Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (766 page)

Three days after this meeting and farewell, Alwyn, his soft, handsome features stamped with a haggard hardness that ten years of ordinary wear and tear in the world could scarcely have produced, sailed from Plymouth on a drizzling morning, in the passenger-ship
Western Glory
.  When the land had faded behind him he mechanically endeavoured to school himself into a stoical frame of mind.  His attempt, backed up by the strong moral staying power that had enabled him to resist the passionate temptation to which Emmeline, in her reckless trustfulness, had exposed him, was rewarded by a certain kind of success, though the murmuring stretch of waters whereon he gazed day after day too often seemed to be articulating to him in tones of her well-remembered voice.

He framed on his journey rules of conduct for reducing to mild proportions the feverish regrets which would occasionally arise and agitate him, when he indulged in visions of what might have been had he not hearkened to the whispers of conscience.  He fixed his thoughts for so many hours a day on philosophical passages in the volumes he had brought with him, allowing himself now and then a few minutes’ thought of Emmeline, with the strict yet reluctant niggardliness of an ailing epicure proportioning the rank drinks that cause his malady.  The voyage was marked by the usual incidents of a sailing-passage in those days — a storm, a calm, a man overboard, a birth, and a funeral — the latter sad event being one in which he, as the only clergyman on board, officiated, reading the service ordained for the purpose.  The ship duly arrived at Boston early in the month following, and thence he proceeded to Providence to seek out a distant relative.

After a short stay at Providence he returned again to Boston, and by applying himself to a serious occupation made good progress in shaking off the dreary melancholy which enveloped him even now.  Distracted and weakened in his beliefs by his recent experiences, he decided that he could not for a time worthily fill the office of a minister of religion, and applied for the mastership of a school.  Some introductions, given him before starting, were useful now, and he soon became known as a respectable scholar and gentleman to the trustees of one of the colleges.  This ultimately led to his retirement from the school and installation in the college as Professor of rhetoric and oratory.

Here and thus he lived on, exerting himself solely because of a conscientious determination to do his duty.  He passed his winter evenings in turning sonnets and elegies, often giving his thoughts voice in ‘Lines to an Unfortunate Lady,’ while his summer leisure at the same hour would be spent in watching the lengthening shadows from his window, and fancifully comparing them with the shades of his own life.  If he walked, he mentally inquired which was the eastern quarter of the landscape, and thought of two thousand miles of water that way, and of what was beyond it.  In a word he was at all spare times dreaming of her who was only a memory to him, and would probably never be more.

Nine years passed by, and under their wear and tear Alwyn Hill’s face lost a great many of the attractive characteristics which had formerly distinguished it.  He was kind to his pupils and affable to all who came in contact with him; but the kernel of his life, his secret, was kept as snugly shut up as though he had been dumb.  In talking to his acquaintances of England and his life there, he omitted the episode of Batton Castle and Emmeline as if it had no existence in his calendar at all.  Though of towering importance to himself, it had filled but a short and small fragment of time, an ephemeral season which would have been wellnigh imperceptible, even to him, at this distance, but for the incident it enshrined.

One day, at this date, when cursorily glancing over an old English newspaper, he observed a paragraph which, short as it was, contained for him whole tomes of thrilling information — rung with more passion-stirring rhythm than the collected cantos of all the poets.  It was an announcement of the death of the Duke of Hamptonshire, leaving behind him a widow, but no children.

The current of Alwyn’s thoughts now completely changed.  On looking again at the newspaper he found it to be one that was sent him long ago, and had been carelessly thrown aside.  But for an accidental overhauling of the waste journals in his study he might not have known of the event for years.  At this moment of reading the Duke had already been dead seven months.  Alwyn could now no longer bind himself down to machine-made synecdoche, antithesis, and climax, being full of spontaneous specimens of all these rhetorical forms, which he dared not utter.  Who shall wonder that his mind luxuriated in dreams of a sweet possibility now laid open for the first time these many years? for Emmeline was to him now as ever the one dear thing in all the world.  The issue of his silent romancing was that he resolved to return to her at the very earliest moment.

