This conclusion was one that he had reached shortly after dinner. Gertie was pregnant again. Why else would she have changed her mind so precipitately?
Florence gave a gasp. ‘I don’t know –’
‘There is no other possible explanation.’
‘Thomas –’
‘She has only herself to blame.’
‘Thomas!’
He waited.
‘I am so sorry about your poems!’
‘O –’ he made a dismissive gesture.
‘I should not have done it. I should not have!’
‘Let us forget it and go to bed. Let us forget it, please. They were no good; the fire was the best place for them.’ He was not far short of desperation. ‘Read some more, please.’
‘Will you ever forgive me?’
‘My dear, there is nothing to forgive. Read something else.’
‘What would you like? More Virgil?’
‘No – something else – anything.’
‘What?’
For no reason that he could have clearly expressed, save that it was one of his favourite poems, and that he had not heard or read it for many months, and that it was not too long, and also that it seemed appropriate to the moment – the hour being late, and a hard frost certain – he named Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’.
She fetched the volume of Coleridge’s poems from the shelves, opened it, and began to read in a shaky voice:
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud – and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude –
Here, to his surprise, she broke off. ‘O dear me,’ she said with a sob. ‘Dear me.’
He reached out, put a hand over the page. ‘It is all right – stop – Florence – there is no need to read anything.’
‘No. No.’ She pulled the book from under his hand, and read on:
– that solitude which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully –
before bursting into sobs through which he made out her impassioned words: ‘I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.’
‘There is nothing to be sorry for. Let us go to bed. We are both tired. Wessex is tired too. We should go to sleep.’
‘No! No! Thomas! I must speak! I must speak! I have been your wife for eleven years. I have lived for you, cared for you, done all I could do to help you, and to make you happy. If you are not happy, it is not for lack of effort on my part. I have served you constantly. In marrying you I have abandoned my hopes, my dreams …’ Her voice choked in bitterness. ‘O, Thomas! Can you not see?’
She had been preparing this speech, he thought. He had heard it before.
‘I have lost my youth. I have lost my youth, living here. I am old already, in my heart –’ and she rapped against her heart with a fist. ‘I used to be able to write,’ she went on. ‘I am a human being too.’
He had always been embarrassed by her writing. When he remembered those trite, whimsical verses about bunny rabbits and fox cubs – when he remembered how he had encouraged her, and for motives that were patently self-serving, he was ashamed of himself.
‘Florence,’ said he, and he put down the glass of whisky, ‘of course. Of course. Of course. We are all older than we were, unfortunately.’ Was he now expected to make a declaration of love? ‘My dear, I have always considered that, as marriages go, ours has been a very successful one,’ he said, aware that this was, by any measure, a fairly feeble effort, yet unable to find any stronger words.
‘And so have I,’ she brought out, in a whimper. ‘And so have I. But you are not happy!’
He considered this with some puzzlement. Was he not happy? He was happy enough. She was the unhappy one.
‘I am not unhappy,’ he replied. ‘In general I am happy. I should be happier if the world were a happier place, and I should be happier if you were happier. But we are in many ways fortunate.’
She said something he did not catch.
‘What, my dear?’ He leant forward, so as to hear her words more distinctly.
‘We ought to be happier.’
‘Perhaps. But I have come to believe that the secret of happiness generally lies in lowered expectations. It is a mistake to expect more than a little out of life.’
She seemed to stifle a sob. ‘If we could only have had children. Just one child, just one. I am sorry, so sorry.’
The old man was taken completely by surprise. For a moment he could not think what to say. Then he took her hand.
‘You should not have married me. I needed you, and I am very grateful to you for marrying me, and for all you have done for me; but you should not have done. I was too old.’
She gave a moan. ‘No, no, no.’
‘I was. You should have married someone younger. When I am dead and gone, when I am dust – marry again. You are still an attractive woman. Marry a young man.’
‘O, Thomas, Thomas, it is too late for that, far too late.’
‘Nonsense. There are many men who would like to marry you. You will be a woman of substance, when I am gone.’
‘I mean it is too late for children. I am forty-six. I am past child-bearing.’
She stared at him, her eyes welling with fresh tears.
His eyes had not filled with tears for many years; age had dried up the fluid capacity. Yet if he could have done, he would have wept too. Children; yes; if they had only had children. A child would have made all the difference to her – and to him, too. How many times had he thought as much! How many times had he reflected on the fact that he would die without issue! Once he was gone, the long line of Hardys, like the long line of the d’Urbervilles, would reach its end.
He had failed his ancestors. Grim-faced and condemnatory, their ghosts watched him and shook their spectral heads.
He might have had a child with Emma, but when, in the first few years of the marriage, she had talked about her desire to start a family, he had always fought shy, saying that it was too early. He was trying to make his way as a writer, and they were not financially secure; he was not sufficiently established to be able to afford a family. If they had had children, would he have been able to justify the hours that he had spent at his desk without any certain prospect of financial reward? No. His writing would have come to a halt, and he would have fallen back on his work as an architect. It was too early – and then, or so it seemed, it was too late. A chill set in; and for the last twenty-five years, by common consent, they had slept in separate bedrooms, a floor apart.
