by Thomas Hardy
(“Hurrah!”)
“Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.”
(“Hurrah!”)
“Why died I not from the womb? Why did i not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? … For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest!”
(“Hurrah!”)
“There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor… The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?”
Meanwhile Arabella, in her journey to discover what was going on, took a short cut down a narrow street and through an obscure nook into the quad of Cardinal. It was full of bustle, and brilliant in the sunlight with flowers and other preparations for a ball here also. A carpenter nodded to her, one who had formerly been a fellow-workman of Jude’s. A corridor was in course of erection from the entrance to the hall staircase, of gay red and buff bunting. Waggon-loads of boxes containing bright plants in full bloom were being placed about, and the great staircase was covered with red cloth. She nodded to one workman and another, and ascended to the hall on the strength of their acquaintance, where they were putting down a new floor and decorating for the dance.
The cathedral bell close at hand was sounding for five o’clock service.
“I should not mind having a spin there with a fellow’s arm round my waist,” she said to one of the men. “But Lord, I must be getting home again — there’s a lot to do. No dancing for me!”
When she reached home she was met at the door by Stagg, and one or two other of Jude’s fellow stoneworkers. “We are just going down to the river,” said the former, “to see the boat-bumping. But we’ve called round on our way to ask how your husband is.”
“He’s sleeping nicely, thank you,” said Arabella.
“That’s right. Well now, can’t you give yourself half an hour’s relaxation, Mrs. Fawley, and come along with us? ‘Twould do you good.”
“I should like to go,” said she. “I’ve never seen the boat-racing, and I hear it is good fun.”
“Come along!”
“How I wish I could!” She looked longingly down the street. “Wait a minute, then. I’ll just run up and see how he is now. Father is with him, I believe; so I can most likely come.”
They waited, and she entered. Downstairs the inmates were absent as before, having, in fact, gone in a body to the river where the procession of boats was to pass. When she reached the bedroom she found that her father had not even now come.
“Why couldn’t he have been here!” she said impatiently. “He wants to see the boats himself — that’s what it is!”
However, on looking round to the bed she brightened, for she saw that Jude was apparently sleeping, though he was not in the usual half-elevated posture necessitated by his cough. He had slipped down, and lay flat. A second glance caused her to start, and she went to the bed. His face was quite white, and gradually becoming rigid. She touched his fingers; they were cold, though his body was still warm. She listened at his chest. All was still within. The bumping of near thirty years had ceased.
After her first appalled sense of what had happened the faint notes of a military or other brass band from the river reached her ears; and in a provoked tone she exclaimed, “To think he should die just now! Why did he die just now!” Then meditating another moment or two she went to the door, softly closed it as before, and again descended the stairs.
“Here she is!” said one of the workmen. “We wondered if you were coming after all. Come along; we must be quick to get a good place… Well, how is he? Sleeping well still? Of course, we don’t want to drag ‘ee away if — ”
“Oh yes — sleeping quite sound. He won’t wake yet,” she said hurriedly.
They went with the crowd down Cardinal Street, where they presently reached the bridge, and the gay barges burst upon their view. Thence they passed by a narrow slit down to the riverside path — now dusty, hot, and thronged. Almost as soon as they had arrived the grand procession of boats began; the oars smacking with a loud kiss on the face of the stream, as they were lowered from the perpendicular.
“Oh, I say — how jolly! I’m glad I’ve come,” said Arabella. “And — it can’t hurt my husband — my being away.”
On the opposite side of the river, on the crowded barges, were gorgeous nosegays of feminine beauty, fashionably arrayed in green, pink, blue, and white. The blue flag of the boat club denoted the centre of interest, beneath which a band in red uniform gave out the notes she had already heard in the death-chamber. Collegians of all sorts, in canoes with ladies, watching keenly for “our” boat, darted up and down. While she regarded the lively scene somebody touched Arabella in the ribs, and looking round she saw Vilbert.
“That philtre is operating, you know!” he said with a leer. “Shame on ‘ee to wreck a heart so!”
“I shan’t talk of love to-day.”
“Why not? It is a general holiday.”
She did not reply. Vilbert’s arm stole round her waist, which act could be performed unobserved in the crowd. An arch expression overspread Arabella’s face at the feel of the arm, but she kept her eyes on the river as if she did not know of the embrace.
The crowd surged, pushing Arabella and her friends sometimes nearly into the river, and she would have laughed heartily at the horse-play that succeeded, if the imprint on her mind’s eye of a pale, statuesque countenance she had lately gazed upon had not sobered her a little.
The fun on the water reached the acme of excitement; there were immersions, there were shouts: the race was lost and won, the pink and blue and yellow ladies retired from the barges, and the people who had watched began to move.
