Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (85 page)
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Authors: Thomas Hardy
Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was obtainable out of six hours’ experience as a wife, in order that the contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained, she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat prominent position in which that wonderfully-emblazoned left hand was continually found to be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives, forks, and glasses, was quite the result of accident. As to wishing to excite envy in the bosoms of her maiden companions, by the exhibition of the shining ring, every one was to know it was quite foreign to the dignity of such an experienced married woman. Dick’s imagination in the meantime was far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his new condition. He had been for two or three hours trying to feel himself merely a newly-married man, but had been able to get no further in the attempt than to realise that he was Dick Dewy, the tranter’s son, at a party given by Lord Wessex’s head man-in-charge, on the outlying Yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day.
Five country dances, including ‘Haste to the Wedding,’ two reels, and three fragments of horn-pipes, brought them to the time for supper, which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the immaturity of the summer season, was spread indoors. At the conclusion of the meal Dick went out to put the horse in; and Fancy, with the elder half of the four bridesmaids, retired upstairs to dress for the journey to Dick’s new cottage near Mellstock.
“How long will you be putting on your bonnet, Fancy?” Dick inquired at the foot of the staircase. Being now a man of business and married, he was strong on the importance of time, and doubled the emphasis of his words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods.
“Only a minute.”
“How long is that?”
“Well, dear, five.”
“Ah, sonnies!” said the tranter, as Dick retired, “‘tis a talent of the female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of money.”
“True, true, upon my body,” said Geoffrey.
“Ye spak with feeling, Geoffrey, seemingly.”
“Anybody that d’know my experience might guess that.”
“What’s she doing now, Geoffrey?”
“Claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the second-best chainey — a thing that’s only done once a year. ‘If there’s work to be done I must do it,’ says she, ‘wedding or no.’”
“‘Tis my belief she’s a very good woman at bottom.”
“She’s terrible deep, then.”
Mrs. Penny turned round. “Well, ‘tis humps and hollers with the best of us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair a chance of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land.”
“Ay, there’s no gainsaying it.”
Mrs. Dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another. “Happy, yes,” she said. “‘Tis always so when a couple is so exactly in tune with one another as Dick and she.”
“When they be’n’t too poor to have time to sing,” said grandfather James.
“I tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes,” said the tranter: “when the oldest daughter’s boots be only a size less than her mother’s, and the rest o’ the flock close behind her. A sharp time for a man that, my sonnies; a very sharp time! Chanticleer’s comb is a-cut then, ‘a believe.”
“That’s about the form o’t,” said Mr. Penny. “That’ll put the stuns upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter’s lasts to tell ‘em apart.”
“You’ve no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock,” said Mrs. Dewy; “for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows!”
“I d’know it, I d’know it,” said the tranter. “You be a well-enough woman, Ann.”
Mrs. Dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, and put it back again without smiling.
“And if they come together, they go together,” said Mrs. Penny, whose family had been the reverse of the tranter’s; “and a little money will make either fate tolerable. And money can be made by our young couple, I know.”
“Yes, that it can!” said the impulsive voice of Leaf, who had hitherto humbly admired the proceedings from a corner. “It can be done — all that’s wanted is a few pounds to begin with. That’s all! I know a story about it!”
“Let’s hear thy story, Leaf,” said the tranter. “I never knew you were clever enough to tell a story. Silence, all of ye! Mr. Leaf will tell a story.”
“Tell your story, Thomas Leaf,” said grandfather William in the tone of a schoolmaster.
“Once,” said the delighted Leaf, in an uncertain voice, “there was a man who lived in a house! Well, this man went thinking and thinking night and day. At last, he said to himself, as I might, ‘If I had only ten pound, I’d make a fortune.’ At last by hook or by crook, behold he got the ten pounds!”
“Only think of that!” said Nat Callcome satirically.
“Silence!” said the tranter.
“Well, now comes the interesting part of the story! In a little time he made that ten pounds twenty. Then a little time after that he doubled it, and made it forty. Well, he went on, and a good while after that he made it eighty, and on to a hundred. Well, by-and-by he made it two hundred! Well, you’d never believe it, but — he went on and made it four hundred! He went on, and what did he do? Why, he made it eight hundred! Yes, he did,” continued Leaf, in the highest pitch of excitement, bringing down his fist upon his knee with such force that he quivered with the pain; “yes, and he went on and made it A THOUSAND!”
“Hear, hear!” said the tranter. “Better than the history of England, my sonnies!”
“Thank you for your story, Thomas Leaf,” said grandfather William; and then Leaf gradually sank into nothingness again.
Amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, Dick and his bride took their departure, side by side in the excellent new spring-cart which the young tranter now possessed. The moon was just over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own beauties quite unnecessary to the pair. They drove slowly along Yalbury Bottom, where the road passed between two copses. Dick was talking to his companion.
“Fancy,” he said, “why we are so happy is because there is such full confidence between us. Ever since that time you confessed to that little flirtation with Shiner by the river (which was really no flirtation at all), I have thought how artless and good you must be to tell me o’ such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about it as you were. It has won me to tell you my every deed and word since then. We’ll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we ever? — no secret at all.”
“None from to-day,” said Fancy. “Hark! what’s that?”
From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud, musical, and liquid voice —
“Tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki! Come hither, come hither, come hither!”
“O, ‘tis the nightingale,” murmured she, and thought of a secret she would never tell.
A PAIR OF BLUE EYES
A Pair of Blue Eyes
was published in 1873 and concerns a love triangle between a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from opposing backgrounds. Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background. Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man who represents London society.
This was the third of Hardy’s novels to be published and the first to bear his name. Interestingly, the term “cliffhanger” is thought to have originated from this novel, which was first serialised in
Tinsley’s Magazine
between September 1872 and July 1873. At one stage Hardy leaves Henry Knight literally hanging off a cliff in peril.
Hardy in a personal portrait, 1926
A PAIR OF BLUE EYES
CONTENTS
A PAIR OF BLUE EYES
‘A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more.’
PREFACE
The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England, where the wild and tragic features of the coast had long combined in perfect harmony with the crude Gothic Art of the ecclesiastical buildings scattered along it, throwing into extraordinary discord all architectural attempts at newness there. To restore the grey carcases of a mediaevalism whose spirit had fled, seemed a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags themselves.
Hence it happened that an imaginary history of three human hearts, whose emotions were not without correspondence with these material circumstances, found in the ordinary incidents of such church-renovations a fitting frame for its presentation.
The shore and country about ‘Castle Boterel’ is now getting well known, and will be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of modern American settlements, was progressive and uncertain.
This, however, is of little importance. The place is pre-eminently (for one person at least) the region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds, the pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the waters, the bloom of dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from the shoreward precipices, in themselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.
One enormous sea-bord cliff in particular figures in the narrative; and
for some forgotten reason or other this cliff was described in the story
as being without a name. Accuracy would require the statement to be
that a remarkable cliff which resembles in many points the cliff of the
description bears a name that no event has made famous.
T. H.
March 1899
THE PERSONS
ELFRIDE SWANCOURT a young Lady
CHRISTOPHER SWANCOURT a Clergyman
STEPHEN SMITH an Architect
HENRY KNIGHT a Reviewer and Essayist
CHARLOTTE TROYTON a rich Widow
GERTRUDE JETHWAY a poor Widow
SPENSER HUGO LUXELLIAN a Peer
LADY LUXELLIAN his Wife
MARY AND KATE two little Girls