A Laodicean : A Story of To-day Read online

  Produced by Les Bowler

  A LAODICEAN: A STORY OF TO-DAY

  By Thomas Hardy

  CONTENTS.

  PREFACE CHAPTERS BOOK THE FIRST. GEORGE SOMERSET. I - XV. BOOK THE SECOND. DARE AND HAVILL. I - VII. BOOK THE THIRD. DE STANCY. I - XI. BOOK THE FOURTH. SOMERSET, DARE, AND DE STANCY. I - V. BOOK THE FIFTH. DE STANCY AND PAULA. I - XIV. BOOK THE SIXTH. PAULA. I - V.

  PREFACE.

  The changing of the old order in country manors and mansions may beslow or sudden, may have many issues romantic or otherwise, its romanticissues being not necessarily restricted to a change back to the originalorder; though this admissible instance appears to have been the onlyromance formerly recognized by novelists as possible in the case.Whether the following production be a picture of other possibilities ornot, its incidents may be taken to be fairly well supported by evidenceevery day forthcoming in most counties.

  The writing of the tale was rendered memorable to two persons, at least,by a tedious illness of five months that laid hold of the author soonafter the story was begun in a well-known magazine; during whichperiod the narrative had to be strenuously continued by dictation to apredetermined cheerful ending.

  As some of these novels of Wessex life address themselves moreespecially to readers into whose souls the iron has entered, and whoseyears have less pleasure in them now than heretofore, so "A Laodicean"may perhaps help to while away an idle afternoon of the comfortable oneswhose lines have fallen to them in pleasant places; above all, of thatlarge and happy section of the reading public which has not yet reachedripeness of years; those to whom marriage is the pilgrim's Eternal City,and not a milestone on the way. T.H.

  January 1896.

  BOOK THE FIRST. GEORGE SOMERSET.

  I.

  The sun blazed down and down, till it was within half-an-hour of itssetting; but the sketcher still lingered at his occupation of measuringand copying the chevroned doorway--a bold and quaint example of atransitional style of architecture, which formed the tower entrance toan English village church. The graveyard being quite open on its westernside, the tweed-clad figure of the young draughtsman, and the tall massof antique masonry which rose above him to a battlemented parapet,were fired to a great brightness by the solar rays, that crossed theneighbouring mead like a warp of gold threads, in whose mazes groups ofequally lustrous gnats danced and wailed incessantly.

  He was so absorbed in his pursuit that he did not mark the brilliantchromatic effect of which he composed the central feature, till it wasbrought home to his intelligence by the warmth of the moulded stoneworkunder his touch when measuring; which led him at length to turn his headand gaze on its cause.

  There are few in whom the sight of a sunset does not beget as muchmeditative melancholy as contemplative pleasure, the human decline anddeath that it illustrates being too obvious to escape the notice ofthe simplest observer. The sketcher, as if he had been brought to thisreflection many hundreds of times before by the same spectacle, showedthat he did not wish to pursue it just now, by turning away his faceafter a few moments, to resume his architectural studies.

  He took his measurements carefully, and as if he reverenced the oldworkers whose trick he was endeavouring to acquire six hundred yearsafter the original performance had ceased and the performers passed intothe unseen. By means of a strip of lead called a leaden tape, whichhe pressed around and into the fillets and hollows with his finger andthumb, he transferred the exact contour of each moulding to his drawing,that lay on a sketching-stool a few feet distant; where were also asketching-block, a small T-square, a bow-pencil, and other mathematicalinstruments. When he had marked down the line thus fixed, he returned tothe doorway to copy another as before.

  It being the month of August, when the pale face of the townsman and thestranger is to be seen among the brown skins of remotest uplanders,not only in England, but throughout the temperate zone, few of thehomeward-bound labourers paused to notice him further than by amomentary turn of the head. They had beheld such gentlemen before, notexactly measuring the church so accurately as this one seemed to bedoing, but painting it from a distance, or at least walking round themouldy pile. At the same time the present visitor, even exteriorly, wasnot altogether commonplace. His features were good, his eyes of the darkdeep sort called eloquent by the sex that ought to know, and with thatray of light in them which announces a heart susceptible to beauty ofall kinds,--in woman, in art, and in inanimate nature. Though hewould have been broadly characterized as a young man, his face borecontradictory testimonies to his precise age. This was conceivablyowing to a too dominant speculative activity in him, which, while ithad preserved the emotional side of his constitution, and with it thesignificant flexuousness of mouth and chin, had played upon his foreheadand temples till, at weary moments, they exhibited some traces of beingover-exercised. A youthfulness about the mobile features, a matureforehead--though not exactly what the world has been familiar within past ages--is now growing common; and with the advance of juvenileintrospection it probably must grow commoner still. Briefly, he had moreof the beauty--if beauty it ought to be called--of the future human typethan of the past; but not so much as to make him other than a nice youngman.

  His build was somewhat slender and tall; his complexion, though a littlebrowned by recent exposure, was that of a man who spent much of his timeindoors. Of beard he had but small show, though he was as innocent asa Nazarite of the use of the razor; but he possessed a moustacheall-sufficient to hide the subtleties of his mouth, which could thus betremulous at tender moments without provoking inconvenient criticism.

  Owing to his situation on high ground, open to the west, he remainedenveloped in the lingering aureate haze till a time when the easternpart of the churchyard was in obscurity, and damp with rising dew.When it was too dark to sketch further he packed up his drawing, and,beckoning to a lad who had been idling by the gate, directed him tocarry the stool and implements to a roadside inn which he named, lying amile or two ahead. The draughtsman leisurely followed the lad out of thechurchyard, and along a lane in the direction signified.