THE WELL-BELOVED -- A SKETCH OF A TEMPERAMENT
BY THOMAS HARDY
PREFACE
The peninsula carved by Time out of a single stone, whereon most of the
following scenes are laid, has been for centuries immemorial the home
of a curious and well-nigh distinct people, cherishing strange beliefs
and singular customs, now for the most part obsolescent. Fancies, like
certain soft-wooded plants which cannot bear the silent inland frosts,
but thrive by the sea in the roughest of weather, seem to grow up
naturally here, in particular amongst those natives who have no active
concern in the labours of the 'Isle.' Hence it is a spot apt to
generate a type of personage like the character imperfectly sketched in
these pages--a native of natives--whom some may choose to call a
fantast (if they honour him with their consideration so far), but whom
others may see only as one that gave objective continuity and a name to
a delicate dream which in a vaguer form is more or less common to all
men, and is by no means new to Platonic philosophers.
To those who know the rocky coign of England here depicted--overlooking
the great Channel Highway with all its suggestiveness, and standing out
so far into mid-sea that touches of the Gulf Stream soften the air till
February--it is matter of surprise that the place has not been more
frequently chosen as the retreat of artists and poets in search of
inspiration--for at least a month or two in the year, the tempestuous
rather than the fine seasons by preference. To be sure, one nook
therein is the retreat, at their country's expense, of other geniuses
from a distance; but their presence is hardly discoverable. Yet
perhaps it is as well that the artistic visitors do not come, or no
more would be heard of little freehold houses being bought and sold
there for a couple of hundred pounds--built of solid stone, and dating
from the sixteenth century and earlier, with mullions, copings, and
corbels complete. These transactions, by the way, are carried out and
covenanted, or were till lately, in the parish church, in the face of
the congregation, such being the ancient custom of the Isle.
As for the story itself, it may be worth while to remark that,
differing from all or most others of the series in that the interest
aimed at is of an ideal or subjective nature, and frankly imaginative,
verisimilitude in the sequence of events has been subordinated to the
said aim.
The first publication of this tale in an independent form was in 1897;
but it had appeared in the periodical press in 1892, under the title of
'The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved.' A few chapters of that experimental
issue were rewritten for the present and final form of the narrative.
T. H.
August 1912.
CONTENTS
PART FIRST -- A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY.
--'Now, if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;
Her that dares be
What these lines wish to see:
I seek no further, it is She.'
--R. CRASHAW.
1. I. A SUPPOSITITIOUS PRESENTMENT OF HER
A person who differed from the local wayfarers was climbing the steep
road which leads through the sea-skirted townlet definable as the
Street of Wells, and forms a pass into that Gibraltar of Wessex, the
singular peninsula once an island, and still called such, that
stretches out like the head of a bird into the English Channel. It is
connected with the mainland by a long thin neck of pebbles 'cast up by
rages of the se,' and unparalleled in its kind in Europe.
The pedestrian was what he looked like--a young man from London and the
cities of the Continent. Nobody could see at present that his urbanism
sat upon him only as a garment. He was just recollecting with
something of self-reproach that a whole three years and eight months
had flown since he paid his last visit to his father at this lonely
rock of his birthplace, the intervening time having been spent amid
many contrasting societies, peoples, manners, and scenes.
What had seemed usual in the isle when he lived there always looked
quaint and odd after his later impressions. More than ever the spot
seemed what it was said once to have been, the ancient Vindilia Island,
and the Home of the Slingers. The towering rock, the houses above
houses, one man's doorstep rising behind his neighbour's chimney, the
gardens hung up by one edge to the sky, the vegetables growing on
apparently almost vertical planes, the unity of the whole island as a
solid and single block of limestone four miles long, were no longer
familiar and commonplace ideas. All now stood dazzlingly unique and
white against the tinted sea, and the sun flashed on infinitely
stratified walls of oolite,
The melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles, . . .
with a distinctiveness that called the eyes to it as strongly as any
spectacle he had beheld afar.
After a laborious clamber he reached the top, and walked along the
plateau towards the eastern village. The time being about two o'clock,
in the middle of the summer season, the road was glaring and dusty, and
drawing near to his father's house he sat down in the sun.
He stretched out his hand upon the rock beside him. It felt warm.
That was the island's personal temperature when in its afternoon sleep
as now. He listened, and heard sounds: whirr-whirr, saw-saw-saw.
Those were the island's snores--the noises of the quarrymen and stone-
sawyers.
Opposite to the spot on which he sat was a roomy cottage or homestead.
Like the island it was all of stone, not only in walls but in window-
frames, roof, chimneys, fence, stile, pigsty and stable, almost door.
