Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (911 page)

But in a few minutes she found herself nerved to an unexpected and passionate vigour of action; and began writing her letter to Lord Parkhurst with great rapidity. Sheet after sheet she filled, and, having read them over, she sealed up the letter and placed it on the mantelpiece to be given to a groom and dispatched by hand as soon as the morning was a little further advanced.

With cold feet and a burning head she flung herself upon the bed just as she was, and waited for the day without the power to sleep.  When she had lain nearly two hours, and the morning had crept in, and she could hear from the direction of the stables that the men were astir, she rang for her maid, and taking the letter in her hand stood with it in an attitude of suspense as the woman entered.  The latter looked full of intelligence.

“Are any of the men about?” asked Rosalys.

“O yes, ma’am.  There’ve been such an accident in the meads this past night — about half-a-mile down the river — and Jones ran up from the lodge to call for help quite early; and Benton and Peters went as soon as they were dressed.  A gentleman drowned — yes — it’s Mr James Durrant — the son of old Mr Durrant who died some years ago. He came home only yesterday, after having been heard nothing of for years and years.  He left Mrs Durrant, who they say is a French lady, somewhere in London, but they have telegraphed and found her, and she’s coming.  They say she’s quite distracted.  The poor gentleman left the Three Lions last night and went out to dinner, saying he would walk home, as it was a fine night and not very far: and it is supposed he took the old short cut across the moor where there used to be a path when he was a lad at home, crossing the big river by a plank.  There is only a rail now, and he must have tried to get across upon it, for it was broken in two, and his body found in the water-weeds just below.”

“Is he dead?”

“O yes.  They had a great trouble to get him out.  The men have just come in from carrying him to the hotel.  It will be sad for his poor wife when she gets there!”

“His poor wife — yes.”

“Travelling all the way from London on such a call!”

Rosalys had allowed the hand in which she held the letter to Lord Parkhurst to drop to her side: she now put it in the pocket of her dressing-gown.

“I was wishing to send somewhere,” she said. “But I think I will wait till later.”

The house was astir betimes on account of the wedding, and Rosalys’ companion in particular, who was not sad because she was going to live on with the bride. When Miss Jennings saw her cousin’s agitation she said she looked ill, and insisted upon sending for the doctor. He, who was the local practitioner, arrived at breakfast time; very proud to attend such an important lady, who mostly got doctored in London. He said Rosalys certainly was not quite in her usual state of health; prescribed a tonic, and declared that she would be all right in an hour or two. He then informed her that he had been suddenly called up that morning to the case of which they had possibly heard — the drowning of Mr Durrant.

“And you could do nothing?” asked Rosalys.

“O no. He’d been under water too long for any human aid. Dead and stiff... It was not so very far down from here.... Yes, I remember him quite as a boy. But he has had no relations hereabout for years past — old Durrant’s property was sold to pay his debts, if you recollect; and nobody expected to see the son again. I think he has lived in the East Indies a good deal. Much better for him if he had not come — poor fellow!”

When the doctor had left Rosalys went to the window, and remained for some time thinking. There was the lake from which the water had flowed down the river that had drowned Jim after visiting her last night — as a mere interlude in his continuous life of caresses with the Frenchwoman Melanie. She turned, took from her dressing-gown pocket the renunciatory letter to her intended husband Lord Parkhurst, thrust it through the bars of the grate, and watched it till it was entirely consumed.

The wedding had been fixed for an early hour in the afternoon, and as the morning wore on Rosalys felt increasing strength, mental and physical. The doctor’s dose had been a powerful one: the image of “Melanie”, too, had much to do with her recuperative mood; more still, Rosalys’ innate qualities; the nerve of the woman who nine years earlier had gone to the city to be married as if it were a mere shopping expedition; most of all, she loved Lord Parkhurst; he was the man among all men she desired.  Rosalys allowed things to take their course.

Soon the dressing began; and she sat through it quite calmly.  When Lord Parkhurst rode across for a short visit that day he only noticed that she seemed strung-up, nervous, and that the flush of love which mantled her cheek died away to pale rather quickly.

