A Laodicean : A Story of To-day

by Thomas Hardy

  VII.

  The wet day arrived with all the promptness that might have beenexpected of it in this land of rains and mists. The alder bushes behindthe gymnasium dripped monotonously leaf upon leaf, added to this beingthe purl of the shallow stream a little way off, producing a sense ofsatiety in watery sounds. Though there was drizzle in the open meads,the rain here in the thicket was comparatively slight, and two men withfishing tackle who stood beneath one of the larger bushes found itsboughs a sufficient shelter.

  'We may as well walk home again as study nature here, Willy,' saidthe taller and elder of the twain. 'I feared it would continue when westarted. The magnificent sport you speak of must rest for to-day.'

  The other looked at his watch, but made no particular reply.

  'Come, let us move on. I don't like intruding into other people'sgrounds like this,' De Stancy continued.

  'We are not intruding. Anybody walks outside this fence.' He indicatedan iron railing newly tarred, dividing the wilder underwood amid whichthey stood from the inner and well-kept parts of the shrubbery, andagainst which the back of the gymnasium was built.

  Light footsteps upon a gravel walk could be heard on the other side ofthe fence, and a trio of cloaked and umbrella-screened figures werefor a moment discernible. They vanished behind the gymnasium; and againnothing resounded but the river murmurs and the clock-like drippings ofthe leafage.

  'Hush!' said Dare.

  'No pranks, my boy,' said De Stancy suspiciously. 'You should be abovethem.'

  'And you should trust to my good sense, captain,' Dare remonstrated. 'Ihave not indulged in a prank since the sixth year of my pilgrimage. Ihave found them too damaging to my interests. Well, it is not too dryhere, and damp injures your health, you say. Have a pull for safety'ssake.' He presented a flask to De Stancy.

  The artillery officer looked down at his nether garments.

  'I don't break my rule without good reason,' he observed.

  'I am afraid that reason exists at present.'

  'I am afraid it does. What have you got?'

  'Only a little wine.'

  'What wine?'

  'Do try it. I call it "the blushful Hippocrene," that the poet describesas

  "Tasting of Flora and the country green; Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth."'

  De Stancy took the flask, and drank a little.

  'It warms, does it not?' said Dare.

  'Too much,' said De Stancy with misgiving. 'I have been taken unawares.Why, it is three parts brandy, to my taste, you scamp!'

  Dare put away the wine. 'Now you are to see something,' he said.

  'Something--what is it?' Captain De Stancy regarded him with a puzzledlook.

  'It is quite a curiosity, and really worth seeing. Now just look inhere.'

  The speaker advanced to the back of the building, and withdrew the woodbillet from the wall.

  'Will, I believe you are up to some trick,' said De Stancy,not, however, suspecting the actual truth in these unsuggestivecircumstances, and with a comfortable resignation, produced by thepotent liquor, which would have been comical to an outsider, but which,to one who had known the history and relationship of the two speakers,would have worn a sadder significance. 'I am too big a fool about you tokeep you down as I ought; that's the fault of me, worse luck.'

  He pressed the youth's hand with a smile, went forward, and lookedthrough the hole into the interior of the gymnasium. Dare withdrewto some little distance, and watched Captain De Stancy's face, whichpresently began to assume an expression of interest.

  What was the captain seeing? A sort of optical poem.

  Paula, in a pink flannel costume, was bending, wheeling and undulatingin the air like a gold-fish in its globe, sometimes ascending by herarms nearly to the lantern, then lowering herself till she swung levelwith the floor. Her aunt Mrs. Goodman, and Charlotte De Stancy, weresitting on camp-stools at one end, watching her gyrations, Paulaoccasionally addressing them with such an expression as--'Now, Aunt,look at me--and you, Charlotte--is not that shocking to your weaknerves,' when some adroit feat would be repeated, which, however, seemedto give much more pleasure to Paula herself in performing it than toMrs. Goodman in looking on, the latter sometimes saying, 'O, it isterrific--do not run such a risk again!'

  It would have demanded the poetic passion of some joyous Elizabethanlyrist like Lodge, Nash, or Constable, to fitly phrase Paula'spresentation of herself at this moment of absolute abandonment to everymuscular whim that could take possession of such a supple form. Thewhite manilla ropes clung about the performer like snakes as she tookher exercise, and the colour in her face deepened as she went on.Captain De Stancy felt that, much as he had seen in early life of beautyin woman, he had never seen beauty of such a real and living sort asthis. A recollection of his vow, together with a sense that to gazeon the festival of this Bona Dea was, though so innocent and pretty asight, hardly fair or gentlemanly, would have compelled him to withdrawhis eyes, had not the sportive fascination of her appearance gluedthem there in spite of all. And as if to complete the picture of Gracepersonified and add the one thing wanting to the charm which bound him,the clouds, till that time thick in the sky, broke away from the upperheaven, and allowed the noonday sun to pour down through the lanternupon her, irradiating her with a warm light that was incarnadined by herpink doublet and hose, and reflected in upon her face. She onlyrequired a cloud to rest on instead of the green silk net which actuallysupported her reclining figure for the moment, to be quite Olympian;save indeed that in place of haughty effrontery there sat on hercountenance only the healthful sprightliness of an English girl.

  Dare had withdrawn to a point at which another path crossed the pathoccupied by De Stancy. Looking in a side direction, he saw Havillidling slowly up to him over the silent grass. Havill's knowledge of theappointment had brought him out to see what would come of it. When heneared Dare, but was still partially hidden by the boughs from the thirdof the party, the former simply pointed to De Stancy upon which Havillstood and peeped at him. 'Is she within there?' he inquired.

  Dare nodded, and whispered, 'You need not have asked, if you hadexamined his face.'

  'That's true.'

  'A fermentation is beginning in him,' said Dare, half pitifully; 'apurely chemical process; and when it is complete he will probably beclear, and fiery, and sparkling, and quite another man than the good,weak, easy fellow that he was.'

  To precisely describe Captain De Stancy's admiration was impossible. Asun seemed to rise in his face. By watching him they could almost seethe aspect of her within the wall, so accurately were her changingphases reflected in him. He seemed to forget that he was not alone.

  'And is this,' he murmured, in the manner of one only half apprehendinghimself, 'and is this the end of my vow?'

  Paula was saying at this moment, 'Ariel sleeps in this posture, doeshe not, Auntie?' Suiting the action to the word she flung out her armsbehind her head as she lay in the green silk hammock, idly closed herpink eyelids, and swung herself to and fro.

  BOOK THE THIRD. DE STANCY.