CHAPTER V
Phyllis thanked him for his beautiful gift; but the talking was soon
entirely on Humphrey's side as they walked along. He told her of the
latest movements of the world of fashion--a subject which she
willingly discussed to the exclusion of anything more personal--and
his measured language helped to still her disquieted heart and brain.
Had not her own sadness been what it was she must have observed his
embarrassment. At last he abruptly changed the subject.
'I am glad you are pleased with my little present,' he said. 'The
truth is that I brought it to propitiate 'ee, and to get you to help
me out of a mighty difficulty.'
It was inconceivable to Phyllis that this independent bachelor--whom
she admired in some respects--could have a difficulty.
'Phyllis--I'll tell you my secret at once; for I have a monstrous
secret to confide before I can ask your counsel. The case is, then,
that I am married: yes, I have privately married a dear young belle;
and if you knew her, and I hope you will, you would say everything in
her praise. But she is not quite the one that my father would have
chose for me--you know the paternal idea as well as I--and I have
kept it secret. There will be a terrible noise, no doubt; but I
think that with your help I may get over it. If you would only do me
this good turn--when I have told my father, I mean--say that you
never could have married me, you know, or something of that sort--
'pon my life it will help to smooth the way vastly. I am so anxious
to win him round to my point of view, and not to cause any
estrangement.'
What Phyllis replied she scarcely knew, or how she counselled him as
to his unexpected situation. Yet the relief that his announcement
brought her was perceptible. To have confided her trouble in return
was what her aching heart longed to do; and had Humphrey been a woman
she would instantly have poured out her tale. But to him she feared
to confess; and there was a real reason for silence, till a
sufficient time had elapsed to allow her lover and his comrade to get
out of harm's way.
As soon as she reached home again she sought a solitary place, and
spent the time in half regretting that she had not gone away, and in
dreaming over the meetings with Matthaus Tina from their beginning to
their end. In his own country, amongst his own countrywomen, he
would possibly soon forget her, even to her very name.
Her listlessness was such that she did not go out of the house for
several days. There came a morning which broke in fog and mist,
behind which the dawn could be discerned in greenish grey; and the
outlines of the tents, and the rows of horses at the ropes. The
smoke from the canteen fires drooped heavily.
The spot at the bottom of the garden where she had been accustomed to
climb the wall to meet Matthaus, was the only inch of English ground
in which she took any interest; and in spite of the disagreeable haze
prevailing she walked out there till she reached the well-known
corner. Every blade of grass was weighted with little liquid globes,
and slugs and snails had crept out upon the plots. She could hear
the usual faint noises from the camp, and in the other direction the
trot of farmers on the road to the town, for it was market-day. She
observed that her frequent visits to this corner had quite trodden
down the grass in the angle of the wall, and left marks of garden
soil on the stepping-stones by which she had mounted to look over the
top. Seldom having gone there till dusk, she had not considered that
her traces might be visible by day. Perhaps it was these which had
revealed her trysts to her father.
While she paused in melancholy regard, she fancied that the customary
sounds from the tents were changing their character. Indifferent as
Phyllis was to camp doings now, she mounted by the steps to the old
place. What she beheld at first awed and perplexed her; then she
stood rigid, her fingers hooked to the wall, her eyes staring out of
her head, and her face as if hardened to stone.
On the open green stretching before her all the regiments in the camp
were drawn up in line, in the mid-front of which two empty coffins
lay on the ground. The unwonted sounds which she had noticed came
from an advancing procession. It consisted of the band of the York
Hussars playing a dead march; next two soldiers of that regiment in a
mourning coach, guarded on each side, and accompanied by two priests.
Behind came a crowd of rustics who had been attracted by the event.
The melancholy procession marched along the front of the line,
returned to the centre, and halted beside the coffins, where the two
condemned men were blindfolded, and each placed kneeling on his
coffin; a few minutes pause was now given, while they prayed.
A firing-party of twenty-four men stood ready with levelled carbines.
The commanding officer, who had his sword drawn, waved it through
some cuts of the sword-exercise till he reached the downward stroke,
whereat the firing-party discharged their volley. The two victims
fell, one upon his face across his coffin, the other backwards.
As the volley resounded there arose a shriek from the wall of Dr.
Grove's garden, and some one fell down inside; but nobody among the
spectators without noticed it at the time. The two executed Hussars
were Matthaus Tina and his friend Christoph. The soldiers on guard
placed the bodies in the coffins almost instantly; but the colonel of
the regiment, an Englishman, rode up and exclaimed in a stern voice:
'Turn them out--as an example to the men!'
The coffins were lifted endwise, and the dead Germans flung out upon
their faces on the grass. Then all the regiments wheeled in
sections, and marched past the spot in slow time. When the survey
was over the corpses were again coffined, and borne away.
Meanwhile Dr. Grove, attracted by the noise of the volley, had rushed
out into his garden, where he saw his wretched daughter lying
motionless against the wall. She was taken indoors, but it was long
before she recovered consciousness; and for weeks they despaired of
her reason.
It transpired that the luckless deserters from the York Hussars had
cut the boat from her moorings in the adjacent harbour, according to
their plan, and, with two other comrades who were smarting under ill-
treatment from their colonel, had sailed in safety across the
Channel. But mistaking their bearings they steered into Jersey,
thinking that island the French coast. Here they were perceived to
be deserters, and delivered up to the authorities. Matthaus and
Christoph interceded for the other two at the court-martial, saying
that it was entirely by the former's representations that these were
induced to go. Their sentence was accordingly commuted to flogging,
the death punishment being reserved for their leaders.
The visitor to the well-known old Georgian watering-place, who may
care to ramble to the neighbouring village under the hills, and
examine the register of burials, will there find two entries in these
words:-
'Matth:- Tina (Corpl.) in His Majesty's Regmt. of York Hussars, and
Shot for Desertion, was Buried June 30th, 1801, aged 22 years. Born
in the town of Sarrbruk, Germany.
'Christoph Bless, belonging to His Majesty's Regmt. of York Hussars,
who was Shot for Desertion, was Buried June 30th, 1801, aged 22
years. Born at Lothaargen, Alsatia.'
Their graves were dug at the back of the little church, near the
wall. There is no memorial to mark the spot, but Phyllis pointed it
out to me. While she lived she used to keep their mounds neat; but
now they are overgrown with nettles, and sunk nearly flat. The older
villagers, however, who know of the episode from their parents, still
recollect the place where the soldiers lie. Phyllis lies near.
October 1889.
THE FIDDLER OF THE REELS
'Talking of Exhibitions, World's Fairs, and what not,' said the old
gentleman, 'I would not go round the corner to see a dozen of them
nowadays. The only exhibition that ever made, or ever will make, any
impression upon my imagination was the first of the series, the
parent of them all, and now a thing of old times--the Great
Exhibition of 1851, in Hyde Park, London. None of the younger
generation can realize the sense of novelty it produced in us who
were then in our prime. A noun substantive went so far as to become
an adjective in honour of the occasion. It was "exhibition" hat,"
"exhibition" razor-strop, "exhibition" watch; nay, even "exhibition"
weather, "exhibition" spirits, sweethearts, babies, wives--for the
time.
'For South Wessex, the year formed in many ways an extraordinary
chronological frontier or transit-line, at which there occurred what
one might call a precipice in Time. As in a geological "fault," we
had presented to us a sudden bringing of ancient and modern into
absolute contact, such as probably in no other single year since the
Conquest was ever witnessed in this part of the country.'
These observations led us onward to talk of the different personages,
gentle and simple, who lived and moved within our narrow and peaceful
horizon at that time; and of three people in particular, whose queer
little history was oddly touched at points by the Exhibition, more
concerned with it than that of anybody else who dwelt in those
outlying shades of the world, Stickleford, Mellstock, and Egdon.
First in prominence among these three came Wat Ollamoor--if that were
his real name--whom the seniors in our party had known well.
He was a woman's man, they said,--supremely so--externally little
else. To men be was not attractive; perhaps a little repulsive at
times. Musician, dandy, and company-man in practice; veterinary
surgeon in theory, he lodged awhile in Mellstock village, coming from
nobody knew where; though some said his first appearance in this
neighbourhood had been as fiddle-player in a show at Greenhill Fair.
Many a worthy villager envied him his power over unsophisticated
maidenhood--a power which seemed sometimes to have a touch of the
weird and wizardly in it. Personally he was not ill-favoured, though
rather un-English, his complexion being a rich olive, his rank hair
dark and rather clammy--made still clammier by secret ointments,
which, when he came fresh to a party, caused him to smell like
'boys'-love' (southernwood) steeped in lamp-oil. On occasion he wore
curls--a double row--running almost horizontally around his head.
But as these were sometimes noticeably absent, it was concluded that
they were not altogether of Nature's making. By girls whose love for
him had turned to hatred he had been nicknamed 'Mop,' from this
abundance of hair, which was long enough to rest upon his shoulders;
as time passed the name more and more prevailed.
His fiddling possibly had the most to do with the fascination he
exercised, for, to speak fairly, it could claim for itself a most
peculiar and personal quality, like that in a moving preacher. There
were tones in it which bred the immediate conviction that indolence
and averseness to systematic application were all that lay between
'Mop' and the career of a second Paganini.
While playing he invariably closed his eyes; using no notes, and, as
it were, allowing the violin to wander on at will into the most
plaintive passages ever heard by rustic man. There was a certain
lingual character in the supplicatory expressions he produced, which
would well nigh have drawn an ache from the heart of a gate-post. He
could make any child in the parish, who was at all sensitive to
music, burst into tears in a few minutes by simply fiddling one of
the old dance-tunes he almost entirely affected--country jigs, reels,
and 'Favourite Quick Steps' of the last century--some mutilated
remains of which even now reappear as nameless phantoms in new
quadrilles and gallops, where they are recognized only by the
curious, or by such old-fashioned and far-between people as have been
thrown with men like Wat Ollamoor in their early life.
His date was a little later than that of the old Mellstock quire-band
which comprised the Dewys, Mail, and the rest--in fact, he did not
rise above the horizon thereabout till those well-known musicians
were disbanded as ecclesiastical functionaries. In their honest love
of thoroughness they despised the new man's style. Theophilus Dewy
(Reuben the tranter's younger brother) used to say there was no
'plumness' in it--no bowing, no solidity--it was all fantastical.
