Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy (most popular novels of all time TXT) 📖

‘They sat on after that without speaking, side by side, and the band played as before; the people strolled up and down; and Stephen and Olive shrank smaller and smaller as they shot straight out to sea.  The two on shore used to relate how they saw Stephen stop rowing a moment, and take off his coat to get at his work better; but James’s wife sat quite still in the stern, holding the tiller-ropes by which she steered the boat.  When they had got very small indeed she turned her head to shore.

‘“She is waving her handkerchief to us,” said Stephen’s wife, who thereupon pulled out her own, and waved it as a return signal.

‘The boat’s course had been a little awry while Mrs. James neglected her steering to wave her handkerchief to her husband and Mrs. Stephen; but now the light skiff went straight onward again, and they could soon see nothing more of the two figures it contained than Olive’s light mantle and Stephen’s white shirt sleeves behind.

‘The two on the shore talked on.  “’Twas very curious—our changing partners at Tony Kytes’s wedding,” Emily declared.  “Tony was of a fickle nature by all account, and it really seemed as if his character had infected us that night.  Which of you two was it that first proposed not to marry as we were engaged?”

‘“H’m—I can’t remember at this moment,” says James.  “We talked it over, you know; and no sooner said than done.”

‘“’Twas the dancing,” said she.  “People get quite crazy sometimes in a dance.”

‘“They do,” he owned.

‘“James—do you think they care for one another still?” asks Mrs. Stephen.

‘James Hardcome mused and admitted that perhaps a little tender feeling might flicker up in their hearts for a moment now and then.  “Still, nothing of any account,” he said.

‘“I sometimes think that Olive is in Steve’s mind a good deal,” murmurs Mrs. Stephen; “particularly when she pleases his fancy by riding past our window at a gallop on one of the draught-horses . . . I never could do anything of that sort; I could never get over my fear of a horse.”

‘“And I am no horseman, though I pretend to be on her account,” murmured James Hardcome.  “But isn’t it almost time for them to turn and sweep round to the shore, as the other boating folk have done?  I wonder what Olive means by steering away straight to the horizon like that?  She has hardly swerved from a direct line seaward since they started.”

‘“No doubt they are talking, and don’t think of where they are going,” suggests Stephen’s wife.

‘“Perhaps so,” said James.  “I didn’t know Steve could row like that.”

‘“O yes,” says she.  “He often comes here on business, and generally has a pull round the bay.”

‘“I can hardly see the boat or them,” says James again; “and it is getting dark.”

‘The heedless pair afloat now formed a mere speck in the films of the coming night, which thickened apace, till it completely swallowed up their distant shapes.  They had disappeared while still following the same straight course away from the world of land-livers, as if they were intending to drop over the sea-edge into space, and never return to earth again.

‘The two on the shore continued to sit on, punctually abiding by their agreement to remain on the same spot till the others returned.  The Esplanade lamps were lit one by one, the bandsmen folded up their stands and departed, the yachts in the bay hung out their riding lights, and the little boats came back to shore one after another, their hirers walking on to the sands by the plank they had climbed to go afloat; but among these Stephen and Olive did not appear.

‘“What a time they are!” said Emily.  “I am getting quite chilly.  I did not expect to have to sit so long in the evening air.”

‘Thereupon James Hardcome said that he did not require his overcoat, and insisted on lending it to her.

‘He wrapped it round Emily’s shoulders.

‘“Thank you, James,” she said.  “How cold Olive must be in that thin jacket!”

‘He said he was thinking so too.  “Well, they are sure to be quite close at hand by this time, though we can’t see ’em.  The boats are not all in yet.  Some of the rowers are fond of paddling along the shore to finish out their hour of hiring.”

‘“Shall we walk by the edge of the water,” said she, “to see if we can discover them?”

‘He assented, reminding her that they must not lose sight of the seat, lest the belated pair should return and miss them, and be vexed that they had not kept the appointment.

‘They walked a sentry beat up and down the sands immediately opposite the seat; and still the others did not come.  James Hardcome at last went to the boatman, thinking that after all his wife and cousin might have come in under shadow of the dusk without being perceived, and might have forgotten the appointment at the bench.

‘“All in?” asked James.

‘“All but one boat,” said the lessor.  “I can’t think where that couple is keeping to.  They might run foul of something or other in the dark.”

‘Again Stephen’s wife and Olive’s husband waited, with more and more anxiety.  But no little yellow boat returned.  Was it possible they could have landed further down the Esplanade?

‘“It may have been done to escape paying,” said the boat-owner.  “But they didn’t look like people who would do that.”

‘James Hardcome knew that he could found no hope on such a reason as that.  But now, remembering what had been casually discussed between Steve and himself about their wives from time to time, he admitted for the first time the possibility that their old tenderness had been revived by their face-to-face position more strongly than either had anticipated at starting—the excursion having been so obviously undertaken for the pleasure of the performance only,—and that they had landed at some steps he knew of further down toward the pier, to be longer alone together.