And with Florence? Again it seemed too late. Far too late, at least for him; he had been past seventy when they married. To father a child at that age would have been judged irresponsible, and he had never even dreamt of it. Still, perhaps it would have been possible, if they had tried harder, if he had tried harder. She might have become pregnant. Certainly she had been sufficiently young to bear a child.
Now she was not. She was barren. That much was unalterable. Now, beyond a doubt, it was too late. He felt the deepest sympathy for her.
He found himself on the point of telling her that children were not everything, that there were many paths to self-fulfilment other than reproduction; that, in all conscience, it was not morally right to bring another human being into a sorry world such as this. We live in a vale of tears! But other words came from his mouth.
‘We have Wessex,’ he said.
‘O yes.’ She seized on the thought. ‘Yes. Yes. We have Wessie. Dear Wessie. Dear, dear, darling Wessie!’
Her face streaming, she flung herself on the dozing Wessex.
He watched. He watched.
Weary after a long day, wanting only to sleep, Wessex uttered a long, heartfelt sigh, expressive of the desire to be left alone, and curled himself into a tighter ball on the bed.
Still on her knees, F
lorence lifted her head. Her hair had come loose, and her face, blotchy and swollen with tears, stared at him. ‘O Thomas, Thomas! What will become of us?’
As to her precise meaning, he had no idea. He reached forward, and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Nothing. Nothing will become of us.’
‘Living here, in this house –’ she broke off, then resumed. ‘It wears me down. It has worn me out.’
‘We need another maid. The maids are useless, both of them.’
‘It is not the maids, it is not the maids, it is nothing to do with the maids. Thomas, we must do something about the trees! Everyone agrees! It is so dark.’
The trees, again; always the trees. It was an illusion, he knew, that cutting down the trees would make any difference at all to her mental state, and almost at once he seemed to drift away, detaching himself from the moment and observing from a distance. The man and woman, the husband and wife, he and she. Was it possible for a marriage to exist without difficulties? Was it not obvious that marriage brought to the surface difficulties which would otherwise have remained hidden?
‘The trees are what make me ill,’ she brought out. ‘I know they do. The spores … the mould … the air … I breathe it in. I am blighted! They are an evil force!’
‘I am sure they are not.’
‘Mr. Sherren says so! He agrees with me! They are cancer-inducing!’
‘Let us talk about it later,’ he said. ‘Later. Florence, I beg of you, not now – you are overwrought. This is not the time.’
‘You always say the same!’ she cried. ‘It is never the time! It is always later!’
‘In the morning,’ he insisted. ‘We will talk in the morning, I promise you. We will talk over breakfast. But now … now we must sleep. Sleep is the thing, blessed sleep. Tomorrow will be better.’
‘But will it? Will it?’
‘It will.’
‘I do so hope – I hope so. They do worry me so much.’
‘You exhaust yourself over nothing. You should rest more. You need to sleep.’
‘I cannot rest. I cannot sleep. I can never sleep.’
‘You must sleep,’ he said firmly. ‘You will sleep, I am sure. If you believe you will sleep, you will sleep.’ Thus, by sheer repetition of the word, he hoped to help her. As a general rule, he himself slept like the dead – or so the phrase went. But who knew how the dead slept? Who knew if the dead slept at all?
Something occurred to him. He took her hand, and caressed it gently. ‘My dear, I was thinking. When I am gone, I shall be buried with Emma, I expect. Presumably, in the fullness of time, you would like to be there also?’
She blinked at him, her eyes bloodshot.
‘Not for many years yet, of course,’ he added hastily. ‘But in these matters it is always as well to plan ahead …’
‘Will there be room for three?’ she asked in a mouse-like squeak.
‘O, yes. I am sure there will be.’
‘Would you really like me there?’
‘Very much. Of course. If you would like to be there.’
She seemed to nod.
He squeezed her hand, in a gesture of affection which was also intended as a sign that they should, now, say goodnight. ‘Sleep,’ he said, and as if to a child: ‘Bed-time now. Bed-time now.’
But she lingered. Her weeping recommenced, and grew in intensity. Bending over her knees, her hands pressed into her face, her entire body shook with sobs. The fox stole slid off her neck and lay glassy-eyed on the floor. At last the convulsions diminished in force.
‘I am so sorry. It’s just this winter … fighting with the cold … I am so very tired.’
He offered her a handkerchief, to dab her eyes. She thanked him. He waited a moment. ‘How is your neck?’ he asked, for that, surely, was what this fuss was all about.
She put up a hand. ‘If only it was not so obvious.’
‘One can hardly see anything,’ he lied, though the jagged red line of the scar that she had hidden from him for so long was clearly visible. It shocked him. ‘Mr. Sherren did a good job.’
‘I am so afraid it will return.’
‘It is done, it is done; there is nothing to be afraid of.’
She wrapped the stole around her neck again. ‘What if it does return?’
