An Imaginative Woman
After Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
When William Marchmill had finished looking for lodgings at the well-known watering-place of Solentsea in Upper Wessex,[37] he returned to the hotel to find his wife. She, with the children, had walked along the shore, and Marchmill followed them there.
“How far you’ve gone!” Marchmill said, when he came up to his wife, who was reading as she walked, the three children were considerably further ahead with the nurse.
Mrs. Marchmill started out of the thoughts into which the book had thrown her. “Yes,” she said, “you’ve been such a long time. I was tired of staying in the hotel.”
“Well, I have had trouble to find rooms. Will you come and see if what I’ve chosen on will do?[38] There is not much room, I am afraid; but I couldn’t find anything better. The town is rather full.”
The couple left the children and nurse to continue their walk, and went back together.
Well-balanced in age, matched in personal appearance, and having the same domestic requirements, this couple differed in temper, though even here they did not often clash. They did not have common tastes. Marchmill considered his wife’s likes and interests silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband was a manufacturer of weapons in a city in the north, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was sensitive and romantic. Ella, shrank from detailed knowledge of her husband’s business whenever she thought that everything he manufactured was for the destruction of life. She could only recover her balance by thinking that some, at least, of his weapons were sooner or later used for killing animals almost as cruel to others in their species as human beings were to theirs.
She had never considered this occupation of his as any objection to having him for a husband. Indeed, the necessity of getting married at all cost, which all good mothers teach, kept her from thinking of it at all till she had married William and had passed the honeymoon. Then, like a person who has stumbled upon something in the dark, she wondered what she had got; mentally walked round it, estimated it; whether it was rare or common; contained gold, silver, or lead; was everything to her or nothing.
She came to some vague conclusions, and since then had pitied her husband for want of refinement, pitying herself, and daydreaming, which perhaps would not much have disturbed William if he had known of it.
Her figure was small, elegant, she was dark-eyed, and quick in movement. Her husband was a tall, long-faced man, with a brown beard; he was, it must be added, usually kind and tolerant to her. He spoke short sentences, and was highly satisfied that weapons were a necessity.
Husband and wife walked till they had reached a house, which stood in a terrace facing the sea, and had a small garden in front, stone steps led up to the porch.
The landlady, who had been watching for the gentleman’s return, met them and showed the rooms. Mrs. Marchmill said that she liked the house; but as it was small, they would take it only if they could have all the rooms.
The landlady was disappointed. She wanted the visitors to be her tenants very badly, she said. But unfortunately two of the rooms were occupied permanently by a bachelor gentleman. As he kept on his apartment all the year round and was a very nice and interesting young man, who gave no trouble, she did not like to turn him out for a month because of them. “Perhaps, however,” she added, “he might offer to go for some time.”
They would not hear of this,[39] and went back to the hotel to look for other lodgings. Hardly had they sat down to tea[40] when the landlady called. Her gentleman, she said, had offered to give up his rooms for three or four weeks.
“It is very kind, but we won’t inconvenience him in that way,” said the Marchmills.
“O, it won’t inconvenience him!” said the landlady. “You see, he’s a different sort of young man from most – dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy – and he cares more to be here when there’s not a soul in the place, than now in the season. He’s going to a little cottage on the Island opposite, for a change.”
The Marchmill family moved into the house next day, and it seemed to suit them very well. After lunch Mr. Marchmill walked toward the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, having sent the children to the shore, looked round the rooms more closely.
In the small back sitting room, which had been the young bachelor’s, she found a lot of books.
“I’ll make this my own little room,” said Mrs. Marchmill to the landlady, “because the books are here. By the way, the person who has left seems to have very many. He won’t mind my reading some of them, Mrs. Hooper, I hope?”
“O, dear no, ma’am. Yes, he has a good many. You see, he is a poet – yes, really a poet – and he has a little income of his own, which is enough to write verses on.”
“A Poet! O, I did not know that.”
Mrs. Marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner’s name written on the title-page. “Dear me!” she continued; “I know his name very well – Robert Trewe – of course I do; and his writings! And it is his rooms we have taken, and him we have turned out of his home?”
Ella Marchmill, sitting down alone a few minutes later, thought with interested surprise of Robert Trewe. Her own history will best explain that interest. Herself the only daughter of a writer, she had during the last year or two begun writing poems, in an attempt to find to express her painful emotions caused by the routine of daily life and of bearing children to a weapons manufacturer. These poems, under male pseudonym, had appeared in various small magazines, and in two cases in rather well-known ones. In one of the well-known ones the page which had her poem at the bottom had at the top a few verses by this very man, Robert Trewe. After that Ella, otherwise “John Ivy,” had watched with much attention the appearance of verse of Robert Trewe.
Trewe’s verse contrasted with that of most other poets. With sad and hopeless envy Ella Marchmill often read the rival poet’s work, always so much stronger than her own lines. She imitated him, and her inability to reach his level sent her into fits of depression. Months passed away thus, till she observed that Trewe had collected his pieces into a volume, which was published, and was praised, and had a sale quite sufficient to pay for the printing.
This suggested to John Ivy the idea of collecting her pieces also and making up a book of her verses. Her husband paid for the publication; a few reviews noticed her poor little volume; but nobody talked of it, nobody bought it.
The author’s thoughts were interrupted by the discovery that she was going to have a third child, and her failure as a poet had perhaps less effect upon her mind than it might have done if she had more time for thinking. But, though less than a poet of her century, Ella was more than a mother and wife, and lately she had begun to feel the old dissatisfaction once more. And now by chance she found herself in the rooms of Robert Trewe.
She rose from her chair and searched the rooms with the interest of a fellow-tradesman.[41] Yes, the volume of his verse was among the rest. Though quite familiar with its contents, she read it here as if it spoke aloud to her, then called up Mrs. Hooper, the landlady, and asked her again about the young man.
“Well, I’m sure you’d be interested in him, ma’am, if you could see him, only he’s so shy that I don’t suppose you will.” Mrs. Hooper was not surprised at Mrs. Marchmill’s interest in her tenant. “Lived here long? Yes, nearly two years. He keeps on his rooms even when he’s not here: the soft air of this place suits him, and he likes to be able to come back at any time. He is mostly writing or reading, and doesn’t see many people, though he is such a good, kind young fellow that people would only be too glad to be friendly with him if they knew him. You don’t meet kind-hearted people every day.”
37
watering-place of Solentsea in Upper Wessex – морской курорт Солентси в Верхнем Уэссексе.