Томас Харди (Гарди)
A Pair of Blue Eyes
Chapter XXXIII
‘O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery.’
A habit of Knight’s, when not immediately occupied with Elfride – to walk by himself for half an hour or so between dinner and bedtime – had become familiar to his friends at Endelstow, Elfride herself among them. When he had helped her over the stile, she said gently, ‘If you wish to take your usual turn on the hill, Harry, I can run down to the house alone.’
‘Thank you, Elfie; then I think I will.’
Her form diminished to blackness in the moonlight, and Knight, after remaining upon the churchyard stile a few minutes longer, turned back again towards the building. His usual course was now to light a cigar or pipe, and indulge in a quiet meditation. But to-night his mind was too tense to bethink itself of such a solace. He merely walked round to the site of the fallen tower, and sat himself down upon some of the large stones which had composed it until this day, when the chain of circumstance originated by Stephen Smith, while in the employ of Mr. Hewby, the London man of art, had brought about its overthrow.
Pondering on the possible episodes of Elfride’s past life, and on how he had supposed her to have had no past justifying the name, he sat and regarded the white tomb of young Jethway, now close in front of him. The sea, though comparatively placid, could as usual be heard from this point along the whole distance between promontories to the right and left, floundering and entangling itself among the insulated stacks of rock which dotted the water’s edge – the miserable skeletons of tortured old cliffs that would not even yet succumb to the wear and tear of the tides.
As a change from thoughts not of a very cheerful kind, Knight attempted exertion. He stood up, and prepared to ascend to the summit of the ruinous heap of stones, from which a more extended outlook was obtainable than from the ground. He stretched out his arm to seize the projecting arris of a larger block than ordinary, and so help himself up, when his hand lighted plump upon a substance differing in the greatest possible degree from what he had expected to seize – hard stone. It was stringy and entangled, and trailed upon the stone. The deep shadow from the aisle wall prevented his seeing anything here distinctly, and he began guessing as a necessity. ‘It is a tressy species of moss or lichen,’ he said to himself.
But it lay loosely over the stone.
‘It is a tuft of grass,’ he said.
But it lacked the roughness and humidity of the finest grass.
‘It is a mason’s whitewash-brush.’
Such brushes, he remembered, were more bristly; and however much used in repairing a structure, would not be required in pulling one down.
He said, ‘It must be a thready silk fringe.’
He felt further in. It was somewhat warm. Knight instantly felt somewhat cold.
To find the coldness of inanimate matter where you expect warmth is startling enough; but a colder temperature than that of the body being rather the rule than the exception in common substances, it hardly conveys such a shock to the system as finding warmth where utter frigidity is anticipated.
‘God only knows what it is,’ he said.
He felt further, and in the course of a minute put his hand upon a human head. The head was warm, but motionless. The thready mass was the hair of the head – long and straggling, showing that the head was a woman’s.
Knight in his perplexity stood still for a moment, and collected his thoughts. The vicar’s account of the fall of the tower was that the workmen had been undermining it all the day, and had left in the evening intending to give the finishing stroke the next morning. Half an hour after they had gone the undermined angle came down. The woman who was half buried, as it seemed, must have been beneath it at the moment of the fall.
Knight leapt up and began endeavouring to remove the rubbish with his hands. The heap overlying the body was for the most part fine and dusty, but in immense quantity. It would be a saving of time to run for assistance. He crossed to the churchyard wall, and hastened down the hill.
A little way down an intersecting road passed over a small ridge, which now showed up darkly against the moon, and this road here formed a kind of notch in the sky-line. At the moment that Knight arrived at the crossing he beheld a man on this eminence, coming towards him. Knight turned aside and met the stranger.
‘There has been an accident at the church,’ said Knight, without preface. ‘The tower has fallen on somebody, who has been lying there ever since. Will you come and help?’
‘That I will,’ said the man.
‘It is a woman,’ said Knight, as they hurried back, ‘and I think we two are enough to extricate her. Do you know of a shovel?’
‘The grave-digging shovels are about somewhere. They used to stay in the tower.’
‘And there must be some belonging to the workmen.’
They searched about, and in an angle of the porch found three carefully stowed away. Going round to the west end Knight signified the spot of the tragedy.
