Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy (best love novels of all time .txt) 📕

‘Well, as I’m alive!’ cried the postmistress from the interior of the conveyance, peering through the little square back-window along the road townward.

‘What?’ said the carrier.

‘A man hailing us!’

Another sudden stoppage.  ‘Somebody else?’ the carrier asked.

‘Ay, sure!’  All waited silently, while those who could gaze out did so.

‘Now, who can that be?’ Burthen continued.  ‘I just put it to ye, neighbours, can any man keep time with such hindrances?  Bain’t we full a’ready?  Who in the world can the man be?’

‘He’s a sort of gentleman,’ said the schoolmaster, his position commanding the road more comfortably than that of his comrades.

The stranger, who had been holding up his umbrella to attract their notice, was walking forward leisurely enough, now that he found, by their stopping, that it had been secured.  His clothes were decidedly not of a local cut, though it was difficult to point out any particular mark of difference.  In his left hand he carried a small leather travelling bag.  As soon as he had overtaken the van he glanced at the inscription on its side, as if to assure himself that he had hailed the right conveyance, and asked if they had room.

The carrier replied that though they were pretty well laden he supposed they could carry one more, whereupon the stranger mounted, and took the seat cleared for him within.  And then the horses made another move, this time for good, and swung along with their burden of fourteen souls all told.

‘You bain’t one of these parts, sir?’ said the carrier.  ‘I could tell that as far as I could see ’ee.’

‘Yes, I am one of these parts,’ said the stranger.

‘Oh?  H’m.’

The silence which followed seemed to imply a doubt of the truth of the new-comer’s assertion.  ‘I was speaking of Upper Longpuddle more particular,’ continued the carrier hardily, ‘and I think I know most faces of that valley.’

‘I was born at Longpuddle, and nursed at Longpuddle, and my father and grandfather before me,’ said the passenger quietly.

‘Why, to be sure,’ said the aged groceress in the background, ‘it isn’t John Lackland’s son—never—it can’t be—he who went to foreign parts five-and-thirty years ago with his wife and family?  Yet—what do I hear?—that’s his father’s voice!’

‘That’s the man,’ replied the stranger.  ‘John Lackland was my father, and I am John Lackland’s son.  Five-and-thirty years ago, when I was a boy of eleven, my parents emigrated across the seas, taking me and my sister with them.  Kytes’s boy Tony was the one who drove us and our belongings to Casterbridge on the morning we left; and his was the last Longpuddle face I saw.  We sailed the same week across the ocean, and there we’ve been ever since, and there I’ve left those I went with—all three.’

‘Alive or dead?’

‘Dead,’ he replied in a low voice.  ‘And I have come back to the old place, having nourished a thought—not a definite intention, but just a thought—that I should like to return here in a year or two, to spend the remainder of my days.’

‘Married man, Mr. Lackland?’

‘No.’

‘And have the world used ’ee well, sir—or rather John, knowing ’ee as a child?  In these rich new countries that we hear of so much, you’ve got rich with the rest?’

‘I am not very rich,’ Mr. Lackland said.  ‘Even in new countries, you know, there are failures.  The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and even if it sometimes is, you may be neither swift nor strong.  However, that’s enough about me.  Now, having answered your inquiries, you must answer mine; for being in London, I have come down here entirely to discover what Longpuddle is looking like, and who are living there.  That was why I preferred a seat in your van to hiring a carriage for driving across.’

‘Well, as for Longpuddle, we rub on there much as usual.  Old figures have dropped out o’ their frames, so to speak it, and new ones have been put in their places.  You mentioned Tony Kytes as having been the one to drive your family and your goods to Casterbridge in his father’s waggon when you left.  Tony is, I believe, living still, but not at Longpuddle.  He went away and settled at Lewgate, near Mellstock, after his marriage.  Ah, Tony was a sort o’ man!’

‘His character had hardly come out when I knew him.’

‘No.  But ’twas well enough, as far as that goes—except as to women.  I shall never forget his courting—never!’

The returned villager waited silently, and the carrier went on:—

‘I shall never forget Tony’s face.  ’Twas a little, round, firm, tight face, with a seam here and there left by the smallpox, but not enough to hurt his looks in a woman’s eye, though he’d had it badish when he was a boy.  So very serious looking and unsmiling ’a was, that young man, that it really seemed as if he couldn’t laugh at all without great pain to his conscience.  He looked very hard at a small speck in your eye when talking to ’ee.  And there was no more sign of a whisker or beard on Tony Kytes’s face than on the palm of my hand.  He used to sing “The Tailor’s Breeches” with a religious manner, as if it were a hymn:—

‘“O the petticoats went off, and the breeches they went on!”

and all the rest of the scandalous stuff.  He was quite the women’s favourite, and in return for their likings he loved ’em in shoals.

