Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (728 page)

She turned pale.

‘Don’t say that, Shadrach,’ she answered hastily.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like to hear it!  There’s danger at sea.  I want them to be something genteel, and no danger to them.  I couldn’t let them risk their lives at sea.  O, I couldn’t ever, ever!’

‘Very well, dear, it shan’t be done.’

Next day, after a silence, she asked a question:

‘If they were to go with you it would make a great deal of difference, I suppose, to the profit?’

‘‘Twould treble what I should get from the venture single-handed.  Under my eye they would be as good as two more of myself.’

Later on she said: ‘Tell me more about this.’

‘Well, the boys are almost as clever as master-mariners in handling a craft, upon my life!  There isn’t a more cranky place in the Northern Seas than about the sandbanks of this harbour, and they’ve practised here from their infancy.  And they are so steady.  I couldn’t get their steadiness and their trustworthiness in half a dozen men twice their age.’

‘And is it
very
dangerous at sea; now, too, there are rumours of war?’ she asked uneasily.

‘O, well, there be risks.  Still . . . ‘

The idea grew and magnified, and the mother’s heart was crushed and stifled by it.  Emmy was growing
too
patronizing; it could not be borne.  Shadrach’s wife could not help nagging him about their comparative poverty.  The young men, amiable as their father, when spoken to on the subject of a voyage of enterprise, were quite willing to embark; and though they, like their father, had no great love for the sea, they became quite enthusiastic when the proposal was detailed.

Everything now hung upon their mother’s assent.  She withheld it long, but at last gave the word: the young men might accompany their father.  Shadrach was unusually cheerful about it: Heaven had preserved him hitherto, and he had uttered his thanks.  God would not forsake those who were faithful to him.

All that the Jolliffes possessed in the world was put into the enterprise.  The grocery stock was pared down to the least that possibly could afford a bare sustenance to Joanna during the absence, which was to last through the usual ‘New-f’nland spell.’  How she would endure the weary time she hardly knew, for the boys had been with her formerly; but she nerved herself for the trial.

The ship was laden with boots and shoes, ready-made clothing, fishing-tackle, butter, cheese, cordage, sailcloth, and many other commodities; and was to bring back oil, furs, skins, fish, cranberries, and what else came to hand.  But much trading to other ports was to be undertaken between the voyages out and homeward, and thereby much money made.

CHAPTER III

The brig sailed on a Monday morning in spring; but Joanna did not witness its departure.  She could not bear the sight that she had been the means of bringing about.  Knowing this, her husband told her overnight that they were to sail some time before noon next day hence when, awakening at five the next morning, she heard them bustling about downstairs, she did not hasten to descend, but lay trying to nerve herself for the parting, imagining they would leave about nine, as her husband had done on his previous voyage.  When she did descend she beheld words chalked upon the sloping face of the bureau; but no husband or sons.  In the hastily-scrawled lines Shadrach said they had gone off thus not to pain her by a leave-taking; and the sons had chalked under his words: ‘Good-bye, mother!’

She rushed to the quay, and looked down the harbour towards the blue rim of the sea, but she could only see the masts and bulging sails of the
Joanna
; no human figures.  ‘‘Tis I have sent them!’ she said wildly, and burst into tears.  In the house the chalked ‘Good-bye’ nearly broke her heart.  But when she had re-entered the front room, and looked across at Emily’s, a gleam of triumph lit her thin face at her anticipated release from the thraldom of subservience.

To do Emily Lester justice, her assumption of superiority was mainly a figment of Joanna’s brain.  That the circumstances of the merchant’s wife were more luxurious than Joanna’s, the former could not conceal; though whenever the two met, which was not very often now, Emily endeavoured to subdue the difference by every means in her power.