And probably this was true. Anyhow, Mop had, very obviously, never
bowed a note of church-music from his birth; he never once sat in the
gallery of Mellstock church where the others had tuned their
venerable psalmody so many hundreds of times; had never, in all
likelihood, entered a church at all. All were devil's tunes in his
repertory. 'He could no more play the Wold Hundredth to his true
time than he could play the brazen serpent,' the tranter would say.
(The brazen serpent was supposed in Mellstock to be a musical
instrument particularly hard to blow.)
Occasionally Mop could produce the aforesaid moving effect upon the
souls of grown-up persons, especially young women of fragile and
responsive organization. Such an one was Car'line Aspent. Though
she was already engaged to be married before she met him, Car'line,
of them all, was the most influenced by Mop Ollamoor's heart-stealing
melodies, to her discomfort, nay, positive pain and ultimate injury.
She was a pretty, invocating, weak-mouthed girl, whose chief defect
as a companion with her sex was a tendency to peevishness now and
then. At this time she was not a resident in Mellstock parish where
Mop lodged, but lived some miles off at Stickleford, farther down the
river.
How and where she first made acquaintance with him and his fiddling
is not truly known, but the story was that it either began or was
developed on one spring evening, when, in passing through Lower
Mellstock, she chanced to pause on the bridge near his house to rest
herself, and languidly leaned over the parapet. Mop was standing on
his door-step, as was his custom, spinning the insidious thread of
semi- and demi-semi-quavers from the E string of his fiddle for the
benefit of passers-by, and laughing as the tears rolled down the
cheeks of the little children hanging around him. Car'line pretended
to be engrossed with the rippling of the stream under the arches, but
in reality she was listening, as he knew. Presently the aching of
the heart seized her simultaneously with a wild desire to glide
airily in the mazes of an infinite dance. To shake off the
fascination she resolved to go on, although it would be necessary to
pass him as he played. On stealthily glancing ahead at the
performer, she found to her relief that his eyes were closed in
abandonment to instrumentation, and she strode on boldly. But when
closer her step grew timid, her tread convulsed itself more and more
accordantly with the time of the melody, till she very nearly danced
along. Gaining another glance at him when immediately opposite, she
saw that ONE of his eyes was open, quizzing her as he smiled at her
emotional state. Her gait could not divest itself of its compelled
capers till she had gone a long way past the house; and Car'line was
unable to shake off the strange infatuation for hours.
After that day, whenever there was to be in the neighbourhood a dance
to which she could get an invitation, and where Mop Ollamoor was to
be the musician, Car'line contrived to be present, though it
sometimes involved a walk of several miles; for he did not play so
often in Stickleford as elsewhere.
The next evidences of his influence over her were singular enough,
and it would require a neurologist to fully explain them. She would
be sitting quietly, any evening after dark, in the house of her
father, the parish clerk, which stood in the middle of Stickleford
village street, this being the highroad between Lower Mellstock and
Moreford, five miles eastward. Here, without a moment's warning, and
in the midst of a general conversation between her father, sister,
and the young man before alluded to, who devotedly wooed her in
ignorance of her infatuation, she would start from her seat in the
chimney-corner as if she had received a galvanic shock, and spring
convulsively towards the ceiling; then she would burst into tears,
and it was not till some half-hour had passed that she grew calm as
usual. Her father, knowing her hysterical tendencies, was always
excessively anxious about this trait in his youngest girl, and feared
the attack to be a species of epileptic fit. Not so her sister
Julia. Julia had found Out what was the cause. At the moment before
the jumping, only an exceptionally sensitive ear situated in the
chimney-nook could have caught from down the flue the beat of a man's
footstep along the highway without. But it was in that footfall, for
which she had been waiting, that the origin of Car'line's involuntary
springing lay. The pedestrian was Mop Ollamoor, as the girl well
knew; but his business that way was not to visit her; he sought
another woman whom he spoke of as his Intended, and who lived at
Moreford, two miles farther on. On one, and only one, occasion did
it happen that Car'line could not control her utterance; it was when
her sister alone chanced to be present. 'Oh--oh--oh--!' she cried.
'He's going to HER, and not coming to ME!'
To do the fiddler justice he had not at first thought greatly of, or
spoken much to, this girl of impressionable mould. But he had soon
found out her secret, and could not resist a little by-play with her
too easily hurt heart, as an interlude between his more serious
performances at Moreford. The two became well acquainted, though
only by stealth, hardly a soul in Stickleford except her sister, and
her lover Ned Hipcroft, being aware of the attachment. Her father
disapproved of her coldness to Ned; her sister, too, hoped she might
get over this nervous passion for a man of whom so little was known.
The ultimate result was that Car'line's manly and simple wooer Edward
found his suit becoming practically hopeless. He was a respectable
mechanic, in a far sounder position than Mop the nominal horse-
doctor; but when, before leaving her, Ned put his flat and final
question, would she marry him, then and there, now or never, it was
with little expectation of obtaining more than the negative she gave
him. Though her father supported him and her sister supported him,
he could not play the fiddle so as to draw your soul out of your body
like a spider's thread, as Mop did, till you felt as limp as withy-
wind and yearned for something to cling to. Indeed, Hipcroft had not
the slightest ear for music; could not sing two notes in tune, much
less play them.
The No he had expected and got from her, in spite of a preliminary
encouragement, gave Ned a new start in life. It had been uttered in
such a tone of sad entreaty that he resolved to persecute her no
more; she should not even be distressed by a sight of his form in the
distant perspective of the street and lane. He left the place, and
his natural course was to London.
The railway to South Wessex was in process of construction, but it
was not as yet opened for traffic; and Hipcroft reached the capital
by a six days' trudge on foot, as many a better man had done before
him. He was one of the last of the artisan class who used that now
extinct method of travel to the great centres of labour, so customary
then from time immemorial.
In London he lived and worked regularly at his trade. More fortunate
than many, his disinterested willingness recommended him from the
first. During the ensuing four years he was never out of employment.
He neither advanced nor receded in the modern sense; he improved as a
workman, but he did not shift one jot in social position. About his
love for Car'line he maintained a rigid silence. No doubt he often
thought of her; but being always occupied, and having no relations at
Stickleford, he held no communication with that part of the country,
and showed no desire to return. In his quiet lodging in Lambeth he
moved about after working-hours with the facility of a woman, doing
his own cooking, attending to his stocking-heels, and shaping himself
by degrees to a life-long bachelorhood. For this conduct one is
bound to advance the canonical reason that time could not efface from
his heart the image of little Car'line Aspent--and it may be in part
true; but there was also the inference that his was a nature not
greatly dependent upon the ministrations of the other sex for its
comforts.
The fourth year of his residence as a mechanic in London was the year
of the Hyde-Park Exhibition already mentioned, and at the
construction of this huge glass-house, then unexampled in the world's
history, he worked daily. It was an era of great hope and activity
among the nations and industries. Though Hipcroft was, in his small
way, a central man in the movement, he plodded on with his usual
outward placidity. Yet for him, too, the year was destined to have
its surprises, for when the bustle of getting the building ready for
the opening day was past, the ceremonies had been witnessed, and
people were flocking thither from all parts of the globe, he received
a letter from Car'line. Till that day the silence of four years
between himself and Stickleford had never been broken.
She informed her old lover, in an uncertain penmanship which
suggested a trembling hand, of the trouble she had been put to in
ascertaining his address, and then broached the subject which had
prompted her to write. Four years ago, she said with the greatest
delicacy of which she was capable, she had been so foolish as to
refuse him. Her wilful wrong-headedness had since been a grief to
her many times, and of late particularly. As for Mr. Ollamoor, he
had been absent almost as long as Ned--she did not know where. She
would gladly marry Ned now if he were to ask her again, and be a
tender little wife to him till her life's end.
A tide of warm feeling must have surged through Ned Hipcroft's frame
on receipt of this news, if we may judge by the issue.
Unquestionably he loved her still, even if not to the exclusion of
every other happiness. This from his Car'line, she who had been dead
to him these many years, alive to him again as of old, was in itself
a pleasant, gratifying thing. Ned had grown so resigned to, or
satisfied with, his lonely lot, that he probably would not have shown
much jubilation at anything. Still, a certain ardour of
preoccupation, after his first surprise, revealed how deeply her
confession of faith in him had stirred him. Measured and methodical
in his ways, he did not answer the letter that day, nor the next, nor
the next. He was having 'a good think.' When he did answer it,
there was a great deal of sound reasoning mixed in with the
unmistakable tenderness of his reply; but the tenderness itself was
sufficient to reveal that he was pleased with her straightforward
frankness; that the anchorage she had once obtained in his heart was
renewable, if it had not been continuously firm.
He told her--and as he wrote his lips twitched humorously over the
few gentle words of raillery he indited among the rest of his
sentences--that it was all very well for her to come round at this
time of day. Why wouldn't she have him when he wanted her? She had
no doubt learned that he was not married, but suppose his affections
had since been fixed on another? She ought to beg his pardon.
Still, he was not the man to forget her. But considering how he had
been used, and what he had suffered, she could not quite expect him
to go down to Stickleford and fetch her. But if she would come to
him, and say she was sorry, as was only fair; why, yes, he would
marry her, knowing what a good little woman she was at the core. He
added that the request for her to come to him was a less one to make
than it would have been when he first left Stickleford, or even a few
months ago; for the new railway into South Wessex was now open, and
there had just begun to be run wonderfully contrived special trains,
called excursion-trains, on account of the Great Exhibition; so that
she could come up easily alone.
She said in her reply how good it was of him to treat her so
generously, after her hot and cold treatment of him; that though she
felt frightened at the magnitude of the journey, and was never as yet
in a railway-train, having only seen one pass at a distance, she
embraced his offer with all her heart; and would, indeed, own to him
how sorry she was, and beg his pardon, and try to be a good wife
always, and make up for lost time.
The remaining details of when and where were soon settled, Car'line
informing him, for her ready identification in the crowd, that she
would be wearing 'my new sprigged-laylock cotton gown,' and Ned gaily
responding that, having married her the morning after her arrival, he
would make a day of it by taking her to the Exhibition. One early
summer afternoon, accordingly, he came from his place of work, and
hastened towards Waterloo Station to meet her. It was as wet and
chilly as an English June day can occasionally be, but as he waited
on the platform in the drizzle he glowed inwardly, and seemed to have
something to live for again.
The 'excursion-train'--an absolutely new departure in the history of
travel--was still a novelty on the Wessex line, and probably
everywhere. Crowds of people had flocked to all the stations on the
way up to witness the unwonted sight of so long a train's passage,
even where they did not take advantage of the opportunity it offered.
