by Thomas Hardy
“Good morning, Miss Lovill!” said the young man, in the free manner usual with him toward pretty and inexperienced country girls.
Agatha Pollin — the maiden addressed — instantly perceived how the mistake had arisen. Miss Lovill was the owner of a blue autumn wrapper, exceptionally gay for a village; and Agatha, in a spirit of emulation rather than originality, had purchased a similarly enviable article for herself, which she wore to-day for the first time. It may be mentioned that the two young women had ridden together from their homes to Maiden-Newton on this foggy September morning, Agatha prolonging her journey thence to Weymouth by train, and leaving her acquaintance at the former place. The remark was made to her on Weymouth esplanade.
Agatha was now about to reply very naturally, “I am not Miss Lovill,” and she went so far as to turn up her face to him for the purpose, when he added, “I’ve been hoping to meet you. I have heard of your — well, I must say it — beauty, long ago, though I only came to Beaminster yesterday.”
Agatha bowed — her contradiction hung back — and they walked slowly along the esplanade together without speaking another word after the above point-blank remark of his. It was evident that her new friend could never have seen either herself or Miss Lovill except from a distance.
And Agatha trembled as well as bowed. This Miss Lovill — Frances Lovill — was of great and long renown as the beauty of Cloton village, near Beaminster. She was five and twenty and fully developed, while Agatha was only the niece of the miller of the same place, just nineteen, and of no repute as yet for comeliness, though she undoubtedly could boast of much. Now, were the speaker, Oswald Winwood, to be told that he had not lighted upon the true Helen, he would instantly apologize for his mistake and leave her side,” contingency of no great matter but for one curious emotional circumstance — Agatha had already lost her heart to him. Only in secret had she acquired this interest in Winwood — by hearing much report of his talent and by watching him several times from a window; but she loved none the less in that she had discovered that Miss Lovill’s desire to meet and talk with the same intellectual luminary was in a fair way of approaching the intensity of her own. We are never unbiased appraisers, even in love, and rivalry usually operates as a stimulant to esteem even while it is acting as an obstacle to opportunity. So it had been with Agatha in her talk to Miss Lovill that morning concerning Oswald Winwood.
The Weymouth season was almost at an end, and but few loungers were to be seen on the parades, particularly at this early hour. Agatha looked over the iridescent sea, from which the veil of mist was slowly rising, at the white cliffs on the left, now just beginning to gleam in a weak sunlight, at the one solitary yacht in the midst, and still delayed her explanation. Her companion went on:
“The mist is vanishing, look, and I think it will be fine, after all. Shall you stay in Weymouth the whole day?”
“No. I am going to Portland by the twelve o’clock steam-boat. But I return here again at six to go home by the seven o’clock train.”
“I go to Maiden Newton by the same train, and then to Beaminster by the carrier.”
“So do I.”
“Not, I suppose, to walk from Beaminster to Cloton at that time in the evening?”
“I shall be met by somebody — but it is only a mile, you know.”
That is how it all began; the continuation it is not necessary to detail at length. Both being somewhat young and impulsive, social forms were not scrupulously attended to. She discovered him to be on board the steamer as it ploughed the emerald waves of Weymouth Bay, although he had wished her a formal good-bye at the pier. He had altered his mind, he said, and thought that he would come to Portland, too. They returned by the same boat, walked the velvet sands till the train started, and entered a carriage together.
All this time, in the midst of her happiness, Agatha’s conscience was sombre with guiltiness at not having yet told him of his mistake. It was true that he had not more than once or twice called her by Miss Lovill’s name since the first greeting in the morning; but he certainly was still under the impression that she was Frances Lovill. Yet she perceived that though he had been led to her by another’s name, it was her own proper person that he was so rapidly getting to love, and Agatha’s feminine insight suggested blissfully to her that the face belonging to the name would after this encounter have no power to drag him away from the face of the day’s romance.
