Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (860 page)

Two or three years of suffering were passed by Lady Penelope as the despised and chidden wife of this man Sir John, amid regrets that she had so greatly mistaken him, and sighs for one whom she thought never to see again, till it chanced that her husband fell sick of some slight ailment.  One day after this, when she was sitting in his room, looking from the window upon the expanse in front, she beheld, approaching the house on foot, a form she seemed to know well.  Lady Penelope withdrew silently from the sick-room, and descended to the hall, whence, through the doorway, she saw entering between the two round towers which at that time flanked the gateway, Sir William Hervy, as she had supposed, but looking thin and travel-worn.  She advanced into the courtyard to meet him.

‘I was passing through Casterbridge,’ he said, with faltering deference, ‘and I walked out to ask after your ladyship’s health.  I felt that I could do no less; and, of course, to pay my respects to your good husband, my heretofore acquaintance.... But O, Penelope, th’st look sick and sorry!’

‘I am heartsick, that’s all,’ said she.

They could see in each other an emotion which neither wished to express, and they stood thus a long time with tears in their eyes.

‘He does not treat ‘ee well, I hear,’ said Sir William in a low voice. ‘May God in Heaven forgive him; but it is asking a great deal!’

‘Hush, hush!’ said she hastily.

‘Nay, but I will speak what I may honestly say,’ he answered.  ‘I am not under your roof, and my tongue is free.  Why didst not wait for me, Penelope, or send to me a more overt letter?  I would have travelled night and day to come!’

‘Too late, William; you must not ask it,’ said she, endeavouring to quiet him as in old times.  ‘My husband just now is unwell.  He will grow better in a day or two, maybe.  You must call again and see him before you leave Casterbridge.’

As she said this their eyes met.  Each was thinking of her lightsome words about taking the three men in turn; each thought that two-thirds of that promise had been fulfilled.  But, as if it were unpleasant to her that this recollection should have arisen, she spoke again quickly: ‘Come again in a day or two, when my husband will be well enough to see you.’

Sir William departed without entering the house, and she returned to Sir John’s chamber.  He, rising from his pillow, said, ‘To whom hast been talking, wife, in the courtyard?  I heard voices there.’

She hesitated, and he repeated the question more impatiently.

‘I do not wish to tell you now,’ said she.

‘But I will know!’ said he.

Then she answered, ‘Sir William Hervy.’

‘By God, I thought as much!’ cried Sir John, drops of perspiration standing on his white face.  ‘A skulking villain!  A sick man’s ears are keen, my lady.  I heard that they were lover-like tones, and he called ‘ee by your Christian name.  These be your intrigues, my lady, when I am off my legs awhile!’

‘On my honour,’ cried she, ‘you do me a wrong.  I swear I did not know of his coming!’

‘Swear as you will,’ said Sir John, ‘I don’t believe ‘ee.’ And with this he taunted her, and worked himself into a greater passion, which much increased his illness.  His lady sat still, brooding.  There was that upon her face which had seldom been there since her marriage; and she seemed to think anew of what she had so lightly said in the days of her freedom, when her three lovers were one and all coveting her hand.  ‘I began at the wrong end of them,’ she murmured.  ‘My God — that did I!’

‘What?’ said he.

‘A trifle,’ said she.  ‘I spoke to myself only.’

It was somewhat strange that after this day, while she went about the house with even a sadder face than usual, her churlish husband grew worse; and what was more, to the surprise of all, though to the regret of few, he died a fortnight later.  Sir William had not called upon him as he had promised, having received a private communication from Lady Penelope, frankly informing him that to do so world be inadvisable, by reason of her husband’s temper.

Now when Sir John was gone, and his remains carried to his family burying-place in another part of England, the lady began in due time to wonder whither Sir William had betaken himself.  But she had been cured of precipitancy (if ever woman were), and was prepared to wait her whole lifetime a widow if the said Sir William should not reappear.  Her life was now passed mostly within the walls, or in promenading between the pleasaunce and the bowling-green; and she very seldom went even so far as the high-road which then gave entrance from the north, though it has now and for many years, been diverted to the south side.  Her patience was rewarded(if love be in any case a reward); for one day, many months after her second husband’s death, a messenger arrived at her gate with the intelligence that Sir William Hervy was again in Casterbridge, and would be glad to know if it were her pleasure that he should wait upon her.