“Well — it’s been awfully good,” cried Arabella. “But I think I must get back to my poor man. Father is there, so far as I know; but I had better get back.”
“What’s your hurry?”
“Well, I must go… Dear, dear, this is awkward!”
At the narrow gangway where the people ascended from the riverside path to the bridge the crowd was literally jammed into one hot mass — Arabella and Vilbert with the rest; and here they remained motionless, Arabella exclaiming, “Dear, dear!” more and more impatiently; for it had just occurred to her mind that if Jude were discovered to have died alone an inquest might be deemed necessary.
“What a fidget you are, my love,” said the physician, who, being pressed close against her by the throng, had no need of personal effort for contact. “Just as well have patience: there’s no getting away yet!”
It was nearly ten minutes before the wedged multitude moved sufficiently to let them pass through. As soon as she got up into the street Arabella hastened on, forbidding the physician to accompany her further that day. She did not go straight to her house; but to the abode of a woman who performed the last necessary offices for the poorer dead; where she knocked.
“My husband has just gone, poor soul,” she said. “Can you come and lay him out?”
Arabella waited a few minutes; and the two women went along, elbowing their way through the stream of fashionable people pouring out of Cardinal meadow, and being nearly knocked down by the carriages.
“I must call at the sexton’s about the bell, too,” said Arabella. “It is just round here, isn’t it? I’ll meet you at my door.”
By ten o’clock that night Jude was lying on the bedstead at his lodging covered with a sheet, and straight as an arrow. Through the partly opened window the joyous throb of a waltz entered from the ball-room at Cardinal.
Two days later, when the sky was equally cloudless, and the air equally still, two persons stood beside Jude’s open coffin in the same little bedroom. On one side was Arabella, on the other the Widow Edlin. They were both looking at Jude’s face, the worn old eyelids of Mrs. Edlin
being red.
“How beautiful he is!” said she.
“Yes. He’s a ‘andsome corpse,” said Arabella.
The window was still open to ventilate the room, and it being about noontide the clear air was motionless and quiet without. From a distance came voices; and an apparent noise of persons stamping.
“What’s that?” murmured the old woman.
“Oh, that’s the doctors in the theatre, conferring honourary degrees on the Duke of Hamptonshire and a lot more illustrious gents of that sort. It’s Remembrance Week, you know. The cheers come from the young men.”
“Aye; young and strong-lunged! Not like our poor boy here.”
An occasional word, as from some one making a speech, floated from the open windows of the theatre across to this quiet corner, at which there seemed to be a smile of some sort upon the marble features of Jude; while the old, superseded, Delphin editions of Virgil and Horace, and the dog-eared Greek Testament on the neighbouring shelf, and the few other volumes of the sort that he had not parted with, roughened with stone-dust where he had been in the habit of catching them up for a few minutes between his labours, seemed to pale to a sickly cast at the sounds. The bells struck out joyously; and their reverberations travelled round the bed-room.
Arabella’s eyes removed from Jude to Mrs. Edlin. “D’ye think she will come?” she asked.
“I could not say. She swore not to see him again.”
“How is she looking?”
“Tired and miserable, poor heart. Years and years older than when you saw her last. Quite a staid, worn woman now. ‘Tis the man — she can’t stomach un, even now!”
“If Jude had been alive to see her, he would hardly have cared for her any more, perhaps.”
“That’s what we don’t know… Didn’t he ever ask you to send for her, since he came to see her in that strange way?”
“No. Quite the contrary. I offered to send, and he said I was not to let her know how ill he was.”
“Did he forgive her?”
“Not as I know.”
“Well — poor little thing, ‘tis to be believed she’s found forgiveness somewhere! She said she had found peace!
“She may swear that on her knees to the holy cross upon her necklace till she’s hoarse, but it won’t be true!” said Arabella. “She’s never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she’s as he is now!”
THE WELL-BELOVED
The Well-Beloved was published in 1897. The main setting of the novel was The Isle of Slingers, a caricature of the Isle of Portland in Dorset, southern England. The novel was first published in a three-part serial form in 1892, before Hardy’s final novel Jude the Obscure (1895), and was then published after Jude the Obscure in amended book form in 1897. The Well-Beloved tells the story of sculptor Jocelyn Pierston’s search for the ideal woman, through three generations of the Portland family.
Hardy 1927, shortly before his death
THE WELL-BELOVED
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PART FIRST — A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
PART SECOND — A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
PART THIRD — A YOUNG MAN OF SIXTY
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
PREFACE
The peninsula carved by Time out of a single stone, whereon most of the following scenes are laid, has been for centuries immemorial the home of a curious and well-nigh distinct people, cherishing strange beliefs and singular customs, now for the most part obsolescent. Fancies, like certain soft-wooded plants which cannot bear the silent inland frosts, but thrive by the sea in the roughest of weather, seem to grow up naturally here, in particular amongst those natives who have no active concern in the labours of the ‘Isle.’ Hence it is a spot apt to generate a type of personage like the character imperfectly sketched in these pages — a native of natives — whom some may choose to call a fantast (if they honour him with their consideration so far), but whom others may see only as one that gave objective continuity and a name to a delicate dream which in a vaguer form is more or less common to all men, and is by no means new to Platonic philosophers.
To those who know the rocky coign of England here depicted — overlooking the great Channel Highway with all its suggestiveness, and standing out so far into mid-sea that touches of the Gulf Stream soften the air till February — it is matter of surprise that the place has not been more frequently chosen as the retreat of artists and poets in search of inspiration — for at least a month or two in the year, the tempestuous rather than the fine seasons by preference. To be sure, one nook therein is the retreat, at their country’s expense, of other geniuses from a distance; but their presence is hardly discoverable. Yet perhaps it is as well that the artistic visitors do not come, or no more would be heard of little freehold houses being bought and sold there for a couple of hundred pounds — built of solid stone, and dating from the sixteenth century and earlier, with mullions, copings, and corbels complete. These transactions, by the way, are carried out and covenanted, or were till lately, in the parish church, in the face of the congregation, such being the ancient custom of the Isle.
As for the story itself, it may be worth while to remark that, differing from all or most others of the series in that the interest aimed at is of an ideal or subjective nature, and frankly imaginative, verisimilitude in the sequence of events has been subordinated to the said aim.
The first publication of this tale in an independent form was in 1897; but it had appeared in the periodical press in 1892, under the title of ‘The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved.’ A few chapters of that experimental issue were rewritten for the present and final form of the narrative.
T. H. August 1912.
PART FIRST — A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY.
— ’Now, if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;
Her that dares be
What these lines wish to see:
I seek no further, it is She.’
— R. CRASHAW.
CHAPTER I.
A SUPPOSITITIOUS PRESENTMENT OF HER
A person who differed from the local wayfarers was climbing the steep road which leads through the sea-skirted townlet definable as the Street of Wells, and forms a pass into that Gibraltar of Wessex, the singular peninsula once an island, and still called such, that stretches out like the head of a bird into the English Channel. It is connected with the mainland by a long thin neck of pebbles ‘cast up by rages of the se,’ and unparalleled in its kind in Europe.
The pedestrian was what he looked like — a young man from London and the cities of the Continent. Nobody could see at present that his urbanism sat upon him only as a garment. He was just recollecting with something of self-reproach that a whole three years and eight months had flown since he paid his last visit to his father at this lonely rock of his birthplace, the intervening time having been spent amid many contrasting societies, peoples, manners, and scenes.
What had seemed usual in the isle when he lived there always looked quaint and odd after his later impressions. More than ever the spot seemed what it was said once to have been, the ancient Vindilia Island, and the Home of the Sl
ingers. The towering rock, the houses above houses, one man’s doorstep rising behind his neighbour’s chimney, the gardens hung up by one edge to the sky, the vegetables growing on apparently almost vertical planes, the unity of the whole island as a solid and single block of limestone four miles long, were no longer familiar and commonplace ideas. All now stood dazzlingly unique and white against the tinted sea, and the sun flashed on infinitely stratified walls of oolite,
The melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles,...
with a distinctiveness that called the eyes to it as strongly as any spectacle he had beheld afar.
After a laborious clamber he reached the top, and walked along the plateau towards the eastern village. The time being about two o’clock, in the middle of the summer season, the road was glaring and dusty, and drawing near to his father’s house he sat down in the sun.
He stretched out his hand upon the rock beside him. It felt warm. That was the island’s personal temperature when in its afternoon sleep as now. He listened, and heard sounds: whirr-whirr, saw-saw-saw. Those were the island’s snores — the noises of the quarrymen and stone-sawyers.
Opposite to the spot on which he sat was a roomy cottage or homestead. Like the island it was all of stone, not only in walls but in window-frames, roof, chimneys, fence, stile, pigsty and stable, almost door.
He remembered who had used to live there — and probably lived there now — the Caro family; the ‘roan-mare’ Caros, as they were called to distinguish them from other branches of the same pedigree, there being but half-a-dozen Christian and surnames in the whole island. He crossed the road and looked in at the open doorway. Yes, there they were still.
Mrs. Caro, who had seen him from the window, met him in the entry, and an old-fashioned greeting took place between them. A moment after a door leading from the back rooms was thrown open, and a young girl about seventeen or eighteen came bounding in.