‘We ought to have brought a lantern,’ he exclaimed. ‘But we may be able to do without.’ He set to work removing the superincumbent mass.
The other man, who looked on somewhat helplessly at first, now followed the example of Knight’s activity, and removed the larger stones which were mingled with the rubbish. But with all their efforts it was quite ten minutes before the body of the unfortunate creature could be extricated. They lifted her as carefully as they could, breathlessly carried her to Felix Jethway’s tomb, which was only a few steps westward, and laid her thereon.
‘Is she dead indeed?’ said the stranger.
‘She appears to be,’ said Knight. ‘Which is the nearest house? The vicarage, I suppose.’
‘Yes; but since we shall have to call a surgeon from Castle Boterel, I think it would be better to carry her in that direction, instead of away from the town.’
‘And is it not much further to the first house we come to going that way, than to the vicarage or to The Crags?’
‘Not much,’ the stranger replied.
‘Suppose we take her there, then. And I think the best way to do it would be thus, if you don’t mind joining hands with me.’
‘Not in the least; I am glad to assist.’
Making a kind of cradle, by clasping their hands crosswise under the inanimate woman, they lifted her, and walked on side by side down a path indicated by the stranger, who appeared to know the locality well.
‘I had been sitting in the church for nearly an hour,’ Knight resumed, when they were out of the churchyard. ‘Afterwards I walked round to the site of the fallen tower, and so found her. It is painful to think I unconsciously wasted so much time in the very presence of a perishing, flying soul.’
‘The tower fell at dusk, did it not? quite two hours ago, I think?’
‘Yes. She must have been there alone. What could have been her object in visiting the churchyard then?
‘It is difficult to say.’ The stranger looked inquiringly into the reclining face of the motionless form they bore. ‘Would you turn her round for a moment, so that the light shines on her face?’ he said.
They turned her face to the moon, and the man looked closer into her features. ‘Why, I know her!’ he exclaimed.
‘Who is she?’
‘Mrs. Jethway. And the cottage we are taking her to is her own. She is a widow; and I was speaking to her only this afternoon. I was at Castle Boterel post-office, and she came there to post a letter. Poor soul! Let us hurry on.’
‘Hold my wrist a little tighter. Was not that tomb we laid her on the tomb of her only son?’
‘Yes, it was. Yes, I see it now. She was there to visit the tomb. Since the death of that son she has been a desolate, desponding woman, always bewailing him. She was a farmer’s wife, very well educated – a governess originally, I believe.’
Knight’s heart was moved to sympathy. His own fortunes seemed in some strange way to be interwoven with those of this Jethway family, through the influence of Elfride over himself and the unfortunate son of that house. He made no reply, and they still walked on.
‘She begins to feel heavy,’ said the stranger, breaking the silence.
‘Yes, she does,’ said Knight; and after another pause added, ‘I think I have met you before, though where I cannot recollect. May I ask who you are?’
‘Oh yes. I am Lord Luxellian. Who are you?’
‘I am a visitor at The Crags – Mr. Knight.’
‘I have heard of you, Mr. Knight.’
‘And I of you, Lord Luxellian. I am glad to meet you.’
‘I may say the same. I am familiar with your name in print.’
‘And I with yours. Is this the house?’
‘Yes.’
The door was locked. Knight, reflecting a moment, searched the pocket of the lifeless woman, and found therein a large key which, on being applied to the door, opened it easily. The fire was out, but the moonlight entered the quarried window, and made patterns upon the floor. The rays enabled them to see that the room into which they had entered was pretty well furnished, it being the same room that Elfride had visited alone two or three evenings earlier. They deposited their still burden on an old-fashioned couch which stood against the wall, and Knight searched about for a lamp or candle. He found a candle on a shelf, lighted it, and placed it on the table.
Both Knight and Lord Luxellian examined the pale countenance attentively, and both were nearly convinced that there was no hope. No marks of violence were visible in the casual examination they made.
‘I think that as I know where Doctor Granson lives,’ said Lord Luxellian, ‘I had better run for him whilst you stay here.’