The seats for the humbler class of travellers in these early
experiments in steam-locomotion, were open trucks, without any
protection whatever from the wind and rain; and damp weather having
set in with the afternoon, the unfortunate occupants of these
vehicles were, on the train drawing up at the London terminus, found
to he in a pitiable condition from their long journey; blue-faced,
stiff-necked, sneezing, rain-beaten, chilled to the marrow, many of
the men being hatless; in fact, they resembled people who had been
out all night in an open boat on a rough sea, rather than inland
excursionists for pleasure. The women had in some degree protected
themselves by turning up the skirts of their gowns over their heads,
but as by this arrangement they were additionally exposed about the
hips, they were all more or less in a sorry plight.
In the bustle and crush of alighting forms of both sexes which
followed the entry of the huge concatenation into the station, Ned
Hipcroft soon discerned the slim little figure his eye was in search
of, in the sprigged lilac, as described. She came up to him with a
frightened smile--still pretty, though so damp, weather-beaten, and
shivering from long exposure to the wind.
'O Ned!' she sputtered, 'I--I--' He clasped her in his arms and
kissed her, whereupon she burst into a flood of tears.
'You are wet, my poor dear! I hope you'll not get cold,' he said.
And surveying her and her multifarious surrounding packages, he
noticed that by the hand she led a toddling child--a little girl of
three or so--whose hood was as clammy and tender face as blue as
those of the other travellers.
'Who is this--somebody you know?' asked Ned curiously.
'Yes, Ned. She's mine.'
'Yours?'
'Yes--my own!'
'Your own child?'
'Yes!'
'Well--as God's in--'
'Ned, I didn't name it in my letter, because, you see, it would have
been so hard to explain! I thought that when we met I could tell you
how she happened to be born, so much better than in writing! I hope
you'll excuse it this once, dear Ned, and not scold me, now I've come
so many, many miles!'
'This means Mr. Mop Ollamoor, I reckon!' said Hipcroft, gazing palely
at them from the distance of the yard or two to which he had
withdrawn with a start.
Car'line gasped. 'But he's been gone away for years!' she
supplicated. 'And I never had a young man before! And I was so
onlucky to be catched the first time, though some of the girls down
there go on like anything!'
Ned remained in silence, pondering.
'You'll forgive me, dear Ned?' she added, beginning to sob outright.
'I haven't taken 'ee in after all, because--because you can pack us
back again, if you want to; though 'tis hundreds o' miles, and so
wet, and night a-coming on, and I with no money!'
'What the devil can I do!' Hipcroft groaned.
A more pitiable picture than the pair of helpless creatures presented
was never seen on a rainy day, as they stood on the great, gaunt,
puddled platform, a whiff of drizzle blowing under the roof upon them
now and then; the pretty attire in which they had started from
Stickleford in the early morning bemuddled and sodden, weariness on
their faces, and fear of him in their eyes; for the child began to
look as if she thought she too had done some wrong, remaining in an
appalled silence till the tears rolled down her chubby cheeks.
'What's the matter, my little maid?' said Ned mechanically.
'I do want to go home!' she let out, in tones that told of a bursting
heart. 'And my totties be cold, an' I shan't have no bread an'
butter no more!'
'I don't know what to say to it all!' declared Ned, his own eye moist
as he turned and walked a few steps with his head down; then regarded
them again point blank. From the child escaped troubled breaths and
silently welling tears.
'Want some bread and butter, do 'ee?' he said, with factitious
hardness.
'Ye-e-s!'
'Well, I daresay I can get 'ee a bit! Naturally, you must want some.
And you, too, for that matter, Car'line.'
'I do feel a little hungered. But I can keep it off,' she murmured.
'Folk shouldn't do that,' he said gruffly. . . . 'There come along!'
he caught up the child, as he added, 'You must bide here to-night,
anyhow, I s'pose! What can you do otherwise? I'll get 'ee some tea
and victuals; and as for this job, I'm sure I don't know what to say!
This is the way out.'
They pursued their way, without speaking, to Ned's lodgings, which
were not far off. There he dried them and made them comfortable, and
prepared tea; they thankfully sat down. The ready-made household of
which he suddenly found himself the head imparted a cosy aspect to
his room, and a paternal one to himself. Presently he turned to the
child and kissed her now blooming cheeks; and, looking wistfully at
Car'line, kissed her also.
'I don't see how I can send 'ee back all them miles,' he growled,
'now you've come all the way o' purpose to join me. But you must
trust me, Car'line, and show you've real faith in me. Well, do you
feel better now, my little woman?'
The child nodded, her mouth being otherwise occupied.
'I did trust you, Ned, in coming; and I shall always!'
Thus, without any definite agreement to forgive her, he tacitly
acquiesced in the fate that Heaven had sent him; and on the day of
their marriage (which was not quite so soon as he had expected it
could be, on account of the time necessary for banns) he took her to
the Exhibition when they came back from church, as he had promised.
While standing near a large mirror in one of the courts devoted to
furniture, Car'line started, for in the glass appeared the reflection
of a form exactly resembling Mop Ollamoor's--so exactly, that it
seemed impossible to believe anybody but that artist in person to be
the original. On passing round the objects which hemmed in Ned, her,
and the child from a direct view, no Mop was to be seen. Whether he
were really in London or not at that time was never known; and
Car'line always stoutly denied that her readiness to go and meet Ned
in town arose from any rumour that Mop had also gone thither; which
denial there was no reasonable ground for doubting.
And then the year glided away, and the Exhibition folded itself up
and became a thing of the past. The park trees that had been
enclosed for six months were again exposed to the winds and storms,
and the sod grew green anew. Ned found that Car'line resolved
herself into a very good wife and companion, though she had made
herself what is called cheap to him; but in that she was like another
domestic article, a cheap tea-pot, which often brews better tea than
a dear one. One autumn Hipcroft found himself with but little work
to do, and a prospect of less for the winter. Both being country
born and bred, they fancied they would like to live again in their
natural atmosphere. It was accordingly decided between them that
they should leave the pent-up London lodging, and that Ned should
seek out employment near his native place, his wife and her daughter
staying with Car'line's father during the search for occupation and
an abode of their own.
Tinglings of pleasure pervaded Car'line's spasmodic little frame as
she journeyed down with Ned to the place she had left two or three
years before, in silence and under a cloud. To return to where she
had once been despised, a smiling London wife with a distinct London
accent, was a triumph which the world did not witness every day.
The train did not stop at the petty roadside station that lay nearest
to Stickleford, and the trio went on to Casterbridge. Ned thought it
a good opportunity to make a few preliminary inquiries for employment
at workshops in the borough where he had been known; and feeling cold
from her journey, and it being dry underfoot and only dusk as yet,
with a moon on the point of rising, Car'line and her little girl
walked on toward Stickleford, leaving Ned to follow at a quicker
pace, and pick her up at a certain half-way house, widely known as an
inn.
The woman and child pursued the well-remembered way comfortably
enough, though they were both becoming wearied. In the course of
three miles they had passed Heedless-William's Pond, the familiar
landmark by Bloom's End, and were drawing near the Quiet Woman Inn, a
lone roadside hostel on the lower verge of the Egdon Heath, since and
for many years abolished. In stepping up towards it Car'line heard
more voices within than had formerly been customary at such an hour,
and she learned that an auction of fat stock had been held near the
spot that afternoon. The child would be the better for a rest as
well as herself, she thought, and she entered.
The guests and customers overflowed into the passage, and Car'line
had no sooner crossed the threshold than a man whom she remembered by
sight came forward with glass and mug in his hands towards a friend
leaning against the wall; but, seeing her, very gallantly offered her
a drink of the liquor, which was gin-and-beer hot, pouring her out a
tumblerful and saying, in a moment or two: 'Surely, 'tis little
Car'line Aspent that was--down at Stickleford?'
She assented, and, though she did not exactly want this beverage, she
drank it since it was offered, and her entertainer begged her to come
in farther and sit down. Once within the room she found that all the
persons present were seated close against the walls, and there being
a chair vacant she did the same. An explanation of their position
occurred the next moment. In the opposite corner stood Mop, rosining
his bow and looking just the same as ever. The company had cleared
the middle of the room for dancing, and they were about to dance
again. As she wore a veil to keep off the wind she did not think he
had recognized her, or could possibly guess the identity of the
child; and to her satisfied surprise she found that she could
confront him quite calmly--mistress of herself in the dignity her
London life had given her. Before she had quite emptied her glass
the dance was called, the dancers formed in two lines, the music
sounded, and the figure began.
Then matters changed for Car'line. A tremor quickened itself to life
in her, and her hand so shook that she could hardly set down her
glass. It was not the dance nor the dancers, but the notes of that
old violin which thrilled the London wife, these having still all the
witchery that she had so well known of yore, and under which she had
used to lose her power of independent will. How it all came back!
There was the fiddling figure against the wall; the large, oily, mop-
like head of him, and beneath the mop the face with closed eyes.
After the first moments of paralyzed reverie the familiar tune in the
familiar rendering made her laugh and shed tears simultaneously.
Then a man at the bottom of the dance, whose partner had dropped
away, stretched out his hand and beckoned to her to take the place.
She did not want to dance; she entreated by signs to be left where
she was, but she was entreating of the tune and its player rather
than of the dancing man. The saltatory tendency which the fiddler
and his cunning instrument had ever been able to start in her was
seizing Car'line just as it had done in earlier years, possibly
assisted by the gin-and-beer hot. Tired as she was she grasped her
little girl by the hand, and plunging in at the bottom of the figure,
whirled about with the rest. She found that her companions were
mostly people of the neighbouring hamlets and farms--Bloom's End,
Mellstock, Lewgate, and elsewhere; and by degrees she was recognized
as she convulsively danced on, wishing that Mop would cease and let
her heart rest from the aching he caused, and her feet also.
After long and many minutes the dance ended, when she was urged to
fortify herself with more gin-and-beer; which she did, feeling very
weak and overpowered with hysteric emotion. She refrained from
unveiling, to keep Mop in ignorance of her presence, if possible.
Several of the guests having left, Car'line hastily wiped her lips
and also turned to go; but, according to the account of some who
remained, at that very moment a five-handed reel was proposed, in
which two or three begged her to join.
She declined on the plea of being tired and having to walk to
Stickleford, when Mop began aggressively tweedling 'My Fancy-Lad,' in
D major, as the air to which the reel was to be footed. He must have
recognized her, though she did not know it, for it was the strain of
all seductive strains which she was least able to resist--the one he
had played when she was leaning over the bridge at the date of their
first acquaintance. Car'line stepped despairingly into the middle of
the room with the other four.
