Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (833 page)

‘Has she forgiven you?’ said I.

‘I have not asked her,’ he said.

‘But you are bound to do so,’ I told him.

He paused, and then said, ‘Alicia, let us understand each other. Do you mean to tell me, once for all, that if your sister is willing to become my wife you absolutely make way for her, and will not entertain any thought of what I suggested to you any more ?’

‘I do tell you so, said I with dry lips. ‘You belong to her - how can I do otherwise?’

‘Yes; it is so; it is purely a question of honour,’ he returned. ‘Very well then, honour shall be my word, and not my love. I will put the question to her frankly; if she says yes, the marriage shall be. But not here. It shall be at your own house in England.’

‘When?’ said I.

‘I will accompany her there,’ he replied, ‘and it shall be within a week of her return. I have nothing to gain by delay. But I will not answer for the consequences.’

‘What do you mean?’ said I. He made no reply, went away, and I came back to my room.

IX. — SHE WITNESSES THE END

April 20. Milan, 10:30 p.m. - We are thus far on our way homeward. I, being decidedly de trop, travel apart from the rest as much as I can. Having dined at the hotel here, I went out by myself, regardless of the proprieties, for I could not stay in. I walked at a leisurely pace along the Via Allesandro Manzoni till my eye was caught by the grand Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and I entered under the high glass arcades till I reached the central octagon, where I sat down on one of a group of chairs placed there. Becoming accustomed to the stream of promenaders, I soon observed, seated on the chairs opposite, Caroline and Charles. This was the first occasion on which I had seen them en tete a tete since my conversation with him. She soon caught sight of me; averted her eyes; then, apparently abandoning herself to an impulse, she jumped up from her seat and came across to me. We had not spoken to each other since the meeting in Venice.

‘Alicia,’ she said, sitting down by my side, ‘Charles asks me to forgive you, and I do forgive you.’

I pressed her hand, with tears in my eyes, and said, ‘And do you forgive him?’

‘Yes,’ said she shyly.

‘And what’s the result?’ said I.

‘We are to be married directly we reach home.’

This was almost the whole of our conversation; she walked home with me, Charles following a little way behind, though she kept turning her head, as if anxious that he should overtake us. ‘Honour and not love’ seemed to ring in my ears. So matters stand. Caroline is again happy.

April 25. — We have reached home, Charles with us. Events are now moving in silent speed, almost with velocity, indeed; and I sometimes feel oppressed by the strange and preternatural ease which seems to accompany their flow. Charles is staying at the neighbouring town; he is only waiting for the marriage licence; when obtained he is to come here, be quietly married to her, and carry her off. It is rather resignation than content which sits on his face; but he has not spoken a word more to me on the burning subject or deviated one hair’s breadth from the course he laid down. They may be happy in time to come: I hope so. But I cannot shake off depression.

May 6. — Eve of the wedding. Caroline is serenely happy, though not blithe. But there is nothing to excite anxiety about her. I wish I could say the same of him. He comes and goes like a ghost, and yet nobody seems to observe this strangeness in his mien. I could not help being here for the ceremony; but my absence would have resulted in less disquiet on his part, I believe. However, I may be wrong in attributing causes: my father simply says that Charles and Caroline have as good a chance of being happy as other people. Well, to-morrow settles all.

May 7. — They are married: we have just returned from church. Charles looked so pale this morning that my father asked him if he was ill. He said, ‘No: only a slight headache;’ and we started for the church. There was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done.

4 p.m. — They ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but there is an unaccountable delay. Charles went out half-an-hour ago, and has not yet returned. Caroline is waiting in the hall; but I am dreadfully afraid they will miss the train. I suppose the trifling hindrance is of no account; and yet I am full of misgivings. . . .

Sept. 14. — Four months have passed; only four months! It seems like years. Can it be that only seventeen weeks ago I set on this paper the fact of their marriage? I am now an aged woman by comparison!

On that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and Charles did not return. At six o’clock, when poor little Caroline had gone back to her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father. He had an interview with him in the study. My father then rang his bell, and sent for me. I went down; and I then learnt the fatal news. Charles was no more. The waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something strange at the bottom. He knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body. It is needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time. Charles was brought to the house, but he was dead.

We all feared for Caroline; and she suffered much; but strange to say, her suffering was purely of the nature of deep grief which found relief in sobbing and tears. It came out at the inquest that Charles had been accustomed to cross the meads to give an occasional half-crown to an old man who lived on the opposite hill, who had once been a landscape painter in an humble way till he lost his eyesight; and it was assumed that he had gone thither for the same purpose to-day, and to bid him farewell. On this information the coroner’s jury found that his death had been caused by misadventure; and everybody believes to this hour that he was drowned while crossing the weir to relieve the old man. Except one: she believes in no accident. After the stunning effect of the first news, I thought it strange that he should have chosen to go on such an errand at the last moment, and to go personally, when there was so little time to spare, since any gift could have been so easily sent by another hand. Further reflection has convinced me that this step out of life was as much a part of the day’s plan as was the wedding in the church hard by. They were the two halves of his complete intention when he gave me on the Grand Canal that assurance which I shall never forget: ‘Very well, then; honour shall be my word, not love. If she says “Yes,” the marriage shall be.’

I do not know why I should have made this entry at this particular time; but it has occurred to me to do it — to complete, in a measure, that part of my desultory chronicle which relates to the love-story of my sister and Charles. She lives on meekly in her grief, and will probably outlive it; while I — but never mind me.

X. — SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER

Five years later. — I have lighted upon this old diary, which it has interested me to look over, containing, as it does, records of the time when life shone in more warmly in my eye than it does now. I am impelled to add one sentence to round off its record of the past. About a year ago my sister Caroline, after a persistent wooing, accepted the hand and heart of Theophilus Higham, once the blushing young Scripture reader who assisted at the substitute for a marriage I planned, and now the fully-ordained curate of the next parish. His penitence for the part he played ended in love. We have all now made atonement for our sins against her: may she be deceived no more.

1887.

The Waiting Supper

I

Whoever had perceived the yeoman standing on Squire Everard’s lawn in the dusk of that October evening fifty years ago, might have said at first sight that he was loitering there from idle curiosity.  For a large five-light window of the manor-house in front of him was unshuttered and uncurtained, so that the illuminated room within could be scanned almost to its four corners.  Obviously nobody was ever expected to be in this part of the grounds after nightfall.

The apartment thus swept by an eye from without was occupied by two persons; they were sitting over dessert, the tablecloth having been removed in the old-fashioned way.  The fruits were local, consisting of apples, pears, nuts, and such other products of the summer as might be presumed to grow on the estate.  There was strong ale and rum on the table, and but little wine.  Moreover, the appointments of the dining-room were simple and homely even for the date, betokening a countrified household of the smaller gentry, without much wealth or ambition — formerly a numerous class, but now in great part ousted by the territorial landlords.

One of the two sitters was a young lady in white muslin, who listened somewhat impatiently to the remarks of her companion, an elderly, rubicund personage, whom the merest stranger could have pronounced to be her father.  The watcher evinced no signs of moving, and it became evident that affairs were not so simple as they first had seemed.  The tall farmer was in fact no accidental spectator, and he stood by premeditation close to the trunk of a tree, so that had any traveller passed along the road without the park gate, or even round the lawn to the door, that person would scarce have noticed the other, notwithstanding that the gate was quite near at hand, and the park little larger than a paddock.  There was still light enough in the western heaven to brighten faintly one side of the man’s face, and to show against the trunk of the tree behind the admirable cut of his profile; also to reveal that the front of the manor-house, small though it seemed, was solidly built of stone in that never-to-be surpassed style for the English country residence — the mullioned and transomed Elizabethan.

The lawn, although neglected, was still as level as a bowling green — which indeed it might once have served for; and the blades of grass before the window were raked by the candle-shine, which stretched over them so far as to touch the yeoman’s face in front.

Within the dining-room there were also, with one of the twain, the same signs of a hidden purpose that marked the farmer.  The young lady’s mind was straying as clearly into the shadows as that of the loiterer was fixed upon the room — nay, it could be said that she was quite conscious of his presence outside.  Impatience caused her foot to beat silently on the carpet, and she more than once rose to leave the table.  This proceeding was checked by her father, who would put his hand upon her shoulder and unceremoniously press her down into her chair, till he should have concluded his observations.  Her replies were brief enough, and there was factitiousness in her smiles of assent to his views.  A small iron casement between two of the mullions was open, and some occasional words of the dialogue were audible without.

‘As for drains — how can I put in drains?  The pipes don’t cost much, that’s true; but the labour in sinking the trenches is ruination.  And then the gates — they should be hung to stone posts, otherwise there’s no keeping them up through harvest.’ The Squire’s voice was strongly toned with the local accent, so that he said ‘drains’ and ‘geats’ like the rustics on his estate.

The landscape without grew darker, and the young man’s figure seemed to be absorbed into the trunk of the tree.  The small stars filled in between the larger, the nebulae between the small stars, the trees quite lost their voice; and if there was still a sound, it was from the cascade of a stream which stretched along under the trees that bounded the lawn on its northern side.

At last the young girl did get to her feet and secure her retreat.  ‘I have something to do, papa,’ she said.  I shall not be in the drawing-room just yet.’

‘Very well,’ replied he.  ‘Then I won’t hurry.’ And closing the door behind her, he drew his decanters together and settled down in his chair.

Three minutes after that a woman’s shape emerged from the drawing room window, and passing through a wall-door to the entrance front, came across the grass. She kept well clear of the dining-room window, but enough of its light fell on her to show, escaping from the dark-hooded cloak that she wore, stray verges of the same light dress which had figured but recently at the dinner-table.  The hood was contracted tight about her face with a drawing-string, making her countenance small and baby-like, and lovelier even than before.

Without hesitation she brushed across the grass to the tree under which the young man stood concealed.  The moment she had reached him he enclosed her form with his arm.  The meeting and embrace, though by no means formal, were yet not passionate; the whole proceeding was that of persons who had repeated the act so often as to be unconscious of its performance.  She turned within his arm, and faced in the same direction with himself, which was towards the window; and thus they stood without speaking, the back of her head leaning against his shoulder.  For a while each seemed to be thinking his and her diverse thoughts.

‘You have kept me waiting a long time, dear Christine,’ he said at last.  ‘I wanted to speak to you particularly, or I should not have stayed.  How came you to be dining at this time o’ night?’

‘Father has been out all day, and dinner was put back till six.  I know I have kept you; but Nicholas, how can I help it sometimes, if I am not to run any risk?  My poor father insists upon my listening to all he has to say; since my brother left he has had nobody else to listen to him; and tonight he was particularly tedious on his usual topics — draining, and tenant-farmers, and the village people.  I must take daddy to London; he gets so narrow always staying here.’

‘And what did you say to it all?’

‘Well, I took the part of the tenant-farmers, of course, as the beloved of one should in duty do.’  There followed a little break or gasp, implying a strangled sigh.

‘You are sorry you have encouraged that beloving one?’

‘O no, Nicholas ... What is it you want to see me for particularly?’

‘I know you are sorry, as time goes on, and everything is at a dead-lock, with no prospect of change, and your rural swain loses his freshness!  Only think, this secret understanding between us has lasted near three year, ever since you was a little over sixteen.’