by Thomas Hardy
Suddenly rushing towards her, he seized her hand before she comprehended his intention, kissed it tenderly, and clasped her in his arms. Her soft body yielded like wool under his embrace. As suddenly releasing her he turned, and went back to the other end of the room.
Egbert’s feeling as he retired was that he had committed a crime. The madness of the action was apparent to him almost before it was completed. There seemed not a single thing left for him to do, but to go into lifelong banishment for such sacrilege. He faced round and regarded her. Her features were not visible enough to judge of their expression. All that he could discern through the dimness and his own agitation was that for some time she remained quite motionless. Her state was probably one of suspension as with Ulysses before Melanthus, she may have
entertained a breast
That in the strife of all extremes did rest.
In one, two, or five minutes — neither of them ever knew exactly how long — apparently without the motion of a limb, she glided noiselessly to the door and vanished.
Egbert leant himself against the wall, almost distracted. He could see absolutely no limit to the harm that he had done by his wild and unreasoning folly. “Am I a man to thus ill-treat the loveliest girl that ever was born? Sweet injured creature — how she will hate me!” These were some of the expressions that he murmured in the twilight of that lonely room.
Then he said that she certainly had encouraged him, which, unfortunately for her, was only too true. She had seen that he was always in search of her, and she did not put herself out of his way. He was sure that she liked him to admire her. “Yet, no,” he murmured, “I will not excuse myself at all.”
The night passed away miserably. One conviction by degrees overruled all the rest in his mind — that if she knew precisely how pure had been his longing towards her, she could not think badly of him. His reflections resulted in a resolve to get an interview with her, and make his defence and explanation in full. The decision come to, his impatience could scarcely preserve him from rushing to Tollamore House that very daybreak, and trying to get into her presence, though it was the likeliest of suppositions that she would never see him.
Every spare minute of the following days he hovered round the house, in hope of getting a glimpse of her; but not once did she make herself visible. He delayed taking the extreme step of calling, till the hour came when he could delay no longer. On a certain day he rang the bell with a mild air, and disguised his feelings by looking as if he wished to speak to her merely on copy-books, slates, and other school matters, the school being professedly her hobby. He was told that Miss Allenville had gone on a visit to some relatives thirty-five miles off, and that she would probably not return for a month.
As there was no help for it, Egbert settled down to wait as he best could, not without many misgivings lest his rash action, which a prompt explanation might have toned down and excused, would now be the cause of a total estrangement between them, so that nothing would restore him to the place he had formerly held in her estimation. That she had ever seriously loved him he did not hope or dream; but it was intense pain to him to be out of her favour.
CHAPTER V.
So I soberly laid my last plan
To extinguish the man,
Round his creep-hole, with never a break
Ran my fires for his sake;
Over head did my thunder combine
With my underground mine:
Till I looked from my labour content
To enjoy the event.
When sudden — how think ye the end?
A week after the crisis mentioned above, it was secretly whispered to Egbert’s grandfather that the park enlargement scheme was after all to be proceeded with; that Miss Allenville was extremely anxious to have it put in hand as soon as possible. Farmer Broadford’s farm was to be added to Greenman’s, as originally intended, and the old house that Broadford lived in was to be pulled down as an encumbrance.
“It is she this time!” murmured Egbert gloomily. “Then I did offend her, and mortify her; and she is resentful.”
The excitement of his grandfather again caused him much alarm, and even remorse. Such was the responsiveness of the farmer’s physical to his mental state that in the course of a week his usual health failed, and his gloominess of mind was followed by dimness of sight and giddiness. By much persuasion Egbert induced him to stay at home for a day or two; but indoors he was the most restless of creatures, through not being able to engage in the pursuits to which he had been accustomed from his boyhood. He walked up and down, looking wistfully out of the window, shifting the positions of books and chairs, and putting them back again, opening his desk and shutting it after a vacant look at the papers, saying he should never get settled in another farm at his time of life, and evincing all the symptoms of nervousness and excitability.
Meanwhile Egbert anxiously awaited Miss Allenville’s return, more resolved than ever to obtain audience of her, and beg her not to visit upon an unoffending old man the consequences of a young one’s folly. Any retaliation upon himself he would accept willingly, and own to be well deserved.
At length, by making off-hand inquiries (for he dared not ask directly for her again) he learnt that she was to be at home on the Thursday. The following Friday and Saturday he kept a sharp look-out; and, when lingering in the park for at least the tenth time in that half-week, a sudden rise in the ground revealed her coming along a path
Egbert stayed his advance, in order that, if she really objected to see him, she might easily strike off into a side path or turn back.
She did not accept the alternatives, but came straight on to where he lingered, averting her face waywardly as she approached. When she was within a few steps of him he could see that the trimmings of her dress trembled like leaves. He cleared his dry throat to speak.
“Miss Allenville,” he said, humbly taking off his hat, “I should be glad to say one word to you, if I may.”
