Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (908 page)

“I am afraid so.  But couldn’t you come there too?  I know your leave is not up for a great many weeks?”

He was silent for longer than she had ever known him at these times. Rosalys left her seat on the bench and threw her arms impulsively round him.

“I can’t go away unless you will come to London when we do, Jim!”

“I will; but on one condition.”

“What condition?  You frighten me!”

“That you will marry me when I do join you there.”

The quick breath that heaved in Rosalys ebbed silently; and she leant on the rustic bench with one hand, a trembling being apparent in her garments.

“You really — mean it, Jim darling?”

He swore that he did; that life was quite unendurable to him as he then experienced it.  When she was once his wife nothing could come between them; but of course the marriage need not be known for a time — indeed must not.  He could not take her abroad.  The climate of Burmah would be too trying for her; and, besides, they really would not have enough to live upon.

“Couldn’t we get on as other people do?” said Rosalys, trying not to cry at these arguments.  “I am so tired of concealment, and I don’t like to marry privately!  It seems to me, much as I love being with you, that there is a sort of — well — vulgarity in our clandestine meetings, as we now enjoy them.  Therefore how should I ever have strength enough to hide the fact of my being your wife, to face my mother day after day with the shadow of this secret between us?”

For all answer Jim kissed her, and stroked her silky brown curls.

“I suppose I shall end in agreeing with you — I always do!” she said, her mouth quivering.  “Though I can be very dogged and obstinate too, Jim!  Do you know that all my governesses have said I was the most stubborn child they ever came across?  But then, in that case, my temper must be really aroused.  You have never seen me as I am when angry.  Perhaps, Jim, you would get to hate me?” She looked at him wistfully with her wet eyes.

“I shall never cease to love you desperately, as I do now!” declared the young man.  “How lovely you look, little Rosalys, with that one moonbeam making your forehead like pure white marble. But time is passing.  You must go back, my darling, I’m afraid. And you won’t fail me in London? I shall make all the plans. Good-bye — good-bye!”

One clinging, intermittent kiss; and then from the shadow in which he stood Jim watched her light figure past the lake, and hurrying along in the shelter of the yew hedges towards the great house, asleep under the reaching deeps of sky, and the vacant gaze of the round white moon.

II

When clouds are iron-grey above the prim drab houses, and a hard east wind blows flakes of dust, stable-straws, scraps of soiled newspaper, and sharp pieces of grit into the eyes of foot-passengers, a less inviting and romantic dwelling-spot than Eaton Place can hardly be experienced.

But the Prince’s daughter of the Canticles, emerging from her palace to see the vine flourish and the pomegranates bud forth with her Beloved, could not have looked more unconscious of grime than Rosalys Ambrose as she came down the steps of one of the tall houses in the aforesaid highly respectable place of residences. Her cheeks were hotly pink, her eyes shining, her lips parted. Having once made up her mind, “Qualms of prudence, pride and pelf” had died within her passionate little heart.  After to-day she would belong absolutely to Jim, be his alone, through all the eternities, as it seemed; and of what account was anything else in the world?  The entirely physical character of his affection for her, and perhaps of hers for him, was an unconjectured element herein which might not render less transitory the most transitory of sweet things.  Thus hopefully she stepped out of the commonplace home that would, in one sense, be hers no more.

The raw wind whistled up the street, and deepened the colour in her face.  She was plainly dressed in grey, and wore a rather thick veil, natural to the dusty day: it could not however conceal the sparkle of her eyes: veils, even thick ones, happily, never do.  Hailing a hansom she told the driver to take her to the corner of the Embankment.

In the midst of her pre-occupation she noticed as the cab turned the corner out of Eaton Place that the bony chestnut-horse went lame.  Rosalys was superstitious as well as tender-hearted, and she deemed that some stroke of ill-luck might befall her if she drove to be married behind a suffering animal.  She alighted and paid off the man, and in her excitement gave him three times his fare.  Hurrying forward on foot she heard her name called, and received a cordial greeting from a tall man with grey whiskers, in whom she recognized Mr Durrant, Jim’s father.  It occurred to her for a second that he might have discovered the plot and have lain in wait to prevent it.  However, he spoke in his usual half-respectful, half-friendly tones, not noticing herfrightened face.  Mr Durrant was a busy man. Besides holding several very important land-agencies in the county where Rosalys lived, he had business in the city to transact at times.  He explained to Miss Ambrose that some urgent affairs he was supervising for a client of his, Lord Parkhurst, had now brought him up to London for a few weeks.