The first summer lapsed away; and Joanna meagrely maintained herself by the shop, which now consisted of little more than a window and a counter.  Emily was, in truth, her only large customer; and Mrs. Lester’s kindly readiness to buy anything and everything without questioning the quality had a sting of bitterness in it, for it was the uncritical attitude of a patron, and almost of a donor.  The long dreary winter moved on; the face of the bureau had been turned to the wall to protect the chalked words of farewell, for Joanna could never bring herself to rub them out; and she often glanced at them with wet eyes.  Emily’s handsome boys came home for the Christmas holidays; the University was talked of for them; and still Joanna subsisted as it were with held breath, like a person submerged.  Only one summer more, and the ‘spell’ would end.  Towards the close of the time Emily called on her quondam friend.  She had heard that Joanna began to feel anxious; she had received no letter from husband or sons for some months.  Emily’s silks rustled arrogantly when, in response to Joanna’s almost dumb invitation, she squeezed through the opening of the counter and into the parlour behind the shop.

‘
You
are all success, and
I
am all the other way!’ said Joanna.

‘But why do you think so?’ said Emily.  ‘They are to bring back a fortune, I hear.’

‘Ah! will they come?  The doubt is more than a woman can bear.  All three in one ship — think of that!  And I have not heard of them for months!’

‘But the time is not up.  You should not meet misfortune half-way.’

‘Nothing will repay me for the grief of their absence!’

‘Then why did you let them go?  You were doing fairly well.’

‘I made them go!’ she said, turning vehemently upon Emily.  ‘And I’ll tell you why!  I could not bear that we should be only muddling on, and you so rich and thriving!  Now I have told you, and you may hate me if you will!’

‘I shall never hate you, Joanna.’

And she proved the truth of her words afterwards.  The end of autumn came, and the brig should have been in port; but nothing like the
Joanna
appeared in the channel between the sands.  It was now really time to be uneasy.  Joanna Jolliffe sat by the fire, and every gust of wind caused her a cold thrill.  She had always feared and detested the sea; to her it was a treacherous, restless, slimy creature, glorying in the griefs of women.  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘they
must
come!’

She recalled to her mind that Shadrach had said before starting that if they returned safe and sound, with success crowning their enterprise, he would go as he had gone after his shipwreck, and kneel with his sons in the church, and offer sincere thanks for their deliverance.  She went to church regularly morning and afternoon, and sat in the most forward pew, nearest the chancel-step.  Her eyes were mostly fixed on that step, where Shadrach had knelt in the bloom of his young manhood: she knew to an inch the spot which his knees had pressed twenty winters before; his outline as he had knelt, his hat on the step beside him.  God was good.  Surely her husband must kneel there again: a son on each side as he had said; George just here, Jim just there.  By long watching the spot as she worshipped it became as if she saw the three returned ones there kneeling; the two slim outlines of her boys, the more bulky form between them; their hands clasped, their heads shaped against the eastern wall.  The fancy grew almost to an hallucination: she could never turn her worn eyes to the step without seeing them there.

Nevertheless they did not come.  Heaven was merciful, but it was not yet pleased to relieve her soul.  This was her purgation for the sin of making them the slaves of her ambition.  But it became more than purgation soon, and her mood approached despair.  Months had passed since the brig had been due, but it had not returned.

Joanna was always hearing or seeing evidences of their arrival.  When on the hill behind the port, whence a view of the open Channel could be obtained, she felt sure that a little speck on the horizon, breaking the eternally level waste of waters southward, was the truck of the
Joana’s
mainmast.  Or when indoors, a shout or excitement of any kind at the corner of the Town Cellar, where the High Street joined the Quay, caused her to spring to her feet and cry: ‘‘Tis they!’

But it was not.  The visionary forms knelt every Sunday afternoon on the chancel-step, but not the real.  Her shop had, as it were, eaten itself hollow.  In the apathy which had resulted from her loneliness and grief she had ceased to take in the smallest supplies, and thus had sent away her last customer.

In this strait Emily Lester tried by every means in her power to aid the afflicted woman; but she met with constant repulses.

‘I don’t like you!  I can’t bear to see you!’ Joanna would whisper hoarsely when Emily came to her and made advances.

‘But I want to help and soothe you, Joanna,’ Emily would say.