It need hardly be said that permission was joyfully granted, and within two hours her lover stood before her, a more thoughtful man than formerly ,but in all essential respects the same man, generous, modest to diffidence, and sincere.  The reserve which womanly decorum threw over her manner was but too obviously artificial, and when he said ‘the ways of Providence are strange,’ and added after a moment, ‘and merciful likewise,’ she could not conceal her agitation, and burst into tears upon his neck.

‘But this is too soon,’ she said, starting back.

‘But no,’ said he.  ‘You are eleven months gone in widowhood, and it is not at if Sir John had been a good husband to you.’

His visits grew pretty frequent now, as may well be guessed, and in a month or two he began to urge her to an early union.  But she counselled a little longer delay.

‘Why?’ said he.  ‘Surely I have waited long!  Life is short; we are getting older every day, and I am the last of the three.’

‘Yes,’ said the lady frankly.  ‘And that is why I would not have you hasten.  Our marriage may seem so strange to everybody, after my unlucky remark on that occasion we know so well, and which so many others know likewise, thanks to talebearers.’

On this representation he conceded a little space, for the sake of her good name.  But the destined day of their marriage at last arrived, and it was a gay time for the villagers and all concerned, and the bells in the parish church rang from noon till night.  Thus at last she was united to the man who had loved her the most tenderly of them all, who but for his reticence might perhaps have been the first to win her.  Often did he say to himself,  ‘How wondrous that her words should have been fulfilled!  Many a truth hath been spoken in jest, but never a more remarkable one!’ The noble lady herself preferred not to dwell on the coincidence, a certain shyness, if not shame, crossing her fair face at any allusion thereto.

But people will have their say, sensitive souls or none, and their sayings on this third occasion took a singular shape. ‘Surely,’ they whispered, ‘there is something more than chance in this.... The death of the first was possibly natural; but what of the death of the second, who ill-used her, and whom, loving the third so desperately, she must have wished out of the way?’

Then they pieced together sundry trivial incidents of Sir John’s illness, and dwelt upon the indubitable truth that he had grown worse after her lover’s unexpected visit; till a very sinister theory was built up as to the hand she may have had in Sir John’s premature demise.  But nothing of this suspicion was said openly, for she was a lady of noble birth — nobler, indeed, than either of her husbands — and what people suspected they feared to express in formal accusation.

The mansion that she occupied had been left to her for so long a time as she should choose to reside in it, and, having a regard for the spot, she had coaxed Sir William to remain there.  But in the end it was unfortunate; for one day, when in the full tide of his happiness, he was walking among the willows near the gardens, where he overheard a conversation between some basketmakers who were cutting the osiers for their use.  In this fatal dialogue the suspicions of the neighbouring townsfolk were revealed to him for the first time.        ‘

A cupboard close to his bed, and the key in her pocket.  Ah!’ said one.

‘And a blue phial therein — h’m!’ said another.

‘And spurge-laurel leaves among the hearth-ashes.  Oh — oh!’ said a third.

On his return home Sir William seemed to have aged years.  But he said nothing; indeed, it was a thing impossible.  And from that hour a ghastly estrangement began.  She could not understand it, and simply waited.  One day he said, however, ‘I must go abroad.’

‘Why?’ said she.  ‘William, have I offended you?’

‘No,’ said he; ‘but I must go.’

She could coax little more out of him, and in itself there was nothing unnatural in his departure, for he had been a wanderer from his youth.  In a few days he started off, apparently quite another man than he who had rushed to her side so devotedly a few months before.

It is not known when, or how, the rumours, which were so thick in the atmosphere around her, actually reached the Lady Penelope’s ears, but that they did reach her there is no doubt.  It was impossible that they should not; the district teemed with them; they rustled in the air like night-birds of evil omen.  Then a reason for her husband’s departure occurred to her appalled mind, and a loss of health became quickly apparent.  She dwindled thin in the face, and the veins in her temples could all be distinctly traced.  An inner fire seemed to be withering her away.  Her rings fell off her fingers, and her arms hung like the flails of the threshers, though they had till lately been so round and so elastic.  She wrote to her husband repeatedly, begging him to return to her; but he, being in extreme and wretched doubt moreover, knowing nothing of her ill health, and never suspecting that the rumours had reached her also, deemed absence best, and postponed his return awhile, giving various good reasons for his delay.