They reached Maiden-Newton at dusk, and went to the inn door, where stood the old-fashioned hooded van which was to take them to Beaminster. It was on the point of starting, and when they had mounted in front the old man at once drove up the long hill leading out of the village.
“This has been a charming experience to me, Miss Lovill,” Oswald said, as they sat side by side. “Accidental meetings have a way of making themselves pleasant when contrived ones quite fail to do it.”
It was absolutely necessary to confess this time, though all her bliss were at once destroyed.
“I am not really Miss Lovill!” she faltered.
“What! not the young lady — and are you really not Frances Lovill?” he exclaimed, in surprise.
“O forgive me, Mr Winwood! I have wanted so to tell you of your mistake; indeed I have, all day — but I couldn’t — and it is so wicked and wrong of me! I am only poor Agatha Pollin, at the mill.”
“But why couldn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was afraid that if I did you would go away from me and not care for me any more, and I l — l — love you so dearly!”
The carrier being on foot beside the horse, the van being so dark, and Oswald’s feelings being rather warm, he could not for his life avoid kissing her there and then.
“Well,” he said, “it doesn’t matter; you are yourself anyhow. It is you I like, and nobody else in the world — not the name. But, you know, I was really looking for Miss Lovill this morning. I saw the back of her head yesterday, and I have often heard how very good-looking she is. Ah! suppose you had been she. I wonder — “
He did not complete the sentence. The driver mounted again, touched the horse with the whip, and they jogged on.
“You forgive me?” she said.
“Entirely — absolutely — the reason justified everything. How strange that you should have been caring deeply for me, and I ignorant of it all the time!”
They descended into Beaminster and alighted, Oswald handing her down. They had not moved from the spot when another female figure also alighted, dropped her fare into the carrier’s hand, and glided away.
“Who is that?” said Oswald to the carrier. “Why, I thought we were the only passengers!”
“What?” said the carrier, who was rather stupid.
“Who is that woman?”
“Miss Lovill, of Cloton. She altered her mind about staying at Beaminster, and is come home again.”
“Oh!” said Agatha, almost sinking to the earth. “She has heard it all. What shall I do, what shall I do?”
“Never mind it a bit,” said Oswald.
II
The mill stood beside the village high-road, from which it was separated by the stream, the latter forming also the boundary of the mill garden, orchard, and paddock on that side. A visitor crossed a little wood bridge embedded in oozy, aquatic growths, and found himself in a space where usually stood a waggon laden with sacks, surrounded by a number of bright-feathered fowls.
It was now, however, just dusk, but the mill was not closed, a stripe of light stretching as usual from the open door across the front, across the river, across the road, into the hedge beyond. On the bridge, which was aside from the line of light, a young man and girl stood talking together. Soon they moved a little way apart, and then it was apparent that their right hands were joined. In receding one from the other they began to swing their arms gently backward and forward between them.
“Come a little way up the lane, Agatha, since it is the last time,” he said. “I don’t like parting here. You know your unc
le does not object.”
“He doesn’t object because he knows nothing to object to,” she whispered. And they both then contemplated the fine, stalwart figure of the said uncle, who could be seen moving about inside the mill, illuminated by the candle, and circumscribed by a faint halo of flour, and hindered by the whirr of the mill from hearing anything so gentle as lovers’ talk.
Oswald had not relinquished her hand, and, submitting herself to a bondage she appeared to love better than freedom, Agatha followed him across the bridge, and they went down the lane engaged in the low, sad talk common to all such cases, interspersed with remarks peculiar to their own.
“It is nothing so fearful to contemplate,” he said.” Many live there for years in a state of rude health, and return home in the same happy condition. So shall I.”
“I hope you will.”
“But aren’t you glad I am going? It is better to do well in India than badly here. Say you are glad, dearest; it will fortify me when I am gone.”
“I am glad,” she murmured faintly. “I mean I am glad in my mind. I don’t think that in my heart I am glad.”