On the way to church the road skirted the low-lying ground where the river was, and about a dozen men were seen in the bright green Meadow, standing beside the deep central stream, and looking intently at a broken rail.

“Who are those men?” said the bride.

“O — they are the coroner’s jury, I think,” said Miss Jennings; “come to view the place where that unfortunate Mr Durrant lost his life last night.  It was curious that, by the merest accident, he should have been at Mrs Lacy’s dinner, — since they hardly know him at all.”

“It was — I saw him there,” said Rosalys.

They had reached the church. Ten minutes later she was kneeling against the altar-railings, with Lord Parkhurst on her right hand.The wedding was by no means a gay one, and there were few people invited, Rosalys, for one thing, having hardly any relations. The newly united pair got away from the house very soon after the ceremony. When they drove off there was a group of people round the door, and some among the bystanders asked how far they were going that day.

“To Dover. They cross the Channel to-morrow, I believe.”

To-morrow came, and those who had gathered together at the wedding went about their usual duties and amusements, Colonel Lacy among the rest. As he and his wife were returning home by the late afternoon train after a short journey up the line, he bought a copy of an evening paper, and glanced at the latest telegrams.

“My good God!” he cried.

“What?” said she, starting towards him.

He tried to read — then handed the paper; and she read for herself — .

“D O V E R. — DEATH OF LORD PARKHURST, R.N. —

“We regret to announce that this distinguished nobleman and heroic naval officer, who arrived with Lady Parkhurst last evening at the Lord Chamberlain Hotel in this town, preparatory to starting on their wedding-tour, entered his dressing-room very early this morning, and shot himself through the head with a revolver. The report was heard shortly after dawn, none of the inmates of the hotel being astir at the time. No reason can be assigned for the rash act.

THE END.

A Committee-Man of ‘The Terror’

We had been talking of the Georgian glories of our old-fashioned watering-place, which now, with its substantial russet-red and dun brick buildings in the style of the year eighteen hundred, looks like one side of a Soho or Bloomsbury Street transported to the shore, and draws a smile from the modern tourist who has no eye for solidity of build. The writer, quite a youth, was present merely as a listener. The conversation proceeded from general subjects to particular, until old Mrs. H — , whose memory was as perfect at eighty as it had ever been in her life, interested us all by — the obvious fidelity with which she repeated a story many times related to her by her mother when our aged friend was a girl — a domestic drama much affecting the life of an acquaintance of her said parent, one Mademoiselle V — , a teacher of French. The incidents occurred in the town during the heyday of its fortunes, at the time of our brief peace with France in 1802-3.

‘I wrote it down in the shape of a story some years ago, just after my mother’s death,’ said Mrs. H — . ‘It is locked up in my desk there now.’

‘Read it!’ said we.

‘No,’ said she; ‘the light is bad, and I can remember it well enough, word for word, flourishes and all.’ We could not be choosers in the circumstances, and she began.

‘There are two in it, of course, the man and the woman, and it was on an evening in September that she first got to know him. There had not been such a grand gathering on the Esplanade all the season. His Majesty King George the Third was present, with all the princesses and royal dukes, while upwards of three hundred of the general nobility and other persons of distinction were also in the town at the time. Carriages and other conveyances were arriving every minute from London and elsewhere; and when among the rest a shabby stage-coach came in by a by-route along the coast from Havenpool, and drew up at a second-rate tavern, it attracted comparatively little notice.

‘From this dusty vehicle a man alighted, left his small quantity of luggage temporarily at the office, and walked along the street as if to look for lodgings.

‘He was about forty-five — possibly fifty — and wore a long coat of faded super-fine cloth, with a heavy collar, and a bunched-up neck cloth. He seemed to desire obscurity.

‘But the display appeared presently to strike him, and he asked of a rustic he met in the street what was going on; his accent being that of one to whom English pronunciation was difficult.

‘The countryman looked at him with a slight surprise, and said, “King Jargeis here and his royal Cwort.”

‘The stranger inquired if they were going to stay long.

