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

very wet days visiting the parishioners.  These, the only two great ones of Narrobourne, were impressed by Joshua’s eloquence as much as the cottagers.

Halborough had been briefly introduced to them on his arrival some days before, and, their interest being kindled, they waited a few moments till he came out of the vestry, to walk down the churchyard-path with him.  Mrs. Fellmer spoke warmly of the sermon, of the good fortune of the parish in his advent, and hoped he had found comfortable quarters.

Halborough, faintly flushing, said that he had obtained very fair lodgings in the roomy house of a farmer, whom he named.

She feared he would find it very lonely, especially in the evenings, and hoped they would see a good deal of him.  When would he dine with them?  Could he not come that day—it must be so dull for him the first Sunday evening in country lodgings?

Halborough replied that it would give him much pleasure, but that he feared he must decline.  ‘I am not altogether alone,’ he said.  ‘My sister, who has just returned from Brussels, and who felt, as you do, that I should be rather dismal by myself, has accompanied me hither to stay a few days till she has put my rooms in order and set me going.  She was too fatigued to come to church, and is waiting for me now at the farm.’

‘Oh, but bring your sister—that will be still better!  I shall be delighted to know her.  How I wish I had been aware!  Do tell her, please, that we had no idea of her presence.’

Halborough assured Mrs. Fellmer that he would certainly bear the message; but as to her coming he was not so sure.  The real truth was, however, that the matter would be decided by him, Rosa having an almost filial respect for his wishes.  But he was uncertain as to the state of her wardrobe, and had determined that she should not enter the manor-house at a disadvantage that evening, when there would probably be plenty of opportunities in the future of her doing so becomingly.

He walked to the farm in long strides.  This, then, was the outcome of his first morning’s work as curate here.  Things had gone fairly well with him.  He had been ordained; he was in a comfortable parish, where he would exercise almost sole supervision, the rector being infirm.  He had made a deep impression at starting, and the absence of a hood seemed to have done him no harm.  Moreover, by considerable persuasion and payment, his father and the dark woman had been shipped off to Canada, where they were not likely to interfere greatly with his interests.

Rosa came out to meet him.  ‘Ah! you should have gone to church like a good girl,’ he said.

‘Yes—I wished I had afterwards.  But I do so hate church as a rule that even your preaching was underestimated in my mind.  It was too bad of me!’

The girl who spoke thus playfully was fair, tall, and sylph-like, in a muslin dress, and with just the coquettish désinvolture which an English girl brings home from abroad, and loses again after a few months of native life.  Joshua was the reverse of playful; the world was too important a concern for him to indulge in light moods.  He told her in decided, practical phraseology of the invitation.

‘Now, Rosa, we must go—that’s settled—if you’ve a dress that can be made fit to wear all on the hop like this.  You didn’t, of course, think of bringing an evening dress to such an out-of-the-way place?’

But Rosa had come from the wrong city to be caught napping in those matters.  ‘Yes, I did,’ said she.  ‘One never knows what may turn up.’

‘Well done!  Then off we go at seven.’

The evening drew on, and at dusk they started on foot, Rosa pulling up the edge of her skirt under her cloak out of the way of the dews, so that it formed a great wind-bag all round her, and carrying her satin shoes under her arm.  Joshua would not let her wait till she got indoors before changing them, as she proposed, but insisted on her performing that operation under a tree, so that they might enter as if they had not walked.  He was nervously formal about such trifles, while Rosa took the whole proceeding—walk, dressing, dinner, and all—as a pastime.  To Joshua it was a serious step in life.

A more unexpected kind of person for a curate’s sister was never presented at a dinner.  The surprise of Mrs. Fellmer was unconcealed.  She had looked forward to a Dorcas, or Martha, or Rhoda at the outside, and a shade of misgiving crossed her face.  It was possible that, had the young lady accompanied her brother to church, there would have been no dining at Narrobourne House that day.

Not so with the young widower, her son.  He resembled a sleeper who had awaked in a summer noon expecting to find it only dawn.  He could scarcely help stretching his arms and yawning in their faces, so strong was his sense of being suddenly aroused to an unforeseen thing.  When they had sat down to table he at first talked to Rosa somewhat with the air of a ruler in the land; but the woman lurking in the acquaintance soon brought him to his level, and the girl from Brussels saw him looking at her mouth, her hands, her contour, as if he could not quite comprehend how they got created: then he dropped into the more satisfactory stage which discerns no particulars.

He talked but little; she said much.  The homeliness of the Fellmers, to her view, though they were regarded with such awe down here, quite disembarrassed her.  The squire had become so unpractised, had dropped so far into the shade during the last year or so of his life, that he had almost forgotten what the world contained till this evening reminded him.  His mother, after her first moments of doubt, appeared to think that he must be left to his own guidance, and gave her attention to Joshua.

