Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (792 page)

Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. The events that had, as it were, dashed themselves together in one half-hour of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god at other times known as blind Circumstance. That his few minutes of hope between the reading of the first and second letters had carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the immensity of his suffering now. The sun blazing into his face would have showed a close watcher that a horizontal line, which he had never noticed before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead. His eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares.

The secondary particulars of his present position, too, were odd enough, though for some time they appeared to engage little of his attention. Not a soul in the town knew, as yet, of his wife’s death, and he almost owed Downe the kindness of not publishing it till the day was over — the conjuncture, taken with that which had accompanied the death of Mrs. Downe, being so singular as to be quite sufficient to darken the pleasure of the impressible solicitor to a cruel extent if made known to him. But as Barnet could not set out on his journey to London, where his wife lay, for some hours (there being at this date no railway within a distance of eighty miles), no great reason existed why he should leave the town.

Impulse in all its forms characterized Barnet, and when he heard the distant clock strike the hour of ten, his feet began to carry him up the harbor-road with the manner of a man who must do something to bring himself to life. He passed Lucy Savile’s old house, his own new one, and came in view of the church. Now he gave a perceptible start, and his mechanical condition went away. Before the church-gate were a couple of carriages, and Barnet then could perceive that the marriage between Downe and Lucy was at that moment being solemnized within. A feeling of sudden, proud self-confidence, an indocile wish to walk unmoved in spite of grim environments, plainly possessed him, and when he reached the wicket-gate he turned in without apparent effort. Pacing up the paved foot-way he entered the church and stood for a while in the nave passage. A group of people was standing round the vestry door; Barnet advanced through these and stepped into the vestry.

There they were busily signing their names. Seeing Downe about to look round, Barnet averted his somewhat disturbed face for a second or two; when he turned again front to front he was calm quite smiling: it was a creditable triumph over himself, and deserved to be remembered in his native town. He greeted Downe heartily, offering his congratulations.

It seemed as if Barnet expected a half-guilty look upon Lucy’s face; but no, save the natural flush and flurry engendered by the service just performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which showed a disturbed mind; her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as at other times the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude which never went so far as to touch on hardness. She shook hands with him, and Downe said, warmly: “I wish you could have come sooner; I called on purpose to ask you. You’ll drive back with us now?”

“No, no,” said Barnet; “I am not at all prepared; but I thought I would look in upon you for a moment, even though I had not time to go home and dress. I’ll stand back and see you pass out, and observe the effect of the spectacle upon myself as one of the public.”

Then Lucy and her husband laughed, and Barnet laughed and retired; and the quiet little party went gliding down the nave and toward the porch, Lucy’s new silk dress sweeping with a smart rustle round the base-moldings of the ancient font, and Downe’s little daughters following in a state of round-eyed interest in their position, and that of Lucy, their teacher and friend.

So Downe was comforted after his Emily’s death, which had taken place twelvemonths, two weeks, and three days before that time.

When the two flys had driven off and the spectators had vanished, Barnet followed to the door and went out into the sun. He took no more trouble to preserve a spruce exterior; his step was unequal, hesitating, almost convulsive; and the slight changes of colour which went on in his face seemed refracted from some inward flame. In the churchyard he became pale as a summer cloud, and finding it not easy toproceed, he sat down on one of the tombstones and supported his head with his hand.

Hard by was a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time to finish on the previous evening. Observing Barnet, he went up to him, and recognizing him, said: “Shall I help you home, sir?”

“Oh no, thank you,” said Barnet, rousing himself and standing up. The sexton returned to his grave, followed by Barnet, who, after watching him a while, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and helped to tread in the earth.

The sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he made no observation, and when the grave was full, Barnet suddenly stopped, looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the gate and vanished. The sexton rested on his shovel and looked after him for a few moments, and then began banking up the mound.

In those short minutes of treading in the dead man Barnet had formed a design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for some long time imagine. He went home, wrote several letters of business, called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had been the legal adviser of Barnet’s father before him, and during the evening overhauled a large quantity of letters and other documents in his possession. By eleven o’clock the heap of papers in and before Barnet’s grate had reached formidable dimensions, and he began to burn them. This, owing to their quantity, it was not so easy to do as he had expected, and he sat long into the night to complete the task.

The next morning Barnet departed for London, leaving a note for Downe to inform him of Mrs. Barnet’s sudden death, and that he was gone to bury her; but when a thrice sufficient time for that purpose had elapsed lie was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in his new house, or in his old one. He was gone for good, nobody knew whither. It was soon discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to dispose of all his property, real and personal, in the borough, and pay in the proceeds to the account of an unknown person at one of the large London banks. The person was by some supposed to be himself under an assumed name; but few, if any, had certain knowledge of that fact.

The elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions; and its purchaser was no other than Downe, now a thriving man in the borough, and one whose growing family and new wife required more roomy accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the narrow side street. Barnet’s old habitation was bought by the trustees of the Congregational Baptist body in that town, who pulled down the time-honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site. By the time the last hour of that, to Barnet, eventful year had chimed, every vestige of him had disappeared from the precincts of his native place, and the name became extinct in the borough of Port-Bredy, after having been a living force therein for more than two hundred years.

