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Title: Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Thomas Hardy
Author: Hardy, Thomas
Language: English
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THOMAS HARDY
CONTENTS
## FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
## TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
## RETURN OF THE NATIVE
## THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
## JUDE THE OBSCURE
## A PAIR OF BLUE EYES
## THE WOODLANDERS
## SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE
THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A MILKMAID
## DESPERATE REMEDIES
TWO ON A TOWER
## POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
## MOMENTS OF VISION and VERSES
## A LAODICEAN
## THE WELL-BELOVED
THE DYNASTS
## LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER
## LIFE'S LITTLE IRONIES
## A GROUP OF NOBLE DAMES
## WESSEX TALES
## A CHANGED MAN AND OTHER TALES
## THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA
TABLES OF CONTENTS OF VOLUMES
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
Preface I. Description of Farmer Oak\x97An Incident II. Night\x97The
Flock\x97An Interior\x97Another Interior III. A Girl on
Horseback\x97Conversation IV. Gabriel's Resolve\x97The Visit\x97The Mistake
V. Departure of Bathsheba\x97A Pastoral Tragedy VI. The Fair\x97The
Journey\x97The Fire VII. Recognition\x97A Timid Girl VIII. The
Malthouse\x97The Chat\x97News IX. The Homestead\x97A Visitor\x97Half-Confidences
X. Mistress and Men XI. Outside the Barracks\x97Snow\x97A Meeting XII.
Farmers\x97A Rule\x97An Exception XIII. Sortes Sanctorum\x97The Valentine
XIV. Effect of the Letter\x97Sunrise XV. A Morning Meeting\x97The
Letter Again XVI. All Saints' and All Souls' XVII. In the
Market-Place XVIII. Boldwood in Meditation\x97Regret XIX. The
Sheep-Washing\x97The Offer XX. Perplexity\x97Grinding the Shears\x97A Quarrel
XXI. Troubles in the Fold\x97A Message XXII. The Great Barn and the
Sheep-Shearers XXIII. Eventide\x97A Second Declaration XXIV. The
Same Night\x97The Fir Plantation XXV. The New Acquaintance Described
XXVI. Scene on the Verge of the Hay-Mead XXVII. Hiving the Bees
XXVIII. The Hollow Amid the Ferns XXIX. Particulars of a Twilight
Walk XXX. Hot Cheeks and Tearful Eyes XXXI. Blame\x97Fury XXXII.
Night\x97Horses Tramping XXXIII. In the Sun\x97A Harbinger XXXIV. Home
Again\x97A Trickster XXXV. At an Upper Window XXXVI. Wealth in
Jeopardy\x97The Revel XXXVII. The Storm\x97The Two Together XXXVIII.
Rain\x97One Solitary Meets Another XXXIX. Coming Home\x97A Cry XL. On
Casterbridge Highway XLI. Suspicion\x97Fanny Is Sent For XLII.
Joseph and His Burden\x97Buck's Head XLIII. Fanny's Revenge XLIV.
Under a Tree\x97Reaction XLV. Troy's Romanticism XLVI. The
Gurgoyle: Its Doings XLVII. Adventures by the Shore XLVIII.
Doubts Arise\x97Doubts Linger XLIX. Oak's Advancement\x97A Great Hope L.
