Life's Little Ironies, Thomas Hardy [reading well .txt] 📗

‘Not—how—I sent him more money on his promising to stay in Canada?’

‘He is home, safe enough.’  Cornelius in the same gloomy tone gave the remainder of his information.  He had witnessed the scene, unobserved of his father, and had heard him say that he was on his way to see his daughter, who was going to marry a rich gentleman.  The only good fortune attending the untoward incident was that the millwright’s name had been printed as Joshua Alborough.

‘Beaten!  We are to be beaten on the eve of our expected victory!’ said the elder brother.  ‘How did he guess that Rosa was likely to marry?  Good Heaven Cornelius, you seem doomed to bring bad news always, do you not!’

‘I do,’ said Cornelius.  ‘Poor Rosa!’

It was almost in tears, so great was their heart-sickness and shame, that the brothers walked the remainder of the way to Joshua’s dwelling.  In the evening they set out to meet Rosa, bringing her to the village in a fly; and when she had come into the house, and was sitting down with them, they almost forgot their secret anxiety in contemplating her, who knew nothing about it.

Next day the Fellmers came, and the two or three days after that were a lively time.  That the squire was yielding to his impulses—making up his mind—there could be no doubt.  On Sunday Cornelius read the lessons, and Joshua preached.  Mrs. Fellmer was quite maternal towards Rosa, and it appeared that she had decided to welcome the inevitable with a good grace.  The pretty girl was to spend yet another afternoon with the elder lady, superintending some parish treat at the house in observance of Christmas, and afterwards to stay on to dinner, her brothers to fetch her in the evening.  They were also invited to dine, but they could not accept owing to an engagement.

The engagement was of a sombre sort.  They were going to meet their father, who would that day be released from Fountall Gaol, and try to persuade him to keep away from Narrobourne.  Every exertion was to be made to get him back to Canada, to his old home in the Midlands—anywhere, so that he would not impinge disastrously upon their courses, and blast their sister’s prospects of the auspicious marriage which was just then hanging in the balance.

As soon as Rosa had been fetched away by her friends at the manor-house her brothers started on their expedition, without waiting for dinner or tea.  Cornelius, to whom the millwright always addressed his letters when he wrote any, drew from his pocket and re-read as he walked the curt note which had led to this journey being undertaken; it was despatched by their father the night before, immediately upon his liberation, and stated that he was setting out for Narrobourne at the moment of writing; that having no money he would be obliged to walk all the way; that he calculated on passing through the intervening town of Ivell about six on the following day, where he should sup at the Castle Inn, and where he hoped they would meet him with a carriage-and-pair, or some other such conveyance, that he might not disgrace them by arriving like a tramp.

‘That sounds as if he gave a thought to our position,’ said Cornelius.

Joshua knew the satire that lurked in the paternal words, and said nothing.  Silence prevailed during the greater part of their journey.  The lamps were lighted in Ivell when they entered the streets, and Cornelius, who was quite unknown in this neighbourhood, and who, moreover, was not in clerical attire, decided that he should be the one to call at the Castle Inn.  Here, in answer to his inquiry under the darkness of the archway, they told him that such a man as he had described left the house about a quarter of an hour earlier, after making a meal in the kitchen-settle.  He was rather the worse for liquor.

‘Then,’ said Joshua, when Cornelius joined him outside with this intelligence, ‘we must have met and passed him!  And now that I think of it, we did meet some one who was unsteady in his gait, under the trees on the other side of Hendford Hill, where it was too dark to see him.’

They rapidly retraced their steps; but for a long stretch of the way home could discern nobody.  When, however, they had gone about three-quarters of the distance, they became conscious of an irregular footfall in front of them, and could see a whitish figure in the gloom.  They followed dubiously.  The figure met another wayfarer—the single one that had been encountered upon this lonely road—and they distinctly heard him ask the way to Narrobourne.  The stranger replied—what was quite true—that the nearest way was by turning in at the stile by the next bridge, and following the footpath which branched thence across the meadows.

When the brothers reached the stile they also entered the path, but did not overtake the subject of their worry till they had crossed two or three meads, and the lights from Narrobourne manor-house were visible before them through the trees.  Their father was no longer walking; he was seated against the wet bank of an adjoining hedge.  Observing their forms he shouted, ‘I’m going to Narrobourne; who may you be?’

They went up to him, and revealed themselves, reminding him of the plan which he had himself proposed in his note, that they should meet him at Ivell.

‘By Jerry, I’d forgot it!’ he said.  ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’  His tone was distinctly quarrelsome.

A long conversation followed, which became embittered at the first hint from them that he should not come to the village.  The millwright drew a quart bottle from his pocket, and challenged them to drink if they meant friendly and called themselves men.  Neither of the two had touched alcohol for years, but for once they thought it best to accept, so as not to needlessly provoke him.

‘What’s in it?’ said Joshua.

‘A drop of weak gin-and-water.  It won’t hurt ye.  Drin’ from the bottle.’  Joshua did so, and his father pushed up the bottom of the vessel so as to make him swallow a good deal in spite of himself.  It went down into his stomach like molten lead.