At length, however, when the Lady Penelope had given birth to a still-born child, her mother, the Countess, addressed a letter to Sir William, requesting him to come back to her if he wished to see her alive; since she was wasting away of some mysterious disease, which seemed to be rather mental than physical. It was evident that his mother-in-law knew nothing of the secret, for she lived at a distance; but Sir William promptly hastened home, and stood beside the bed of his now dying wife.

‘Believe me, William,’ she said when they were alone, ‘I am innocent — innocent!’

‘Of what?’ said he.  ‘Heaven forbid that I should accuse you of anything!’

‘But you do accuse me silently!’ she gasped.  ‘I could not write thereon — and ask you to hear me.  It was too much, too degrading.  But would that I had been less proud!  They suspect me of poisoning him William!  But, O my dear husband, I am innocent of that wicked crime!  He died naturally.  I loved you — too soon; but that was all!’

Nothing availed to save her.  The worm had gnawed too far into her heart before Sir William’s return for anything to be remedial now; and in a few weeks she breathed her last.  After her death the people spoke louder, and her conduct became a subject of public discussion.  A little later on, the physician who had attended the late Sir John heard the rumour, and came down from the place near London to which he latterly had retired, with the express purpose of calling upon Sir William Hervy, now staying in Casterbridge.

He stated that, at the request of a relative of Sir John’s, who wished to be assured on the matter by reason of its suddenness, he had, with the assistance of a surgeon, made a private examination of Sir John’s body immediately after his decease, and found that it had resulted from purely natural causes.  Nobody at this time had breathed a suspicion of foul play, and therefore nothing was said which might afterwards have established her innocence.

It being thus placed beyond doubt that this beautiful and noble lady had been done to death by a vile scandal that was wholly unfounded, her husband was stung with a dreadful remorse at the share he had taken in her misfortunes, and left the country anew, this time never to return alive.  He survived her but a few years, and his body was brought home and buried beside his wife’s under the tomb which is still visible in the parish church. Until lately there was a good portrait of her, in weeds for her first husband, with a cross in her hand, at the ancestral seat of her family, where she was much pitied, as she deserved to be. Yet there were some severe enough to say — and these not unjust persons in other respects — that though unquestionably innocent of the crime imputed to her, she had shown an unseemly wantonness in contracting three marriages in such rapid succession; that the untrue suspicion might have been ordered by Providence (who often works indirectly) as a punishment for her self-indulgence.  Upon that point I have no opinion to offer.

The reverend the Vice-President however, the tale being ended, offered as his opinion that her fate ought to be quite clearly recognized as a chastisement.  So thought the Churchwarden, and also the quiet gentleman sitting near.  The latter knew many other instances in point, one of which could be narrated in a few words.

The Marchioness of Stonehenge

Dame the Third

By the Rural Dean.

I would have you know, then, that a great many years ago there lived in a classical mansion with which I used to be familiar, standing not a hundred miles from the city of Melchester, a lady whose personal charms were so rare and unparalleled that she was courted, flattered, and spoilt by almost all the young noblemen and gentlemen in that part of Wessex. For a time these attentions pleased her well. But as, in the words of good Robert South (whose sermons might be read much more than they are), the most passionate lover of sport, if tied to follow his hawks and hounds every day of his life, would find the pursuit the greatest torment and calamity, and would fly to the mines and galleys for his recreation, so did this lofty and beautiful lady after a while become satiated with the constant iteration of what she had in its novelty enjoyed; and by an almost natural revulsion turned her regards absolutely netherward, socially speaking. She perversely and passionately centred her affection on quite a plain-looking young man of humble birth and no position at all; though it is true that he was gentle and delicate in nature, of good address, and guileless heart. In short, he was the parish-clerk’s son, acting as assistant to the land-steward of her father the Earl of Avon, with the hope of becoming some day a land-steward himself. It should be said that perhaps the Lady Caroline (as she was called) was a little stimulated in this passion by the discovery that a young girl of the village already loved the young man fondly, and that he had paid some attentions to her, though merely of a casual and good-natured kind.