Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  ‘What, not know nor-west? Well, I should think a boy could never live and grow up to be a man without knowing the four quarters. I knowed ‘em when I was a mossel of a chiel. We be no great scholars here, that’s true, but there isn’t a Tom-rig or Jack-straw in these parts that don’t know where they lie as well as I. Now I’ve lived, man and boy, these eight-and-sixty years, and never met a man in my life afore who hadn’t learnt such a common thing as the four quarters.’

  Christopher parted from his companion and soon reached a stile, clambering over which he entered a park. Here he threaded his way, and rounding a clump of aged trees the young man came in view of a light and elegant country-house in the half-timbered Gothic style of the late revival, apparently only a few years old. Surprised at finding himself so near, Christopher’s heart fluttered unmanageably till he had taken an abstract view of his position, and, in impatience at his want of nerve, adopted a sombre train of reasoning to convince himself that, far from indulgence in the passion of love bringing bliss, it was a folly, leading to grief and disquiet — certainly one which would do him no good. Cooled down by this, he stepped into the drive and went up to the house.

  ‘Is Mrs. Petherwin at home?’ he said modestly.

  ‘Who did you say, sir?’

  He repeated the name.

  ‘Don’t know the person.’

  ‘The lady may be a visitor — I call on business.’

  ‘She is not visiting in this house, sir.’

  ‘Is not this Arrowthorne Lodge?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Then where is Arrowthorne Lodge, please?’

  ‘Well, it is nearly a mile from here. Under the trees by the high-road. If you go across by that footpath it will bring you out quicker than by following the bend of the drive.’

  Christopher wondered how he could have managed to get into the wrong park; but, setting it down to his ignorance of the difference between oak and elm, he immediately retraced his steps, passing across the park again, through the gate at the end of the drive, and into the turnpike road. No other gate, park, or country seat of any description was within view.

  ‘Can you tell me the way to Arrowthorne Lodge?’ he inquired of the first person he met, who was a little girl.

  ‘You are just coming away from it, sir,’ said she. ‘I’ll show you; I am going that way.’

  They walked along together. Getting abreast the entrance of the park he had just emerged from, the child said, ‘There it is, sir; I live there too.’

  Christopher, with a dazed countenance, looked towards a cottage which stood nestling in the shrubbery and ivy like a mushroom among grass. ‘Is that Arrowthorne Lodge?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, and if you go up the drive, you come to Arrowthorne House.’

  ‘Arrowthorne Lodge — where Mrs. Petherwin lives, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. She lives there along wi’ mother and we. But she don’t want anybody to know it, sir, cause she’s celebrate, and ‘twouldn’t do at all.’

  Christopher said no more, and the little girl became interested in the products of the bank and ditch by the wayside. He left her, pushed open the heavy gate, and tapped at the Lodge door.

  The latch was lifted. ‘Does Mrs. Petherwin,’ he began, and, determined that there should be no mistake, repeated, ‘Does Mrs. Ethelberta Petherwin, the poetess, live here?’ turning full upon the person who opened the door.

  ‘She does, sir,’ said a faltering voice; and he found himself face to face with the pupil-teacher of Sandbourne.

  CHAPTER 13.

  THE LODGE (continued) — THE COPSE BEHIND

  ‘This is indeed a surprise; I — am glad to see you!’ Christopher stammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one he had intended — a smile not without a tinge of ghastliness.

  ‘Yes — I am home for the holidays,’ said the blushing maiden; and, after a critical pause, she added, ‘If you wish to speak to my sister, she is in the plantation with the children.’

  ‘O no — no, thank you — not necessary at all,’ said Christopher, in haste. ‘I only wish for an interview with a lady called Mrs. Petherwin.’

  ‘Yes; Mrs Petherwin — my sister,’ said Picotee. ‘She is in the plantation. That little path will take you to her in five minutes.’

  The amazed Christopher persuaded himself that this discovery was very delightful, and went on persuading so long that at last he felt it to be so. Unable, like many other people, to enjoy being satirized in words because of the irritation it caused him as aimed-at victim, he sometimes had philosophy enough to appreciate a satire of circumstance, because nobody intended it. Pursuing the path indicated, he found himself in a thicket of scrubby undergrowth, which covered an area enclosed from the park proper by a decaying fence. The boughs were so tangled that he was obliged to screen his face with his hands, to escape the risk of having his eyes filliped out by the twigs that impeded his progress. Thus slowly advancing, his ear caught, between the rustles, the tones of a voice in earnest declamation; and, pushing round in that direction, he beheld through some beech boughs an open space about ten yards in diameter, floored at the bottom with deep beds of curled old leaves, and cushions of furry moss. In the middle of this natural theatre was the stump of a tree that had been felled by a saw, and upon the flat stool thus formed stood Ethelberta, whom Christopher had not beheld since the ball at Wyndway House.