The Sheep Fair\x97Troy Touches His Wife's Hand LI. Bathsheba Talks with
Her Outrider LII. Converging Courses LIII. Concurritur\x97Horae
Momento LIV. After the Shock LV. The March Following\x97"Bathsheba
Boldwood" LVI. Beauty in Loneliness\x97After All LVII. A Foggy
Night and Morning\x97Conclusion
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES A Pure Woman Faithfully presented by Thomas
Hardy
CONTENTS
Phase the First: The Maiden Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV
Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X
Chapter XI Phase the Second: Maiden No More Chapter XII Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV Chapter XV Phase the Third: The Rally Chapter XVI Chapter
XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Phase the Fourth: The Consequence Chapter
XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI Chapter XXXII Chapter XXXIII Chapter XXXIV Phase the Fifth:
The Woman Pays Chapter XXXV Chapter XXXVI Chapter XXXVII Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX Chapter XL Chapter XLI Chapter XLII Chapter XLIII Chapter
XLIV Phase the Sixth: The Convert Chapter XLV Chapter XLVI Chapter
XLVII Chapter XLVIII Chapter XLIX Chapter L Chapter LI Chapter LII Phase
the Seventh: Fulfilment Chapter LIII Chapter LIV Chapter LV Chapter LVI
Chapter LVII Chapter LVIII Chapter LIX
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE by Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
BOOK ONE \x97 THE THREE WOMEN
1\x97A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression
2\x97Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble
3\x97The Custom of the Country
4\x97The Halt on the Turnpike Road
5\x97Perplexity among Honest People
6\x97The Figure against the Sky
7\x97Queen of Night
8\x97Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said to Be Nobody
9\x97Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy
10\x97A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion
11\x97The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman
BOOK TWO \x97 THE ARRIVAL
1\x97Tidings of the Comer
2\x97The People at Blooms-End Make Ready
3\x97How a Little Sound Produced a Great Dream
4\x97Eustacia Is Led on to an Adventure
5\x97Through the Moonlight
6\x97The Two Stand Face to Face
7\x97A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness
8\x97Firmness Is Discovered in a Gentle Heart
BOOK THREE \x97 THE FASCINATION
1\x97\x93My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is\x94
2\x97The New Course Causes Disappointment
3\x97The First Act in a Timeworn Drama
4\x97An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of Sadness
5\x97Sharp Words Are Spoken, and a Crisis Ensues
6\x97Yeobright Goes, and the Breach Is Complete
7\x97The Morning and the Evening of a Day
8\x97A New Force Disturbs the Current
BOOK FOUR \x97 THE CLOSED DOOR
1\x97The Rencounter by the Pool
2\x97He Is Set upon by Adversities but He Sings a Song
3\x97She Goes Out to Battle against Depression
4\x97Rough Coercion Is Employed
5\x97The Journey across the Heath
6\x97A Conjuncture, and Its Result upon the Pedestrian
7\x97The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends
8\x97Eustacia Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil
BOOK FIVE \x97 THE DISCOVERY
1\x97\x93Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery\x94
2\x97A Lurid Light Breaks in upon a Darkened Understanding
3\x97Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black Morning
4\x97The Ministrations of a Half-forgotten One
5\x97An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated
6\x97Thomasin Argues with Her Cousin, and He Writes a Letter
7\x97The Night of the Sixth of November
8\x97Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers
9\x97Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers Together
BOOK SIX \x97 AFTERCOURSES
1\x97The Inevitable Movement Onward
2\x97Thomasin Walks in a Green Place by the Roman Road
3\x97The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin
4\x97Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End, and Clym Finds His
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE by Thomas Hardy
CHAPTERS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
JUDE THE OBSCURE By Thomas Hardy CONTENTS PART FIRST At Marygreen
Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter
VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI
PART SECOND At Christminster Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV
Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII
PART THIRD At Melchester Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV
Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X
PART FOURTH At Shaston Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV
Chapter V Chapter VI
PART FIFTH At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III
Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII
PART SIXTH At Christminster Again Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III
Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX
Chapter X Chapter XI
A PAIR OF BLUE EYES by Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Chapter I -- 'A fair vestal, throned in the west'
Chapter II -- 'Twas on the evening of a winter's day.'
Chapter III -- 'Melodious birds sing madrigals'
Chapter IV -- 'Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap.'
Chapter V -- 'Bosom'd high in tufted trees.'
Chapter VI -- 'Fare thee weel awhile!'
Chapter VII -- 'No more of me you knew, my love!'
Chapter VIII -- 'Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord.'