Knight agreed to this. Lord Luxellian then went off, and his hurrying footsteps died away. Knight continued bending over the body, and a few minutes longer of careful scrutiny perfectly satisfied him that the woman was far beyond the reach of the lancet and the drug. Her extremities were already beginning to get stiff and cold. Knight covered her face, and sat down.
The minutes went by. The essayist remained musing on all the occurrences of the night. His eyes were directed upon the table, and he had seen for some time that writing-materials were spread upon it. He now noticed these more particularly: there were an inkstand, pen, blotting-book, and note-paper. Several sheets of paper were thrust aside from the rest, upon which letters had been begun and relinquished, as if their form had not been satisfactory to the writer. A stick of black sealing-wax and seal were there too, as if the ordinary fastening had not been considered sufficiently secure. The abandoned sheets of paper lying as they did open upon the table, made it possible, as he sat, to read the few words written on each. One ran thus:
‘SIR, – As a woman who was once blest with a dear son of her own, I implore you to accept a warning – ’
Another:
‘SIR, – If you will deign to receive warning from a stranger before it is too late to alter your course, listen to – ’
The third:
‘SIR, – With this letter I enclose to you another which, unaided by any explanation from me, tells a startling tale. I wish, however, to add a few words to make your delusion yet more clear to you – ’
It was plain that, after these renounced beginnings, a fourth letter had been written and despatched, which had been deemed a proper one. Upon the table were two drops of sealing-wax, the stick from which they were taken having been laid down overhanging the edge of the table; the end of it drooped, showing that the wax was placed there whilst warm. There was the chair in which the writer had sat, the impression of the letter’s address upon the blotting-paper, and the poor widow who had caused these results lying dead hard by. Knight had seen enough to lead him to the conclusion that Mrs. Jethway, having matter of great importance to communicate to some friend or acquaintance, had written him a very careful letter, and gone herself to post it; that she had not returned to the house from that time of leaving it till Lord Luxellian and himself had brought her back dead.
The unutterable melancholy of the whole scene, as he waited on, silent and alone, did not altogether clash with the mood of Knight, even though he was the affianced of a fair and winning girl, and though so lately he had been in her company. Whilst sitting on the remains of the demolished tower he had defined a new sensation; that the lengthened course of inaction he had lately been indulging in on Elfride’s account might probably not be good for him as a man who had work to do. It could quickly be put an end to by hastening on his marriage with her.
Knight, in his own opinion, was one who had missed his mark by excessive aiming. Having now, to a great extent, given up ideal ambitions, he wished earnestly to direct his powers into a more practical channel, and thus correct the introspective tendencies which had never brought himself much happiness, or done his fellow-creatures any great good. To make a start in this new direction by marriage, which, since knowing Elfride, had been so entrancing an idea, was less exquisite to-night. That the curtailment of his illusion regarding her had something to do with the reaction, and with the return of his old sentiments on wasting time, is more than probable. Though Knight’s heart had so greatly mastered him, the mastery was not so complete as to be easily maintained in the face of a moderate intellectual revival.
His reverie was broken by the sound of wheels, and a horse’s tramp. The door opened to admit the surgeon, Lord Luxellian, and a Mr. Coole, coroner for the division (who had been attending at Castle Boterel that very day, and was having an after-dinner chat with the doctor when Lord Luxellian arrived); next came two female nurses and some idlers.
Mr. Granson, after a cursory examination, pronounced the woman dead from suffocation, induced by intense pressure on the respiratory organs; and arrangements were made that the inquiry should take place on the following morning, before the return of the coroner to St. Launce’s.
Shortly afterwards the house of the widow was deserted by all its living occupants, and she abode in death, as she had in her life during the past two years, entirely alone.
Chapter XXXIV
‘Yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.’
Sixteen hours had passed. Knight was entering the ladies’ boudoir at The Crags, upon his return from attending the inquest touching the death of Mrs. Jethway. Elfride was not in the apartment.
Mrs. Swancourt made a few inquiries concerning the verdict and collateral circumstances. Then she said —
‘The postman came this morning the minute after you left the house. There was only one letter for you, and I have it here.’
She took a letter from the lid of her workbox, and handed it to him. Knight took the missive abstractedly, but struck by its appearance murmured a few words and left the room.
