Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (773 page)

“If I’m on this earth I’ll come home and marry you.”

And then followed the good-bye.

III

In the Spring came the examination. One morning a newspaper directed by Oswald was placed in her hands, and she opened it to find it was a copy of the Times. In the middle of the sheet, in the most conspicuous place, in the excellent neighbourhood of the leading articles, was a list of names, and the first on the list was Oswald Winwood. Attached to his name, as showing where he was educated, was the simple title of some obscure little academy, while underneath came public school and college men in shoals. Such a case occurs sometimes, and it occurred then.

How Agatha clapped her hands! for her selfish wish to have him in England at any price, even that of failure, had been but a paroxysm of the wretched parting, and was now quite extinct. Circumstances combined to hinder another meeting between them before his departure, and, accordingly, making up her mind to the inevitable in a way which would have done honour to an older head, she fixed her mental vision on that sunlit future — far away, yet always nearing — and contemplated its probabilities with a firm hope.

At length he had arrived in India, and now Agatha had only to work and wait; and the former made the latter more easy. In her spare hours she would wander about the river banks and into the coppices and there weave thoughts of him by processes that young women understand so well. She kept a diary, and in this, since there were few events to chronicle in her daily life, she sketched the changes of the landscape, noted the arrival and departure of birds of passage, the times of storms and foul weather — all which information, being mixed up with her life and taking colour from it, she sent as scraps in her letters to him, deriving most of her enjoyment in contemplating his.

Oswald, on his part, corresponded very regularly. Knowing the days of the Indian mail, she would go at such times to meet the post-man in early morning, and to her unvarying inquiry, “A letter for me?” it was seldom, indeed, that there came a disappointing answer. Thus the season passed, and Oswald told her he should be a judge some day, with many other details, which, in her mind, were viewed chiefly in their bearing on the grand consummation — that he was to come home and marry her.

Meanwhile, as the girl grew older and more womanly, the woman whose name she had once stolen for a day grew more of an old maid, and showed symptoms of fading. One day Agatha’s uncle, who, though still a handsome man in the prime of his life was a widower with four children, to whom she acted the part of eldest sister, told Agatha that Frances Lovill was about to become his second wife.

“Well!” said Agatha, and thought, “What an end for a beauty!”

And yet it was all reasonable enough, notwithstanding that Miss Lovill might have looked a little higher. Agatha knew that this step would produce great alterations in the small household of Cloton Mill, and the idea of having as aunt and ruler the woman to whom she was in some sense indebted for a lover, affected Agatha with a slight thrill of dread. Yet nothing had ever been spoken between the two women to show that Frances had heard, much less resented, the explanation in the van on that night of the return from Weymouth.

IV

On a certain day old farmer Lovill called. He was of the same family as Frances, though their relationship was distant. A considerable business in corn had been done from time to time between miller and farmer, but the latter had seldom called at Pollin’s house. He was a bachelor, or he would probably never have appeared in this history, and he was mostly full of a boyish merriment rare in one of his years. To-day his business with the miller had been so imperative as to bring him in person, and it was evident from their talk in the mill that the matter was payment. Perhaps ten minutes had been spent in serious converse when the old farmer turned away from the door, and, without saying good-morning, went toward the bridge. This was unusual for a man of his temperament.

He was an old man — really and fairly old — sixty-five years of age at least. He was not exactly feeble, but he found a stick useful when walking in a high wind. His eyes were not yet bleared, but in their corners was occasionally a moisture like majolica glaze — entirely absent in youth. His face was not shrivelled, but there were unmistakable puckers in some places. And hence the old gentleman, unmarried, substantial, and cheery as he was, was not doted on by the young girls of Cloton as he had been by their mothers in former time. Each year his breast impended a little further over his toes, and his chin a little further over his breast, and in proportion as he turned down his nose to earth did pretty females turn up theirs at him. They might have liked him as a friend had he not shown the abnormal wish to be regarded as a lover. To Agatha Pollin this aged youth was positively distasteful.

