Thomas Hardy

“ But how refuse Heddegan without telling? It really seemed to her as if her marriage with Mr. Heddegan were about to take place as if nothing had intervened.
Morning came. The events of the previous days were cut off from her present existence by scene and sentiment more completely than ever. Charles Stow had grown to be a special being of whom, owing to his character, she entertained rather fearful than loving memory. Baptista could hear when she awoke that her parents were already moving about downstairs. ”

“ You see, they are growed up too tall to be sent to school."
"Oh, mercy!" she almost moaned. "Three great girls to teach the rudiments to, and have always in the house with me spelling over their books; and I hate teaching, it kills me. I am bitterly punished—I am, I am!"
"You'll get used to 'em, mee deer, and the balance of secrets—mine against yours—will comfort your heart with a sense of justice. I could send for 'em this week very well—and I will! In faith, I could send this very day. Baptista, you have relieved me of all my difficulty!" ”

“ You could leave me on the quay, where I'd have a smoke, while you went and saw your father and mother privately; you could then tell them what you had done, and that I was waiting not far off; that I was a schoolmaster in a fairly good position, and a young man you had known when you were at the Training College. Then I would come boldly forward; and they would see that it could not be altered, and so you wouldn't suffer a lifelong misery by being the wife of a wretched old gaffer you don't like at all. Now, honestly; you do like me best, don't you, Baptista? ”

“ She spoke with a certain awkward facetiousness, and took the hat out of the room. Baptista had recovered her outward composure. "The other gentleman?" she said. "Where is the other gentleman?"
"He's in the next room, ma'am. He removed out of this to oblige ye."
"How can you say so? I should hear him if he were there," said Baptista, sufficiently recovered to argue down an apparent untruth.
"He's there," said the girl, hardily.
"Then it is strange that he makes no noise," said Mrs. Heddegan, convicting the girl of falsity by a look.
"He makes no noise; but it is not strange," said the servant. ”

“ What does that mean, Charley? You never showed—anything to wait for—anything special towards me."
"O come, Baptista; come!"
"What I mean is, nothing definite," she expostulated. "I suppose you liked me a little; but it seemed to me to be only a pastime on your part, and that you never meant to make an honourable engagement of it."
"There, that's just it! You girls expect a man to mean business at the first look. No man when he first becomes interested in a woman has any definite scheme of engagement to marry her in his mind, unless he is meaning a vulgar mercenary marriage. ”

“ He scarcely seemed to take in the meaning of this explanation, in the intensity of his critical survey. "Teaching still—What a fine schoolmistress you make, Baptista, I warrant!" he said with a slight flavour of sarcasm, which was not lost upon her.
"I know I am nothing to brag of," she replied. "That's why I have given up."
"Oh—given up? You astonish me."
"I hate the profession."
"Perhaps that's because I am in it."
"Oh no, it isn't. But I am going to enter on another life altogether. I am going to be married next week to Mr. David Heddegan." ”

“ I am. We can get home tomorrow for certain, I hope?"
"We can. And please God we will!" said Mr. Heddegan heartily, as if he too were weary of his brief honeymoon. "I must be into business again on Monday morning at latest."
They left by the next morning steamer, and in the afternoon took up their residence in their own house at Hugh Town.
The hour that she reached the island it was as if a material weight had been removed from Baptista's shoulders. Her husband attributed the change to the influence of the local breezes after the hot-house atmosphere of the mainland. ”

“ David Heddegan had, indeed, just shown himself at the upper end of the garden; and the glazier, looking in bewilderment from the husband to the wife, saw the latter turn pale.
Now that decayed glazier was a far-seeing and cunning man—too far-seeing and cunning to allow himself to thrive by simple and straightforward means—and he held his peace, till he could read more plainly the meaning of this riddle, merely adding carelessly, "Well—marriage do alter a man, 'tis true. ”