The letter was fastened with a black seal, and the handwriting in which it was addressed had lain under his eyes, long and prominently, only the evening before.
Knight was greatly agitated, and looked about for a spot where he might be secure from interruption. It was the season of heavy dews, which lay on the herbage in shady places all the day long; nevertheless, he entered a small patch of neglected grass-plat enclosed by the shrubbery, and there perused the letter, which he had opened on his way thither.
The handwriting, the seal, the paper, the introductory words, all had told on the instant that the letter had come to him from the hands of the widow Jethway, now dead and cold. He had instantly understood that the unfinished notes which caught his eye yesternight were intended for nobody but himself. He had remembered some of the words of Elfride in her sleep on the steamer, that somebody was not to tell him of something, or it would be her ruin – a circumstance hitherto deemed so trivial and meaningless that he had well-nigh forgotten it. All these things infused into him an emotion intense in power and supremely distressing in quality. The paper in his hand quivered as he read:
‘THE VALLEY, ENDELSTOW.
‘SIR, – A woman who has not much in the world to lose by any censure this act may bring upon her, wishes to give you some hints concerning a lady you love. If you will deign to accept a warning before it is too late, you will notice what your correspondent has to say.
‘You are deceived. Can such a woman as this be worthy?
‘One who encouraged an honest youth to love her, then slighted him, so that he died.
‘One who next took a man of no birth as a lover, who was forbidden the house by her father.
‘One who secretly left her home to be married to that man, met him, and went with him to London.
‘One who, for some reason or other, returned again unmarried.
‘One who, in her after-correspondence with him, went so far as to address him as her husband.
‘One who wrote the enclosed letter to ask me, who better than anybody else knows the story, to keep the scandal a secret.
‘I hope soon to be beyond the reach of either blame or praise. But before removing me God has put it in my power to avenge the death of my son.
‘GERTRUDE JETHWAY.’
The letter enclosed was the note in pencil that Elfride had written in Mrs. Jethway’s cottage:
‘DEAR MRS. JETHWAY, – I have been to visit you. I wanted much to see you, but I cannot wait any longer. I came to beg you not to execute the threats you have repeated to me. Do not, I beseech you, Mrs. Jethway, let any one know I ran away from home! It would ruin me with him, and break my heart. I will do anything for you, if you will be kind to me. In the name of our common womanhood, do not, I implore you, make a scandal of me. – Yours,
‘E. SWANCOURT.
Knight turned his head wearily towards the house. The ground rose rapidly on nearing the shrubbery in which he stood, raising it almost to a level with the first floor of The Crags. Elfride’s dressing-room lay in the salient angle in this direction, and it was lighted by two windows in such a position that, from Knight’s standing-place, his sight passed through both windows, and raked the room. Elfride was there; she was pausing between the two windows, looking at her figure in the cheval-glass. She regarded herself long and attentively in front; turned, flung back her head, and observed the reflection over her shoulder.
Nobody can predicate as to her object or fancy; she may have done the deed in the very abstraction of deep sadness. She may have been moaning from the bottom of her heart, ‘How unhappy am I!’ But the impression produced on Knight was not a good one. He dropped his eyes moodily. The dead woman’s letter had a virtue in the accident of its juncture far beyond any it intrinsically exhibited. Circumstance lent to evil words a ring of pitiless justice echoing from the grave. Knight could not endure their possession. He tore the letter into fragments.
He heard a brushing among the bushes behind, and turning his head he saw Elfride following him. The fair girl looked in his face with a wistful smile of hope, too forcedly hopeful to displace the firmly established dread beneath it. His severe words of the previous night still sat heavy upon her.
‘I saw you from my window, Harry,’ she said timidly.
‘The dew will make your feet wet,’ he observed, as one deaf.
‘I don’t mind it.’
‘There is danger in getting wet feet.’
‘Yes…Harry, what is the matter?’
‘Oh, nothing. Shall I resume the serious conversation I had with you last night? No, perhaps not; perhaps I had better not.’
‘Oh, I cannot tell! How wretched it all is! Ah, I wish you were your own dear self again, and had kissed me when I came up! Why didn’t you ask me for one? why don’t you now?’