It happened that at the hour of Mr Lovill’s visit Agatha was bending over the pool at the mill head, sousing some white fabric in the water. She was quite unconscious of the farmer’s presence near her, and continued dipping and rinsing in the idlest phase possible to industry, until she remained quite still, holding the article under the water, and looking at her own reflection within it. The river, though gliding slowly, was yet so smooth that to the old man on the bridge she existed in duplicate — the pouting mouth, the little nose, the frizzed hair, the bit of blue ribbon, as they existed over the surface, being but a degree more, distinct than the same features beneath.

“What a pretty maid!” said the old man to himself. He walked up the margin of the stream, and stood beside her.

“Oh!” said Agatha, starting with surprise. In her flurry she relinquished the article she had been rinsing, which slowly turned over and sank deeper, and made toward the hatch of the mill-wheel.

“There — it will get into the wheel, and be torn to pieces!” she exclaimed.

“I’ll fish it out with my stick, my dear,” said Farmer Lovill, and kneeling cautiously down he began hooking and crooking with all his might. “What thing is it of much value?”

“Yes; it is my best one!” she said involuntarily.

“It — what is the it?”

“Only something — a piece of linen.” Just then the farmer hooked the endangered article, and dragging it out, held it high on his walking-stick — dripping, but safe.

“Why, it is a chemise!” he said.

The girl looked red, and instead of taking it from the end of the stick, turned away.

“Hee-hee!” laughed the ancient man. “Well, my dear, there’s nothing to be ashamed of that I can see in owning to such a necessary and innocent article of clothing. There, I’ll put it on the grass for you, and you shall take it when I am gone.”

Then Farmer Lovill retired, lifting his fingers privately, to express amazement on a small scale, and murmuring, “What a nice young thing! Well, to be sure. Yes, a nice child — young woman rather indeed, a marriageable woman, come to that; of course she is.”

The doting old person thought of the young one all this day in a way that the young one did not think of him. He thought so much about her, that in the evening, instead of going to bed, he hobbled privately out by the back door into the moonlight, crossed a field or two, and stood in the lane, looking at the mill — not more in the hope of getting a glimpse of the attractive girl inside than for the pleasure of realising that she was there.

A light moved within, came nearer, and ascended. The staircase window was large, and he saw his goddess going up with a candle in her hand. This was indeed worth coming for. He feared he was seen by her as well, yet hoped otherwise in the interests of his passion, for she came and drew down the window blind, completely shutting out his gaze. The light vanished from this part, and reappeared in a window a little further on.

The lover drew nearer; this, then, was her bedroom. He rested vigorously upon his stick, and straightening his back nearly to a perpendicular, turned up his amorous face.

She came to the window, paused, then opened it.

“Bess its deary-eary heart! it is going to speak to me!” said the old man, moistening his lips, resting still more desperately upon his stick, and straightening himself yet an inch taller. “She saw me then!”

Agatha, however, made no sign; she was bent on a far different purpose. In a box on her window-sill was a row of mignonette, which had been sadly neglected since her lover’s departure, and she began to water it, as if inspired by a sudden recollection of its condition. She poured from her water-jug slowly along the plants, and then, to her astonishment, discerned her elderly friend below.

“A rude old thing!” she murmured.

Directing the spout of the jug over the edge of the box, and looking in another direction that it might appear to be an accident, she allowed the stream to spatter down upon her admirer’s face, neck, and shoulders, causing him to beat a quick retreat. Then Agatha serenely closed the window, and drew down that blind also.

“Ah! she did not see me; it was evident she did not, and I was mistaken!” said the trembling farmer, hastily wiping his face, and mopping out the rills trickling down within his shirt-collar as far as he could get at them, which was by no means to their termination. “A pretty creature, and so innocent, too! Watering her flowers; how like a girl who is fond of flowers! I wish she had spoken, and I wish I was younger. Yes, I know what I’d do with the little mouse!” And the old gentleman tapped emotionally upon the ground with his stick.

V

“Agatha, I suppose you have heard the news from somebody else by this time?” said her Uncle Humphrey some two or three weeks later.

“I mean what Farmer Lovill has been talking to me about.”