Chapter IX -- 'Her father did fume'
Chapter X -- 'Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.'
Chapter XI -- 'Journeys end in lovers meeting.'
Chapter XII -- 'Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.'
Chapter XIII -- 'He set in order many proverbs.'
Chapter XIV -- 'We frolic while 'tis May.'
Chapter XV -- 'A wandering voice.'
Chapter XVI -- 'Then fancy shapes-as fancy can.'
Chapter XVII -- 'Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase.'
Chapter XVIII -- 'He heard her musical pants.'
Chapter XIX -- 'Love was in the next degree.'
Chapter XX -- 'A distant dearness in the hill.'
Chapter XXI -- 'On thy cold grey stones, O sea!'
Chapter XXII -- 'A woman's way.'
Chapter XXIII -- 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot?'
Chapter XXIV -- 'Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour.'
Chapter XXV -- Mine own familiar friend.'
Chapter XXVI -- 'To that last nothing under earth.'
Chapter XXVII -- 'How should I greet thee?'
Chapter XXVIII -- 'I lull a fancy, trouble-tost.'
Chapter XXIX -- 'Care, thou canker.'
Chapter XXX -- 'Vassal unto Love.'
Chapter XXXI -- 'A worm i' the bud.'
Chapter XXXII -- 'Had I wist before I kist'
Chapter XXXIII -- 'O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery.'
Chapter XXXIV -- 'Yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou
hast served us.'
Chapter XXXV -- 'And wilt thou leave me thus?-say nay-say nay!'
Chapter XXXVI -- 'The pennie's the jewel that beautifies a'.'
Chapter XXXVII -- 'After many days.'
Chapter XXXVIII -- 'Jealousy is cruel as the grave.'
Chapter XXXIX -- 'Each to the loved one's side.'
Chapter XL -- 'Welcome, proud lady.'
THE WOODLANDERS By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER
XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXXII CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER
XXXVIII CHAPTER XXXIX CHAPTER XL CHAPTER XLI CHAPTER XLII CHAPTER
XLIII CHAPTER XLIV CHAPTER XLV CHAPTER XLVI CHAPTER XLVII CHAPTER
XLVIII
SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE LYRICS AND REVERIES WITH MISCELLANEOUS PIECES By
Thomas Hardy CONTENTS
Lyrics and Reveries\x97
PAGE
In Front of the Landscape
3
Channel Firing
7
The Convergence of the Twain
9
The Ghost of the Past
12
After the Visit
14
To Meet, or Otherwise
16
The Difference
18
The Sun on the Bookcase
19
\x93When I set out for Lyonnesse\x94
20
A Thunderstorm in Town
21
The Torn Letter
22
Beyond the Last Lamp
25
The Face at the Casement
27
Lost Love
30
\x93My spirit will not haunt the mound\x94
31
Wessex Heights
32
In Death divided
35
p. viThe Place on the Map
37
Where the Picnic was
39
The Schreckhorn
41
A Singer asleep
42
A Plaint to Man
45
God\x92s Funeral
47
Spectres that grieve
52
\x93Ah, are you digging on my grave?\x94
54
Satires of Circumstance\x97
I.
At Tea
59
II.
In Church
60
III.
By her Aunt\x92s Grave
61
IV.
In the Room of the Bride-elect
62
V.
At the Watering-place
63
VI.
In the Cemetery
64
VII.
Outside the Window
65
VIII.
In the Study
66
IX.
At the Altar-rail
67
X.
In the Nuptial Chamber
68
XI.
In the Restaurant
69
XII.
At the Draper\x92s
70
XIII.
On the Death-bed
71
XIV.
Over the Coffin
72
XV.
