

               When Joan’s ale was new,

                               My boys,

               When Joan’s ale was new.’

‘You understand, friend,’ the postman added, ‘I was originally a mason by trade: no offence to you if you be a parson?’

‘None at all,’ said Manston.

The rain now came down heavily, but they pursued their path with alacrity, the produce of the several fields between which the lane wound its way being indicated by the peculiar character of the sound emitted by the falling drops. Sometimes a soaking hiss proclaimed that they were passing by a pasture, then a patter would show that the rain fell upon some large-leafed root crop, then a paddling plash announced the naked arable, the low sound of the wind in their ears rising and falling with each pace they took.

Besides the small private bags of the county families, which were all locked, the postman bore the large general budget for the remaining inhabitants along his beat. At each village or hamlet they came to, the postman searched for the packet of letters destined for that place, and thrust it into an ordinary letter-hole cut in the door of the receiver’s cottage — the village post-offices being mostly kept by old women who had not yet risen, though lights moving in other cottage windows showed that such people as carters, woodmen, and stablemen had long been stirring.

The postman had by this time become markedly unsteady, but he still continued to be too conscious of his duties to suffer the steward to search the bag. Manston was perplexed, and at lonely points in the road cast his eyes keenly upon the short bowed figure of the man trotting through the mud by his side, as if he were half inclined to run a very great risk indeed.

It frequently happened that the houses of farmers, clergymen, etc., lay a short distance up or down a lane or path branching from the direct track of the postman’s journey. To save time and distance, at the point of junction of some of these paths with the main road, the gate-post was hollowed out to form a letter-box, in which the postman deposited his missives in the morning, looking in the box again in the evening to collect those placed there for the return post. Tolchurch Vicarage and Farmstead, lying back from the village street, were served on this principle. This fact the steward now learnt by conversing with the postman, and the discovery relieved Manston greatly, making his intentions much clearer to himself than they had been in the earlier stages of his journey.