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

at the party they had played at all the night before, and away he went, bow and fiddle, at “The Devil among the Tailors,” the favourite jig of our neighbourhood at that time.  The rest of the band, being in the same state of mind and nothing doubting, followed their leader with all their strength, according to custom.  They poured out that there tune till the lower bass notes of “The Devil among the Tailors” made the cobwebs in the roof shiver like ghosts; then Nicholas, seeing nobody moved, shouted out as he scraped (in his usual commanding way at dances when the folk didn’t know the figures), “Top couples cross hands!  And when I make the fiddle squeak at the end, every man kiss his pardner under the mistletoe!”

‘The boy Levi was so frightened that he bolted down the gallery stairs and out homeward like lightning.  The pa’son’s hair fairly stood on end when he heard the evil tune raging through the church, and thinking the choir had gone crazy he held up his hand and said: “Stop, stop, stop!  Stop, stop!  What’s this?”  But they didn’t hear’n for the noise of their own playing, and the more he called the louder they played.

‘Then the folks came out of their pews, wondering down to the ground, and saying: “What do they mean by such wickedness!  We shall be consumed like Sodom and Gomorrah!”

‘Then the squire came out of his pew lined wi’ green baize, where lots of lords and ladies visiting at the house were worshipping along with him, and went and stood in front of the gallery, and shook his fist in the musicians’ faces, saying, “What!  In this reverent edifice!  What!”

‘And at last they heard’n through their playing, and stopped.

‘“Never such an insulting, disgraceful thing—never!” says the squire, who couldn’t rule his passion.

‘“Never!” says the pa’son, who had come down and stood beside him.

‘“Not if the Angels of Heaven,” says the squire (he was a wickedish man, the squire was, though now for once he happened to be on the Lord’s side)—“not if the Angels of Heaven come down,” he says, “shall one of you villanous players ever sound a note in this church again; for the insult to me, and my family, and my visitors, and God Almighty, that you’ve a-perpetrated this afternoon!”

‘Then the unfortunate church band came to their senses, and remembered where they were; and ’twas a sight to see Nicholas Pudding come and Timothy Thomas and John Biles creep down the gallery stairs with their fiddles under their arms, and poor Dan’l Hornhead with his serpent, and Robert Dowdle with his clarionet, all looking as little as ninepins; and out they went.  The pa’son might have forgi’ed ’em when he learned the truth o’t, but the squire would not.  That very week he sent for a barrel-organ that would play two-and-twenty new psalm-tunes, so exact and particular that, however sinful inclined you was, you could play nothing but psalm-tunes whatsomever.  He had a really respectable man to turn the winch, as I said, and the old players played no more.’

* * * * *

‘And, of course, my old acquaintance, the annuitant, Mrs. Winter, who always seemed to have something on her mind, is dead and gone?’ said the home-comer, after a long silence.

Nobody in the van seemed to recollect the name.

‘O yes, she must be dead long since: she was seventy when I as a child knew her,’ he added.

‘I can recollect Mrs. Winter very well, if nobody else can,’ said the aged groceress.  ‘Yes, she’s been dead these five-and-twenty year at least.  You knew what it was upon her mind, sir, that gave her that hollow-eyed look, I suppose?’

‘It had something to do with a son of hers, I think I once was told.  But I was too young to know particulars.’

The groceress sighed as she conjured up a vision of days long past.  ‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘it had all to do with a son.’  Finding that the van was still in a listening mood, she spoke on:—

THE WINTERS AND THE PALMLEYS

‘To go back to the beginning—if one must—there were two women in the parish when I was a child, who were to a certain extent rivals in good looks.  Never mind particulars, but in consequence of this they were at daggers-drawn, and they did not love each other any better when one of them tempted the other’s lover away from her and married him.  He was a young man of the name of Winter, and in due time they had a son.

‘The other woman did not marry for many years: but when she was about thirty a quiet man named Palmley asked her to be his wife, and she accepted him.  You don’t mind when the Palmleys were Longpuddle folk, but I do well.  She had a son also, who was, of course, nine or ten years younger than the son of the first.  The child proved to be of rather weak intellect, though his mother loved him as the apple of her eye.

‘This woman’s husband died when the child was eight years old, and left his widow and boy in poverty.  Her former rival, also a widow now, but fairly well provided for, offered for pity’s sake to take the child as errand-boy, small as he was, her own son, Jack, being hard upon seventeen.  Her poor neighbour could do no better than let the child go there.  And to the richer woman’s house little Palmley straightway went.

