Thomas Hardy

“ Edith Harnham led a lonely life. Influenced by the belief of the British parent that a bad marriage with its aversions is better than free womanhood with its interests, dignity, and leisure, she had consented to marry an elderly wine-merchant as a pis aller, at the age of seven-and-twenty—some three years before this date—to find afterwards that she had made a mistake. He had died, and she had still remained a woman whose deeper nature had never been stirred. ”

“ Mrs. Harnham had come up this morning by an early train, and a young man—a friend of Raye's—having met them at the door, all four entered the registry office together. Till an hour before this time Raye had never known the wine merchant's widow, except at that first casual encounter, and in the flutter of the performance before them he had little opportunity for more than a brief acquaintance. The contract of marriage at a registry is soon got through; but somehow, during its progress, Raye discovered a strange and secret gravitation between himself and Anna's friend. ”

“ A tender reply was thereupon concocted, and set down in Edith Harnham's hand. This letter it had been which Raye had received and delighted in. Written in the presence of Anna it certainly was, and on Anna's humble note-paper, and in a measure indited by the young girl; but the life, the spirit, the individuality, were Edith Harnham's.
"Won't you at least put your name yourself?" she said. ”

“ Harnham then felt a man's hand clasping her fingers, and from the look of consciousness on the young fellow's face she knew the hand to be his: she also knew that from the position of the girl he had no other thought than that the imprisoned hand was Anna's. ”

“ Then the pleasure-machine started again, and, to the light-hearted girl, the figure of the handsome young man, the market-square with its lights and crowd, the houses beyond, and the world at large, began moving round as before, countermoving in the revolving mirrors on her right hand, she being as it were the fixed point in an undulating, dazzling, lurid universe, in which loomed forward most prominently of all the form of her late interlocutor. ”

“ In due time Raye returned to his London chambers, having called at Melchester on his way and spent a few additional hours with his fascinating child of nature. In town he lived monotonously every day. Often he and his room were inclosed by a tawny fog from all the world besides, and when he lighted the gas to read or write by, his situation seemed so unnatural that he would look into the fire and think of that simple girl at Melchester again and again. ”

“ Edith Harnham's large dark eyes expressed some interest in the contents, though, in her character of mere interpreter she threw into her tone as much as she could of mechanical passiveness. She read the short epistle on to its concluding sentence, which idly requested Anna to send him a tender answer.
"Now—you'll do it for me, won't you, dear mistress?" said Anna eagerly. "And you'll do it as well as ever you can, please? Because I couldn't bear him to think I am not able to do it myself. I should sink into the earth with shame if he knew that!" ”

“ Miss Raye observed. "And bright-minded. One is drawn out towards her, in spite of one's self, poor thing."
The upshot of the discussion was that though he had not been directly advised to do it, Raye wrote, in his real name, what he would never have decided to write on his own responsibility; namely that she should not suffer for his sake; he would come down in the Spring and marry her.
This bold acceptance of the situation was made known to Anna by Mrs. Harnham driving out immediately to the cottage on the Plain. Anna jumped for joy like a little child. ”

“ At length the couple turned from the roundabout, towards the door of Mrs. Harnham's house, and the young man could be heard saying that he would accompany her home. Anna certainly had found a lover, apparently a very devoted one. Mrs. Harnham was quite interested in him. When they drew near the door of the wine-merchant's house, a comparatively deserted spot by this time, they stood invisible for a little while in the shadow of a wall, where they separated, Anna going on to the entrance, and her acquaintance returning across the square. ”

“ Edith Harnham would have preferred it at Melchester; Anna was passive. His reasoning prevailed, and Mrs. Harnham threw herself with mournful zest into the preparations for Anna's departure. In a last desperate feeling that she must at every hazard be in at the death of her dream, and see once again the man who by a species of telepathy had exercised such an influence on her, she offered to go up with Anna and be with her through the formalities—"to see the end of her," as her mistress put it with forced gaiety; an offer which the girl gratefully accepted ”

“ She had come to live in Melchester from a village on the Great Plain, and this was the first time that she had ever seen a steam-circus; she could not understand how such wonderful machines were made. She had come to the city on the invitation of Mrs. Harnham, who had taken her into her household to train her as a servant, if she showed any aptitude. Mrs. Harnham was a young widow-lady, who had been Miss Edith White before she married, living in the country near the speaker's cottage, and was now very kind to her through knowing her in childhood so well. ”

“ The husband of this kind young lady had been a rich wine-merchant of the town, but Mrs. Harnham's uncle lived temporarily with her now; in the daytime you could see the house from where they were talking. She, the speaker, liked Melchester better than the lonely country, and she was going to have a new hat for next Sunday that was to cost fifteen-and-ninepence.
Then she inquired of her acquaintance where he lived, and he told her in London, that ancient and smoky city, where everybody lived who lived at all, and died because they could not live there. ”

“ Each time that she approached the half of her orbit that lay nearest him they gazed at each other with smiles, and with that unmistakable expression which means so little at the moment, yet so often leads up to such passion, heart-ache, union, disunion, devotion, overpopulation, drudgery, discontent, resignation, as none can foretell. ”

“ Throbbing humanity in full light was, on second thoughts, better than ecclesiology in the dark. The young man, lighting a short pipe and putting one hand in his pocket, to throw himself into harmony with his new environment, drew near to the largest and most patronized of the steam-circuses (as the roundabouts were called by their owners) . ”

“ But a week later the girl came to her mistress's room with another note, which, on being read, informed her that after all he could not find time for the journey. Anna was grieved, but by Mrs. Harnham's advice strictly refrained from reproaches or bitterness on account of this disappointment; one thing being imperative—to keep the young man's romantic interest in Anna alive. Rather, therefore, did Edith, in the name of her protégée, request him on no account to be distressed at all about his inability to come. ”

“ Yet he had nothing square or practical about his look, much that was curvilinear and sensuous; he would have been called a man not altogether typical of the middle-class male of a century wherein sordid ambition is the master-passion that seems to be taking the time-honoured place of love. ”

“ Often, oppressed by absurd fondness for her he would enter the dim religious nave of the Law Courts because it was something like her cathedral, elbow other juniors habited like himself, and like him unretained ”

“ And crude directions for answering appropriately were given to Edith Harnham who on her return to the city promptly carried them out, with warm intensifications.
"Oh!" she groaned, as she threw down the pen. "Anna—poor good little fool—hasn't intelligence enough to appreciate him! How should she? While I—have neither lover nor child."
It was now February. The correspondence had continued altogether for four months; and the next letter from Raye contained incidentally a statement of his position and prospects. ”

“ The widow was almost as unaccustomed as the maiden herself to the end-of-the-age young man, or she might have wondered less. Raye, having looked about him awhile, left abruptly, without regard to the service that was proceeding; and Mrs. Harnham—lonely, impressionable young creature that she was—took no further interest in praising the Lord. She wished she had married a London man who knew the subtleties of love-making as they were evidently known to him who had mistakenly caressed her hand.
III. The calendar at Melchester had been light, occupying the court only a few hours ”

“ He felt sure that, with her powers of development, after a little private training in the social forms of London under his supervision, and a little help from a governess if necessary, she would make as good a professional man's wife as could be desired, even if he should rise to the woolsack. ”