“Thanks to Macaulay, of honoured memory, I have as good a chance as the best of them!” he said, with ardour. “What a great thing competitive examination is; it will put good men in good places, and make inferior men move lower down; all bureaucratic jobbery will be swept away.”
“What’s bureaucratic, Oswald?”
“Oh! that’s what they call it, you know. It is — well, I don’t exactly know what it is. I know this, that it is the name of what I hate, and that it isn’t competitive examination.”
“At any rate it is a very bad thing,” she said, conclusively.
“Very bad, indeed; you may take my word for that.”
Then the parting scene began, in the dark, under the heavy-headed trees which shut out sky and stars. “And since I shall be in London till the Spring,” he remarked, “the parting doesn’t seem so bad — so all at once. Perhaps you may come to London before the Spring, Agatha.”
“I may; but I don’t think I shall.”
“We must hope on all the same. Then there will be the examination, and then I shall know my fate.”
“I hope you’ll fail! — there, I’ve said it; I couldn’t help it, Oswald!” she exclaimed, bursting out crying. “You would come home again then!”
“How can you be so disheartening and wicked, Agatha! I — I didn’t expect — “
“No, no; I don’t wish it; I wish you to be best, top, very very best!” she said. “I didn’t mean the other; indeed, dear Oswald, I didn’t. And will you be sure to come to me when you are rich? Sure to come?”
“If I’m on this earth I’ll come home and marry you.”
And then followed the good-bye.
III
In the Spring came the examination. One morning a newspaper directed by Oswald was placed in her hands, and she opened it to find it was a copy of the Times. In the middle of the sheet, in the most conspicuous place, in the excellent neighbourhood of the leading articles, was a list of names, and the first on the list was Oswald Winwood. Attached to his name, as showing where he was educated, was the simple title of some obscure little academy, while underneath came public school and college men in shoals. Such a case occurs sometimes, and it occurred then.
How Agatha clapped her hands! for her selfish wish to have him in England at any price, even that of failure, had been but a paroxysm of the wretched parting, and was now quite extinct. Circumstances combined to hinder another meeting between them before his departure, and, accordingly, making up her mind to the inevitable in a way which would have done honour to an older head, she fixed her mental vision on that sunlit future — far away, yet always nearing — and contemplated its probabilities with a firm hope.
At length he had arrived in India, and now Agatha had only to work and wait; and the former made the latter more easy. In her spare hours she would wander about the river banks and into the coppices and there weave thoughts of him by processes that young women understand so well. She kept a diary, and in this, since there were few events to chronicle in her daily life, she sketched the changes of the landscape, noted the arrival and departure of birds of passage, the times of storms and foul weather — all which information, being mixed up with her life and taking colour from it, she sent as scraps in her letters to him, deriving most of her enjoyment in contemplating his.
Oswald, on his part, corresponded very regularly. Knowing the days of the Indian mail, she would go at such times to meet the post-man in early morning, and to her unvarying inquiry, “A letter for me?” it was seldom, indeed, that there came a disappointing answer. Thus the season passed, and Oswald told her he should be a judge some day, with many other details, which, in her mind, were viewed chiefly in their bearing on the grand consummation — that he was to come home and marry her.
Meanwhile, as the girl grew older and more womanly, the woman whose name she had once stolen for a day grew more of an old maid, and showed symptoms of fading. One day Agatha’s uncle, who, though still a handsome man in the prime of his life was a widower with four children, to whom she acted the part of eldest sister, told Agatha that Frances Lovill was about to become his second wife.
“Well!” said Agatha, and thought, “What an end for a beauty!”
And yet it was all reasonable enough, notwithstanding that Miss Lovill might have looked a little higher. Agatha knew that this step would produce great alterations in the small household of Cloton Mill, and the idea of having as aunt and ruler the woman to whom she was in some sense indebted for a lover, affected Agatha with a slight thrill of dread. Yet nothing had ever been spoken between the two women to show that Frances had heard, much less resented, the explanation in the van on that night of the return from Weymouth.