She looked at him for just one moment, but said nothing; and he could see that the expression of her face was flushed, and her mood skittish. The place they were standing in was a remote nook, hidden by the trunks and boughs, so that he could afford to give her plenty of time, for there was no fear of their being observed or overheard. Indeed, knowing that she often walked that way, Egbert had previously surveyed the spot and thought it suitable for the occasion, much as Wellington antecedently surveyed the field of Waterloo.
Here the young man began his pleading speech to her. He dilated upon his sensations when first he saw her; and as he became warmed by his oratory he spoke of all his inmost perturbations on her account without the slightest reserve. He related with much natural eloquence how he had tried over and over again not to love her, and how he had loved her in spite of that trying; of his intention never to reveal his passion, till their situation on that rainy evening prompted the impulse which ended in that irreverent action of his; and earnestly asked her to forgive him — not for his feelings, since they were his own to commend or blame — but for the way in which he testified of them to one so cultivated and so beautiful.
Egbert was flushed and excited by the time that he reached this point in his tale.
Her eyes were fixed on the grass; and then a tear stole quietly from its corner, and wandered down her cheek. She tried to say something, but her usually adroit tongue was unequal to the task. Ultimately she glanced at him, and murmured, “I forgive you;” but so inaudibly, that he only recognized the words by their shape upon her lips.
She looked not much more than a child now, and Egbert thought with sadness that her tear and her words were perhaps but the result, the one of a transitory sympathy, the other of a desire to escape. They stood silent for some seconds, and the dressing-bell of the house began ringing. Turning slowly away without another word she hastened out of his sight.
When Egbert reached home some of his grandfather’s old friends were gathered there, sympathizing with him on the removal he would have
to submit to if report spoke truly. Their sympathy was rather more for him to bear than their indifference; and as Egbert looked at the old man’s bent figure, and at the expression of his face, denoting a wish to sink under the earth, out of sight and out of trouble, he was greatly depressed, and he said inwardly, “What a fool I was to ask forgiveness of a woman who can torture my only relative like this! Why do I feel her to be glorious? Oh that I had never seen her!”
The next day was Sunday, and his grandfather being too unwell to go out, Egbert went to the evening, service alone. When it was over, the rector detained him in the churchyard to say a few words about the next week’s undertakings. This was soon done, and Egbert turned back to leave the now empty churchyard. Passing the porch he saw Miss Allenville coming out of the door.
Egbert said nothing, for he knew not what to say; but she spoke. “Ah, Mr. Mayne, how beautiful the west sky looks! It is the finest sunset we have had this spring.”
“It is very beautiful,” he replied, without looking westward a single degree. “Miss Allenville,” he said reproachfully, “you might just have thought whether, for the sake of reaching one guilty person, it was worth while to deeply wound an old man.”
“I do not allow you to say that,” she answered with proud quickness. “Still, I will listen just this once.”
“Are you glad you asserted your superiority to me by putting in motion again that scheme for turning him out?”
“I merely left off hindering it,” she said.
“Well, we shall go now,” continued Egbert,” and make room for newer people. I hope you forgive what caused it all.”
“You talk in that strain to make me feel regrets; and you think that because you are read in a few books you may say or do anything.”
“No, no. That’s unfair.”
“I will try to alter it — that your grandfather may not leave. Say that you forgive me for thinking he and yourself had better leave — as I forgive you for what you did. But remember, nothing of that sort ever again.”
“Forgive you? Oh, Miss Allenville!” said he in a wild whisper, “I wish you had sinned a hundred ,times as much, that I might show how readily I can forgive all.”
She had looked as if she would have held out her hand; but, for some reason or other, directly he had spoken with emotion it was not so well for him as when he had spoken to wound her. She passed on silently, and entered the private gate to the house.
A day or two after this, about three o’clock in the afternoon, and whilst Egbert was giving a less on in geography, a lad burst into the school with the tidings that Farmer Broadford had fallen from a cornstack they were threshing, and hurt himself severely.
The boy had borrowed a horse to come with, and Mayne at once made him gallop off with it for a doctor. Dismissing the children, the young man ran home full of forebodings. He found his relative in a chair, held up by two of his labouring men. He was put to bed, and seeing how pale he was, Egbert gave him a little wine, and bathed the parts which had been bruised by the fall.
Egbert had at first been the more troubled at the event through believing that his grandfather’s fall was the result of his low spirits and mental uneasiness; and he blamed himself for letting so infirm a man go out upon the farm till quite recovered. But it turned out that the actual cause of the accident was the breaking of the ladder that he had been standing on. When the surgeon had seen him he said that the external bruises were mere trifles; but that the shock had been great, and had produced internal injuries highly dangerous to a man in that stage of life.
His grandson was of opinion in later years that the fall only hastened by a few months a dissolution which would soon have taken place under any circumstances, from the natural decay of the old man’s constitution. His pulse grew feeble and his voice weak, but he continued in a comparatively firm state of mind for some days, during which he talked to Egbert a great deal.