‘Too free in manner by half,’ he heard murmur the voice within him.
‘It was that hateful conversation last night,’ she went on. ‘Oh, those words! Last night was a black night for me.’
‘Kiss! – I hate that word! Don’t talk of kissing, for God’s sake! I should think you might with advantage have shown tact enough to keep back that word “kiss,” considering those you have accepted.’
She became very pale, and a rigid and desolate charactery took possession of her face. That face was so delicate and tender in appearance now, that one could fancy the pressure of a finger upon it would cause a livid spot.
Knight walked on, and Elfride with him, silent and unopposing. He opened a gate, and they entered a path across a stubble-field.
‘Perhaps I intrude upon you?’ she said as he closed the gate. ‘Shall I go away?’
‘No. Listen to me, Elfride.’ Knight’s voice was low and unequal. ‘I have been honest with you: will you be so with me? If any – strange – connection has existed between yourself and a predecessor of mine, tell it now. It is better that I know it now, even though the knowledge should part us, than that I should discover it in time to come. And suspicions have been awakened in me. I think I will not say how, because I despise the means. A discovery of any mystery of your past would embitter our lives.’
Knight waited with a slow manner of calmness. His eyes were sad and imperative. They went farther along the path.
‘Will you forgive me if I tell you all?’ she exclaimed entreatingly.
‘I can’t promise; so much depends upon what you have to tell.’
Elfride could not endure the silence which followed.
‘Are you not going to love me?’ she burst out. ‘Harry, Harry, love me, and speak as usual! Do; I beseech you, Harry!’
‘Are you going to act fairly by me?’ said Knight, with rising anger; ‘or are you not? What have I done to you that I should be put off like this? Be caught like a bird in a springe; everything intended to be hidden from me! Why is it, Elfride? That’s what I ask you.’
In their agitation they had left the path, and were wandering among the wet and obstructive stubble, without knowing or heeding it.
‘What have I done?’ she faltered.
‘What? How can you ask what, when you know so well? You KNOW that I have designedly been kept in ignorance of something attaching to you, which, had I known of it, might have altered all my conduct; and yet you say, what?’
She drooped visibly, and made no answer.
‘Not that I believe in malicious letter-writers and whisperers; not I. I don’t know whether I do or don’t: upon my soul, I can’t tell. I know this: a religion was building itself upon you in my heart. I looked into your eyes, and thought I saw there truth and innocence as pure and perfect as ever embodied by God in the flesh of woman. Perfect truth is too much to expect, but ordinary truth I WILL HAVE or nothing at all. Just say, then; is the matter you keep back of the gravest importance, or is it not?’
‘I don’t understand all your meaning. If I have hidden anything from you, it has been because I loved you so, and I feared – feared – to lose you.’
‘Since you are not given to confidence, I want to ask you some plain questions. Have I your permission?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and there came over her face a weary resignation. ‘Say the harshest words you can; I will bear them!’
‘There is a scandal in the air concerning you, Elfride; and I cannot even combat it without knowing definitely what it is. It may not refer to you entirely, or even at all.’ Knight trifled in the very bitterness of his feeling. ‘In the time of the French Revolution, Pariseau, a ballet-master, was beheaded by mistake for Parisot, a captain of the King’s Guard. I wish there was another “E. Swancourt” in the neighbourhood. Look at this.’
He handed her the letter she had written and left on the table at Mrs. Jethway’s. She looked over it vacantly.
‘It is not so much as it seems!’ she pleaded. ‘It seems wickedly deceptive to look at now, but it had a much more natural origin than you think. My sole wish was not to endanger our love. O Harry! that was all my idea. It was not much harm.’
‘Yes, yes; but independently of the poor miserable creature’s remarks, it seems to imply – something wrong.’
‘What remarks?’
‘Those she wrote me – now torn to pieces. Elfride, DID you run away with a man you loved? – that was the damnable statement. Has such an accusation life in it – really, truly, Elfride?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Knight’s countenance sank. ‘To be married to him?’ came huskily from his lips.
‘Yes. Oh, forgive me! I had never seen you, Harry.’
‘To London?’
‘Yes; but I – ’
‘Answer my questions; say nothing else, Elfride Did you ever deliberately try to marry him in secret?’