Reels were resorted to hereabouts at this time by the more robust
spirits, for the reduction of superfluous energy which the ordinary
figure-dances were not powerful enough to exhaust. As everybody
knows, or does not know, the five reelers stood in the form of a
cross, the reel being performed by each line of three alternately,
the persons who successively came to the middle place dancing in both
directions. Car'line soon found herself in this place, the axis of
the whole performance, and could not get out of it, the tune turning
into the first part without giving her opportunity. And now she
began to suspect that Mop did know her, and was doing this on
purpose, though whenever she stole a glance at him his closed eyes
betokened obliviousness to everything outside his own brain. She
continued to wend her way through the figure of 8 that was formed by
her course, the fiddler introducing into his notes the wild and
agonizing sweetness of a living voice in one too highly wrought; its
pathos running high and running low in endless variation, projecting
through her nerves excruciating spasms, a sort of blissful torture.
The room swam, the tune was endless; and in about a quarter of an
hour the only other woman in the figure dropped out exhausted, and
sank panting on a bench.
The reel instantly resolved itself into a four-handed one. Car'line
would have given anything to leave off; but she had, or fancied she
had, no power, while Mop played such tunes; and thus another ten
minutes slipped by, a haze of dust now clouding the candles, the
floor being of stone, sanded. Then another dancer fell out--one of
the men--and went into the passage, in a frantic search for liquor.
To turn the figure into a three-handed reel was the work of a second,
Mop modulating at the same time into 'The Fairy Dance,' as better
suited to the contracted movement, and no less one of those foods of
love which, as manufactured by his bow, had always intoxicated her.
In a reel for three there was no rest whatever, and four or five
minutes were enough to make her remaining two partners, now
thoroughly blown, stamp their last bar and, like their predecessors,
limp off into the next room to get something to drink. Car'line,
half-stifled inside her veil, was left dancing alone, the apartment
now being empty of everybody save herself, Mop, and their little
girl.
She flung up the veil, and cast her eyes upon him, as if imploring
him to withdraw himself and his acoustic magnetism from the
atmosphere. Mop opened one of his own orbs, as though for the first
time, fixed it peeringly upon her, and smiling dreamily, threw into
his strains the reserve of expression which he could not afford to
waste on a big and noisy dance. Crowds of little chromatic
subtleties, capable of drawing tears from a statue, proceeded
straightway from the ancient fiddle, as if it were dying of the
emotion which had been pent up within it ever since its banishment
from some Italian city where it first took shape and sound. There
was that in the look of Mop's one dark eye which said: 'You cannot
leave off, dear, whether you would or no!' and it bred in her a
paroxysm of desperation that defied him to tire her down.
She thus continued to dance alone, defiantly as she thought, but in
truth slavishly and abjectly, subject to every wave of the melody,
and probed by the gimlet-like gaze of her fascinator's open eye;
keeping up at the same time a feeble smile in his face, as a feint to
signify it was still her own pleasure which led her on. A terrified
embarrassment as to what she could say to him if she were to leave
off, had its unrecognized share in keeping her going. The child, who
was beginning to be distressed by the strange situation, came up and
said: 'Stop, mother, stop, and let's go home!' as she seized
Car'line's hand.
Suddenly Car'line sank staggering to the floor; and rolling over on
her face, prone she remained. Mop's fiddle thereupon emitted an
elfin shriek of finality; stepping quickly down from the nine-gallon
beer-cask which had formed his rostrum, he went to the little girl,
who disconsolately bent over her mother.
The guests who had gone into the back-room for liquor and change of
air, hearing something unusual, trooped back hitherward, where they
endeavoured to revive poor, weak Car'line by blowing her with the
bellows and opening the window. Ned, her husband, who had been
detained in Casterbridge, as aforesaid, came along the road at this
juncture, and hearing excited voices through the open casement, and
to his great surprise, the mention of his wife's name, he entered
amid the rest upon the scene. Car'line was now in convulsions,
weeping violently, and for a long time nothing could be done with
her. While he was sending for a cart to take her onward to
Stickleford Hipcroft anxiously inquired how it had all happened; and
then the assembly explained that a fiddler formerly known in the
locality had lately revisited his old haunts, and had taken upon
himself without invitation to play that evening at the inn.
Ned demanded the fiddler's name, and they said Ollamoor.
'Ah!' exclaimed Ned, looking round him. 'Where is he, and where--
where's my little girl?'
Ollamoor had disappeared, and so had the child. Hipcroft was in
ordinary a quiet and tractable fellow, but a determination which was
to be feared settled in his face now. 'Blast him!' he cried. 'I'll
beat his skull in for'n, if I swing for it to-morrow!'
He had rushed to the poker which lay on the hearth, and hastened down
the passage, the people following. Outside the house, on the other
side of the highway, a mass of dark heath-land rose sullenly upward
to its not easily accessible interior, a ravined plateau, whereon
jutted into the sky, at the distance of a couple of miles, the fir-
woods of Mistover backed by the Yalbury coppices--a place of
Dantesque gloom at this hour, which would have afforded secure hiding
for a battery of artillery, much less a man and a child.
Some other men plunged thitherward with him, and more went along the
road. They were gone about twenty minutes altogether, returning
without result to the inn. Ned sat down in the settle, and clasped
his forehead with his hands.
'Well--what a fool the man is, and hev been all these years, if he
thinks the child his, as a' do seem to!' they whispered. 'And
everybody else knowing otherwise!'
'No, I don't think 'tis mine!' cried Ned hoarsely, as he looked up
from his hands. 'But she is mine, all the same! Ha'n't I nussed
her? Ha'n't I fed her and teached her? Ha'n't I played wi' her? O,
little Carry--gone with that rogue--gone!'
'You ha'n't lost your mis'ess, anyhow,' they said to console him.
'She's throwed up the sperrits, and she is feeling better, and she's
more to 'ee than a child that isn't yours.'
'She isn't! She's not so particular much to me, especially now she's
lost the little maid! But Carry's everything!'
'Well, ver' like you'll find her to-morrow.'
'Ah--but shall I? Yet he CAN'T hurt her--surely he can't! Well--
how's Car'line now? I am ready. Is the cart here?'
She was lifted into the vehicle, and they sadly lumbered on toward
Stickleford. Next day she was calmer; but the fits were still upon
her; and her will seemed shattered. For the child she appeared to
show singularly little anxiety, though Ned was nearly distracted. It
was nevertheless quite expected that the impish Mop would restore the
lost one after a freak of a day or two; but time went on, and neither
he nor she could be heard of, and Hipcroft murmured that perhaps he
was exercising upon her some unholy musical charm, as he had done
upon Car'line herself. Weeks passed, and still they could obtain no
clue either to the fiddler's whereabouts or the girl's; and how he
could have induced her to go with him remained a mystery.
Then Ned, who had obtained only temporary employment in the
neighbourhood, took a sudden hatred toward his native district, and a
rumour reaching his ears through the police that a somewhat similar
man and child had been seen at a fair near London, he playing a
violin, she dancing on stilts, a new interest in the capital took
possession of Hipcroft with an intensity which would scarcely allow
him time to pack before returning thither.
He did not, however, find the lost one, though he made it the entire
business of his over-hours to stand about in by-streets in the hope
of discovering her, and would start up in the night, saying, 'That
rascal's torturing her to maintain him!' To which his wife would
answer peevishly, 'Don't 'ee raft yourself so, Ned! You prevent my
getting a bit o' rest! He won't hurt her!' and fall asleep again.
That Carry and her father had emigrated to America was the general
opinion; Mop, no doubt, finding the girl a highly desirable companion
when he had trained her to keep him by her earnings as a dancer.
There, for that matter, they may be performing in some capacity now,
though he must be an old scamp verging on threescore-and-ten, and she
a woman of four-and-forty.
May 1893,
TRADITION OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR
The widely discussed possibility of an invasion of England through a
Channel tunnel has more than once recalled old Solomon Selby's story
to my mind.
The occasion on which I numbered myself among his audience was one
evening when he was sitting in the yawning chimney-corner of the inn-
kitchen, with some others who had gathered there, and I entered for
shelter from the rain. Withdrawing the stem of his pipe from the
dental notch in which it habitually rested, he leaned back in the
recess behind him and smiled into the fire. The smile was neither
mirthful nor sad, not precisely humorous nor altogether thoughtful.
We who knew him recognized it in a moment: it was his narrative
smile. Breaking off our few desultory remarks we drew up closer, and
he thus began:-
'My father, as you mid know, was a shepherd all his life, and lived
out by the Cove four miles yonder, where I was born and lived
likewise, till I moved here shortly afore I was married. The cottage
that first knew me stood on the top of the down, near the sea; there
was no house within a mile and a half of it; it was built o' purpose
for the farm-shepherd, and had no other use. They tell me that it is
now pulled down, but that you can see where it stood by the mounds of
earth and a few broken bricks that are still lying about. It was a
bleak and dreary place in winter-time, but in summer it was well
enough, though the garden never came to much, because we could not
get up a good shelter for the vegetables and currant bushes; and
where there is much wind they don't thrive.
'Of all the years of my growing up the ones that bide clearest in my
mind were eighteen hundred and three, four, and five. This was for
two reasons: I had just then grown to an age when a child's eyes and
ears take in and note down everything about him, and there was more
at that date to bear in mind than there ever has been since with me.
It was, as I need hardly tell ye, the time after the first peace,
when Bonaparte was scheming his descent upon England. He had crossed
the great Alp mountains, fought in Egypt, drubbed the Turks, the
Austrians, and the Proossians, and now thought he'd have a slap at
us. On the other side of the Channel, scarce out of sight and hail
of a man standing on our English shore, the French army of a hundred
and sixty thousand men and fifteen thousand horses had been brought
together from all parts, and were drilling every day. Bonaparte had
been three years a-making his preparations; and to ferry these
soldiers and cannon and horses across he had contrived a couple of
thousand flat-bottomed boats. These boats were small things, but
wonderfully built. A good few of 'em were so made as to have a
little stable on board each for the two horses that were to haul the
cannon carried at the stern. To get in order all these, and other
things required, he had assembled there five or six thousand fellows
that worked at trades--carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights,
saddlers, and what not. O 'twas a curious time!