  Round her, leaning against branches or prostrate on the ground, were five or six individuals. Two were young mechanics — one of them evidently a carpenter. Then there was a boy about thirteen, and two or three younger children. Ethelberta’s appearance answered as fully as ever to that of an English lady skilfully perfected in manner, carriage, look, and accent; and the incongruity of her present position among lives which had had many of Nature’s beauties stamped out of them, and few of the beauties of Art stamped in, brought him, as a second feeling, a pride in her that almost equalled his first sentiment of surprise. Christopher’s attention was meanwhile attracted from the constitution of the group to the words of the speaker in the centre of it — words to which her auditors were listening with still attention.

  It appeared to Christopher that Ethelberta had lately been undergoing some very extraordinary experiences. What the beginning of them had been he could not in the least understand, but the portion she was describing came distinctly to his ears, and he wondered more and more.

  ‘He came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from the edge. I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. How I longed for the assistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching the block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped up with an oath. This method of attack told me a new thing with wretched distinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was to serve my turn no longer. The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for he exclaimed, “You don’t escape me, masquerading madam,” or some such words, and came on. My only hope was that in his excitement he might forget to notice where the grass terminated near the edge of the cliff, though this could be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own feeling more distinct on this point I hastily bared my feet.’

  The listeners moistened their lips, Ethelberta took breath, and then went on to describe the scene that ensued, ‘A dreadful variation on the game of Blindman’s buff,’ being the words by which she characterized it.

  Ethelberta’s manner had become so impassioned at this point that the lips of her audience parted, the children clung to their elders, and Christopher could control himself no longer. He thrust aside the boughs, and broke in upon the group.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Ethelberta,’ he exclaimed with great excitement, ‘where did you meet with such a terrible experience as that?’

  The children shrieked, as if they thought that the interruption was in some way the catastrophe of the events in course of narration. Every one started up; the
two young mechanics stared, and one of them inquired, in return, ‘What’s the matter, friend?’

  Christopher had not yet made reply when Ethelberta stepped from her pedestal down upon the crackling carpet of deep leaves.

  ‘Mr. Julian!’ said she, in a serene voice, turning upon him eyes of such a disputable stage of colour, between brown and grey, as would have commended itself to a gallant duellist of the last century as a point on which it was absolutely necessary to take some friend’s life or other. But the calmness was artificially done, and the astonishment that did not appear in Ethelberta’s tones was expressed by her gaze. Christopher was not in a mood to draw fine distinctions between recognized and unrecognized organs of speech. He replied to the eyes.

  ‘I own that your surprise is natural,’ he said, with an anxious look into her face, as if he wished to get beyond this interpolated scene to something more congenial and understood. ‘But my concern at such a history of yourself since I last saw you is even more natural than your surprise at my manner of breaking in.’

  ‘That history would justify any conduct in one who hears it — ’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘If it were true,’ added Ethelberta, smiling. ‘But it is as false as — ’ She could name nothing notoriously false without raising an image of what was disagreeable, and she continued in a better manner: ‘The story I was telling is entirely a fiction, which I am getting up for a particular purpose — very different from what appears at present.’

  ‘I am sorry there was such a misunderstanding,’ Christopher stammered, looking upon the ground uncertain and ashamed. ‘Yet I am not, either, for I am very glad you have not undergone such trials, of course. But the fact is, I — being in the neighbourhood — I ventured to call on a matter of business, relating to a poem which I had the pleasure of setting to music at the beginning of the year.’

  Ethelberta was only a little less ill at ease than Christopher showed himself to be by this way of talking.

  ‘Will you walk slowly on?’ she said gently to the two young men, ‘and take the children with you; this gentleman wishes to speak to me on business.’

  The biggest young man caught up a little one under his arm, and plunged amid the boughs; another little one lingered behind for a few moments to look shyly at Christopher, with an oblique manner of hiding her mouth against her shoulder and her eyes behind her pinafore. Then she vanished, the boy and the second young man followed, and Ethelberta and Christopher stood within the wood-bound circle alone.

  ‘I hope I have caused no inconvenience by interrupting the proceedings,’ said Christopher softly; ‘but I so very much wished to see you!’

  ‘Did you, indeed — really wish to see me?’ she said gladly. ‘Never mind inconvenience then; it is a word which seems shallow in meaning under the circumstances. I surely must say that a visit is to my advantage, must I not? I am not as I was, you see, and may receive as advantages what I used to consider as troubles.’

  ‘Has your life really changed so much?’

  ‘It has changed. But what I first meant was that an interesting visitor at a wrong time is better than a stupid one at a right time.’

  ‘I had been behind the trees for some minutes, looking at you, and thinking of you; but what you were doing rather interrupted my first meditation. I had thought of a meeting in which we should continue our intercourse at the point at which it was broken off years ago, as if the omitted part had not existed at all; but something, I cannot tell what, has upset all that feeling, and — ’

  ‘I can soon tell you the meaning of my extraordinary performance,’ Ethelberta broke in quickly, and with a little trepidation. ‘My mother-in-law, Lady Petherwin, is dead; and she has left me nothing but her house and furniture in London — more than I deserve, but less than she had distinctly led me to expect; and so I am somewhat in a corner.’

  ‘It is always so.’