‘Still he disliked to harbour the thought, and would not mention its existence to his companion.  He merely said to her, “Let us walk further on.”

‘They did so, and lingered between the boat-stage and the pier till Stephen Hardcome’s wife was uneasy, and was obliged to accept James’s offered arm.  Thus the night advanced.  Emily was presently so worn out by fatigue that James felt it necessary to conduct her home; there was, too, a remote chance that the truants had landed in the harbour on the other side of the town, or elsewhere, and hastened home in some unexpected way, in the belief that their consorts would not have waited so long.

‘However, he left a direction in the town that a lookout should be kept, though this was arranged privately, the bare possibility of an elopement being enough to make him reticent; and, full of misgivings, the two remaining ones hastened to catch the last train out of Budmouth-Regis; and when they got to Casterbridge drove back to Upper Longpuddle.’

‘Along this very road as we do now,’ remarked the parish clerk.

‘To be sure—along this very road,’ said the curate.  ‘However, Stephen and Olive were not at their homes; neither had entered the village since leaving it in the morning.  Emily and James Hardcome went to their respective dwellings to snatch a hasty night’s rest, and at daylight the next morning they drove again to Casterbridge and entered the Budmouth train, the line being just opened.

‘Nothing had been heard of the couple there during this brief absence.  In the course of a few hours some young men testified to having seen such a man and woman rowing in a frail hired craft, the head of the boat kept straight to sea; they had sat looking in each other’s faces as if they were in a dream, with no consciousness of what they were doing, or whither they were steering.  It was not till late that day that more tidings reached James’s ears.  The boat had been found drifting bottom upward a long way from land.  In the evening the sea rose somewhat, and a cry spread through the town that two bodies were cast ashore in Lullstead Bay, several miles to the eastward.  They were brought to Budmouth, and inspection revealed them to be the missing pair.  It was said that they had been found tightly locked in each other’s arms, his lips upon hers, their features still wrapt in the same calm and dream-like repose which had been observed in their demeanour as they had glided along.

‘Neither James nor Emily questioned the original motives of the unfortunate man and woman in putting to sea.  They were both above suspicion as to intention.  Whatever their mutual feelings might have led them on to, underhand behaviour was foreign to the nature of either.  Conjecture pictured that they might have fallen into tender reverie while gazing each into a pair of eyes that had formerly flashed for him and her alone, and, unwilling to avow what their mutual sentiments were, they had continued thus, oblivious of time and space, till darkness suddenly overtook them far from land.  But nothing was truly known.  It had been their destiny to die thus.  The two halves, intended by Nature to make the perfect whole, had failed in that result during their lives, though “in their death they were not divided.”  Their bodies were brought home, and buried on one day.  I remember that, on looking round the churchyard while reading the service, I observed nearly all the parish at their funeral.’

‘It was so, sir,’ said the clerk.

‘The remaining two,’ continued the curate (whose voice had grown husky while relating the lovers’ sad fate), ‘were a more thoughtful and far-seeing, though less romantic, couple than the first.  They were now mutually bereft of a companion, and found themselves by this accident in a position to fulfil their destiny according to Nature’s plan and their own original and calmly-formed intention.  James Hardcome took Emily to wife in the course of a year and a half; and the marriage proved in every respect a happy one.  I solemnized the service, Hardcome having told me, when he came to give notice of the proposed wedding, the story of his first wife’s loss almost word for word as I have told it to you.’

‘And are they living in Longpuddle still?’ asked the new-comer.

‘O no, sir,’ interposed the clerk.  ‘James has been dead these dozen years, and his mis’ess about six or seven.  They had no children.  William Privett used to be their odd man till he died.’

‘Ah—William Privett!  He dead too?—dear me!’ said the other.  ‘All passed away!’

‘Yes, sir.  William was much older than I.  He’d ha’ been over eighty if he had lived till now.’

‘There was something very strange about William’s death—very strange indeed!’ sighed a melancholy man in the back of the van.  It was the seedsman’s father, who had hitherto kept silence.

‘And what might that have been?’ asked Mr. Lackland.

‘William, as you may know, was a curious, silent man; you could feel when he came near ’ee; and if he was in the house or anywhere behind your back without your seeing him, there seemed to be something clammy in the air, as if a cellar door was opened close by your elbow.  Well, one Sunday, at a time that William was in very good health to all appearance, the bell that was ringing for church went very heavy all of a sudden; the sexton, who told me o’t, said he’d not known the bell go so heavy in his hand for years—it was just as if the gudgeons wanted oiling.  That was on the Sunday, as I say.  During the week after, it chanced that William’s wife was staying up late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for Mr. and Mrs. Hardcome.  Her husband had finished his supper