'Every morning Neighbour Boney would muster his multitude of soldiers
on the beach, draw 'em up in line, practise 'em in the manoeuvre of
embarking, horses and all, till they could do it without a single
hitch. My father drove a flock of ewes up into Sussex that year, and
as he went along the drover's track over the high downs thereabout he
could see this drilling actually going on--the accoutrements of the
rank and file glittering in the sun like silver. It was thought and
always said by my uncle Job, sergeant of foot (who used to know all
about these matters), that Bonaparte meant to cross with oars on a
calm night. The grand query with us was, Where would my gentleman
land? Many of the common people thought it would be at Dover;
others, who knew how unlikely it was that any skilful general would
make a business of landing just where he was expected, said he'd go
either east into the River Thames, or west'ard to some convenient
place, most likely one of the little bays inside the Isle of
Portland, between the Beal and St. Alban's Head--and for choice the
three-quarter-round Cove, screened from every mortal eye, that seemed
made o' purpose, out by where we lived, and which I've climmed up
with two tubs of brandy across my shoulders on scores o' dark nights
in my younger days. Some had heard that a part o' the French fleet
would sail right round Scotland, and come up the Channel to a
suitable haven. However, there was much doubt upon the matter; and
no wonder, for after-years proved that Bonaparte himself could hardly
make up his mind upon that great and very particular point, where to
land. His uncertainty came about in this wise, that he could get no
news as to where and how our troops lay in waiting, and that his
knowledge of possible places where flat-bottomed boats might be
quietly run ashore, and the men they brought marshalled in order, was
dim to the last degree. Being flat-bottomed, they didn't require a
harbour for unshipping their cargo of men, but a good shelving beach
away from sight, and with a fair open road toward London. How the
question posed that great Corsican tyrant (as we used to call him),
what pains he took to settle it, and, above all, what a risk he ran
on one particular night in trying to do so, were known only to one
man here and there; and certainly to no maker of newspapers or
printer of books, or my account o't would not have had so many heads
shaken over it as it has by gentry who only believe what they see in
printed lines.
'The flocks my father had charge of fed all about the downs near our
house, overlooking the sea and shore each way for miles. In winter
and early spring father was up a deal at nights, watching and tending
the lambing. Often he'd go to bed early, and turn out at twelve or
one; and on the other hand, he'd sometimes stay up till twelve or
one, and then turn in to bed. As soon as I was old enough I used to
help him, mostly in the way of keeping an eye upon the ewes while he
was gone home to rest. This is what I was doing in a particular
month in either the year four or five--I can't certainly fix which,
but it was long before I was took away from the sheepkeeping to be
bound prentice to a trade. Every night at that time I was at the
fold, about half a mile, or it may be a little more, from our
cottage, and no living thing at all with me but the ewes and young
lambs. Afeard? No; I was never afeard of being alone at these
times; for I had been reared in such an out-step place that the lack
o' human beings at night made me less fearful than the sight of 'em.
Directly I saw a man's shape after dark in a lonely place I was
frightened out of my senses.
'One day in that month we were surprised by a visit from my uncle
Job, the sergeant in the Sixty-first foot, then in camp on the downs
above King George's watering-place, several miles to the west yonder.
Uncle Job dropped in about dusk, and went up with my father to the
fold for an hour or two. Then he came home, had a drop to drink from
the tub of sperrits that the smugglers kept us in for housing their
liquor when they'd made a run, and for burning 'em off when there was
danger. After that he stretched himself out on the settle to sleep.
I went to bed: at one o'clock father came home, and waking me to go
and take his place, according to custom, went to bed himself. On my
way out of the house I passed Uncle Job on the settle. He opened his
eyes, and upon my telling him where I was going he said it was a
shame that such a youngster as I should go up there all alone; and
when he had fastened up his stock and waist-belt he set off along
with me, taking a drop from the sperrit-tub in a little flat bottle
that stood in the corner-cupboard.
'By and by we drew up to the fold, saw that all was right, and then,
to keep ourselves warm, curled up in a heap of straw that lay inside
the thatched hurdles we had set up to break the stroke of the wind
when there was any. To-night, however, there was none. It was one
of those very still nights when, if you stand on the high hills
anywhere within two or three miles of the sea, you can hear the rise
and fall of the tide along the shore, coming and going every few
moments like a sort of great snore of the sleeping world. Over the
lower ground there was a bit of a mist, but on the hill where we lay
the air was clear, and the moon, then in her last quarter, flung a
fairly good light on the grass and scattered straw.
'While we lay there Uncle Job amused me by telling me strange stories
of the wars he had served in and the wownds he had got. He had
already fought the French in the Low Countries, and hoped to fight
'em again. His stories lasted so long that at last I was hardly sure
that I was not a soldier myself, and had seen such service as he told
of. The wonders of his tales quite bewildered my mind, till I fell
asleep and dreamed of battle, smoke, and flying soldiers, all of a
kind with the doings he had been bringing up to me.
'How long my nap lasted I am not prepared to say. But some faint
sounds over and above the rustle of the ewes in the straw, the bleat
of the lambs, and the tinkle of the sheep-bell brought me to my
waking senses. Uncle Job was still beside me; but he too had fallen
asleep. I looked out from the straw, and saw what it was that had
aroused me. Two men, in boat-cloaks, cocked hats, and swords, stood
by the hurdles about twenty yards off.
'I turned my ear thitherward to catch what they were saying, but
though I heard every word o't, not one did I understand. They spoke
in a tongue that was not ours--in French, as I afterward found. But
if I could not gain the meaning of a word, I was shrewd boy enough to
find out a deal of the talkers' business. By the light o' the moon I
could see that one of 'em carried a roll of paper in his hand, while
every moment he spoke quick to his comrade, and pointed right and
left with the other hand to spots along the shore. There was no
doubt that he was explaining to the second gentleman the shapes and
features of the coast. What happened soon after made this still
clearer to me.
'All this time I had not waked Uncle Job, but now I began to be
afeared that they might light upon us, because uncle breathed so
heavily through's nose. I put my mouth to his ear and whispered,
"Uncle Job."
'"What is it, my boy?" he said, just as if he hadn't been asleep at
all.
'"Hush!" says I. "Two French generals--"
'"French?" says he.
'"Yes," says I. "Come to see where to land their army!"
'I pointed 'em out; but I could say no more, for the pair were coming
at that moment much nearer to where we lay. As soon as they got as
near as eight or ten yards, the officer with a roll in his hand
stooped down to a slanting hurdle, unfastened his roll upon it, and
spread it out. Then suddenly he sprung a dark lantern open on the
paper, and showed it to be a map.
'"What be they looking at?" I whispered to Uncle Job.
'"A chart of the Channel," says the sergeant (knowing about such
things).
'The other French officer now stooped likewise, and over the map they
had a long consultation, as they pointed here and there on the paper,
and then hither and thither at places along the shore beneath us. I
noticed that the manner of one officer was very respectful toward the
other, who seemed much his superior, the second in rank calling him
by a sort of title that I did not know the sense of. The head one,
on the other hand, was quite familiar with his friend, and more than
once clapped him on the shoulder.
'Uncle Job had watched as well as I, but though the map had been in
the lantern-light, their faces had always been in shade. But when
they rose from stooping over the chart the light flashed upward, and
fell smart upon one of 'em's features. No sooner had this happened
than Uncle Job gasped, and sank down as if he'd been in a fit.
'"What is it--what is it, Uncle Job?" said I.
'"O good God!" says he, under the straw.
'"What?" says I.
'"Boney!" he groaned out.
'"Who?" says I.
'"Bonaparty," he said. "The Corsican ogre. O that I had got but my
new-flinted firelock, that there man should die! But I haven't got
my new-flinted firelock, and that there man must live. So lie low,
as you value your life!"
'I did lie low, as you mid suppose. But I couldn't help peeping.
And then I too, lad as I was, knew that it was the face of Bonaparte.
Not know Boney? I should think I did know Boney. I should have
known him by half the light o' that lantern. If I had seen a picture
of his features once, I had seen it a hundred times. There was his
bullet head, his short neck, his round yaller cheeks and chin, his
gloomy face, and his great glowing eyes. He took off his hat to blow
himself a bit, and there was the forelock in the middle of his
forehead, as in all the draughts of him. In moving, his cloak fell a
little open, and I could see for a moment his white-fronted jacket
and one of his epaulets.
'But none of this lasted long. In a minute he and his general had
rolled up the map, shut the lantern, and turned to go down toward the
shore.
'Then Uncle Job came to himself a bit. "Slipped across in the night-
time to see how to put his men ashore," he said. "The like o' that
man's coolness eyes will never again see! Nephew, I must act in
this, and immediate, or England's lost!"
'When they were over the brow, we crope out, and went some little way
to look after them. Half-way down they were joined by two others,
and six or seven minutes brought them to the shore. Then, from
behind a rock, a boat came out into the weak moonlight of the Cove,
and they jumped in; it put off instantly, and vanished in a few
minutes between the two rocks that stand at the mouth of the Cove as
we all know. We climmed back to where we had been before, and I
could see, a little way out, a larger vessel, though still not very
large. The little boat drew up alongside, was made fast at the stern
as I suppose, for the largest sailed away, and we saw no more.
'My uncle Job told his officers as soon as he got back to camp; but
what they thought of it I never heard--neither did he. Boney's army
never came, and a good job for me; for the Cove below my father's
house was where he meant to land, as this secret visit showed. We
coast-folk should have been cut down one and all, and I should not
have sat here to tell this tale.'
We who listened to old Selby that night have been familiar with his
simple grave-stone for these ten years past. Thanks to the
incredulity of the age his tale has been seldom repeated. But if
anything short of the direct testimony of his own eyes could persuade
an auditor that Bonaparte had examined these shores for himself with
a view to a practicable landing-place, it would have been Solomon
Selby's manner of narrating the adventure which befell him on the
down.
Christmas 1882.
A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS
It is a Saturday afternoon of blue and yellow autumn time, and the
scene is the High Street of a well-known market-town. A large
carrier's van stands in the quadrangular fore-court of the White Hart
Inn, upon the sides of its spacious tilt being painted, in weather-
beaten letters: 'Burthen, Carrier to Longpuddle.' These vans, so
numerous hereabout, are a respectable, if somewhat lumbering, class
of conveyance, much resorted to by decent travellers not overstocked
with money, the better among them roughly corresponding to the old
French diligences.