“Lord Parkhurst is away?” she asked, to say something. “I hear of him sometimes through his uncle Colonel Lacy.”

“Yes. A thorough sailor. Mostly afloat,” Mr Durrant replied.  “Well — we’re rather out of the way in Porchester Terrace; otherwise, my wife would be so pleased if you would come to tea. Miss Ambrose?  My son Jim, lazy young beggar, is up here now, too — going to plays and parties. Well, well, it’s natural he should like to amuse himself before he leaves for Burmah, poor boy. Are you looking for a hansom?  Yes? Hi!” And he waved his stick.

“Thank you so much” said Miss Ambrose. “And I will tell to Mamma where you and Mrs Durrant are staying.”

She was surprised at her own composure. Her unconscious father-in-law elect helped her into the cab, took off his hat, and walked rapidly away. Rosalys felt her heart stand still when she drew up at the place of meeting. She saw Jim, very blooming and very well-dressed, awaiting her, outwardly calm, at any rate. He jumped into her vehicle and they drove on city-wards.

“You are only ten minutes late, dearest,” he said. “Do you know, I was half afraid you might have failed me at the last moment?”

“You don’t believe it, Jim!”

“Well, I sometimes think I ought not to expect you to keep engagements with me so honestly as you do. Good, brave, little Rosalys!”

They moved on through the press of struggling omnibuses, gigantic vans, covered carts, and foot-passengers who darted at imminent risk of their lives amid the medley of wheels, horses, and shouting drivers.  The noise jarred Rosalys’ head, and she began to be feverishly anxious.

The church stood in the neighbourhood of a great meat-market, and the pavement was crowded by men in blue linen blouses, their clothes sprinkled with crimson stains. The young girl gave a shiver of disgust.

“How revolting it must be to have a butcher for a husband!  They can’t have hearts like other men. . . . What a gloomy part of London this is to be married in, Jim!”

“Ah — yes!  Everything looks gloomy with the east wind blowing.  Now, here we are! jump out, little woman!”

He handed money to the driver, who went off with the most cursory thoughts of the part that he had played in this little excursion of a palpitating pair into the unknown.

“Jimmy darling; oughtn’t you, or one of us, to have lived here for fifteen days?” she said as they entered the fine old Norman porch, to which she was quite blind in her pre-occupation.

Durrant laughed.  “I have declared that I did,” he answered coolly.  “I hope, in the circumstances, that it’s a forgivable lie.  Cheer up, Rosalys; don’t all of a sudden look so solemn!”

There were tears in her eyes.  The gravity of the step she was about to take had begun to frighten her.

They had some time to wait before the clergyman condescended to come out of the vestry and perform the ceremony which was to unite her to Jim.  Two or three other couples were also in the church on the same errand: a haggard woman in a tawdry white bonnet, hanging on to the arm of a short crimson-faced man, who had evidently been replenishing his inside with gin to nerve himself to the required pitch for the ordeal: a girl with a coarse, hard face, accompanied by a slender youth in shabby black: a tall man, of refined aspect, in very poor clothes, whose hollow cough shook his thin shoulders and chest, and told his bride that her happiness, such as it was, would probably last but the briefest space.

Rosalys glanced absently at the beautiful building, with its Norman apse and transverse arches of horse-shoe form, and the massive curves and cushion-capitals that supported the tower-end; the whole impression left by the church being one of singular harmony, loveliness, and above all, repose — which struck even her by its great contrast with her experiences just then.  As the clergyman emerged from the vestry a shaft of sunlight smote the altar, touched the quaint tomb where the founder of the building lay in his dreamless sleep, and quivered on the darned clothes of the consumptive bridegroom.

Jim and Rosalys moved forward, and then the light shone for a moment, too, upon his yellow hair and handsome face.  To the woman who loved him it seemed that “From the crown of his head even to the sole of his foot there was no blemish in him.”                               

