Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (7 page)
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Authors: Thomas Hardy
He went round among the bushes to the place mentioned, which was entirely sheltered from the wind. She soon appeared, bearing in her hand a wax taper, so small that it scarcely gave more light than a glowworm. She wore the same dress that she had worn when they first met on the previous Christmas, and her hair was loose as at that time. Indeed, she looked throughout much as she had looked then, except that her bright eyes were red, as Egbert could see well enough.
“I have something for you,” she said softly as she opened the window. “How much time is there?”
“Half an hour only, dearest.”
She began a sigh, but checked it, at the same time holding out a packet to him.
“Here are fifty pounds,” she whispered. “It will be useful to you now, and more shall follow.”
Egbert felt how impossible it was to accept this. “No, my dear one,” he said, “I cannot.”
“I don’t require it, Egbert. I wish you to have it; I have plenty. Come, do take it.” But seeing that he continued firm on this point she reluctantly gave in, saying that she would keep it for him.
“I fear so much that papa suspects me,” she said. “And if so, it was my own fault, and all owing to a conversation I began with him without thinking beforehand that it would be dangerous.”
“What did you say?”
I said,” she whispered, ‘Suppose a man should love me very much, would you mind my being acquainted with him if he were a very worthy man?’ ‘That depends upon his rank and circumstances,’ he said. ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘that in addition to his goodness he had much learning, and had made his name famous in the world, but was not altogether rich?’ I think I showed too much earnestness, and I wished that I could have recalled my words. ‘When the time comes I will tell you,’ he said, ‘and don’t speak or think of these matters again.’“
In consequence of this new imprudence of hers Egbert doubted if it would be right to correspond with her. He said nothing about it then, but it added a new shade to the parting.
“I think your decision a good and noble one,” she murmured, smiling hopefully. “And you will come back some day a wondrous man of the world, talking of vast schemes, radical errors, and saying such words as the ‘backbone of society,’ the ‘tendency of modern thought,’ and other things like that. When papa says to you, ‘My lord the chancellor,’ you will answer him with ‘A tall man, with a deep-toned voice — I know him well.’ When he says, ‘Such and such were Lord Hatton’s words, I think,’ you will answer, No, they were Lord Tyrrell’s; I was present on the occasion;’ and so on in that way. You must get to talk authoritatively about vintages and their dates, and to know all about epicureanism, idleness, and fashion; and so you will beat him with his own weapons, for he knows nothing of these things. He will criticise you; then he will be nettled; then he will admire you.”
Egbert kissed her hand devotedly, and held it long.
“If you cannot in the least succeed,” she added, “I shall never think the less of you. The truly great stand on no middling ledge; they are either famous or unknown.”
Egbert moved slowly away amongst the laurestines. Holding the light above her bright head she smiled upon him, as if it were unknown to her that she wept at the same time.
He left the park precincts, and followed the turnpike road to Melport. In spite of the misery of parting he felt relieved of a certain oppressiveness, now that his presence at Tollamore could no longer bring disgrace upon her. The threatening rain passed off by the time that he reached the ridge dividing the inland districts from the coast. It began to get light, but his journey was still very lonely. Ultimately the yellow shore-line of pebbles grew visible, and the distant horizon of water spreading like a grey upland against the sky, till he could soon hear the measured flounce of the waves.
He entered the town at sunrise, just as the lamps were extinguished, and went to a tavern to breakfast. At half past eight o’clock the boat steamed out of the harbor, and reached London after a passage of five-and-forty hours.
DESPERATE REMEDIES
This is Hardy’s first printed work, published anonymously in 1871 and written in an epistolary style. It is a tale of ‘mystery, entanglement, surprise, and moral obliquity’, in which Cytherea Graye, beloved by a young architect, Edward Springrove, is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady’s maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her father had loved but had been unable to marry. Miss Adclyffe’s schemes, the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love, and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston, Miss Adclyffe’s illegitimate son, a passionate villain, whose first wife is believed to have died in a fire. The consequences of this union and the remarkable denouement make this one of Hardy’s most readable and gripping novels.
The original titlepage
DESPERATE REMEDIES
CONTENTS
VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS
VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XVIII. THE EVENTS OF THREE DAYS
XIX. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XXI. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN HOURS
I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS
1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36
In the long and intricately inwrought chain of circumstance which renders worthy of record some experiences of Cytherea Graye, Edward Springrove, and others, the first event directly influencing the issue was a Christmas visit.
