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

herself to be the cause of his disgrace her sorrow was great.  But the position was now reversed; it was his turn to cheer her.

‘Don’t grieve, meine Liebliche!’ he said.  ‘I have got a remedy for whatever comes.  First, even supposing I regain my stripes, would your father allow you to marry a non-commissioned officer in the York Hussars?’

She flushed.  This practical step had not been in her mind in relation to such an unrealistic person as he was; and a moment’s reflection was enough for it.  ‘My father would not—certainly would not,’ she answered unflinchingly.  ‘It cannot be thought of!  My dear friend, please do forget me: I fear I am ruining you and your prospects!’

‘Not at all!’ said he.  ‘You are giving this country of yours just sufficient interest to me to make me care to keep alive in it.  If my dear land were here also, and my old parent, with you, I could be happy as I am, and would do my best as a soldier.  But it is not so.  And now listen.  This is my plan.  That you go with me to my own country, and be my wife there, and live there with my mother and me.  I am not a Hanoverian, as you know, though I entered the army as such; my country is by the Saar, and is at peace with France, and if I were once in it I should be free.’

‘But how get there?’ she asked.  Phyllis had been rather amazed than shocked at his proposition.  Her position in her father’s house was growing irksome and painful in the extreme; his parental affection seemed to be quite dried up.  She was not a native of the village, like all the joyous girls around her; and in some way Matthäus Tina had infected her with his own passionate longing for his country, and mother, and home.

‘But how?’ she repeated, finding that he did not answer.  ‘Will you buy your discharge?’

‘Ah, no,’ he said.  ‘That’s impossible in these times.  No; I came here against my will; why should I not escape?  Now is the time, as we shall soon be striking camp, and I might see you no more.  This is my scheme.  I will ask you to meet me on the highway two miles off; on some calm night next week that may be appointed.  There will be nothing unbecoming in it, or to cause you shame; you will not fly alone with me, for I will bring with me my devoted young friend Christoph, an Alsatian, who has lately joined the regiment, and who has agreed to assist in this enterprise.  We shall have come from yonder harbour, where we shall have examined the boats, and found one suited to our purpose.  Christoph has already a chart of the Channel, and we will then go to the harbour, and at midnight cut the boat from her moorings, and row away round the point out of sight; and by the next morning we are on the coast of France, near Cherbourg.  The rest is easy, for I have saved money for the land journey, and can get a change of clothes.  I will write to my mother, who will meet us on the way.’

He added details in reply to her inquiries, which left no doubt in Phyllis’s mind of the feasibility of the undertaking.  But its magnitude almost appalled her; and it is questionable if she would ever have gone further in the wild adventure if, on entering the house that night, her father had not accosted her in the most significant terms.

‘How about the York Hussars?’ he said.

‘They are still at the camp; but they are soon going away, I believe.’

‘It is useless for you to attempt to cloak your actions in that way.  You have been meeting one of those fellows; you have been seen walking with him—foreign barbarians, not much better than the French themselves!  I have made up my mind—don’t speak a word till I have done, please!—I have made up my mind that you shall stay here no longer while they are on the spot.  You shall go to your aunt’s.’

It was useless for her to protest that she had never taken a walk with any soldier or man under the sun except himself.  Her protestations were feeble, too, for though he was not literally correct in his assertion, he was virtually only half in error.

The house of her father’s sister was a prison to Phyllis.  She had quite recently undergone experience of its gloom; and when her father went on to direct her to pack what would be necessary for her to take, her heart died within her.  In after years she never attempted to excuse her conduct during this week of agitation; but the result of her self-communing was that she decided to join in the scheme of her lover and his friend, and fly to the country which he had coloured with such lovely hues in her imagination.  She always said that the one feature in his proposal which overcame her hesitation was the obvious purity and straightforwardness of his intentions.  He showed himself to be so virtuous and kind; he treated her with a respect to which she had never before been accustomed; and she was braced to the obvious risks of the voyage by her confidence in him.

CHAPTER IV

It was on a soft, dark evening of the following week that they engaged in the adventure.  Tina was to meet her at a point in the highway at which the lane to the village branched off.  Christoph was to go ahead of them to the harbour where the boat lay, row it round the Nothe—or Look-out as it was called in those days—and pick them up on the other side of the promontory, which they were to reach by crossing the harbour-bridge on foot, and climbing over the Look-out hill.