“ All the parish like ye: and I've never been so cheerful, since my poor husband left me to wear his wings, as I've been with ye as my lodger."
The schoolmistress assured her landlady that she could return the sentiment. "But here comes my perplexity," she said. "I don't like keeping school. Ah, you are surprised—you didn't suspect it. That's because I've concealed my feeling. Well, I simply hate school. I don't care for children—they are unpleasant, troublesome little things, whom nothing would delight so much as to hear that you had fallen down dead. ”

“ Baptista was silent for a few moments. 'It is Mr. Heddegan," she murmured. 'Him they used to call David Heddegan before he got his money."
"And who is the Mr. Heddegan they used to call David?"
"An old bachelor at Giant's Town, St. Maria's, with no relations whatever, who lives about a stone's throw from father's. When I was a child he used to take me on his knee and say he'd marry me some day. Now I am a woman the jest has turned earnest, and he is anxious to do it. And father and mother says I can't do better than have him." ”

“ Heddegan's and her father's friends had dropped in, and expressed their sympathy for the delay she had been subjected to. The meal was a most merry one except to Baptista. She had desired privacy, and there was none; and to break the news was already a greater difficulty than it had been at first. Everything around her, animate and inanimate, great and small, insisted that she had come home to be married ”

“ She had, however, the satisfaction of watching the man to the steamer, and seeing him diminish out of sight. But Baptista perceived that the system into which she had been led of purchasing silence thus was one fatal to her peace of mind, particularly if it had to be continued.
Hearing no more from the glazier she hoped the difficulty was past. But another week only had gone by, when, as she was pacing the Giant's Walk (the name given to the promenade) , she met the same personage in the company of a fat woman carrying a bundle. ”

“ He led her on till he reached a tavern which, though comparatively unpretending, stood in as attractive a spot as any in the town; and this, somewhat to their surprise after their previous experience, they found apparently empty. The considerate old man, thinking that Baptista was educated to artistic notions, though he himself was deficient in them, had decided that it was most desirable to have, on such an occasion as the present, an apartment with "a good view" (the expression being one he had often heard in use among tourists) ”

“ Thus it appeared that, on her recovery from the paralysed mood of the former day, while she had resolved not to blast utterly the happiness of her present husband by revealing the history of the departed one, she had also determined to indulge a certain odd, inconsequent, feminine sentiment of decency, to the small extent to which it could do no harm to any person. At Redruth she emerged from the railway carriage in the black attire purchased at the shop, having during the transit made the change in the empty compartment she had chosen. The other clothes were now in the bandbox and parcel. ”

“ The shopman said, "Yes, his body has been washed ashore," and had just handed Baptista a newspaper on which she discerned the heading, "A schoolmaster drowned while bathing," when her husband turned to join her. She might have pursued the subject without raising suspicion; but it was more than flesh and blood could do, and completing a small purchase almost ran out of the shop.
"What is your terrible hurry, mee deer?" said Heddegan, hastening after.
"I don't know—I don't want to stay in shops," she gasped.
"And we won't," he said. "They are suffocating this weather. ”

“ Baptista was too stupefied to say more, and when she went away to her room she wept from very mortification at Mr. Heddegan's duplicity. Education, the one thing she abhorred; the shame of it to delude a young wife so!
The next meal came round. As they sat, Baptista would not suffer her eyes to turn towards him. He did not attempt to intrude upon her reserve, but every now and then looked under the table and chuckled with satisfaction at the aspect of affairs. "How very well matched we be!" he said, comfortably.
Next day, when the steamer came in, Baptista saw her husband rush down to meet it ”

“ I. IT was often said, and oftener surmised that Baptista Trewthen was a young woman with scarcely emotions or character. There was nothing in her to love, and nothing to hate—so ran the general opinion. That she showed few positive qualities was true. The colours and tones which changing events paint on the faces of active womankind were looked for in vain upon hers. ”