In the Moonlight
73
p. viiLyrics and Reveries (continued)\x97
Self-unconscious
77
The Discovery
80
Tolerance
81
Before and after Summer
82
At Day-close in November
83
The Year\x92s Awakening
84
Under the Waterfall
85
The Spell of the Rose
88
St. Launce\x92s revisited
90
Poems of 1912\x9613\x96
The Going
95
Your Last Drive
97
The Walk
99
Rain on a Grace
100
\x93I found her out there\x94
102
Without Ceremony
104
Lament
105
The Haunter
107
The Voice
109
His Visitor
110
A Circular
112
A Dream or No
113
After a Journey
115
A Death-ray recalled
117
p. viiiBeeny Cliff
119
At Castle Boterel
121
Places
123
The Phantom Horsewoman
125
Miscellaneous Pieces\x97
The Wistful Lady
129
The Woman in the Rye
131
The Cheval-Glass
132
The Re-enactment
134
Her Secret
140
\x93She charged me\x94
141
The Newcomer\x92s Wife
142
A Conversation at Dawn
143
A King\x92s Soliloquy
152
The Coronation
154
Aquae Sulis
157
Seventy-four and Twenty
160
The Elopement
161
\x93I rose up as my custom is\x94
163
A Week
165
Had you wept
167
Bereft, she thinks she dreams
169
In the British Museum
170
In the Servants\x92 Quarters
172
The Obliterate Tomb
175
p. ix\x93Regret not me\x94
183
The Recalcitrants
185
Starlings on the Roof
186
The Moon looks in
187
The Sweet Hussy
188
The Telegram
189
The Moth-signal
191
Seen by the Waits
193
The Two Soldiers
194
The Death of Regret
195
In the Days of Crinoline
197
The Roman Gravemounds
199
The Workbox
201
The Sacrilege
203
The Abbey Mason
210
The Jubilee of a Magazine
222
The Satin Shoes
224
Exeunt Omnes
227
A Poet
228
Postscript\x97
\x93Men who march away\x94
229
DESPERATE REMEDIES By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE
I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS
II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT
III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS
IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS
VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS
X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS
XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS
XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
XIV. THE EVENTS OF FIVE WEEKS
XV. THE EVENTS OF THREE WEEKS
XVI. THE EVENTS OF ONE WEEK
XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
XVIII. THE EVENTS OF THREE DAYS
XIX. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XX. THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS
XXI. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN HOURS
SEQUEL
POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT By Thomas Hardy CONTENTS
PAGE
V.R. 1819\x961901
231
WAR POEMS\x97
Embarcation
235
Departure
237
The Colonel\x92s Soliloquy
239
The Going of the Battery
242
At the War Office
245
A Christmas Ghost-Story
247
The Dead Drummer
249
A Wife in London
251
The Souls of the Slain
253
Song of the Soldiers\x92 Wives
260
The Sick God
263
POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE\x97
Genoa and the Mediterranean
269
Shelley\x92s Skylark
272
In the Old Theatre, Fiesole
274
Rome: on the Palatine
276
,, Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter
278
,, The Vatican: Sala Delle Muse
280
,, At the Pyramid of Cestius
283
Lausanne: In Gibbon\x92s Old Garden
286
Zermatt: To the Matterhorn
288
The Bridge of Lodi
290
On an Invitation to the United States
295
p. xiiMISCELLANEOUS POEMS\x97
The Mother Mourns
299
\x93I said to Love\x94
305
A Commonplace Day
307
At a Lunar Eclipse
310
The Lacking Sense
312
To Life
316
Doom and She
318
The Problem
321
The Subalterns
323
The Sleep-worker
325
The Bullfinches
327
God-Forgotten
329
The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknowing God
333
By the Earth\x92s Corpse
336
Mute Opinion
339
To an Unborn Pauper Child
341
To Flowers from Italy in Winter
344
On a Fine Morning
346
To Lizbie Browne
348
Song of Hope
352
The Well-Beloved
354
Her Reproach
358
The Inconsistent
360
A Broken Appointment
362
\x93Between us now\x94
364
\x93How great my Grief\x94
366
\x93I need not go\x94
367
The Coquette, and After
369
p. xiiiA Spot
371
Long Plighted
373
The Widow
375
At a Hasty Wedding
378
The Dream-Follower
379
His Immortality
380
The To-be-Forgotten
382
Wives in the Sere
385
The Superseded
387
An August Midnight
389
The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again
391
Birds at Winter Nightfall
393
The Puzzled Game-Birds
394
Winter in Durnover Field
395
The Last Chrysanthemum
397
The Darkling Thrush
399
The Comet at Yalbury or Yell\x92ham
402
Mad Judy
403
A Wasted Illness
405
A Man
408
The Dame of Athelhall
412
The Seasons of her Year
416
The Milkmaid
418
The Levelled Churchyard
420
The Ruined Maid
422
The Respectable Burgher on \x93the Higher Criticism\x94
425
Architectural Masks
428
The Tenant-for-Life
430
p. xivThe King\x92s Experiment
432
The Tree: an Old Man\x92s Story
435
Her Late Husband
439
The Self-Unseeing
441
De Profundis i.