‘Well, in some way or other—how, it was never exactly known—the thriving woman, Mrs. Winter, sent the little boy with a message to the next village one December day, much against his will.  It was getting dark, and the child prayed to be allowed not to go, because he would be afraid coming home.  But the mistress insisted, more out of thoughtlessness than cruelty, and the child went.  On his way back he had to pass through Yalbury Wood, and something came out from behind a tree and frightened him into fits.  The child was quite ruined by it; he became quite a drivelling idiot, and soon afterward died.

‘Then the other woman had nothing left to live for, and vowed vengeance against that rival who had first won away her lover, and now had been the cause of her bereavement.  This last affliction was certainly not intended by her thriving acquaintance, though it must be owned that when it was done she seemed but little concerned.  Whatever vengeance poor Mrs. Palmley felt, she had no opportunity of carrying it out, and time might have softened her feelings into forgetfulness of her supposed wrongs as she dragged on her lonely life.  So matters stood when, a year after the death of the child, Mrs. Palmley’s niece, who had been born and bred in the city of Exonbury, came to live with her.

‘This young woman—Miss Harriet Palmley—was a proud and handsome girl, very well brought up, and more stylish and genteel than the people of our village, as was natural, considering where she came from.  She regarded herself as much above Mrs. Winter and her son in position as Mrs. Winter and her son considered themselves above poor Mrs. Palmley.  But love is an unceremonious thing, and what in the world should happen but that young Jack Winter must fall wofully and wildly in love with Harriet Palmley almost as soon as he saw her.

‘She, being better educated than he, and caring nothing for the village notion of his mother’s superiority to her aunt, did not give him much encouragement.  But Longpuddle being no very large world, the two could not help seeing a good deal of each other while she was staying there, and, disdainful young woman as she was, she did seem to take a little pleasure in his attentions and advances.

‘One day when they were picking apples together, he asked her to marry him.  She had not expected anything so practical as that at so early a time, and was led by her surprise into a half-promise; at any rate she did not absolutely refuse him, and accepted some little presents that he made her.

‘But he saw that her view of him was rather as a simple village lad than as a young man to look up to, and he felt that he must do something bold to secure her.  So he said one day, “I am going away, to try to get into a better position than I can get here.”  In two or three weeks he wished her good-bye, and went away to Monksbury, to superintend a farm, with a view to start as a farmer himself; and from there he wrote regularly to her, as if their marriage were an understood thing.

‘Now Harriet liked the young man’s presents and the admiration of his eyes; but on paper he was less attractive to her.  Her mother had been a school-mistress, and Harriet had besides a natural aptitude for pen-and-ink work, in days when to be a ready writer was not such a common thing as it is now, and when actual handwriting was valued as an accomplishment in itself.  Jack Winter’s performances in the shape of love-letters quite jarred her city nerves and her finer taste, and when she answered one of them, in the lovely running hand that she took such pride in, she very strictly and loftily bade him to practise with a pen and spelling-book if he wished to please her.  Whether he listened to her request or not nobody knows, but his letters did not improve.  He ventured to tell her in his clumsy way that if her heart were more warm towards him she would not be so nice about his handwriting and spelling; which indeed was true enough.

‘Well, in Jack’s absence the weak flame that had been set alight in Harriet’s heart soon sank low, and at last went out altogether.  He wrote and wrote, and begged and prayed her to give a reason for her coldness; and then she told him plainly that she was town born, and he was not sufficiently well educated to please her.

‘Jack Winter’s want of pen-and-ink training did not make him less thin-skinned than others; in fact, he was terribly tender and touchy about anything.  This reason that she gave for finally throwing him over grieved him, shamed him, and mortified him more than can be told in these times, the pride of that day in being able to write with beautiful flourishes, and the sorrow at not being able to do so, raging so high.  Jack replied to her with an angry note, and then she hit back with smart little stings, telling him how many words he had misspelt in his last letter, and declaring again that this alone was sufficient justification for any woman to put an end to an understanding with him.  Her husband must be a better scholar.

‘He bore her rejection of him in silence, but his suffering was sharp—all the sharper in being untold.  She communicated with Jack no more; and as his reason for going out into the world had been only to provide a home worthy of her, he had no further object in planning such a home now that she was lost to him.  He therefore gave up the farming occupation by which he had hoped to make himself a master-farmer, and left the spot to return to his mother.

‘As soon as he got back to Longpuddle he found that Harriet had already looked wi’ favour upon another lover.  He was a young road-contractor, and Jack could not but admit that his rival was both in manners and scholarship much ahead of him.  Indeed, a more sensible match for the beauty who had been dropped into the village by fate could hardly have been found than this man, who could offer her so much better a chance than Jack could have done, with his uncertain future and