CHAPTER IV
Time passed, and the household on the Knap became again serene under
the composing influences of daily routine. A desultory, very
desultory correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton,
who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night
of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long. Helena and
her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and
Darton therefore deemed it advisable to stay away.
One day, seven months later on, when Mr. Darton was as usual at his
farm, twenty miles from Hintock, a note reached him from Helena.
She thanked him for his kind offer about her children, which her
mother-in-law had duly communicated, and stated that she would be
glad to accept it as regarded the eldest, the boy. Helena had, in
truth, good need to do so, for her uncle had left her penniless, and
all application to some relatives in the north had failed. There
was, besides, as she said, no good school near Hintock to which she
could send the child.
On a fine summer day the boy came. He was accompanied half-way by
Sally and his mother--to the 'White Horse,' at Chalk Newton--where
he was handed over to Darton's bailiff in a shining spring-cart, who
met them there.
He was entered as a day-scholar at a popular school at Casterbridge,
three or four miles from Darton's, having first been taught by
Darton to ride a forest-pony, on which he cantered to and from the
aforesaid fount of knowledge, and (as Darton hoped) brought away a
promising headful of the same at each diurnal expedition. The
thoughtful taciturnity into which Darton had latterly fallen was
quite dissipated by the presence of this boy.
When the Christmas holidays came it was arranged that he should
spend them with his mother. The journey was, for some reason or
other, performed in two stages, as at his coming, except that Darton
in person took the place of the bailiff, and that the boy and
himself rode on horseback.
Reaching the renowned 'White Horse,' Darton inquired if Miss and
young Mrs. Hall were there to meet little Philip (as they had agreed
to be). He was answered by the appearance of Helena alone at the
door.
'At the last moment Sally would not come,' she faltered.
That meeting practically settled the point towards which these long-
severed persons were converging. But nothing was broached about it
for some time yet. Sally Hall had, in fact, imparted the first
decisive motion to events by refusing to accompany Helena. She soon
gave them a second move by writing the following note
'[Private.]
'DEAR CHARLES,--Living here so long and intimately with Helena, I
have naturally learnt her history, especially that of it which
refers to you. I am sure she would accept you as a husband at the
proper time, and I think you ought to give her the opportunity. You
inquire in an old note if I am sorry that I showed temper (which it
WASN'T) that night when I heard you talking to her. No, Charles, I
am not sorry at all for what I said then.--Yours sincerely, SALLY
HALL.'
Thus set in train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its
original quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time. In the following
July, Darton went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil
the bridal office which had been in abeyance since the previous
January twelvemonths.
'With all my heart, man o' constancy!' said Dairyman Johns warmly.
'I've lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot
weather, 'tis true, but I'll do your business as well as them that
look better. There be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet,
thank God, and they'll take off the roughest o' my edge. I'll
compliment her. "Better late than never, Sally Hall," I'll say.'
'It is not Sally,' said Darton hurriedly. 'It is young Mrs. Hall.'
Japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture
of reproachful dismay. 'Not Sally?' he said. 'Why not Sally? I
can't believe it! Young Mrs. Hall! Well, well--where's your
wisdom?'
Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be
reconciled. 'She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he
cried. 'And now to let her go!'
'But I suppose I can marry where I like,' said Darton.
'H'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively.
'This don't become you, Charles--it really do not. If I had done
such a thing you would have sworn I was a curst no'thern fool to be
drawn off the scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.'
Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion
that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted
before. Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had
flatly declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy,
particularly as Japheth was about to leave that side of the county,
so that the words which had divided them were not likely to be
explained away or softened down.
A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a
simple matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined
the boy who had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.
For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness
and satisfaction. There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as
neatly mended as was humanly possible. But after a season the
stream of events followed less clearly, and there were shades in his
reveries. Helena was a fragile woman, of little staying power,
physically or morally, and since the time that he had originally
known her--eight or ten years before--she had been severely tried.
She had loved herself out, in short, and was now occasionally given
to moping. Sometimes she spoke regretfully of the gentilities of
her early life, and instead of comparing her present state with her
condition as the wife of the unlucky Hall, she mused rather on what
it had been before she took the first fatal step of clandestinely
marrying him. She did not care to please such people as those with
whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer's wife. She allowed the
pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to glide by her as sorry
details, and had it not been for the children Darton's house would
have seemed but little brighter than it had been before.
This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes
declared to himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early
deviations of the heart by harking back to the old point mostly
failed of success. 'Perhaps Johns was right,' he would say. 'I
should have gone on with Sally. Better go with the tide and make
the best of its course than stem it at the risk of a capsize.' But
he kept these unmelodious thoughts to himself, and was outwardly
considerate and kind.
This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a
year and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of
the woman they concerned. When she was in her grave he thought
better of her than when she had been alive; the farm was a worse
place without her than with her, after all. No woman short of
divine could have gone through such an experience as hers with her
first husband without becoming a little soured. Her stagnant
sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable manner, had covered a heart
frank and well meaning, and originally hopeful and warm. She left
him a tiny red infant in white wrappings. To make life as easy as
possible to this touching object became at once his care.
As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see
feasibility in a scheme which pleased him. Revolving the experiment
which he had hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained
wisdom from his mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.
What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover. Once more he
had opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by
returning to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her
mother's roof at Hintock. Helena had been a woman to lend pathos
and refinement to a home; Sally was the woman to brighten it. She
would not, as Helena did, despise the rural simplicities of a
farmer's fireside. Moreover, she had a pre-eminent qualification
for Darton's household; no other woman could make so desirable a
mother to her brother's two children and Darton's one as Sally--
while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more promising husband
for Sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an
uncured sentimental wound.
Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his
reparative designs might have been delayed for some time. But there
came a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over
that former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should
postpone longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of
that attempt.
He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with
a younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and
rode off. To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he
would fain have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him.
But Johns, alas! was missing. His removal to the other side of the
county had left unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him
and Darton; and though Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as
Johns had probably forgiven Darton, the effort of reunion in present
circumstances was one not likely to be made.
He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his
former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode,
instead of the words of a companion. The sun went down; the boughs
appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked
men with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir,' and Darton
replied 'Good-night' right heartily.
By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as
it had been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post.
Darton made no mistake this time. 'Nor shall I be able to mistake,
thank Heaven, when I arrive,' he murmured. It gave him peculiar
satisfaction to think that the proposed marriage, like his first,
was of the nature of setting in order things long awry, and not a
momentary freak of fancy.
Nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not
half its former length. Though dark, it was only between five and
six o'clock when the bulky chimneys of Mrs. Hall's residence
appeared in view behind the sycamore-tree. On second thoughts he
retreated and put up at the ale-house as in former time; and when he
had plumed himself before the inn mirror, called for something to
drink, and smoothed out the incipient wrinkles of care, he walked on
to the Knap with a quick step.