But he could not abandon his professional work on the instant.  He did not get really quite free from engagements till four months later; but, though suffering throes of impatience continually, he said to himself every day: ‘If she has continued to love me nine years she will love me ten; she will think the more tenderly of me when her present hours of solitude shall have done their proper work; old times will revive with the cessation of her recent experience, and every day will favour my return.’

The enforced interval soon passed, and he duly arrived in England, reaching the village of Batton on a certain winter day between twelve and thirteen months subsequent to the time of the Duke’s death.

It was evening; yet such was Alwyn’s impatience that he could not forbear taking, this very night, one look at the castle which Emmeline had entered as unhappy mistress ten years before.  He threaded the park trees, gazed in passing at well-known outlines which rose against the dim sky, and was soon interested in observing that lively country-people, in parties of two and three, were walking before and behind him up the interlaced avenue to the castle gateway.  Knowing himself to be safe from recognition, Alwyn inquired of one of these pedestrians what was going on.

‘Her Grace gives her tenantry a ball to-night, to keep up the old custom of the Duke and his father before him, which she does not wish to change.’

‘Indeed.  Has she lived here entirely alone since the Duke’s death?’

‘Quite alone.  But though she doesn’t receive company herself, she likes the village people to enjoy themselves, and often has ‘em here.’

‘Kind-hearted, as always!’ thought Alwyn.

On reaching the castle he found that the great gates at the tradesmen’s entrance were thrown back against the wall as if they were never to be closed again; that the passages and rooms in that wing were brilliantly lighted up, some of the numerous candles guttering down over the green leaves which decorated them, and upon the silk dresses of the happy farmers’ wives as they passed beneath, each on her husband’s arm.  Alwyn found no difficulty in marching in along with the rest, the castle being Liberty Hall to-night.  He stood unobserved in a corner of the large apartment where dancing was about to begin.

‘Her Grace, though hardly out of mourning, will be sure to come down and lead off the dance with neighbour Bates,’ said one.

‘Who is neighbour Bates?’ asked Alwyn.

‘An old man she respects much — the oldest of her tenant-farmers.  He was seventy-eight his last birthday.’

‘Ah, to be sure!’ said Alwyn, at his ease.  ‘I remember.’

The dancers formed in line, and waited.  A door opened at the farther end of the hall, and a lady in black silk came forth.  She bowed, smiled, and proceeded to the top of the dance.

‘Who is that lady?’ said Alwyn, in a puzzled tone.  ‘I thought you told me that the Duchess of Hamptonshire — ’

‘That is the Duchess,’ said his informant.

‘But there is another?’

‘No; there is no other.’

‘But she is not the Duchess of Hamptonshire — who used to — ’ Alwyn’s tongue stuck to his mouth, he could get no farther.

‘What’s the matter?’ said his acquaintance.  Alwyn had retired, and was supporting himself against the wall.

The wretched Alwyn murmured something about a stitch in his side from walking.  Then the music struck up, the dance went on, and his neighbour became so interested in watching the movements of this strange Duchess through its mazes as to forget Alwyn for a while.

It gave him an opportunity to brace himself up.  He was a man who had suffered, and he could suffer again.  ‘How came that person to be your Duchess?’ he asked in a firm, distinct voice, when he had attained complete self-command.  ‘Where is her other Grace of Hamptonshire?  There certainly was another.  I know it.’

‘Oh, the previous one!  Yes, yes.  She ran away years and years ago with the young curate.  Mr. Hill was the young man’s name, if I recollect.’

‘No!  She never did.  What do you mean by that?’ he said.

‘Yes, she certainly ran away.  She met the curate in the shrubbery about a couple of months after her marriage with the Duke.  There were folks who saw the meeting and heard some words of their talk.  They arranged to go, and she sailed from Plymouth with him a day or two afterward.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Then ‘tis the queerest lie ever told by man.  Her father believed and knew to his dying day that she went with him; and so did the Duke, and everybody about here.  Ay, there was a fine upset about it at the time.  The Duke traced her to Plymouth.’

‘Traced her to Plymouth?’