“No, indeed” said Agatha.

“He wants to marry ye if you be willing.”

“O, I never!” said Agatha with dismay. “That old man!”

“Old? He’s hale and hearty; and what’s more, a man very well to do. He’ll make you a comfortable home, and dress ye up like a doll, and I’m sure ou’ll like that, or you baint a woman of woman born.”

“But it can’t be, uncle! other reasons — “

“What reasons?”

“Why, I’ve promised Oswald Winwood — years ago!”

“Promised Oswald Winwood years ago, have you?”

“Yes; surely you know it Uncle Humphrey. And we write to one another regularly.”

“Well, I can just call to mind that ye are always scribbling and getting letters from somewhere. Let me see — where is he now? I quite forget.”

“In India still. Is it possible that you don’t know about him, and what a great man he’s getting? There are paragraphs about him in our paper very often. The last was about some translation from Hindostani that he’d been making. And he’s coming home for me.”

“I very much question it. Lovill will marry you at once, he says.”

“Indeed, he will not.”

“Well, I don’t want to force you to do anything against your will, Agatha, but this is how the matter stands. You know I am a little behind in my dealings with Lovill — nothing serious, you know, if he gives me time — but I want to be free of him quite in order to go to Australia.”

“Australia!”

“Yes. There’s nothing to be done here. I don’t know what business is coming to — can’t think. But never mind that; this is the point: if you will marry Farmer Lovill, he offers to clear off the debt, and there will no longer be any delay about my own marriage; in short, away I can go. I mean to, and there’s an end on’t.”

“What, and leave me at home alone?”

“Yes, but a married woman, of course. You see the children are getting big now. John is twelve and Nathaniel ten, and the girls are growing fast, and when I am married again I shall hardly want you to keep house for me — in fact, I must reduce our family as much as possible. So that if you could bring your mind to think of Farmer Lovill as a husband, why, ‘twould be a great relief to me after having the trouble and expense of bringing you up. If I can in that way edge out of Lovill’s debt I shall have a nice bit of money in hand.”

“But Oswald will be richer even than Mr Lovill,” said Agatha, through her tears.

“Yes, yes. But Oswald is not here, nor is he likely to be. How silly you be.”

“But he will come, and soon, with his eleven hundred a year and all.

“I wish to Heaven he would. I’m sure he might have you.”

“Now, you promise that, uncle, don’t you?” she said, brightening. “If he comes with plenty of money before you want to leave, he shall marry me, and nobody else.”

“Ay, if he comes. But, Agatha, no nonsense. Just think of what I’ve been telling you. And at any rate be civil to Farmer Lovill. If this man Winwood were here and asked for ye, and married ye, that would be a very different thing. I do mind now that I saw something about him and his doings in the papers; but he’s a fine gentleman by this time, and won’t think of stooping to a girl like you. So you’d better take the one who is ready; old men’s darlings fare very well as the world goes. We shall be off in nine months, mind, that I’ve settled. And you must be a married woman afore that time, and wish us good-bye upon your husband’s arm.”

“That old arm couldn’t support me.”

“And if you don’t agree to have him, you’ll take a couple of hundred pounds out of my pocket; you’ll ruin my chances altogether — that’s the long and the short of it.”

Saying which the gloury man turned his back upon her, and his footsteps became drowned in the rumble of the mill.

VI

Nothing so definite was said to her again on the matter for sometime. The old yeoman hovered round her, but, knowing the result of the interview between Agatha and her uncle, he forbore to endanger his suit by precipitancy. But one afternoon he could not avoid saying, “Aggie, when may I speak to you upon a serious subject?”

“Next week,” she replied, instantly.

He had not been prepared for such a ready answer, and it startled him almost as much as it pleased him. Had he known the cause of it his emotions might have been different. Agatha, with all the womanly strategy she was capable of, had written post-haste to Oswald after the conversation with her uncle, and told him of the dilemma. At the end of the present week his answer, if he replied with his customary punctuality, would be sure to come. Fortified with his letter she thought she could meet the old man. Oswald she did not doubt.