“‘Don’t know, Sir. Same as they always do, I suppose.”

“‘How long is that?”

“‘Till some time in October. They’ve come here every zummer since eighty-nine.”

‘The stranger moved onward down St. Thomas Street, and approached the bridge over the harbour backwater, that then, as now, connected the old town with the more modern portion. The spot was swept with the rays of a low sun, which lit up the harbour lengthwise, and shone under the brim of the man’s hat and into his eyes as he looked westward. Against the radiance figures were crossing in the opposite direction to his own; among them this lady of my mother’s later acquaintance, Mademoiselle V — . She was the daughter of a good old French family, and at that date a pale woman, twenty-eight or thirty years of age, tall and elegant in figure, but plainly dressed and wearing that evening (she said) a small muslin shawl crossed over the bosom in the fashion of the time, and tied behind.

‘At sight of his face, which, as she used to tell us, was unusually distinct in the peering sunlight, she could not help giving a little shriek of horror, for a terrible reason connected with her history, and after walking a few steps further, she sank down against the parapet of the bridge in a fainting fit.

‘In his preoccupation the foreign gentleman had hardly noticed her, but her strange collapse immediately attracted his attention. He quickly crossed the carriage-way, picked her up, and carried her into the first shop adjoining the bridge, explaining that she was a lady who had been taken ill outside.

‘She soon revived; but, clearly much puzzled, her helper perceived that she still had a dread of him which was sufficient to hinder her complete recovery of self-command. She spoke in a quick and nervous way to the shopkeeper, asking him to call a coach.

‘This the shopkeeper did, Mademoiselle V — and the stranger remaining in constrained silence while he was gone. The coach came up, and giving the man the address, she entered it and drove away.

‘“Who is that lady?” said the newly arrived Gentleman.

“‘She’s of your nation, as I should make bold to suppose,” said the shopkeeper. And he told the other that she was Mademoiselle V — , governess at General Newbold’s, in the same town.

“‘You have many foreigners here?” the stranger inquired.

“‘Yes, though mostly Hanoverians. But since the peace they are learning French a good deal in genteel society, and French instructors are rather in demand.”

“‘Yes, I teach it,” said the visitor. “I am looking for a tutorship in an academy.”

‘The information given by the burgess to the Frenchman seemed to explain to the latter nothing of his countrywoman’s conduct — which, indeed, was the case — and he left the shop, taking his course again over the bridge and along the south quay to the Old Rooms Inn, where he engaged a bedchamber.

‘Thoughts of the woman who had betrayed such an agitation at sight of him lingered naturally enough with the newcomer. Though, as I stated, not much less than thirty years of age, Mademoiselle V — , one of his own nation, and of highly refined and delicate appearance, had kindled a singular interest in the middle-aged gentleman’s breast, and her large dark eyes, as they had opened and shrunk from him, exhibited a pathetic beauty to which hardly any man could have been insensible.

‘The next day, having written some letters, he went out and made known at the office of the town “Guide” and of the newspaper, that a teacher of French and calligraphy had arrived, leaving a card at the bookseller’s to the same effect. He then walked on aimlessly, but at length inquired the way to General Newbold’s. At the door, without giving his name, he asked to see Mademoiselle V — , and was shown into a little back parlour, where she came to him with a gaze of surprise.

“‘My God! Why do you intrude here, Monsieur? she gasped in French as soon as she saw his face.

“‘You were taken ill yesterday. I helped you. You might have been run over if I had not picked you up. It was an act of simple humanity certainly; but I thought I might come to ask if you had recovered?”

‘She had turned aside, and had scarcely heard a word of his speech. “‘I hate you, infamous man! she said. “‘I cannot bear your helping me. Go away!”

“‘But you are a stranger to me.”

“‘I know you too well !”

“‘You have the advantage then, Mademoiselle. I am a newcomer here. I never have seen you before to my knowledge; and I certainly do not, could not, hate you.”

“‘Are you not Monsieur B — ?”

‘He flinched. “ ‘I am — in Paris,” he said. “‘But here I am Monsieur G — .”