Egbert trusted that the illness would soon pass away; his anxiety for his grandfather was great. When he was gone not one of the family would be left but himself. But in spite of hope the younger man perceived that death was really at hand. And now arose a question. It was certainly a time to make confidences, if they were ever to be made; should he, then, tell his grandfather, who knew the Allenvilles so well, of his love for Geraldine? At one moment it seemed duty; at another it seemed a graceful act, to say the least.
Yet Egbert might never have uttered a word but for a remark of his grandfather’s which led up to the very point. He was speaking of the farm and of the squire, and thence he went on to the daughter.
“She, too,” he said, “seems to have that reckless spirit which was in her mother’s family, and ruined her mother’s father at the gaming-table, though she’s too young to show much of it yet.”
“I hope not,” said Egbert fervently.
“Why? What be the Allenvilles to you — not that I wish the girl harm?”
“I think she is the very best being in the world. I — love her deeply.”
His grandfather’s eyes were set on the wall. “Well, well, my poor boy,” came softly from his mouth. “What made ye think of loving her? Ye may as well love a mountain, for any return you’ll ‘ever get. Do she know of it?”
“She guesses it. It was my saving her from the threshing-machine that began it.”
“And she checks you? “‘
“Well — no.”
“Egbert,” he said after a silence, “I am grieved, for it can but end in pain. Mind, she’s an inexperienced girl. She never thinks of what trouble she may get herself into with her father and with her friends. And mind this, my lad, as another reason for dropping it; however honourable your love may be, you’ll never get credit for your honour. Nothing you can do will ever root out the notion of people that where the man is poor and the woman is high-born he’s a scamp and she’s an angel.”
“She’s very good.”
“She’s thoughtless, or she’d never encourage you. You must try not to see her.”
“I will never put myself in her way again.”
The subject was mentioned no more then. The next day the worn-out old farmer died, and his last request to Egbert was that he would do nothing to tempt Geraldine Allenville to think of him further.
CHAPTER VI.
Hath misery made thee blind
To the fond workings of a woman’s mind?
And must I say — albeit my heart rebel
With all that woman feels but should not tell;
Because, despite thy faults, that heart is moved —
It feared thee, thank’d thee, pitied, maddend, loved?
It was in the evening of the day after Farmer Broadford’s death that Egbert first sat down in the house alone. The bandy-legged little man who had acted as his grandfather’s groom of the chambers and stables simultaneously had gone into the village. The candles were not yet lighted, and Mayne abstractedly watched upon the pale wall the latter rays of sunset slowly changing into the white shine of a moon a few days old. The ancient family clock had stopped for want of winding, and the intense silence that prevailed seemed more like the bodily presence of some quality than the mere absence of sound.
He was thinking how many were the indifferent expressions which he had used towards the poor body lying cold up-stairs — the only relation he had latterly had upon earth — which might as well have been left unsaid; of how far he had been from practically attempting to do what in theory he called best — to make the most of every pulse of natural affection; that he had never heeded or particularly inquired the meaning of the different pieces of advice which the kind old man had tendered from time to time; that he had never even thought of asking for any details of his grandfather’s history.
His musings turned upon Geraldine. He had promised to seek her no more, and he would keep his promise. Her interest in him might only be that of an exceedingly romantic and freakish soul, awakened but through “lack of other idleness,” and because sound sense suggeste
d to her that it was a thing dangerous to do; for it seemed that she was ever and only moved by the superior of two antagonistic forces. She had as yet seen little or no society, she was only seventeen; and hence it was possible that a week of the town and fashion into which she would soon be initiated might blot out his very existence from her memory.
He was sitting with his back to the window, meditating in this minor key, when a shadow darkened the opposite moonlit wall. Egbert started. There was a gentle tap at the door; and he opened it to behold the well-known form of the lady in his mind.
“Mr. Mayne, are you alone?” she whispered, full of agitation.
“Quite alone, excepting my poor grandfather’s body up-stairs,” he answered, as agitated as she.
Then out it all came. “I couldn’t help coming — I hope — oh, I do so pray - that it was not through me that he died. Was it I, indeed, who killed him? They say it was the effect of the news that he was to leave the farm. I would have done anything to hinder his being turned out had I only reflected! And now he is dead. It was so cruel to an old man like him; and now you have nobody in the world to care for you, have you, Egbert — except me?”
The ice was wholly broken. He took her hand in both his own and began to assure her that her alarm was grounded on nothing whatever. And yet he was almost reluctant to assure her out of so sweet a state. And when he had said over and over again that his grandfather’s fall had nothing to do with his mental condition, that the utmost result of her hasty proceeding was a sadness of spirit in him, she still persisted, as is the custom of women, in holding to that most painful possibility as the most likely, simply because it wounded her most. It was a long while before she would be convinced of her own innocence, but he maintained it firmly, and she finally believed.