With all his foresight and doggedness of aim, the result of that dinner exceeded Halborough’s expectations.  In weaving his ambitions he had viewed his sister Rosa as a slight, bright thing to be helped into notice by his abilities; but it now began to dawn upon him that the physical gifts of nature to her might do more for them both than nature’s intellectual gifts to himself.  While he was patiently boring the tunnel Rosa seemed about to fly over the mountain.

He wrote the next day to his brother, now occupying his own old rooms in the theological college, telling him exultingly of the unanticipated début of Rosa at the manor-house.  The next post brought him a reply of congratulation, dashed with the counteracting intelligence that his father did not like Canada—that his wife had deserted him, which made him feel so dreary that he thought of returning home.

In his recent satisfaction at his own successes Joshua Halborough had well-nigh forgotten his chronic trouble—latterly screened by distance.  But it now returned upon him; he saw more in this brief announcement than his brother seemed to see.  It was the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand.

CHAPTER IV

The following December, a day or two before Christmas, Mrs. Fellmer and her son were walking up and down the broad gravel path which bordered the east front of the house.  Till within the last half-hour the morning had been a drizzling one, and they had just emerged for a short turn before luncheon.

‘You see, dear mother,’ the son was saying, ‘it is the peculiarity of my position which makes her appear to me in such a desirable light.  When you consider how I have been crippled at starting, how my life has been maimed; that I feel anything like publicity distasteful, that I have ye no political ambition, and that my chief aim and hope lie in the education of the little thing Annie has left me, you must see how desirable a wife like Miss Halborough would be, to prevent my becoming a mere vegetable.’

‘If you adore her, I suppose you must have her!’ replied his mother with dry indirectness.  ‘But you’ll find that she will not be content to live on here as you do, giving her whole mind to a young child.’

‘That’s just where we differ.  Her very disqualification, that of being a nobody, as you call it, is her recommendation in my eyes.  Her lack of influential connections limits her ambition.  From what I know of her, a life in this place is all that she would wish for.  She would never care to go outside the park-gates if it were necessary to stay within.’

‘Being in love with her, Albert, and meaning to marry her, you invent your practical reasons to make the case respectable.  Well, do as you will; I have no authority over you, so why should you consult me?  You mean to propose on this very occasion, no doubt.  Don’t you, now?’

‘By no means.  I am merely revolving the idea in my mind.  If on further acquaintance she turns out to be as good as she has hitherto seemed—well, I shall see.  Admit, now, that you like her.’

‘I readily admit it.  She is very captivating at first sight.  But as a stepmother to your child!  You seem mighty anxious, Albert, to get rid of me!’

‘Not at all.  And I am not so reckless as you think.  I don’t make up my mind in a hurry.  But the thought having occurred to me, I mention it to you at once, mother.  If you dislike it, say so.’

‘I don’t say anything.  I will try to make the best of it if you are determined.  When does she come?’

‘To-morrow.’

All this time there were great preparations in train at the curate’s, who was now a householder.  Rosa, whose two or three weeks’ stay on two occasions earlier in the year had so affected the squire, was coming again, and at the same time her younger brother Cornelius, to make up a family party.  Rosa, who journeyed from the Midlands, could not arrive till late in the evening, but Cornelius was to get there in the afternoon, Joshua going out to meet him in his walk across the fields from the railway.

Everything being ready in Joshua’s modest abode he started on his way, his heart buoyant and thankful, if ever it was in his life.  He was of such good report himself that his brother’s path into holy orders promised to be unexpectedly easy; and he longed to compare experiences with him, even though there was on hand a more exciting matter still.  From his youth he had held that, in old-fashioned country places, the Church conferred social prestige up to a certain point at a cheaper price than any other profession or pursuit; and events seemed to be proving him right.

He had walked about half an hour when he saw Cornelius coming along the path; and in a few minutes the two brothers met.  The experiences of Cornelius had been less immediately interesting than those of Joshua, but his personal position was satisfactory, and there was nothing to account for the singularly subdued manner that he exhibited, which at first Joshua set down to the fatigue of over-study; and he proceeded to the subject of Rosa’s arrival in the evening, and the probable consequences of this her third visit.  ‘Before next Easter she’ll be his wife, my boy,’ said Joshua with grave exultation.

Cornelius shook his head.  ‘She comes too late!’ he returned.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look here.’  He produced the Fountall paper, and placed his finger on a paragraph, which Joshua read.  It appeared under the report of Petty Sessions, and was a commonplace case of disorderly conduct, in which a man was sent to prison for seven days for breaking windows in that town.

‘Well?’ said Joshua.

‘It happened during an