‘No; not deliberately.’
‘But did you do it?’
A feeble red passed over her face.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And after that – did you – write to him as your husband; and did he address you as his wife?’
‘Listen, listen! It was – ’
‘Do answer me; only answer me!’
‘Then, yes, we did.’ Her lips shook; but it was with some little dignity that she continued: ‘I would gladly have told you; for I knew and know I had done wrong. But I dared not; I loved you too well. Oh, so well! You have been everything in the world to me – and you are now. Will you not forgive me?’
It is a melancholy thought, that men who at first will not allow the verdict of perfection they pronounce upon their sweethearts or wives to be disturbed by God’s own testimony to the contrary, will, once suspecting their purity, morally hang them upon evidence they would be ashamed to admit in judging a dog.
The reluctance to tell, which arose from Elfride’s simplicity in thinking herself so much more culpable than she really was, had been doing fatal work in Knight’s mind. The man of many ideas, now that his first dream of impossible things was over, vibrated too far in the contrary direction; and her every movement of feature – every tremor – every confused word – was taken as so much proof of her unworthiness.
‘Elfride, we must bid good-bye to compliment,’ said Knight: ‘we must do without politeness now. Look in my face, and as you believe in God above, tell me truly one thing more. Were you away alone with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you return home the same day on which you left it?’
‘No.’
The word fell like a bolt, and the very land and sky seemed to suffer. Knight turned aside. Meantime Elfride’s countenance wore a look indicating utter despair of being able to explain matters so that they would seem no more than they really were, – a despair which not only relinquishes the hope of direct explanation, but wearily gives up all collateral chances of extenuation.
The scene was engraved for years on the retina of Knight’s eye: the dead and brown stubble, the weeds among it, the distant belt of beeches shutting out the view of the house, the leaves of which were now red and sick to death.
‘You must forget me,’ he said. ‘We shall not marry, Elfride.’
How much anguish passed into her soul at those words from him was told by the look of supreme torture she wore.
‘What meaning have you, Harry? You only say so, do you?’
She looked doubtingly up at him, and tried to laugh, as if the unreality of his words must be unquestionable.
‘You are not in earnest, I know – I hope you are not? Surely I belong to you, and you are going to keep me for yours?’
‘Elfride, I have been speaking too roughly to you; I have said what I ought only to have thought. I like you; and let me give you a word of advice. Marry your man as soon as you can. However weary of each other you may feel, you belong to each other, and I am not going to step between you. Do you think I would – do you think I could for a moment? If you cannot marry him now, and another makes you his wife, do not reveal this secret to him after marriage, if you do not before. Honesty would be damnation then.’
Bewildered by his expressions, she exclaimed —
‘No, no; I will not be a wife unless I am yours; and I must be yours!’
‘If we had married – ’
‘But you don’t MEAN – that – that – you will go away and leave me, and not be anything more to me – oh, you don’t!’
Convulsive sobs took all nerve out of her utterance. She checked them, and continued to look in his face for the ray of hope that was not to be found there.
‘I am going indoors,’ said Knight. ‘You will not follow me, Elfride; I wish you not to.’
‘Oh no; indeed, I will not.’
‘And then I am going to Castle Boterel. Good-bye.’
He spoke the farewell as if it were but for the day – lightly, as he had spoken such temporary farewells many times before – and she seemed to understand it as such. Knight had not the power to tell her plainly that he was going for ever; he hardly knew for certain that he was: whether he should rush back again upon the current of an irresistible emotion, or whether he could sufficiently conquer himself, and her in him, to establish that parting as a supreme farewell, and present himself to the world again as no woman’s.
Ten minutes later he had left the house, leaving directions that if he did not return in the evening his luggage was to be sent to his chambers in London, whence he intended to write to Mr. Swancourt as to the reasons of his sudden departure. He descended the valley, and could not forbear turning his head. He saw the stubble-field, and a slight girlish figure in the midst of it – up against the sky. Elfride, docile as ever, had hardly moved a step, for he had said, Remain. He looked and saw her again – he saw her for weeks and months. He withdrew his eyes from the scene, swept his hand across them, as if to brush away the sight, breathed a low groan, and went on.