‘My dear, it will not return. Of that, I am certain, inasmuch as one can be certain of anything in this life.’ He hunted for something more to say. ‘You know, it may be winter, but spring is never very far behind.’
The reference to Shelley was a famous one. Whether she recognised it or not, the old man could not be sure; but she managed a timid smile. ‘Thank you.’
She had got to her feet, and was about to go, when another thought struck him. ‘O – Florence – here – if you see, there is a button loose –’
She picked up the waistcoat. ‘I’ll get one of the maids to see to it. Good night, Thomas. And thank you for putting away the hens.’
‘Good night, my dear. Good night.’
So she left him, retiring to her own, cold bedroom. Wessex aside, he was alone with his thoughts and a single lamp. Alone: as he had always been. Alone we come into this world, alone we depart: a truism. Well. He was accustomed to being alone. He did not dislike solitude.
He turned off the stove, removed his dressing gown and climbed into bed, partly dislodging the dog. The day had been a vexatious one, all in all. The burning of his poems did not, he found, bother him very much, for he could easily rewrite them, if they were worth rewriting; but the news about Gertie was a bad blow. She would have done it so well! There would never be another Tess half as good; no, not one quarter.
This was part of his disappointment, for he had set his heart on seeing her on stage at the Haymarket – had imagined her intense and vivid, her red lips, her wide eyes and lush hair, in every scene, down to the final curtain. Yet he was also disappointed on her behalf. She was such a thrilling woman; in years to come, buried in Beaminster (he had no romantic illusions about life in Beaminster), how would she be able to escape a sense of regret at what might have been? The opportunity of a lifetime – an extraordinary opportunity – lost! It had seemed her destiny. How foolish of her, to allow herself to become pregnant at such an important time! What a curse!
And yet he knew, even at this moment, that another view on the matter was possible. The critics might well have brought her down, if they had a mind to. She was an unsophisticated countrywoman, born and bred, and there was something about the thought of her in London that disturbed him. How might London have changed her? He had met a few London actresses – affected creatures, full of extravagant airs: he would not like her to turn into one of those. Virgil’s counsel, with an eye not to ambition but to happiness, would have been for her to stay in the country.
He extended his legs further, accidentally kicking Wessex off the bed. The dog fell heavily, with a thud and a small groan.
Needing to settle his mind, he turned up the lamp so that it shone more brightly, and opened the volume of poetry. Although his eyes hurt, by holding the page close and using a magnifying glass he was able to read the rest of Coleridge’s poem, a young man’s passionate expression of love and hope, one fine winter’s night, for his infant son and, by extension, for the whole earth.
It moved him greatly, although he knew it so well. It was a poem of pure, transcendent optimism, to a degree that lay beyond him; even in his youth he had never had such a degree of faith in the future. The final incantatory verses, a blessing on the little boy, roused him so much that he could barely bring himself to read to the last image, that of the silent icicles quietly shining to the quiet moon.
The moon had risen here too. The same radiant moon that had shone on Coleridge, more than a century earlier, now shone through the gap between the curtains, through the weave of branches, a goddess encircled by an iridescent double halo. Likewise, the same frosty agency was at work, stealing through the starry night, stiffening the bents and grasses of field and meadow, crisping t
he fallen leaves in wood and copse. Droplets of moisture were turning to jewels, puddles shivering into stillness, ponds and lakes taking on a glassy sheen. Beneath the eaves, in cottage after cottage, in village after village, an armoury of spears and lances glittered in the lunar rays.
One such was the cottage in which he had been born, on the heath’s edge; how often had he lain in bed and watched the translucent ice hanging from the thatch! How often had he leant out to touch! The icicles would be growing there now, this very moment – if he were there he could have pushed open the window and snapped one off, licking the tip, just as he had done when he was a little boy! But, even as he pictured himself with the icicles, other places dear to him from a long life were appearing in their wintry vestments. The height of Bulbarrow rose like a mountain in the moonlit dark, the Vale of Blackmoor extended itself in a sheet of latticed pearl, and the pillars of Stonehenge laid their shadows sharp as knives on the hard ground. At the base of the Beeny cliffs wave after wave burst on the black rocks and sent up clouds of luminous spray, and at Sturminster the river poured in silver torrents under the arches of the old bridge. Patches of clotted froth bobbed whitely in the frozen reeds. The scenes came in rapid succession, until at last he found himself in the churchyard at Stinsford, where the ancient yews spread their berried boughs over the graves of the once living. There, too, in the fissures of each tomb, minute crystals were being born from the cold air.
So it was all over England. So it had been for ages past: so it would be for ages to come. Why then was it impossible for him to feel, like Coleridge, confident in the future? Why rather was he affected by such a profound sense of foreboding?
The old man shut the book and extinguished the lamp. He lay, watching the pale slab of moonlight on the uneven wall, and waiting for sleep to come to him. If he did not sleep, he knew, he would find it harder to work in the morning. He had closed his eyes and tucked his hands under his chin, his usual sleeping position, when a series of sharp noises, not far off, the urgent shrieks of a vixen calling for a mate, tore through the stillness of the night. She called repeatedly for several minutes, before falling silent.
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