443
De Profundis ii.
445
De Profundis iii.
448
The Church-Builder
451
The Lost Pyx: a Medi\xE6val Legend
457
Tess\x92s Lament
462
The Supplanter: A Tale
465
IMITATIONS, Etc.\x97
Sapphic Fragment
473
Catullus: xxxi
474
After Schiller
476
Song: From Heine
477
From Victor Hugo
479
Cardinal Bembo\x92s Epitaph on Raphael
480
RETROSPECT\x97
\x93I have Lived with Shades\x94
483
Memory and I
486
?G?OS?O. T?O
489
MOMENTS OF VISION AND MISCELLANEOUS VERSES By Thomas Hardy CONTENTS
PAGE
Moments of Vision
1
The Voice of Things
2
\x93Why be at pains?\x94
3
\x93We sat at the window\x94
4
Afternoon Service at Mellstock
5
At the Wicket-gate
6
In a Museum
7
Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune
8
At the Word \x93Farewell\x94
11
First Sight of Her and After
13
The Rival
14
Heredity
15
\x93You were the sort that men forget\x94
16
She, I, and They
17
Near Lanivet, 1872
18
Joys of Memory
20
To the Moon
21
Copying Architecture in an Old Minster
22
p. viTo Shakespeare
24
Quid hic agis?
27
On a Midsummer Eve
30
Timing Her
31
Before Knowledge
34
The Blinded Bird
35
\x93The wind blew words\x94
36
The Faded Face
37
The Riddle
38
The Duel
39
At Mayfair Lodgings
42
To my Father\x92s Violin
44
The Statue of Liberty
47
The Background and the Figure
50
The Change
51
Sitting on the Bridge
54
The Young Churchwarden
56
\x93I travel as a phantom now\x94
57
Lines to a Movement in Mozart\x92s E-flat Symphony
58
\x93In the seventies\x94
60
The Pedigree
62
This Heart. A Woman\x92s Dream
65
Where they lived
68
The Occultation
69
Life laughs Onward
70
The Peace-offering
71
p. vii\x93Something tapped\x94
72
The Wound
73
A Merrymaking in Question
74
\x93I said and sang her excellence\x94
75
A January Night. 1879
77
A Kiss
78
The Announcement
79
The Oxen
80
The Tresses
81
The Photograph
82
On a Heath
84
An Anniversary
85
\x93By the Runic Stone\x94
87
The Pink Frock
88
Transformations
89
In her Precincts
90
The Last Signal
91
The House of Silence
93
Great Things
95
The Chimes
97
The Figure in the Scene
98
\x93Why did I sketch\x94
99
Conjecture
100
The Blow
101
Love the Monopolist
103
At Middle-field Gate in February
105
p. viiiThe Youth who carried a Light
106
The Head above the Fog
108
Overlooking the River Stour
109
The Musical Box
111
On Sturminster Foot-bridge
113
Royal Sponsors
114
Old Furniture
116
A Thought in Two Moods
118
The Last Performance
119
\x93You on the tower\x94
120
The Interloper
122
Logs on the Hearth
124
The Sunshade
126
The Ageing House
128
The Caged Goldfinch
129