He remembered who had used to live there--and probably lived there now-
-the Caro family; the 'roan-mare' Caros, as they were called to
distinguish them from other branches of the same pedigree, there being
but half-a-dozen Christian and surnames in the whole island. He
crossed the road and looked in at the open doorway. Yes, there they
were still.
Mrs. Caro, who had seen him from the window, met him in the entry, and
an old-fashioned greeting took place between them. A moment after a
door leading from the back rooms was thrown open, and a young girl
about seventeen or eighteen came bounding in.
'Why, 'TIS dear Joce!' she burst out joyfully. And running up to the
young man, she kissed him.
The demonstration was sweet enough from the owner of such an
affectionate pair of bright hazel eyes and brown tresses of hair. But
it was so sudden, so unexpected by a man fresh from towns, that he
winced for a moment quite involuntarily; and there was some constraint
in the manner in which he returned her kiss, and said, 'My pretty
little Avice, how do you do after so long?'
For a few seconds her impulsive innocence hardly noticed his start of
surprise; but Mrs. Caro, the girl's mother, had observed it instantly.
With a pained flush she turned to her daughter.
'Avice--my dear Avice! Why--what are you doing? Don't you know that
you've grown up to be a woman since Jocelyn--Mr. Pierston--was last
down here? Of course you mustn't do now as you used to do three or
four years ago!'
The awkwardness which had arisen was hardly removed by Pierston's
assurance that he quite expected her to keep up the practice of her
childhood, followed by several minutes of conversation on general
subjects. He was vexed from his soul that his unaware movement should
so have betrayed him. At his leaving he repeated that if Avice
regarded him otherwise than as she used to do he would never forgive
her; but though they parted good friends her regret at the incident was
visible in her face. Jocelyn passed out into the road and onward to
his father's house hard by. The mother and daughter were left alone.
'I was quite amazed at 'ee, my child!' exclaimed the elder. 'A young
man from London and foreign cities, used now to the strictest company
manners, and ladies who almost think it vulgar to smile broad! How
could ye do it, Avice?'
'I--I didn't think about how I was altered!' said the conscience-
stricken girl. 'I used to kiss him, and he used to kiss me before he
went away.'
'But that was years ago, my dear!'
'O yes, and for the moment I forgot! He seemed just the same to me as
he used to be.'
'Well, it can't be helped now. You must be careful in the future.
He's got lots of young women, I'll warrant, and has few thoughts left
for you. He's what they call a sculptor, and he means to be a great
genius in that line some day, they do say.'
'Well, I've done it; and it can't be mended!' moaned the girl.
Meanwhile Jocelyn Pierston, the sculptor of budding fame, had gone
onward to the house of his father, an inartistic man of trade and
commerce merely, from whom, nevertheless, Jocelyn condescended to
accept a yearly allowance pending the famous days to come. But the
elder, having received no warning of his son's intended visit, was not
at home to receive him. Jocelyn looked round the familiar premises,
glanced across the Common at the great yards within which eternal saws
were going to and fro upon eternal blocks of stone--the very same saws
and the very same blocks that he had seen there when last in the
island, so it seemed to him--and then passed through the dwelling into
the back garden.
Like all the gardens in the isle it was surrounded by a wall of dry-
jointed spawls, and at its further extremity it ran out into a corner,
which adjoined the garden of the Caros. He had no sooner reached this
spot than he became aware of a murmuring and sobbing on the other side
of the wall. The voice he recognized in a moment as Avice's, and she
seemed to be confiding her trouble to some young friend of her own sex.
'Oh, what shall I DO! what SHALL I do!' she was saying bitterly. 'So
bold as it was--so shameless! How could I think of such a thing! He
will never forgive me--never, never like me again! He'll think me a
forward hussy, and yet--and yet I quite forgot how much I had grown.
But that he'll never believe!' The accents were those of one who had
for the first time become conscious of her womanhood, as an unwonted
possession which shamed and frightened her.
'Did he seem angry at it?' inquired the friend.
'O no--not angry! Worse. Cold and haughty. O, he's such a
fashionable person now--not at all an island man. But there's no use
in talking of it. I wish I was dead!'
Pierston retreated as quickly as he could. He grieved at the incident
which had brought such pain to this innocent soul; and yet it was
beginning to be a source of vague pleasure to him. He returned to the
house, and when his father had come back and welcomed him, and they had
shared a meal together, Jocelyn again went out, full of an earnest
desire to soothe his young neighbour's sorrow in a way she little
expected; though, to tell the truth, his affection for her was rather
that of a friend than of a lover, and he felt by no means sure that the
migratory, elusive idealization he called his Love who, ever since his
boyhood, had flitted from human shell to human shell an indefinite
number of times, was going to take up her abode in the body of Avice
Caro.