The present one is timed to leave the town at four in the afternoon
precisely, and it is now half-past three by the clock in the turret
at the top of the street. In a few seconds errand-boys from the
shops begin to arrive with packages, which they fling into the
vehicle, and turn away whistling, and care for the packages no more.
At twenty minutes to four an elderly woman places her basket upon the
shafts, slowly mounts, takes up a seat inside, and folds her hands
and her lips. She has secured her corner for the journey, though
there is as yet no sign of a horse being put in, nor of a carrier.
At the three-quarters, two other women arrive, in whom the first
recognizes the postmistress of Upper Longpuddle and the registrar's
wife, they recognizing her as the aged groceress of the same village.
At five minutes to the hour there approach Mr. Profitt, the
schoolmaster, in a soft felt hat, and Christopher Twink, the master-
thatcher; and as the hour strikes there rapidly drop in the parish
clerk and his wife, the seedsman and his aged father, the registrar;
also Mr. Day, the world-ignored local landscape-painter, an elderly
man who resides in his native place, and has never sold a picture
outside it, though his pretensions to art have been nobly supported
by his fellow-villagers, whose confidence in his genius has been as
remarkable as the outer neglect of it, leading them to buy his
paintings so extensively (at the price of a few shillings each, it is
true) that every dwelling in the parish exhibits three or four of
those admired productions on its walls.
Burthen, the carrier, is by this time seen bustling round the
vehicle; the horses are put in, the proprietor arranges the reins and
springs up into his seat as if he were used to it--which he is.
'Is everybody here?' he asks preparatorily over his shoulder to the
passengers within.
As those who were not there did not reply in the negative the muster
was assumed to be complete, and after a few hitches and hindrances
the van with its human freight was got under way. It jogged on at an
easy pace till it reached the bridge which formed the last outpost of
the town. The carrier pulled up suddenly.
'Bless my soul!' he said, 'I've forgot the curate!'
All who could do so gazed from the little back window of the van, but
the curate was not in sight.
'Now I wonder where that there man is?' continued the carrier.
'Poor man, he ought to have a living at his time of life.'
'And he ought to be punctual,' said the carrier. '"Four o'clock
sharp is my time for starting," I said to 'en. And he said, "I'll be
there." Now he's not here, and as a serious old church-minister he
ought to be as good as his word. Perhaps Mr. Flaxton knows, being in
the same line of life?' He turned to the parish clerk.
'I was talking an immense deal with him, that's true, half an hour
ago,' replied that ecclesiastic, as one of whom it was no erroneous
supposition that he should be on intimate terms with another of the
cloth. 'But he didn't say he would be late.'
The discussion was cut off by the appearance round the corner of the
van of rays from the curate's spectacles, followed hastily by his
face and a few white whiskers, and the swinging tails of his long
gaunt coat. Nobody reproached him, seeing how he was reproaching
himself; and he entered breathlessly and took his seat.
'Now be we all here?' said the carrier again. They started a second
time, and moved on till they were about three hundred yards out of
the town, and had nearly reached the second bridge, behind which, as
every native remembers, the road takes a turn and travellers by this
highway disappear finally from the view of gazing burghers.
'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:-
TONY KYTES, THE ARCH-DECEIVER
'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 smile.
'"Ah, to be sure! What was I thinking of?" said Tony, in a flutter.
"But you seem as if you was staying at your aunt's?"
'"No, I am not," she said. "Don't you see I have my bonnet and
jacket on? I have only called to see her on my way home. How can
you be so stupid, Tony?"
'"In that case--ah--of course you must come along wi' me," says Tony,
feeling a dim sort of sweat rising up inside his clothes. And he
reined in the horse, and waited till she'd come downstairs, and then
helped her up beside him. He drove on again, his face as long as a
face that was a round one by nature well could be.
'Hannah looked round sideways into his eyes. "This is nice, isn't
it, Tony?" she says. "I like riding with you."
'Tony looked back into her eyes. "And I with you," he said after a
while. In short, having considered her, he warmed up, and the more
he looked at her the more he liked her, till he couldn't for the life
of him think why he had ever said a word about marriage to Milly or
Unity while Hannah Jolliver was in question. So they sat a little
closer and closer, their feet upon the foot-board and their shoulders
touching, and Tony thought over and over again how handsome Hannah
was. He spoke tenderer and tenderer, and called her "dear Hannah" in
a whisper at last.
'"You've settled it with Milly by this time, I suppose," said she.
'"N-no, not exactly."
'"What? How low you talk, Tony."
'"Yes--I've a kind of hoarseness. I said, not exactly."
'"I suppose you mean to?"
'"Well, as to that--" His eyes rested on her face, and hers on his.
He wondered how he could have been such a fool as not to follow up
Hannah. "My sweet Hannah!" he bursts out, taking her hand, not being
really able to help it, and forgetting Milly and Unity, and all the
world besides. "Settled it? I don't think I have!"
'"Hark!" says Hannah.
'"What?" says Tony, letting go her hand.
'"Surely I heard a sort of little screaming squeak under those sacks?
Why, you've been carrying corn, and there's mice in this waggon, I
declare!" She began to haul up the tails of her gown.
'"Oh no; 'tis the axle," said Tony in an assuring way. "It do go
like that sometimes in dry weather."
'"Perhaps it was . . . Well, now, to be quite honest, dear Tony, do
you like her better than me? Because--because, although I've held
off so independent, I'll own at last that I do like 'ee, Tony, to
tell the truth; and I wouldn't say no if you asked me--you know
what."
'Tony was so won over by this pretty offering mood of a girl who had
been quite the reverse (Hannah had a backward way with her at times,
if you can mind) that he just glanced behind, and then whispered very
soft, "I haven't quite promised her, and I think I can get out of it,
and ask you that question you speak of."
'"Throw over Milly?--all to marry me! How delightful!" broke out
Hannah, quite loud, clapping her hands.
'At this there was a real squeak--an angry, spiteful squeak, and
afterward a long moan, as if something had broke its heart, and a
movement of the empty sacks.
'"Something's there!" said Hannah, starting up.
'"It's nothing, really," says Tony in a soothing voice, and praying
inwardly for a way out of this. "I wouldn't tell 'ee at first,
because I wouldn't frighten 'ee. But, Hannah, I've really a couple
of ferrets in a bag under there, for rabbiting, and they quarrel
sometimes. I don't wish it knowed, as 'twould be called poaching.
Oh, they can't get out, bless ye--you are quite safe! And--and--what
a fine day it is, isn't it, Hannah, for this time of year? Be you
going to market next Saturday? How is your aunt now?" And so on,
says Tony, to keep her from talking any more about love in Milly's
hearing.
'But he found his work cut out for him, and wondering again how he
should get out of this ticklish business, he looked about for a
chance. Nearing home he saw his father in a field not far off,
holding up his hand as if he wished to speak to Tony.
'"Would you mind taking the reins a moment, Hannah," he said, much
relieved, "while I go and find out what father wants?"
'She consented, and away he hastened into the field, only too glad to
get breathing time. He found that his father was looking at him with
rather a stern eye.
'"Come, come, Tony," says old Mr. Kytes, as soon as his son was
alongside him, "this won't do, you know."
'"What?" says Tony.
'"Why, if you mean to marry Milly Richards, do it, and there's an end
o't. But don't go driving about the country with Jolliver's daughter
and making a scandal. I won't have such things done."
'"I only asked her--that is, she asked me, to ride home."
'"She? Why, now, if it had been Milly, 'twould have been quite
proper; but you and Hannah Jolliver going about by yourselves--"
'"Milly's there too, father."
'"Milly? Where?"
'"Under the corn-sacks! Yes, the truth is, father, I've got rather
into a nunny-watch, I'm afeard! Unity Sallet is there too--yes, at
the other end, under the tarpaulin. All three are in that waggon,
and what to do with 'em I know no more than the dead! The best plan
is, as I'm thinking, to speak out loud and plain to one of 'em before
the rest, and that will settle it; not but what 'twill cause 'em to
kick up a bit of a miff, for certain. Now which would you marry,
father, if you was in my place?"
'"Whichever of 'em did NOT ask to ride with thee."
'"That was Milly, I'm bound to say, as she only mounted by my
invitation. But Milly--"
"Then stick to Milly, she's the best . . . But look at that!"
'His father pointed toward the waggon. "She can't hold that horse
in. You shouldn't have left the reins in her hands. Run on and take
the horse's head, or there'll be some accident to them maids!"
'Tony's horse, in fact, in spite of Hannah's tugging at the reins,
had started on his way at a brisk walking pace, being very anxious to
get back to the stable, for he had had a long day out. Without
another word Tony rushed away from his father to overtake the horse.
'Now of all things that could have happened to wean him from Milly
there was nothing so powerful as his father's recommending her. No;
it could not be Milly, after all. Hannah must be the one, since he
could not marry all three. This he thought while running after the
waggon. But queer things were happening inside it.
'It was, of course, Milly who had screamed under the sack-bags, being
obliged to let off her bitter rage and shame in that way at what Tony
was saying, and never daring to show, for very pride and dread o'
being laughed at, that she was in hiding. She became more and more
restless, and in twisting herself about, what did she see but another
woman's foot and white stocking close to her head. It quite
frightened her, not knowing that Unity Sallet was in the waggon
likewise. But after the fright was over she determined to get to the
bottom of all this, and she crept arid crept along the bed of the
waggon, under the tarpaulin, like a snake, when lo and behold she
came face to face with Unity.
'"Well, if this isn't disgraceful!" says Milly in a raging whisper to
Unity.
'"'Tis," says Unity, "to see you hiding in a young man's waggon like
this, and no great character belonging to either of ye!"
'"Mind what you are saying!" replied Milly, getting louder. "I am
engaged to be married to him, and haven't I a right to be here? What
right have you, I should like to know? What has he been promising
you? A pretty lot of nonsense, I expect! But what Tony says to
other women is all mere wind, and no concern to me!"
'"Don't you be too sure!" says Unity. "He's going to have Hannah,
and not you, nor me either; I could hear that."
'Now at these strange voices sounding from under the cloth Hannah was
thunderstruck a'most into a swound; and it was just at this time that
the horse moved on. Hannah tugged away wildly, not knowing what she
was doing; and as the quarrel rose louder and louder Hannah got so
horrified that she let go the reins altogether. The horse went on at
his own pace, and coming to the corner where we turn round to drop
down the hill to Lower Longpuddle he turned too quick, the off wheels
went up the bank, the waggon rose sideways till it was quite on edge
upon the near axles, and out rolled the three maidens into the road
in a heap.