‘You are a lady, with a rich husband and fine sons!  What can you want with a bereaved crone like me!’

‘Joanna, I want this: I want you to come and live in my house, and not stay alone in this dismal place any longer.’

‘And suppose they come and don’t find me at home?  You wish to separate me and mine!  No, I’ll stay here.  I don’t like you, and I can’t thank you, whatever kindness you do me!’

However, as time went on Joanna could not afford to pay the rent of the shop and house without an income.  She was assured that all hope of the return of Shadrach and his sons was vain, and she reluctantly consented to accept the asylum of the Lesters’ house.  Here she was allotted a room of her own on the second floor, and went and came as she chose, without contact with the family.  Her hair greyed and whitened, deep lines channeled her forehead, and her form grew gaunt and stooping.  But she still expected the lost ones, and when she met Emily on the staircase she would say morosely: ‘I know why you’ve got me here!  They’ll come, and be disappointed at not finding me at home, and perhaps go away again; and then you’ll be revenged for my taking Shadrach away from ‘ee!’

Emily Lester bore these reproaches from the grief-stricken soul.  She was sure — all the people of Havenpool were sure — that Shadrach and his sons could not return.  For years the vessel had been given up as lost.

Nevertheless, when awakened at night by any noise, Joanna would rise from bed and glance at the shop opposite by the light from the flickering lamp, to make sure it was not they.

It was a damp and dark December night, six years after the departure of the brig
Joanna
.  The wind was from the sea, and brought up a fishy mist which mopped the face like moist flannel.  Joanna had prayed her usual prayer for the absent ones with more fervour and confidence than she had felt for months, and had fallen asleep about eleven.  It must have been between one and two when she suddenly started up.  She had certainly heard steps in the street, and the voices of Shadrach and her sons calling at the door of the grocery shop.  She sprang out of bed, and, hardly knowing what clothing she dragged on herself; hastened down Emily’s large and carpeted staircase, put the candle on the hall-table, unfastened the bolts and chain, and stepped into the street.  The mist, blowing up the street from the Quay, hindered her seeing the shop, although it was so near; but she had crossed to it in a moment.  How was it?  Nobody stood there.  The wretched woman walked wildly up and down with her bare feet — there was not a soul.  She returned and knocked with all her might at the door which had once been her own — they might have been admitted for the night, unwilling to disturb her till the morning.

It was not till several minutes had elapsed that the young man who now kept the shop looked out of an upper window, and saw the skeleton of something human standing below half-dressed.

‘Has anybody come?’ asked the form.

‘O, Mrs. Jolliffe, I didn’t know it was you,’ said the young man kindly, for he was aware how her baseless expectations moved her.  ‘No; nobody has come.’

June
1891.

THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION

CHAPTER I

Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged since those eventful days.  A plough has never disturbed the turf, and the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now.  Here stood the camp; here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the cavalry, and spots where the midden-heaps lay are still to be observed.  At night, when I walk across the lonely place, it is impossible to avoid hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the grass-bents and thistles, the old trumpet and bugle calls, the rattle of the halters; to help seeing rows of spectral tents and the
impedimenta
of the soldiery.  From within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and broken songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the King’s German Legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that time.

It was nearly ninety years ago.  The British uniform of the period, with its immense epaulettes, queer cocked-hat, breeches, gaiters, ponderous cartridge-box, buckled shoes, and what not, would look strange and barbarous now.  Ideas have changed; invention has followed invention.  Soldiers were monumental objects then.  A divinity still hedged kings here and there; and war was considered a glorious thing.

Secluded old manor-houses and hamlets lie in the ravines and hollows among these hills, where a stranger had hardly ever been seen till the King chose to take the baths yearly at the sea-side watering-place a few miles to the south; as a consequence of which battalions descended in a cloud upon the open country around.  Is it necessary to add that the echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time, still linger about here in more or less fragmentary form, to be caught by the attentive ear?  Some of them I have repeated; most of them I have forgotten; one I have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget.