Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  Fadelle, in reading, wondered why Wingate should have piled together and preserved this mass of evidence now before him, for had these letters and papers, all damning records, been burnt, the high integrity of his character would have remained undoubted. An ordinary man, with little of state craft and nothing of Wingate’s ability, would have taken this ordinary precaution. Nevertheless, people did such things as keep compromising papers, and, it was not out of accord with Wingate’s character that he should have hurled his own image from its pedestal thus violently. No gradual descent would have served that supreme wilfulness.

  The last packet of letters gave the final blow, and Fadelle put his hand to his head mechanically, as if amazed at the dull numbing pain it had sustained. Up to this moment he had held that his friend had carried, as a well of sweetening waters in the inviolable recesses of his heart, deep and unstained reverence for a domestic ideal, but these letters spoke of the deepest treachery, not to his party this time but to his wife.

  He put them down and rested his aching head on his hands. Gradually the dubious haze and confusion cleared away and a tiny ray of light, no more than a pin-point at first-pierced the darkness and grew and grew until his mind was illuminated by one vast idea. He, Philip Fadelle, had triumphed at last: his adversary, after long years of victory, had met with one finally decisive stroke, for Fate had taken up arms against her erstwhile favourite on Fadelle’s behalf.

  One thing seemed plain enough to him: the biography could hardly be published now, at any rate not as he had written it. Gertrude would share the disillusionment, and not, so he dared to think, too regretfully. There was no reason now for her keeping faith with the memory of one who had been so unfaithful to her as she must be made to know. Things grew clearer and clearer to him, and at length he was serenely contented. He seemed to beholding out a cynically good-natured hand to Wingate across the dividing stream.

  “I’ve won at last, old friend. You made a good fight of it always; but now, like the sportsman you always were, you must confess yourself beaten.”

  Strange that even now, with that confuting pile of letters before him, he should still cherish the idea of Wingate’s straightness.

  A slight noise made him start, and he turned to see that Gertrude had entered the room. In her hand she held some unfolded pages. She had been looking in a writing case that had belonged to her husband, one that had been used only when he was travelling, and in it she had found a letter, unfinished. “Addressed to me,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice.” From the date I imagine that it was written while he was out of Town, during that last short holiday he took before his death. I remember that he was called back suddenly, and that is, probably, why this letter was never finished.”

  He asked, somewhat bewildered, if she wished him to read it.

  “I thought you would like to, as he speaks very beautifully of you. I was greatly touched. It is like a message from the dead.”

  Fadelle’s eyes lingered for a moment upon the letters spread before him on the bureau: there, too, was a message, but of a different cast. “Have you found anything there of importance?” asked Gertrude, her glance following his.

  Moved by a sudden impulse, strange even to himself, he answered hurriedly that there was nothing; he supposed that the letters had been put there so that they might, after an interval, be destroyed. Of their nature he said nothing, and Gertrude then left him.

  When he was alone he wondered why he had failed to reveal that which must be made known at some time: the opportunity had presented itself so aptly, and yet he had omitted to make use of it. Wingate, he was sure, had never hesitated to grasp the slightest chance; and here was he, in the moment of victory, acknowledging his weakness.

  With a sigh he gathered together the letters of the last packet and slipped around them their elastic band, having done which he took up the written sheets which Gertrude had left.

  “I have been wondering who would be the best man for this purpose, and I have come to the conclusion that there is only one of all my host of acquaintances in whom I am able to place implicit trust, and that one is Philip Fadelle. I am sorry that we have seen so little of him lately, but that has not been my fault. Indeed, as years pass, I realise more fully the loyalty of his friendship; he has been the same from boyhood, your friend and my friend, and I am certain that if I call upon him now to do me this service he will not fail me. I am going to ask him — ”

  The letter ended abruptly, leaving Fadelle in ignorance concerning the request that his dead friend would have made. With a steady hand he laid it on the top of the bureau. It was, indeed, a message from the dead, a supplication rather, an appeal, to which he could not but respond.

  “He will not fail me.” He repeated the words: they were uncanny now. Yes, Wingate had judged him well, he could not fail him; could not reveal. Once more his glance fell upon the packets of betraying letters, ranged in drawer and pigeon-hole, and then he walked back to one of the windows. Below, in the sunlight, he saw the figure of Gertrude moving among the flaming torch-lilies and flaunting golden-rod in the long garden at the side of the house. Some distance behind her, at the end of the kitchen garden, arose a thin blue column of smoke from a pile of burning weeds; the sight suggested to him a course of action and he went down.

  As he drew near to her he saw in her eyes that she wished to know how the letter had affected him, but of that he had determined he would not speak.

  “I have looked through the letters in the bureau,” he said steadily. “They relate mostly to private political matters, and were evidently meant to be destroyed. Perhaps it would be better for me to take them away with me to look through them again more leisurely than I have time to do now. If I find nothing in them that needs preserving I suppose I have your permission to destroy them. I suppose that you do not wish to read them?”

  He waited in strained suspense for her answer, which came as he had thought.

  “No thank you. I would much rather not, if you do not think it necessary. I think there can be nothing more depressing than reading such letters, and I hope that I have seen the last of them.”

  As they sauntered in the garden she again approached, almost shyly, the question of his departure, and it was evident that she wished him to remain longer. These tentative advances were disregarded by Fadelle. All that he wished now was to free himself as quickly as possible from the burden of obligation to his dead friend, which pressed upon his shoulders with ever increasing weight.

  When the time arrived for him to go to the station and Gertrude appeared, ready to drive him in her dogcart, it was clear, even to his dulled bachelor perceptions, that her costume of thick cream serge and hat to match had no suggestion of widowhood; and the light tendrils of hair that blew across her brow were almost virginal in their significance.

  As they drove along he remarked dully that the bracken was taking to itself deeper tints of brown and gold. A strange silence fell between them, a silence that seemed ever at breaking point. He felt that at a word from Gertrude the whole face of his mental world might have changed for ever, but the word was not spoken, though he seemed to see its shadow on her lips and in her eyes. At the same quiet wayside station where she had met him upon his arrival the pony drew up, and he found that there was the briefest possible space in which to wait for the train; he wondered, even then, what the interval might bring forth, but its sliding moments proved barren. Gertrude spoke of the bright flowers of early autumn that were beginning to bloom in the neat little station-garden, and she stooped and petted a serious station-cat which strolled leisurely among the luggage. Then the train rushed in.

  Fadelle had made his farewell and taken his seat when she moved suddenly forward, her lips eagerly parted.

  “Goodbye, Goodbye!” He leaned from the window as the train started, and his voice drowned what she might have said.

  She took a few quick steps, not half a dozen in all, by the side of the moving carriage, and he knew that she had some
thing to say then that might never again be said.

  “Goodbye!” He dropped back in his seat and saw her left behind, the light dying out of her face as she stood still.

  It was not until the train had pulsed and rattled onward for some miles, and he felt himself being carried to pastures unstained by memory, that he uttered to himself a comment which was to him the final token of the affair — that from the other side of the grave Wingate had played his last card and won.

  The Poetry Collections

  Thomas Hardy’s birthplace, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset

  Thomas Hardy’s parents— his father Thomas was a successful stonemason and his mother Jemima was well-educated.

  Hardy in 1856, aged 16

  WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES

  Thomas Hardy was one of the few writers to distinguish himself as a novelist and a poet with equal merit. In 1895, having received severe criticism for the pessimistic tone of his novel Jude the Obscure, Hardy vowed never again to write a novel. Instead, he turned to poetry and three years later he published this book of 51 poems, which he had composed over a period of 30 years.

  Hardy claimed poetry as his first love and dedicated the rest of his literary life to the writing of poems. Although his poetic works were not initially as well received as his novels were, Hardy would later be recognised as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, as demonstrated by the profound influence his poetry had on later writers, such as Philip Larkin, W.B. Yeats and D.H. Lawrence.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

  AMABEL

  HAP

  IN VISION I ROAMED TO -

  AT A BRIDAL TO -

  POSTPONEMENT

  A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

  NEUTRAL TONES

  SHE AT HIS FUNERAL

  HER INITIALS

  HER DILEMMA (IN — - CHURCH)

  REVULSION

  SHE, TO HIM — I

  SHE, TO HIM — II

  SHE, TO HIM — III

  SHE, TO HIM — IV

  DITTY (E. L G.)

  THE SERGEANT’S SONG (1803)

  VALENCIENNES

  SAN SEBASTIAN

  THE STRANGER’S SONG

  THE BURGHERS (17-)

  LEIPZIG

  THE PEASANT’S CONFESSION

  THE ALARM

  HER DEATH AND AFTER

  THE DANCE AT THE PHOENIX

  THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS (KHYBER PASS, 1842)

  A SIGN-SEEKER

  MY CICELY (17-)

  HER IMMORTALITY

  THE IVY-WIFE

  A MEETING WITH DESPAIR

  UNKNOWING

  FRIENDS BEYOND

  TO OUTER NATURE

  THOUGHTS OF PHENA AT NEWS OF HER DEATH

  MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS

  IN A WOOD

  TO A LADY OFFENDED BY A BOOK OF THE WRITER’S

  TO AN ORPHAN CHILD A WHIMSEY

  NATURE’S QUESTIONING

  THE IMPERCIPIENT (AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE)

  AT AN INN

  THE SLOW NATURE (AN INCIDENT OF FROOM VALLEY)

  IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY

  THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S

  HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT FOR A. W. B.

  THE TWO MEN

  LINES

  I LOOK INTO MY GLASS

  PREFACE

  Of the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and other partly written. In some few cases the verses were turned into prose and printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time that they might see the light.

  Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed good grounds.

  The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.

  The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and, as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons rather than for their intrinsic qualities.

  T. H.

  September 1898.

  THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

  Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,

  Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;

  Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,

  Friends interlinked us.

  “Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome -

  Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;

  Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded.”

  So self-communed I.

  Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,

  Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;

  “Maiden meet,” held I, “till arise my forefelt

  Wonder of women.”

  Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,

  Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;

  “Let such lodging be for a breath-while,” thought I,

  ”Soon a more seemly.

  “Then, high handiwork will I make my life-deed,

  Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,

  Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth.”

  Thus I . . . But lo, me!

  Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway,

  Bettered not has Fate or my hand’s achieving;

  Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track -

  Never transcended!

  AMABEL

  I marked her ruined hues,

  Her custom-straitened views,

  And asked, “Can there indwell

  My Amabel?”

  I looked upon her gown,

  Once rose, now earthen brown;

  The change was like the knell

  Of Amabel.

  Her step’s mechanic ways

  Had lost the life of May’s;

  Her laugh, once sweet in swell,

  Spoilt Amabel.

  I mused: “Who sings the strain

  I sang ere warmth did wane?

  Who thinks its numbers spell

  His Amabel?” -

  Knowing that, though Love cease,

  Love’s race shows undecrease;

  All find in dorp or dell

  An Amabel.

  - I felt that I could creep

  To some housetop, and weep,

  That Time the tyrant fell

  Ruled Amabel!

  I said (the while I sighed

  That love like ours had died),

  “Fond things I’ll no more tell

  To Amabel,

  “But leave her to her fate,

  And fling across the gate,

  ‘Till the Last Trump, farewell,

  O Amabel!’“

  1865.

  HAP

  If but some vengeful god would call to me

  From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,

  Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

  That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

  Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,

  Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;

  Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I

  Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

  But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,

  And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

  - Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,

  And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .

  These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown

  Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

  1866.

  IN VISION I ROAMED TO -

  In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,

  So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,

  As though with an awed sense of such ostent;

&nb
sp; And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

  In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,

  To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,

  Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:

  Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

  And the sick grief that you were far away

  Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near?

  Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,

  Less than a Want to me, as day by day

  I lived unware, uncaring all that lay

  Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

  1866.

  AT A BRIDAL TO -

  When you paced forth, to wait maternity,

  A dream of other offspring held my mind,

  Compounded of us twain as Love designed;

  Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!

  Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode’s decree,

  And each thus found apart, of false desire,

  A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire

  As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;

  And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose,

  Each mourn the double waste; and question dare

  To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows.

  Why those high-purposed children never were:

  What will she answer? That she does not care

  If the race all such sovereign types unknows.