'When Tony came up, frightened and breathless, he was relieved enough
to see that neither of his darlings was hurt, beyond a few scratches
from the brambles of the hedge. But he was rather alarmed when he
heard how they were going on at one another.
'"Don't ye quarrel, my dears--don't ye!" says he, taking off his hat
out of respect to 'em. And then he would have kissed them all round,
as fair and square as a man could, but they were in too much of a
taking to let him, and screeched and sobbed till they was quite
spent.
'"Now I'll speak out honest, because I ought to," says Tony, as soon
as he could get heard. "And this is the truth," says he. "I've
asked Hannah to be mine, and she is willing, and we are going to put
up the banns next--"
'Tony had not noticed that Hannah's father was coming up behind, nor
had he noticed that Hannah's face was beginning to bleed from the
scratch of a bramble. Hannah had seen her father, and had run to
him, crying worse than ever.
'"My daughter is NOT willing, sir!" says Mr. Jolliver hot and strong.
"Be you willing, Hannah? I ask ye to have spirit enough to refuse
him, if yer virtue is left to 'ee and you run no risk?"
'"She's as sound as a bell for me, that I'll swear!" says Tony,
flaring up. "And so's the others, come to that, though you may think
it an onusual thing in me!"
'"I have spirit, and I do refuse him!" says Hannah, partly because
her father was there, and partly, too, in a tantrum because of the
discovery, and the scratch on her face. "Little did I think when I
was so soft with him just now that I was talking to such a false
deceiver!"
'"What, you won't have me, Hannah?" says Tony, his jaw hanging down
like a dead man's.
'"Never--I would sooner marry no--nobody at all!" she gasped out,
though with her heart in her throat, for she would not have refused
Tony if he had asked her quietly, and her father had not been there,
and her face had not been scratched by the bramble. And having said
that, away she walked upon her father's arm, thinking and hoping he
would ask her again.
'Tony didn't know what to say next. Milly was sobbing her heart out;
but as his father had strongly recommended her he couldn't feel
inclined that way. So he turned to Unity.
'"Well, will you, Unity dear, be mine?" he says.
'"Take her leavings? Not I!" says Unity. "I'd scorn it!" And away
walks Unity Sallet likewise, though she looked back when she'd gone
some way, to see if he was following her.
'So there at last were left Milly and Tony by themselves, she crying
in watery streams, and Tony looking like a tree struck by lightning.
'"Well, Milly," he says at last, going up to her, "it do seem as if
fate had ordained that it should be you and I, or nobody. And what
must be must be, I suppose. Hey, Milly?"
'"If you like, Tony. You didn't really mean what you said to them?"
'"Not a word of it!" declares Tony, bringing down his fist upon his
palm.
'And then he kissed her, and put the waggon to rights, and they
mounted together; and their banns were put up the very next Sunday.
I was not able to go to their wedding, but it was a rare party they
had, by all account. Everybody in Longpuddle was there almost; you
among the rest, I think, Mr. Flaxton?' The speaker turned to the
parish clerk.
'I was,' said Mr. Flaxton. 'And that party was the cause of a very
curious change in some other people's affairs; I mean in Steve
Hardcome's and his cousin James's.'
'Ah! the Hardcomes,' said the stranger. 'How familiar that name is
to me! What of them?'
The clerk cleared his throat and began:-
THE HISTORY OF THE HARDCOMES
'Yes, Tony's was the very best wedding-randy that ever I was at; and
I've been at a good many, as you may suppose'--turning to the newly-
arrived one--'having as a church-officer, the privilege to attend all
christening, wedding, and funeral parties--such being our Wessex
custom.
''Twas on a frosty night in Christmas week, and among the folk
invited were the said Hardcomes o' Climmerston--Steve and James--
first cousins, both of them small farmers, just entering into
business on their own account. With them came, as a matter of
course, their intended wives, two young women of the neighbourhood,
both very pretty and sprightly maidens, and numbers of friends from
Abbot's-Cernel, and Weatherbury, and Mellstock, and I don't know
where--a regular houseful.
'The kitchen was cleared of furniture for dancing, and the old folk
played at "Put" and "All-fours" in the parlour, though at last they
gave that up to join in the dance. The top of the figure was by the
large front window of the room, and there were so many couples that
the lower part of the figure reached through the door at the back,
and into the darkness of the out-house; in fact, you couldn't see the
end of the row at all, and 'twas never known exactly how long that
dance was, the lowest couples being lost among the faggots and
brushwood in the out-house.
'When we had danced a few hours, and the crowns of we taller men were
swelling into lumps with bumping the beams of the ceiling, the first
fiddler laid down his fiddle-bow, and said he should play no more,
for he wished to dance. And in another hour the second fiddler laid
down his, and said he wanted to dance too; so there was only the
third fiddler left, and he was a' old, veteran man, very weak in the
wrist. However, he managed to keep up a faltering tweedle-dee; but
there being no chair in the room, and his knees being as weak as his
wrists, he was obliged to sit upon as much of the little corner-table
as projected beyond the corner-cupboard fixed over it, which was not
a very wide seat for a man advanced in years.
'Among those who danced most continually were the two engaged
couples, as was natural to their situation. Each pair was very well
matched, and very unlike the other. James Hardcome's intended was
called Emily Darth, and both she and James were gentle, nice-minded,
in-door people, fond of a quiet life. Steve and his chosen, named
Olive Pawle, were different; they were of a more bustling nature,
fond of racketing about and seeing what was going on in the world.
The two couples had arranged to get married on the same day, and that
not long thence; Tony's wedding being a sort of stimulant, as is
often the case; I've noticed it professionally many times.
'They danced with such a will as only young people in that stage of
courtship can dance; and it happened that as the evening wore on
James had for his partner Stephen's plighted one, Olive, at the same
time that Stephen was dancing with James's Emily. It was noticed
that in spite o' the exchange the young men seemed to enjoy the dance
no less than before. By and by they were treading another tune in
the same changed order as we had noticed earlier, and though at first
each one had held the other's mistress strictly at half-arm's length,
lest there should be shown any objection to too close quarters by the
lady's proper man, as time passed there was a little more closeness
between 'em; and presently a little more closeness still.
'The later it got the more did each of the two cousins dance with the
wrong young girl, and the tighter did he hold her to his side as he
whirled her round; and, what was very remarkable, neither seemed to
mind what the other was doing. The party began to draw towards its
end, and I saw no more that night, being one of the first to leave,
on account of my morning's business. But I learnt the rest of it
from those that knew.
'After finishing a particularly warming dance with the changed
partners, as I've mentioned, the two young men looked at one another,
and in a moment or two went out into the porch together.
'"James," says Steve, "what were you thinking of when you were
dancing with my Olive?"
'"Well," said James, "perhaps what you were thinking of when you were
dancing with my Emily."
'"I was thinking," said Steve, with some hesitation, "that I wouldn't
mind changing for good and all!"
'"It was what I was feeling likewise," said James.
'"I willingly agree to it, if you think we could manage it."
'"So do I. But what would the girls say?"
'"'Tis my belief," said Steve, "that they wouldn't particularly
object. Your Emily clung as close to me as if she already belonged
to me, dear girl."
'"And your Olive to me," says James. "I could feel her heart beating
like a clock."
'Well, they agreed to put it to the girls when they were all four
walking home together. And they did so. When they parted that night
the exchange was decided on--all having been done under the hot
excitement of that evening's dancing. Thus it happened that on the
following Sunday morning, when the people were sitting in church with
mouths wide open to hear the names published as they had expected,
there was no small amazement to hear them coupled the wrong way, as
it seemed. The congregation whispered, and thought the parson had
made a mistake; till they discovered that his reading of the names
was verily the true way. As they had decided, so they were married,
each one to the other's original property.
'Well, the two couples lived on for a year or two ordinarily enough,
till the time came when these young people began to grow a little
less warm to their respective spouses, as is the rule of married
life; and the two cousins wondered more and more in their hearts what
had made 'em so mad at the last moment to marry crosswise as they
did, when they might have married straight, as was planned by nature,
and as they had fallen in love. 'Twas Tony's party that had done IT,
plain enough, and they half wished they had never gone there. James,
being a quiet, fireside, perusing man, felt at times a wide gap
between himself and Olive, his wife, who loved riding and driving and
out--door jaunts to a degree; while Steve, who was always knocking
about hither and thither, had a very domestic wife, who worked
samplers, and made hearthrugs, scarcely ever wished to cross the
threshold, and only drove out with him to please him.
'However, they said very little about this mismating to any of their
acquaintances, though sometimes Steve would look at James's wife and
sigh, and James would look at Steve's wife and do the same. Indeed,
at last the two men were frank enough towards each other not to mind
mentioning it quietly to themselves, in a long-faced, sorry-smiling,
whimsical sort of way, and would shake their heads together over
their foolishness in upsetting a well-considered choice on the
strength of an hour's fancy in the whirl and wildness of a dance.
Still, they were sensible and honest young fellows enough, and did
their best to make shift with their lot as they had arranged it, and
not to repine at what could not now be altered or mended.
'So things remained till one fine summer day they went for their
yearly little outing together, as they had made it their custom to do
for a long while past. This year they chose Budmouth-Regis as the
place to spend their holiday in; and off they went in their best
clothes at nine o'clock in the morning.
'When they had reached Budmouth-Regis they walked two and two along
the shore--their new boots going squeakity-squash upon the clammy
velvet sands. I can seem to see 'em now! Then they looked at the
ships in the harbour; and then went up to the Look-out; and then had
dinner at an inn; and then again walked two and two, squeakity-
squash, upon the velvet sands. As evening drew on they sat on one of
the public seats upon the Esplanade, and listened to the band; and
then they said "What shall we do next?"
'"Of all things," said Olive (Mrs. James Hardcome, that is), "I
should like to row in the bay! We could listen to the music from the
water as well as from here, and have the fun of rowing besides."
'"The very thing; so should I," says Stephen, his tastes being always
like hers.
Here the clerk turned to the curate.
'But you, sir, know the rest of the strange particulars of that
strange evening of their lives better than anybody else, having had
much of it from their own lips, which I had not; and perhaps you'll
oblige the gentleman?'
'Certainly, if it is wished,' said the curate. And he took up the
clerk's tale:-
'Stephen's wife hated the sea, except from land, and couldn't bear
the thought of going into a boat. James, too, disliked the water,
and said that for his part he would much sooner stay on and listen to
the band in the seat they occupied, though he did not wish to stand
in his wife's way if she desired a row. The end of the discussion
was that James and his cousin's wife Emily agreed to remain where
they were sitting and enjoy the music, while they watched the other
two hire a boat just beneath, and take their water-excursion of half
an hour or so, till they should choose to come back and join the
sitters on the Esplanade; when they would all start homeward
together.