At Madame Tussaud\x92s in Victorian Years
130
The Ballet
132
The Five Students
133
The Wind\x92s Prophecy
135
During Wind and Rain
137
He prefers her Earthly
139
The Dolls
140
Molly gone
141
A Backward Spring
143
Looking Across
144
At a Seaside Town in 1869
146
p. ixThe Glimpse
149
The Pedestrian
151
\x93Who\x92s in the next room?\x94
153
At a Country Fair
155
The Memorial Brass: 186-
156
Her Love-birds
158
Paying Calls
160
The Upper Birch-Leaves
161
\x93It never looks like summer\x94
162
Everything comes
163
The Man with a Past
164
He fears his Good Fortune
166
He wonders about Himself
167
Jubilate
168
He revisits his First School
171
\x93I thought, my heart\x94
173
Fragment
174
Midnight on the Great Western
176
Honeymoon Time at an Inn
177
The Robin
181
\x93I rose and went to Rou\x92tor town\x94
183
The Nettles
184
In a Waiting-room
185
The Clock-winder
187
Old Excursions
189
The Masked Face
191
p. xIn a Whispering Gallery
192
The Something that saved Him
193
The Enemy\x92s Portrait
195
Imaginings
197
On the Doorstep
198
Signs and Tokens
199
Paths of Former Time
201
The Clock of the Years
203
At the Piano
205
The Shadow on the Stone
206
In the Garden
208
The Tree and the Lady
209
An Upbraiding
211
The Young Glass-stainer
212
Looking at a Picture on an Anniversary
213
The Choirmaster\x92s Burial
215
The Man who forgot
217
While drawing in a Churchyard
219
\x93For Life I had never cared greatly\x94
221
Poems of War and Patriotism\x97
\x93Men who march away\x94 (Song of the Soldiers)
225
His Country
227
England to Germany in 1914
229
On the Belgian Expatriation
230
p. xiAn Appeal to America on behalf of the Belgian Destitute
231
The Pity of It
232
In Time of Wars and Tumults
233
In Time of \x93the Breaking of nations\x94
234
Cry of the Homeless
235
Before Marching and After
237
\x93Often when warring\x94
239
Then and Now
240
A Call to National Service
242
The Dead and the Living One
243
A New Year\x92s Eve in War Time
246
\x93I met a man\x94
248
\x93I looked up from my writing\x94
250
Finale\x97
The Coming of the End
255
Afterwards
257
A LAODICEAN: A STORY OF TO-DAY By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE. BOOK THE FIRST. GEORGE SOMERSET. BOOK THE SECOND. DARE AND
HAVILL. BOOK THE THIRD. DE STANCY. BOOK THE FOURTH. SOMERSET, DARE
AND DE STANCY. BOOK THE FIFTH. DE STANCY AND PAULA. BOOK THE SIXTH.
PAULA.
THE WELL-BELOVED A SKETCH OF A TEMPERAMENT By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PART FIRST \x97 A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY.