‘But in course of time Tony got fixed down to one in particular, Milly Richards, a nice, light, small, tender little thing; and it was soon said that they were engaged to be married.  One Saturday he had been to market to do business for his father, and was driving home the waggon in the afternoon.  When he reached the foot of the very hill we shall be going over in ten minutes who should he see waiting for him at the top but Unity Sallet, a handsome girl, one of the young women he’d been very tender toward before he’d got engaged to Milly.

‘As soon as Tony came up to her she said, “My dear Tony, will you give me a lift home?”

‘“That I will, darling,” said Tony.  “You don’t suppose I could refuse ’ee?”

‘She smiled a smile, and up she hopped, and on drove Tony.

‘“Tony,” she says, in a sort of tender chide, “why did ye desert me for that other one?  In what is she better than I?  I should have made ’ee a finer wife, and a more loving one too.  ’Tisn’t girls that are so easily won at first that are the best.  Think how long we’ve known each other—ever since we were children almost—now haven’t we, Tony?”

‘“Yes, that we have,” says Tony, a-struck with the truth o’t.

‘“And you’ve never seen anything in me to complain of, have ye, Tony?  Now tell the truth to me?”

‘“I never have, upon my life,” says Tony.

‘“And—can you say I’m not pretty, Tony?  Now look at me!”

‘He let his eyes light upon her for a long while.  “I really can’t,” says he.  “In fact, I never knowed you was so pretty before!”

‘“Prettier than she?”

‘What Tony would have said to that nobody knows, for before he could speak, what should he see ahead, over the hedge past the turning, but a feather he knew well—the feather in Milly’s hat—she to whom he had been thinking of putting the question as to giving out the banns that very week.

‘“Unity,” says he, as mild as he could, “here’s Milly coming.  Now I shall catch it mightily if she sees ’ee riding here with me; and if you get down she’ll be turning the corner in a moment, and, seeing ’ee in the road, she’ll know we’ve been coming on together.  Now, dearest Unity, will ye, to avoid all unpleasantness, which I know ye can’t bear any more than I, will ye lie down in the back part of the waggon, and let me cover you over with the tarpaulin till Milly has passed?  It will all be done in a minute.  Do!—and I’ll think over what we’ve said; and perhaps I shall put a loving question to you after all, instead of to Milly.  ’Tisn’t true that it is all settled between her and me.”

‘Well, Unity Sallet agreed, and lay down at the back end of the waggon, and Tony covered her over, so that the waggon seemed to be empty but for the loose tarpaulin; and then he drove on to meet Milly.

‘“My dear Tony!” cries Milly, looking up with a little pout at him as he came near.  “How long you’ve been coming home!  Just as if I didn’t live at Upper Longpuddle at all!  And I’ve come to meet you as you asked me to do, and to ride back with you, and talk over our future home—since you asked me, and I promised.  But I shouldn’t have come else, Mr. Tony!”

‘“Ay, my dear, I did ask ye—to be sure I did, now I think of it—but I had quite forgot it.  To ride back with me, did you say, dear Milly?”

‘“Well, of course!  What can I do else?  Surely you don’t want me to walk, now I’ve come all this way?”

‘“O no, no!  I was thinking you might be going on to town to meet your mother.  I saw her there—and she looked as if she might be expecting ’ee.”

‘“O no; she’s just home.  She came across the fields, and so got back before you.”

‘“Ah!  I didn’t know that,” says Tony.  And there was no help for it but to take her up beside him.

‘They talked on very pleasantly, and looked at the trees, and beasts, and birds, and insects, and at the ploughmen at work in the fields, till presently who should they see looking out of the upper window of a house that stood beside the road they were following, but Hannah Jolliver, another young beauty of the place at that time, and the very first woman that Tony had fallen in love with—before Milly and before Unity, in fact—the one that he had almost arranged to marry instead of Milly.  She was a much more dashing girl than Milly Richards, though he’d not thought much of her of late.  The house Hannah was looking from was her aunt’s.

‘“My dear Milly—my coming wife, as I may call ’ee,” says Tony in his modest way, and not so loud that Unity could overhear, “I see a young woman alooking out of window, who I think may accost me.  The fact is, Milly, she had a notion that I was wishing to marry her, and since she’s discovered I’ve promised another, and a prettier than she, I’m rather afeard of her temper if she sees us together.  Now, Milly, would you do me a favour—my coming wife, as I may say?”

‘“Certainly, dearest Tony,” says she.

‘“Then would ye creep under the empty sacks just here in the front of the waggon, and hide there out of sight till we’ve passed the house?  She hasn’t seen us yet.  You see, we ought to live in peace and good-will since ’tis almost Christmas, and ’twill prevent angry passions rising, which we always should do.”

‘“I don’t mind, to oblige you, Tony,” Milly said; and though she didn’t care much about doing it, she crept under, and crouched down just behind the seat, Unity being snug at the other end.  So they drove on till they got near the road-side cottage.  Hannah had soon seen him coming, and waited at the window, looking down upon him.  She tossed her head a little disdainful and smiled off-hand.

‘“Well, aren’t you going to be civil enough to ask me to ride home with you!” she says, seeing that he was for driving past with a nod and a