In the above-mentioned year, 1835, Ambrose Graye, a young architect who had just begun the practice of his profession in the midland town of Hocbridge, to the north of Christminster, went to London to spend the Christmas holidays with a friend who lived in Bloomsbury. They had gone up to Cambridge in the same year, and, after graduating together, Huntway, the friend, had taken orders.
Graye was handsome, frank, and gentle. He had a quality of thought which, exercised on homeliness, was humour; on nature, picturesqueness; on abstractions, poetry. Being, as a rule, broadcast, it was all three.
Of the wickedness of the world he was too forgetful. To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience: to him it was ever a surprise.
While in London he became acquainted with a retired officer in the Navy named Bradleigh, who, with his wife and their daughter, lived in a street not far from Russell Square. Though they were in no more than comfortable circumstances, the captain’s wife came of an ancient family whose genealogical tree was interlaced with some of the most illustrious and well-known in the kingdom.
The young lady, their daughter, seemed to Graye by far the most beautiful and queenly being he had ever beheld. She was about nineteen or twenty, and her name was Cytherea. In truth she was not so very unlike country girls of that type of beauty, except in one respect. She was perfect in her manner and bearing, and they were not. A mere distinguishing peculiarity, by catching the eye, is often read as the pervading characteristic, and she appeared to him no less than perfection throughout — transcending her rural rivals in very nature. Graye did a thing the blissfulness of which was only eclipsed by its hazardousness. He loved her at first sight.
His introductions had led him into contact with Cytherea and her parents two or three times on the first week of his arrival in London, and accident and a lover’s contrivance brought them together as frequently the week following. The parents liked young Graye, and having few friends (for their equals in blood were their superiors in position), he was received on very generous terms. His passion for Cytherea grew not only strong, but ineffably exalted: she, without positively encouraging him, tacitly assented to his schemes for being near her. Her father and mother seemed to have lost all confidence in nobility of birth, without money to give effect to its presence, and looked upon the budding consequence of the young people’s reciprocal glances with placidity, if not actual favour.
Graye’s whole impassioned dream terminated in a sad and unaccountable episode. After passing through three weeks of sweet experience, he had arrived at the last stage — a kind of moral Gaza — before plunging into an emotional desert. The second week in January had come round, and it was necessary for the young architect to leave town.
Throughout his acquaintanceship with the lady of his heart there had been this marked peculiarity in her love: she had delighted in his presence as a sweetheart should do, yet from first to last she had repressed all recognition of the true nature of the thread which drew them together, blinding herself to its meaning and only natural tendency, and appearing to dread his announcement of them. The present seemed enough for her without cumulative hope: usually, even if love is in itself an end, it must be regarded as a beginning to be enjoyed.
In spite of evasions as an obstacle, and in consequence of them as a spur, he would put the matter off no longer. It was evening. He took her into a little conservatory on the landing, and there among the evergreens, by the light of a few tiny lamps, infinitely enhancing the freshness and beauty of the leaves, he made the declaration of a love as fresh and beautiful as they.
‘My love — my darling, be my wife!’
She seemed like one just awakened. ‘Ah — we must part now!’ she faltered, in a voice of anguish. ‘I will write to you.’ She loosened her hand and rushed away.
In a wild fever Graye went home and watched for the next morning. Who shall express his misery and wonder when a note containing these words was put into his hand?
‘Good-bye; good-bye for ever. As recognized lovers something divides us eternally. Forgive me — I should have told you before; but your love was sweet! Never mention me.’
That very day, and as it seemed, to put an end to a painful condition of things, daughter and parents left London to pay off a promised visit to a relative in a western county. No message or letter of entreaty could wring from her any explanation. She begged him not to follow her, and the most bewildering point was that her father and mother appeared, from the tone of a letter Graye received from them, as vexed and sad as he at this sudden renunciation. One thing was plain: without admitting her reason as valid, they knew what that reason was, and did not intend to reveal it.
A week from that day Ambrose Graye left his friend Huntway’s house and saw no more of the Love he mourned. From time to time his friend answered any inquiry Graye made by letter respecting her. But very poor food to a lover is intelligence of a mistress filtered through a friend. Huntway could tell nothing definitely. He said he believed there had been some prior flirtation between Cytherea and her cousin, an officer of the line, two or three years before Graye met her, which had suddenly been terminated by the cousin’s departure for India, and the young lady’s travelling on the Continent with her parents the whole of the ensuing summer, on account of delicate health. Eventually Huntway said that circumstances had rendered Graye’s attachment more hopeless still. Cytherea’s mother had unexpectedly inherited a large fortune and estates in the west of England by the rapid fall of some intervening lives. This had caused their removal from the small house in Bloomsbury, and, as it appeared, a renunciation of their old friends in that quarter.