‘Ha, ha, that’s right!’ said old Halborough.  ‘But ’twas raw spirit—ha, ha!’

‘Why should you take me in so!’ said Joshua, losing his self-command, try as he would to keep calm.

‘Because you took me in, my lad, in banishing me to that cursed country under pretence that it was for my good.  You were a pair of hypocrites to say so.  It was done to get rid of me—no more nor less.  But, by Jerry, I’m a match for ye now!  I’ll spoil your souls for preaching.  My daughter is going to be married to the squire here.  I’ve heard the news—I saw it in a paper!’

‘It is premature—’

‘I know it is true; and I’m her father, and I shall give her away, or there’ll be a hell of a row, I can assure ye!  Is that where the gennleman lives?’

Joshua Halborough writhed in impotent despair.  Fellmer had not yet positively declared himself, his mother was hardly won round; a scene with their father in the parish would demolish as fair a palace of hopes as was ever builded.  The millwright rose.  ‘If that’s where the squire lives I’m going to call.  Just arrived from Canady with her fortune—ha, ha!  I wish no harm to the gennleman, and the gennleman will wish no harm to me.  But I like to take my place in the family, and stand upon my rights, and lower people’s pride!’

‘You’ve succeeded already!  Where’s that woman you took with you—’

‘Woman!  She was my wife as lawful as the Constitution—a sight more lawful than your mother was till some time after you were born!’

Joshua had for many years before heard whispers that his father had cajoled his mother in their early acquaintance, and had made somewhat tardy amends; but never from his father’s lips till now.  It was the last stroke, and he could not bear it.  He sank back against the hedge.  ‘It is over!’ he said.  ‘He ruins us all!’

The millwright moved on, waving his stick triumphantly, and the two brothers stood still.  They could see his drab figure stalking along the path, and over his head the lights from the conservatory of Narrobourne House, inside which Albert Fellmer might possibly be sitting with Rosa at that moment, holding her hand, and asking her to share his home with him.

The staggering whitey-brown form, advancing to put a blot on all this, had been diminishing in the shade; and now suddenly disappeared beside a weir.  There was the noise of a flounce in the water.

‘He has fallen in!’ said Cornelius, starting forward to run for the place at which his father had vanished.

Joshua, awaking from the stupefied reverie into which he had sunk, rushed to the other’s side before he had taken ten steps.  ‘Stop, stop, what are you thinking of?’ he whispered hoarsely, grasping Cornelius’s arm.

‘Pulling him out!’

‘Yes, yes—so am I.  But—wait a moment—’

‘But, Joshua!’

‘Her life and happiness, you know—Cornelius—and your reputation and mine—and our chance of rising together, all three—’

He clutched his brother’s arm to the bone; and as they stood breathless the splashing and floundering in the weir continued; over it they saw the hopeful lights from the manor-house conservatory winking through the trees as their bare branches waved to and fro.

The floundering and splashing grew weaker, and they could hear gurgling words: ‘Help—I’m drownded!  Rosie—Rosie!’

‘We’ll go—we must save him.  O Joshua!’

‘Yes, yes! we must!’

Still they did not move, but waited, holding each other, each thinking the same thought.  Weights of lead seemed to be affixed to their feet, which would no longer obey their wills.  The mead became silent.  Over it they fancied they could see figures moving in the conservatory.  The air up there seemed to emit gentle kisses.

Cornelius started forward at last, and Joshua almost simultaneously.  Two or three minutes brought them to the brink of the stream.  At first they could see nothing in the water, though it was not so deep nor the night so dark but that their father’s light kerseymere coat would have been visible if he had lain at the bottom.  Joshua looked this way and that.

‘He has drifted into the culvert,’ he said.

Below the foot-bridge of the weir the stream suddenly narrowed to half its width, to pass under a barrel arch or culvert constructed for waggons to cross into the middle of the mead in haymaking time.  It being at present the season of high water the arch was full to the crown, against which the ripples clucked every now and then.  At this point he had just caught sight of a pale object slipping under.  In a moment it was gone.

They went to the lower end, but nothing emerged.  For a long time they tried at both ends to effect some communication with the interior, but to no purpose.

‘We ought to have come sooner!’ said the conscience-stricken Cornelius, when they were quite exhausted, and dripping wet.

‘I suppose we ought,’ replied Joshua heavily.  He perceived his father’s walking-stick on the bank; hastily picking it up he stuck it into the mud among the sedge.  Then they went on.

‘Shall we—say anything about this accident?’ whispered Cornelius as they approached the door of Joshua’s house.

‘What’s the use?  It can do no good.  We must wait until he is found.’

They went indoors and changed their clothes; after which they started for the manor-house, reaching it about ten o’clock.  Besides their sister there were only three guests; an adjoining landowner and his wife, and the infirm old rector.

Rosa, although she had parted from them so recently, grasped their hands in an ecstatic, brimming, joyful manner, as if she had not seen them for years.  ‘You look pale,’ she said.

The brothers