IV
On a certain day old farmer Lovill called. He was of the same family as Frances, though their relationship was distant. A considerable business in corn had been done from time to time between miller and farmer, but the latter had seldom called at Pollin’s house. He was a bachelor, or he would probably never have appeared in this history, and he was mostly full of a boyish merriment rare in one of his years. To-day his business with the miller had been so imperative as to bring him in person, and it was evident from their talk in the mill that the matter was payment. Perhaps ten minutes had been spent in serious converse when the old farmer turned away from the door, and, without saying good-morning, went toward the bridge. This was unusual for a man of his temperament.
He was an old man — really and fairly old — sixty-five years of age at least. He was not exactly feeble, but he found a stick useful when walking in a high wind. His eyes were not yet bleared, but in their corners was occasionally a moisture like majolica glaze — entirely absent in youth. His face was not shrivelled, but there were unmistakable puckers in some places. And hence the old gentleman, unmarried, substantial, and cheery as he was, was not doted on by the young girls of Cloton as he had been by their mothers in former time. Each year his breast impended a little further over his toes, and his chin a little further over his breast, and in proportion as he turned down his nose to earth did pretty females turn up theirs at him. They might have liked him as a friend had he not shown the abnormal wish to be regarded as a lover. To Agatha Pollin this aged youth was positively distasteful.
It happened that at the hour of Mr Lovill’s visit Agatha was bending over the pool at the mill head, sousing some white fabric in the water. She was quite unconscious of the farmer’s presence near her, and continued dipping and rinsing in the idlest phase possible to industry, until she remained quite still, holding the article under the water, and looking at her own reflection within it. The river, though gliding slowly, was yet so smooth that to the old man on the bridge she existed in duplicate — the pouting mouth, the little nose, the frizzed hair, the bit of blue ribbon, as they existed over the surface, being but a degree more, distinct than the same features be
neath.
“What a pretty maid!” said the old man to himself. He walked up the margin of the stream, and stood beside her.
“Oh!” said Agatha, starting with surprise. In her flurry she relinquished the article she had been rinsing, which slowly turned over and sank deeper, and made toward the hatch of the mill-wheel.
“There — it will get into the wheel, and be torn to pieces!” she exclaimed.
“I’ll fish it out with my stick, my dear,” said Farmer Lovill, and kneeling cautiously down he began hooking and crooking with all his might. “What thing is it of much value?”
“Yes; it is my best one!” she said involuntarily.
“It — what is the it?”
“Only something — a piece of linen.” Just then the farmer hooked the endangered article, and dragging it out, held it high on his walking-stick — dripping, but safe.
“Why, it is a chemise!” he said.
The girl looked red, and instead of taking it from the end of the stick, turned away.
“Hee-hee!” laughed the ancient man. “Well, my dear, there’s nothing to be ashamed of that I can see in owning to such a necessary and innocent article of clothing. There, I’ll put it on the grass for you, and you shall take it when I am gone.”
Then Farmer Lovill retired, lifting his fingers privately, to express amazement on a small scale, and murmuring, “What a nice young thing! Well, to be sure. Yes, a nice child — young woman rather indeed, a marriageable woman, come to that; of course she is.”
The doting old person thought of the young one all this day in a way that the young one did not think of him. He thought so much about her, that in the evening, instead of going to bed, he hobbled privately out by the back door into the moonlight, crossed a field or two, and stood in the lane, looking at the mill — not more in the hope of getting a glimpse of the attractive girl inside than for the pleasure of realising that she was there.
A light moved within, came nearer, and ascended. The staircase window was large, and he saw his goddess going up with a candle in her hand. This was indeed worth coming for. He feared he was seen by her as well, yet hoped otherwise in the interests of his passion, for she came and drew down the window blind, completely shutting out his gaze. The light vanished from this part, and reappeared in a window a little further on.