The curate looked sharply at the four couples; angrily, Rosalys fancied, at her.  But it was only because the cast-wind had given him an acute tooth-ache that his gaze was severe, and his reading spiritless.                            

The four couples having duly contracted their inviolable unities, and slowly gone their ways through the porch, Jim and Rosalys adjourned to a fashionable hotel on the Embankment, where in a room all to themselves they had luncheon, over which Rosalys presided with quite a housewifely air.

“When shall I see you again?” he said, as he put her into a cab two or three hours later on in the afternoon.

“You must arrange all that, Jim. Somehow I feel so dreadfully sad and sinful now, all of a sudden! Have I been wicked? I don’t know!”

Her tone changed as she met his passionate gaze, and she said very low, with a lump in her throat:

“O my dear darling! I care for nothing in the whole wide world, now that I belong to you!”

III

The London weeks went by with all their commonplaces, all their novelties.  Mr Durrant, senior, had finished his urgent business, and returned to his square and uninteresting country-house.  But Jim lingered on in town, although conscious of some subtle change in himself and his view of things. He and Rosalys met whenever it was possible, which was pretty frequently. Often they contrived to do so at hastily arranged luncheons and teas in the private rooms of hotels; sometimes, when Mrs Ambrose was suddenly called away, at Jim’s own rooms.  Sometimes they adventured to queer suburban restaurants.

In the lapse of these weeks the twain began somehow to lose a little of their zest for each other’s society.  Jim himself was aware of it before he had yet discovered that something of the same disappointment was dulling her heart too.  On his own side it was the usual lowering of the fire — the slackening of a man’s passion for a woman when she becomes his property. On hers it was a more mixed feeling.  No doubt her love for Jim had been of but little higher quality than his for her.  She had thoroughly abandoned herself to his good looks, his recklessness, his eagerness; and, now that the sensuous part of her character was satisfied, her fervour also began to burn itself down.  But beyond, above, this, the concealment of her marriage was repugnant to Rosalys.  When the rapture of the early meetings had died away she began to loathe the sordid deceit which these involved: the secretly despatched letters, the unavoidably brazen lies to her mother, who, if she attached overmuch importance to money and birth, yet loved her daughter in all good faith and simplicity. Then once or twice Jim was late at their interviews. He seemed indifferent and preoccupied. His manner stung Rosalys into impatient utterance at the end of a particular meeting in which this mood was unduly prominent.

“You forget all I have given up for you!” she cried. “You make a fool of me in allowing me to wait here for you. It is humiliating and vulgar! I hate myself for behaving as I do!”

“The renunciations are not all on your side,” he answered caustically.  “You forget all that the loss of his freedom means to a man!”

Her heart swelled, and she had great difficulty in keeping back her tears. But she took refuge in sullenness.

“Unfortunately we can’t undo our folly!” she murmured. “You will have to make the best of it as well as I. I suppose the awakening to a sense of our idiocy was bound to come sooner or later. But — I didn’t think it would come so soon! Jim, look at me! Are you really angry?  Don’t for God’s sake go and leave me like this!”

He was walking slowly towards the great iron gate leading out of Kensington Gardens; a dogged cast on his now familiar countenance.

“Don’t make a scene in public, for Heaven’s sake, Rosalys!”  Feeling that he had spoken too brutally he suddenly paused, and changed:

“I am sorry, little woman, if I was cross!  But things have combined to harass me lately.  Of course we won’t part from one another in anger.”                                                                              

Jim glanced at her straight profile with its full under-lip and firmly curved chin, at the lashes on either lid, and the glossy brown hair twisted in coils under her hat.  But the sight of this loveliness, now all his own, failed to arouse the old emotions.  He simply contemplated her approvingly from an artistic point of view.

They had reached the gateway, and she placed her hand on his arm.

“Good-bye.  When shall we next meet?  To-day is Tuesday.  Shall it be Friday?”

“I am afraid I must go out of London on Thursday for a day or two.  I’ll write, dear. Let me call a hansom.”

She thanked him in a cold voice again, and with a last handshake and a smile that hovered on sorrow, left him and drove away towards Belgravia.