“ The Easter holidays came round, and Baptista went to spend them as usual in her native isle, going by train into Off–Wessex and crossing by packet from Penzance. When she returned in the middle of April her face wore a more settled aspect.
"Well?" said the expectant Mrs. Wace.
"I have agreed to have him as my husband," said Baptista, in an off-hand way. 'Heaven knows if it will be for the best or not. But I have agreed to do it, and so the matter is settled."
Mrs. Wace commended her; but Baptista did not care to dwell on the subject ”

“ Heddegan, and said she seemed likely to become the leader of fashion in Hugh Town.
Her husband was a man who had made considerably more money by trade than her father had done: and perhaps the greater profusion of surroundings at her command than she had heretofore been mistress of, was not without an effect upon her. One week, two weeks, three weeks passed; and, being pre-eminently a young woman who allowed things to drift, she did nothing whatever either to disclose or conceal traces of her first marriage ”

“ We've come to settle in the town for a time, if so be we can find room."
"That you won't do," said she. "Nobody can live here who is not privileged."
"I am privileged," said the glazier, "by my trade."
Baptista went on, but in the afternoon she received a visit from the man's wife. This honest woman began to depict, in forcible colours, the necessity for keeping up the concealment.
"I will intercede with my husband, ma'am," she said. "He's a true man if rightly managed ”

“ The landlady, after some hesitation, said she was sorry that particular apartment was engaged; the next one, however, or any other in the house, was unoccupied.
"The gentleman who has the best one will give it up tomorrow, and then you can change into it," she added, as Mr. Heddegan hesitated about taking the adjoining and less commanding one. ”

“ That's right—make your word your bond always. Mrs. Wace seems to be a sensible woman. I hope the Lord will do for her as he's doing for you no long time hence. And how did ye get over the terrible journey from Exeter to Penzance? Once you'd done with the railway, of course, you seemed quite at home. Well, Baptista, conduct yourself seemly, and all will be well."
Thus admonished, Baptista entered the house, her father and Mr. Heddegan immediately at her back. ”

“ We shan't get another quiet place at this time of the evening—every other inn in the town is bustling with rackety folk of one sort and 'tother, while here 'tis as quiet as the grave—the country, I would say. ”

“ And owing to the drownded gentleman being brought here, she said, it kept so many people away that we were empty, though all the other houses were full. So when your good man set his mind upon the room, and she would have lost good paying folk if he'd not had it, it wasn't to be supposed, she said, that she'd let anything stand in the way. Ye won't say that I've told ye, please, m'm? All the linen has been changed, and as the inquest won't be till tomorrow, after you are gone, she thought you wouldn't know a word of it, being strangers here. ”

“ Baptista, however, had been detained in Penzance on more than one occasion before, either on account of bad weather or some such reason as the present, and she was therefore not in any personal alarm. But, as she was to be married on the following Wednesday, the delay was certainly inconvenient to a more than ordinary degree, since it would leave less than a day's interval between her arrival and the wedding ceremony. ”

“ It was near dusk when they touched the pier of Hugh's Town, where several friends and neighbours stood awaiting them. Her father had a lantern in his hand. Her mother, too, was there, reproachfully glad that the delay had at last ended so simply. Mrs. Trewthen and her daughter went together along the Hugh, or promenade, to the house, rather in advance of her husband and Mr. Heddegan, who talked in loud tones which reached the women over their shoulders.
Some would have called Mrs. Trewthen a good mother ”

“ Ah, yes, I'm so glad, my child, that you've got over safe. It is all ready, and everything so well arranged, that nothing but misfortune could hinder you settling as, with God's grace, becomes ye. Close to your mother's door a'most, 'twill be a great blessing, I'm sure ”

“ This being Saturday, there was now no other boat till Tuesday, and it became obvious that here she would have to remain for the three days, unless her friends should think fit to rig out one of the island' sailing-boats and come to fetch her—a not very likely contingency, the sea distance being nearly forty miles. ”