‘He traced her to Plymouth, and set on his spies; and they found that she went to the shipping-office, and inquired if Mr. Alwyn Hill had entered his name as passenger by the
Western Glory
; and when she found that he had, she booked herself for the same ship, but not in her real name.  When the vessel had sailed a letter reached the Duke from her, telling him what she had done.  She never came back here again.  His Grace lived by himself a number of years, and married this lady only twelve months before he died.’

Alwyn was in a state of indescribable bewilderment.  But, unmanned as he was, he called the next day on the, to him, spurious Duchess of Hamptonshire.  At first she was alarmed at his statement, then cold, then she was won over by his condition to give confidence for confidence.  She showed him a letter which had been found among the papers of the late Duke, corroborating what Alwyn’s informant had detailed.  It was from Emmeline, bearing the postmarked date at which the
Western Glory
sailed, and briefly stated that she had emigrated by that ship to America.

Alwyn applied himself body and mind to unravel the remainder of the mystery.  The story repeated to him was always the same: ‘She ran away with the curate.’  A strangely circumstantial piece of intelligence was added to this when he had pushed his inquiries a little further.  There was given him the name of a waterman at Plymouth, who had come forward at the time that she was missed and sought for by her husband, and had stated that he put her on board the
Western Glory
at dusk one evening before that vessel sailed.

After several days of search about the alleys and quays of Plymouth Barbican, during which these impossible words, ‘She ran off with the curate,’ became branded on his brain, Alwyn found this important waterman.  He was positive as to the truth of his story, still remembering the incident well, and he described in detail the lady’s dress, as he had long ago described it to her husband, which description corresponded in every particular with the dress worn by Emmeline on the evening of their parting.

Before proceeding to the other side of the Atlantic to continue his inquiries there, the puzzled and distracted Alwyn set himself to ascertain the address of Captain Wheeler, who had commanded the
Western Glory
in the year of Alwyn’s voyage out, and immediately wrote a letter to him on the subject.

The only circumstances which the sailor could recollect or discover from his papers in connection with such a story were, that a woman bearing the name which Alwyn had mentioned as fictitious certainly did come aboard for a voyage he made about that time; that she took a common berth among the poorest emigrants; that she died on the voyage out, at about five days’ sail from Plymouth; that she seemed a lady in manners and education.  Why she had not applied for a first-class passage, why she had no trunks, they could not guess, for though she had little money in her pocket she had that about her which would have fetched it.  ‘We buried her at sea,’ continued the captain.  ‘A young parson, one of the cabin-passengers, read the burial-service over her, I remember well.’

The whole scene and proceedings darted upon Alwyn’s recollection in a moment.  It was a fine breezy morning on that long-past voyage out, and he had been told that they were running at the rate of a hundred and odd miles a day.  The news went round that one of the poor young women in the other part of the vessel was ill of fever, and delirious.  The tidings caused no little alarm among all the passengers, for the sanitary conditions of the ship were anything but satisfactory.  Shortly after this the doctor announced that she had died.  Then Alwyn had learnt that she was laid out for burial in great haste, because of the danger that would have been incurred by delay.  And next the funeral scene rose before him, and the prominent part that he had taken in that solemn ceremony.  The captain had come to him, requesting him to officiate, as there was no chaplain on board.  This he had agreed to do; and as the sun went down with a blaze in his face he read amidst them all assembled: ‘We therefore commit her body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead.’

The captain also forwarded the addresses of the ship’s matron and of other persons who had been engaged on board at the date.  To these Alwyn went in the course of time.  A categorical description of the clothes of the dead truant, the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished for ever all hope of a mistake in identity.

At last, then, the course of events had become clear.  On that unhappy evening when he left Emmeline in the shrubbery, forbidding her to follow him because it would be a sin, she must have disobeyed.  She must have followed at his heels silently through the darkness, like a poor pet animal that will not be driven back.  She could have accumulated nothing for the journey more than she might have carried in her hand; and thus poorly provided she must have embarked.  Her intention had doubtless been to make her presence on board known to him as soon as she could muster courage to do so.