'Nothing could have pleased the other two restless ones better than
this arrangement; and Emily and James watched them go down to the
boatman below and choose one of the little yellow skiffs, and walk
carefully out upon the little plank that was laid on trestles to
enable them to get alongside the craft. They saw Stephen hand Olive
in, and take his seat facing her; when they were settled they waved
their hands to the couple watching them, and then Stephen took the
pair of sculls and pulled off to the tune beat by the band, she
steering through the other boats skimming about, for the sea was as
smooth as glass that evening, and pleasure-seekers were rowing
everywhere.
'"How pretty they look moving on, don't they?" said Emily to James
(as I've been assured). "They both enjoy it equally. In everything
their likings are the same."
'"That's true," said James.
'"They would have made a handsome pair if they had married," said
she.
'"Yes," said he. "'Tis a pity we should have parted 'em"
'"Don't talk of that, James," said she. "For better or for worse we
decided to do as we did, and there's an end of it."
'They sat on after that without speaking, side by side, and the band
played as before; the people strolled up and down; and Stephen and
Olive shrank smaller and smaller as they shot straight out to sea.
The two on shore used to relate how they saw Stephen stop rowing a
moment, and take off his coat to get at his work better; but James's
wife sat quite still in the stern, holding the tiller-ropes by which
she steered the boat. When they had got very small indeed she turned
her head to shore.
'"She is waving her handkerchief to us," said Stephen's wife, who
thereupon pulled out her own, and waved it as a return signal.
'The boat's course had been a little awry while Mrs. James neglected
her steering to wave her handkerchief to her husband and Mrs.
Stephen; but now the light skiff went straight onward again, and they
could soon see nothing more of the two figures it contained than
Olive's light mantle and Stephen's white shirt sleeves behind.
'The two on the shore talked on. "'Twas very curious--our changing
partners at Tony Kytes's wedding," Emily declared. "Tony was of a
fickle nature by all account, and it really seemed as if his
character had infected us that night. Which of you two was it that
first proposed not to marry as we were engaged?"
'"H'm--I can't remember at this moment," says James. "We talked it
over, you know; and no sooner said than done."
'"'Twas the dancing," said she. "People get quite crazy sometimes in
a dance."
'"They do," he owned.
'"James--do you think they care for one another still?" asks Mrs.
Stephen.
'James Hardcome mused and admitted that perhaps a little tender
feeling might flicker up in their hearts for a moment now and then.
"Still, nothing of any account," he said.
'"I sometimes think that Olive is in Steve's mind a good deal,"
murmurs Mrs. Stephen; "particularly when she pleases his fancy by
riding past our window at a gallop on one of the draught-horses . . .
I never could do anything of that sort; I could never get over my
fear of a horse."
'"And I am no horseman, though I pretend to be on her account,"
murmured James Hardcome. "But isn't it almost time for them to turn
and sweep round to the shore, as the other boating folk have done? I
wonder what Olive means by steering away straight to the horizon like
that? She has hardly swerved from a direct line seaward since they
started."
'"No doubt they are talking, and don't think of where they are
going," suggests Stephen's wife.
'"Perhaps so," said James. "I didn't know Steve could row like
that."
'"O yes," says she. "He often comes here on business, and generally
has a pull round the bay."
'"I can hardly see the boat or them," says James again; "and it is
getting dark."
'The heedless pair afloat now formed a mere speck in the films of the
coming night, which thickened apace, till it completely swallowed up
their distant shapes. They had disappeared while still following the
same straight course away from the world of land-livers, as if they
were intending to drop over the sea-edge into space, and never return
to earth again.
'The two on the shore continued to sit on, punctually abiding by
their agreement to remain on the same spot till the others returned.
The Esplanade lamps were lit one by one, the bandsmen folded up their
stands and departed, the yachts in the bay hung out their riding
lights, and the little boats came back to shore one after another,
their hirers walking on to the sands by the plank they had climbed to
go afloat; but among these Stephen and Olive did not appear.
'"What a time they are!" said Emily. "I am getting quite chilly. I
did not expect to have to sit so long in the evening air."
'Thereupon James Hardcome said that he did not require his overcoat,
and insisted on lending it to her.
'He wrapped it round Emily's shoulders.
'"Thank you, James," she said. "How cold Olive must be in that thin
jacket!"
'He said he was thinking so too. "Well, they are sure to be quite
close at hand by this time, though we can't see 'em. The boats are
not all in yet. Some of the rowers are fond of paddling along the
shore to finish out their hour of hiring."
'"Shall we walk by the edge of the water," said she, "to see if we
can discover them?"
'He assented, reminding her that they must not lose sight of the
seat, lest the belated pair should return and miss them, and be vexed
that they had not kept the appointment.
'They walked a sentry beat up and down the sands immediately opposite
the seat; and still the others did not come. James Hardcome at last
went to the boatman, thinking that after all his wife and cousin
might have come in under shadow of the dusk without being perceived,
and might have forgotten the appointment at the bench.
'"All in?" asked James.
'"All but one boat," said the lessor. "I can't think where that
couple is keeping to. They might run foul of something or other in
the dark."
'Again Stephen's wife and Olive's husband waited, with more and more
anxiety. But no little yellow boat returned. Was it possible they
could have landed further down the Esplanade?
'"It may have been done to escape paying," said the boat-owner. "But
they didn't look like people who would do that."
'James Hardcome knew that he could found no hope on such a reason as
that. But now, remembering what had been casually discussed between
Steve and himself about their wives from time to time, he admitted
for the first time the possibility that their old tenderness had been
revived by their face-to-face position more strongly than either had
anticipated at starting--the excursion having been so obviously
undertaken for the pleasure of the performance only,--and that they
had landed at some steps he knew of further down toward the pier, to
be longer alone together.
'Still he disliked to harbour the thought, and would not mention its
existence to his companion. He merely said to her, "Let us walk
further on."
'They did so, and lingered between the boat-stage and the pier till
Stephen Hardcome's wife was uneasy, and was obliged to accept James's
offered arm. Thus the night advanced. Emily was presently so worn
out by fatigue that James felt it necessary to conduct her home;
there was, too, a remote chance that the truants had landed in the
harbour on the other side of the town, or elsewhere, and hastened
home in some unexpected way, in the belief that their consorts would
not have waited so long.
'However, he left a direction in the town that a lookout should be
kept, though this was arranged privately, the bare possibility of an
elopement being enough to make him reticent; and, full of misgivings,
the two remaining ones hastened to catch the last train out of
Budmouth-Regis; and when they got to Casterbridge drove back to Upper
Longpuddle.'
'Along this very road as we do now,' remarked the parish clerk.
'To be sure--along this very road,' said the curate. 'However,
Stephen and Olive were not at their homes; neither had entered the
village since leaving it in the morning. Emily and James Hardcome
went to their respective dwellings to snatch a hasty night's rest,
and at daylight the next morning they drove again to Casterbridge and
entered the Budmouth train, the line being just opened.
'Nothing had been heard of the couple there during this brief
absence. In the course of a few hours some young men testified to
having seen such a man and woman rowing in a frail hired craft, the
head of the boat kept straight to sea; they had sat looking in each
other's faces as if they were in a dream, with no consciousness of
what they were doing, or whither they were steering. It was not till
late that day that more tidings reached James's ears. The boat had
been found drifting bottom upward a long way from land. In the
evening the sea rose somewhat, and a cry spread through the town that
two bodies were cast ashore in Lullstead Bay, several miles to the
eastward. They were brought to Budmouth, and inspection revealed
them to be the missing pair. It was said that they had been found
tightly locked in each other's arms, his lips upon hers, their
features still wrapt in the same calm and dream-like repose which had
been observed in their demeanour as they had glided along.
'Neither James nor Emily questioned the original motives of the
unfortunate man and woman in putting to sea. They were both above
suspicion as to intention. Whatever their mutual feelings might have
led them on to, underhand behaviour was foreign to the nature of
either. Conjecture pictured that they might have fallen into tender
reverie while gazing each into a pair of eyes that had formerly
flashed for him and her alone, and, unwilling to avow what their
mutual sentiments were, they had continued thus, oblivious of time
and space, till darkness suddenly overtook them far from land. But
nothing was truly known. It had been their destiny to die thus. The
two halves, intended by Nature to make the perfect whole, had failed
in that result during their lives, though "in their death they were
not divided." Their bodies were brought home, and buried on one day.
I remember that, on looking round the churchyard while reading the
service, I observed nearly all the parish at their funeral.'
'It was so, sir,' said the clerk.
'The remaining two,' continued the curate (whose voice had grown
husky while relating the lovers' sad fate), 'were a more thoughtful
and far-seeing, though less romantic, couple than the first. They
were now mutually bereft of a companion, and found themselves by this
accident in a position to fulfil their destiny according to Nature's
plan and their own original and calmly-formed intention. James
Hardcome took Emily to wife in the course of a year and a half; and
the marriage proved in every respect a happy one. I solemnized the
service, Hardcome having told me, when he came to give notice of the
proposed wedding, the story of his first wife's loss almost word for
word as I have told it to you.'
'And are they living in Longpuddle still?' asked the new-comer.
'O no, sir,' interposed the clerk. 'James has been dead these dozen
years, and his mis'ess about six or seven. They had no children.
William Privett used to be their odd man till he died.'
'Ah--William Privett! He dead too?--dear me!' said the other. 'All
passed away!'
'Yes, sir. William was much older than I. He'd ha' been over eighty
if he had lived till now.'
'There was something very strange about William's death--very strange
indeed!' sighed a melancholy man in the back of the van. It was the
seedsman's father, who had hitherto kept silence.
'And what might that have been?' asked Mr. Lackland.
THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN'S STORY
'William, as you may know, was a curious, silent man; you could feel
when he came near 'ee; and if he was in the house or anywhere behind
your back without your seeing him, there seemed to be something
clammy in the air, as if a cellar door was opened close by your
elbow. Well, one Sunday, at a time that William was in very good
health to all appearance, the bell that was ringing for church went
very heavy all of a sudden; the sexton, who told me o't, said he'd
not known the bell go so heavy in his hand for years--it was just as
if the gudgeons wanted oiling. That was