As soon as her father had ascended to his room she left the house, and, bundle in hand, proceeded at a trot along the lane.  At such an hour not a soul was afoot anywhere in the village, and she reached the junction of the lane with the highway unobserved.  Here she took up her position in the obscurity formed by the angle of a fence, whence she could discern every one who approached along the turnpike-road, without being herself seen.

She had not remained thus waiting for her lover longer than a minute—though from the tension of her nerves the lapse of even that short time was trying—when, instead of the expected footsteps, the stage-coach could be heard descending the hill.  She knew that Tina would not show himself till the road was clear, and waited impatiently for the coach to pass.  Nearing the corner where she was it slackened speed, and, instead of going by as usual, drew up within a few yards of her.  A passenger alighted, and she heard his voice.  It was Humphrey Gould’s.

He had brought a friend with him, and luggage.  The luggage was deposited on the grass, and the coach went on its route to the royal watering-place.

‘I wonder where that young man is with the horse and trap?’ said her former admirer to his companion.  ‘I hope we shan’t have to wait here long.  I told him half-past nine o’clock precisely.’

‘Have you got her present safe?’

‘Phyllis’s?  O, yes.  It is in this trunk.  I hope it will please her.’

‘Of course it will.  What woman would not be pleased with such a handsome peace-offering?’

‘Well—she deserves it.  I’ve treated her rather badly.  But she has been in my mind these last two days much more than I should care to confess to everybody.  Ah, well; I’ll say no more about that.  It cannot be that she is so bad as they make out.  I am quite sure that a girl of her good wit would know better than to get entangled with any of those Hanoverian soldiers.  I won’t believe it of her, and there’s an end on’t.’

More words in the same strain were casually dropped as the two men waited; words which revealed to her, as by a sudden illumination, the enormity of her conduct.  The conversation was at length cut off by the arrival of the man with the vehicle.  The luggage was placed in it, and they mounted, and were driven on in the direction from which she had just come.

Phyllis was so conscience-stricken that she was at first inclined to follow them; but a moment’s reflection led her to feel that it would only be bare justice to Matthäus to wait till he arrived, and explain candidly that she had changed her mind—difficult as the struggle would be when she stood face to face with him.  She bitterly reproached herself for having believed reports which represented Humphrey Gould as false to his engagement, when, from what she now heard from his own lips, she gathered that he had been living full of trust in her.  But she knew well enough who had won her love.  Without him her life seemed a dreary prospect, yet the more she looked at his proposal the more she feared to accept it—so wild as it was, so vague, so venturesome.  She had promised Humphrey Gould, and it was only his assumed faithlessness which had led her to treat that promise as nought.  His solicitude in bringing her these gifts touched her; her promise must be kept, and esteem must take the place of love.  She would preserve her self-respect.  She would stay at home, and marry him, and suffer.

Phyllis had thus braced herself to an exceptional fortitude when, a few minutes later, the outline of Matthäus Tina appeared behind a field-gate, over which he lightly leapt as she stepped forward.  There was no evading it, he pressed her to his breast.

‘It is the first and last time!’ she wildly thought as she stood encircled by his arms.

How Phyllis got through the terrible ordeal of that night she could never clearly recollect.  She always attributed her success in carrying out her resolve to her lover’s honour, for as soon as she declared to him in feeble words that she had changed her mind, and felt that she could not, dared not, fly with him, he forbore to urge her, grieved as he was at her decision.  Unscrupulous pressure on his part, seeing how romantically she had become attached to him, would no doubt have turned the balance in his favour.  But he did nothing to tempt her unduly or unfairly.

On her side, fearing for his safety, she begged him to remain.  This, he declared, could not be.  ‘I cannot break faith with my friend,’ said he.  Had he stood alone he would have abandoned his plan.  But Christoph, with the boat and compass and chart, was waiting on the shore; the tide would soon turn; his mother had been warned of his coming; go he must.

Many precious minutes were lost while he tarried, unable to tear himself away.  Phyllis held to her resolve, though it cost her many a bitter pang.  At last they parted, and he went down the hill.  Before his footsteps had quite died away she felt a desire to behold at least his outline once more, and running noiselessly after him regained view of his diminishing figure.  For one moment she was sufficiently excited to be on the point of rushing forward and linking her fate with his.  But she could not.  The courage which at the critical instant failed Cleopatra of Egypt could scarcely be expected of Phyllis Grove.

A dark shape, similar to his own, joined him in the highway.  It was Christoph, his friend.  She could see no more; they had hastened on in the direction of the town and harbour, four miles ahead.  With a feeling akin to despair she turned and slowly pursued her way homeward.

Tattoo sounded in the camp; but there was no camp for her now.  It