IX

Twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark even upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a period works nothing less than transformation. In Barnet’s old birthplace vivacious young children with bones like India-rubber had grown up, to be stable men and women, men and women had dried in the skin, stiffened, withered, and sunk into decrepitude; while selections from every class had been consigned to the outlying cemetery. Of inorganic differences the greatest was that a railway had invaded the town, tying it on to a main line at a junction a dozen miles off. Barnet’s house on the harbor-road, once so insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy, Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional infirmities of its own like its elder fellows. Its architecture, once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned. Trees about the harbor-road had increased in circumference or disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends.

During this long interval George Barnet had never once been seen or heard of in the town of his fathers.

It was the evening of a market-day, and some half-dozen middle-aged farmers and dairymen were lounging round the bar of the Black Bull Hotel, occasionally dropping a remark to one another, and less frequently to the two barmaids who stood within the pewter-topped counter in a perfunctory attitude of attention, these latter sighing and making a private observation to each other at odd intervals, on more interesting experiences than the present.

“Days get shorter,” said one of the dairymen, as he looked toward the street, and noticed that the lamplighter was passing by.

The farmers merely acknowledged by their countenances the propriety of this remark, and finding that nobody else spoke, one of the barmaids said “yes,” in a tone of painful duty.

“Come fair-day we shall have to light up before we start for home-along.

“That’s true,” his neighbour conceded, with a gaze of blankness.

“And after that we shan’t see much further difference all’s winter.”

The rest were not unwilling to go even so far as this.

The barmaid sighed again and raised one of her hands from the counter on which they rested to scratch the smallest surface of her face with the smallest of her fingers. She looked toward the door, and presently remarked, “I think I hear the ‘bus coming in from station.”

The eyes of the dairymen and farmers turned to the glass door dividing the hall from the porch, and in a minute or two the omnibus drove up outside. Then there was a lumbering down of luggage, and then a man came into the hall, followed by a porter with a portmanteau on his poll, which he deposited on a bench.

The stranger was on elderly person, with curly ashen-white hair, a deeply creviced outer corner to each eyelid, and a countenance baked by in-numerable suns to the colour of terra-cotta, its hue and that of his hair contrasting like heat and cold respectively. He walked meditatively and gently, like one who was fearful of disturbing his own mental equilibrium. But whatever lay at the bottom of his breast had evidently made him so accustomed to its situation there that it caused him little practical inconvenience.

He paused in silence while, with his dubious eyes fixed on the barmaids, he seemed to consider himself. In a moment or two he addressed them, and asked to be accommodated for the night. As he waited he looked curiously round the hall, but said nothing. As soon as invited he disappeared up the staircase, preceded by a chambermaid and candle, and followed by a lad with his trunk. Not a soul had recognized him.

A quarter of an hour later, when the farmers and dairymen had driven off to their homesteads in the country, he came downstairs, took a biscuit and one glass of wine, and walked out into the town, where the radiance from the shop windows had grown so in volume of late years as to flood with cheerfulness every standing cart, barrow, stall, and idler that occupied the wayside, whether shabby or genteel. His chief interest at present seemed to lie in the names painted over the shop-fronts and on doorways, as far as they were visible; these now differed to an ominous extent from what they had been one-and-twenty years before.

The traveler passed on till he came to the booksellers, where he looked in through the glass door. A fresh-faced young man was standing behind the counter; otherwise the shop was empty. The gray-haired observer entered, asked for some periodical by way of paying for his standing, and with his elbow on the counter began to turn over the pages he had bought, though that he read nothing was obvious.

At length he said, “Is old Mr. Watkins still alive?” in a voice which had a curious youthful cadence in it even now.

“My father is dead, sir, “ said the young man,

“Ah, I am sorry to hear it,” said the stronger.

“But it is so many years since I last visited this town that I could hardly expect it should be otherwise.” After a short silence he continued, “And is the firm of Barnet, Browse & Co. still in existence? — they used to be large flax merchants and twine-spinners here?”

“The firm is still going on, sir, but they have dropped the name of Barnet. I believe that was a sort of fancy name — at least, I never knew of any living Barnet. ‘Tis now Browse & Co.”

“And does Andrew Jones still keep on as architect?”

“He’s dead, sir.”

“And the vicar of St. Mary’s — Mr. Melrose?”

“He’s been dead a great many years.”

“Dear me!” He paused yet longer, and cleared his voice.

“Is Mr. Downe, the solicitor, still in practice?”

“No, sir, he’s dead. He died about seven years ago.”

Here it was a longer silence still; and an attentive observer would have noticed that the paper in the strangers hand increased its imperceptible tremor to a visible shake. The gray-haired gentleman noticed it himself, and rested the paper on the counter. “Is Mrs. Downe still alive?” he asked, closing his lips firmly as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and dropping his eyes.

“Yes, sir, she’s alive and well. She’s living at the old place.”

“In East Street?”

“Oh no; at Chateau Ringdale. I believe it has been in the family for some generations.”

“She lives with her children, perhaps?”

“No; she has no children of her own. There were some Misses Downe; I think they were Mr. Downe’s daughters by a former wife; but they are married and living in other parts of the town. Mrs. Downe lives alone.”

“Quite alone?”

“Yes, sir; quite alone.”

The newly arrived gentleman went back to the hotel and dined; after which he made some change in his dress, shaved back his beard to the fashion that had prevailed twenty years earlier, when he was young and interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the direction of the harbor-road. Just before getting to the point where the pavement ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he overtook a shambling, stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight appeared like a professional tramp, his shoulders having a perceptible greasiness as they passed under the gaslight. Each pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the other, and the tramp-like gentleman started back.