  ‘Not always, I think. But this is how it happened. Lady Petherwin was very capricious; when she was not foolishly kind she was unjustly harsh. A great many are like it, never thinking what a good thing it would be, instead of going on tacking from side to side between favour and cruelty, to keep to a mean line of common justice. And so we quarrelled, and she, being absolute mistress of all her wealth, destroyed her will that was in my favour, and made another, leaving me nothing but the fag-end of the lease of the town-house and the furniture in it. Then, when we were abroad, she turned to me again, forgave everything, and, becoming ill afterwards, wrote a letter to the brother, to whom she had left the bulk of her property, stating that I was to have twenty-thousand of the one-hundred-thousand pounds she had bequeathed to him — as in the original will — doing this by letter in case anything should happen to her before a new will could be considered, drawn, and signed, and trusting to his honour quite that he would obey her expressed wish should she die abroad. Well, she did die, in the full persuasion that I was provided for; but her brother (as I secretly expected all the time) refused to be morally bound by a document which had no legal value, and the result is that he has everything, except, of course, the furniture and the lease. It would have been enough to break the heart of a person who had calculated upon getting a fortune, which I never did; for I felt always like an intruder and a bondswoman, and had wished myself out of the Petherwin family a hundred times, with my crust of bread and liberty. For one thing, I was always forbidden to see my relatives, and it pained me much. Now I am going to move for myself, and consider that I have a good chance of success in what I may undertake, because of an indifference I feel about succeeding which gives the necessary coolness that any great task requires.’

  ‘I presume you mean to write more poems?’

  ‘I cannot — that is, I can write no more that satisfy me. To blossom into rhyme on the sparkling pleasures of life, you must be under the influence of those pleasures, and I am at present quite removed from them — surrounded by gaunt realities of a very different description.’

  ‘Then try the mournful. Trade upon your sufferings: many do, and thrive.’

  ‘It is no use to say that — no use at all. I cannot write a line of verse. And yet the others flowed from my heart like a stream. But nothing is so easy as to seem clever when you have money.’

  ‘Except to seem stupid when you have none,’ said Christopher, looking at the dead leaves.

  Ethelberta allowed herself to linger on that thought for a few seconds; and continued, ‘Then the question arose, what was I to do? I felt that to write prose would be an uncongenial occupation, and altogether a poor prospect for a woman like me. Finally I have decided to appear in public.’

  ‘Not on the stage?’

  ‘Certainly not on the stage. There is no novelty in a poor lady turning actress, and novelty is what I want. Ordinary powers exhibited in a new way effect as much as extraordinary powers exhibited in an old way.’

  ‘Yes — so they do. And extraordinary powers, and a new way too, would be irresistible.’

  ‘I don’t calculate upon both. I had written a prose story by request, when it was found that I had grown utterly inane over verse. It was written in the first person, and the style was modelled after De Foe’s. The night before sending it off, when I had already packed it up, I was reading about the professional story-tellers of Eastern countries, who devoted their lives to the telling of tales. I unfastened the manuscript and retained it, convinced that I should do better by telling the story.’

  ‘Well thought of!’ exclaimed Christopher, looking into her face. ‘There is a way for everybody to live, if they can only find it out.’

  ‘It occurred to me,’ she continued, blushing slightly, ‘that tales of the weird kind were made to be told, not written. The action of a teller is wanted to give due effect to all stories of incident; and I hope that a time will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of fiction at home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at the feet of a professed romancer. I am going to tell my tales befor
e a London public. As a child, I had a considerable power in arresting the attention of other children by recounting adventures which had never happened; and men and women are but children enlarged a little. Look at this.’

  She drew from her pocket a folded paper, shook it abroad, and disclosed a rough draft of an announcement to the effect that Mrs. Petherwin, Professed Story-teller, would devote an evening to that ancient form of the romancer’s art, at a well-known fashionable hall in London. ‘Now you see,’ she continued, ‘the meaning of what you observed going on here. That you heard was one of three tales I am preparing, with a view of selecting the best. As a reserved one, I have the tale of my own life — to be played as a last card. It was a private rehearsal before my brothers and sisters — not with any view of obtaining their criticism, but that I might become accustomed to my own voice in the presence of listeners.’

  ‘If I only had had half your enterprise, what I might have done in the world!’

  ‘Now did you ever consider what a power De Foe’s manner would have if practised by word of mouth? Indeed, it is a style which suits itself infinitely better to telling than to writing, abounding as it does in colloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper in these days, but have a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real. And so, in short, I am going to talk De Foe on a subject of my own. Well?’

  The last word had been given tenderly, with a long-drawn sweetness, and was caused by a look that Christopher was bending upon her at the moment, in which he revealed that he was thinking less of the subject she was so eagerly and hopefully descanting upon than upon her aspect in explaining it. It is a fault of manner particularly common among men newly imported into the society of bright and beautiful women; and we will hope that, springing as it does from no unworthy source, it is as soon forgiven in the general world as it was here.

  ‘I was only following a thought,’ said Christopher: — ’a thought of how I used to know you, and then lost sight of you, and then discovered you famous, and how we are here under these sad autumn trees, and nobody in sight.’