1. I. A SUPPOSITITIOUS PRESENTMENT OF HER
1. II. THE INCARNATION IS ASSUMED TO BE TRUE
1. III. THE APPOINTMENT
1. IV. A LONELY PEDESTRIAN
1. V. A CHARGE
1. VI. ON THE BRINK
1. VII. HER EARLIER INCARNATIONS
1. VIII. 'TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING\x92
1. IX. FAMILIAR PHENOMENA IN THE DISTANCE
PART SECOND \x97 A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
2. I. THE OLD PHANTOM BECOMES DISTINCT
2. II. SHE DRAWS CLOSE AND SATISFIES
2. III. SHE BECOMES AN INACCESSIBLE GHOST
2. IV. SHE THREATENS TO RESUME CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE
2. V. THE RESUMPTION TAKES PLACE
2. VI. THE PAST SHINES IN THE PRESENT
2. VII. THE NEW BECOMES ESTABLISHED
2. VIII. HIS OWN SOUL CONFRONTS HIM
2. IX. JUXTAPOSITIONS
2. X. SHE FAILS TO VANISH STILL
2. XI. THE IMAGE PERSISTS
2. XII. A GRILLE DESCENDS BETWEEN
2. XIII. SHE IS ENSHROUDED FROM SIGHT
PART THIRD \x97 A YOUNG MAN OF SIXTY
3. I. SHE RETURNS FOR THE NEW SEASON
3. II. MISGIVINGS ON THE RE-EMBODIMENT
3. III. THE RENEWED IMAGE BURNS ITSELF IN
3. IV. A DASH FOR THE LAST INCARNATION
3. V. ON THE VERGE OF POSSESSION
3. VI. THE WELL-BELOVED IS\x97WHERE?
3. VII. AN OLD TABERNACLE IN A NEW ASPECT
3. VIII. 'ALAS FOR THIS GREY SHADOW, ONCE A MAN!\x92
LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER WITH MANY OTHER VERSES By Thomas Hardy CONTENTS
PAGE
Apology
v
Weathers
1
The maid of Keinton Mandeville
3
Summer Schemes
5
Epeisodia
6
Faintheart in a Railway Train
8
At Moonrise and Onwards
9
The Garden Seat
11
Barth\xE9l\xE9mon at Vauxhall
12
\x93I sometimes think\x94
14
Jezreel
15
A Jog-trot Pair
17
\x93The Curtains now are drawn\x94
19
\x93According to the Mighty Working\x94
21
\x93I was not He\x94
22
The West-of-Wessex Girl
23
Welcome Home
25
Going and Staying
26
Read by Moonlight
27
At a house in Hampstead
28
A Woman\x92s Fancy
30
p. xxHer Song
33
A Wet August
35
The Dissemblers
36
To a Lady playing and singing in the Morning
37
\x93A Man was drawing near to me\x94
38
The Strange House
40
\x93As \x92twere To-night\x94
42
The Contretemps
43
A Gentleman\x92s Epitaph on Himself and a Lady
46
The Old Gown
48
A Night in November
50
A Duettist to her Pianoforte
51
\x93Where Three Roads joined\x94
53
\x93And There was a Great Calm\x94
55
Haunting Fingers
59
The Woman I Met
63
\x93If it\x92s ever Spring again\x94
67
The Two Houses
68
On Stinsford Hill at Midnight
72
The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House
74
The Selfsame Song
75
The Wanderer
76
A Wife comes back
78
A Young Man\x92s Exhortation
81
At Lulworth Cove a Century Back
83
A Bygone Occasion
85
Two Serenades
86
p. xxiThe Wedding Morning
89
End of the Year 1912
90
The Chimes play \x93Life\x92s a Bumper!\x94
91
\x93I worked no Wile to meet You\x94
93
At the Railway Station, Upway
95
Side by Side
96
Dream of the City Shopwoman
98
A Maiden\x92s Pledge
100
The Child and the Sage
101
Mismet
103
An Autumn Rain-scene
105
Meditations on a Holiday
107
An Experience
111
The Beauty
113
The Collector cleans his Picture
114
The Wood Fire
117
Saying Good-bye
119
On the Tune called The Old-hundred-and-fourth
121
The Opportunity
123
Evelyn G. of Christminster
124
The Rift
126
Voices from Things growing
127
On the Way
130
\x93She did not turn\x94
132
Growth in May
133
The Children and Sir Nameless
134
At the Royal Academy
136
Her Temple
138
p. xxiiA Two-years\x92 Idyll
139
By Henstridge Cross at the Year\x92s End
141
Penance
143
\x93I look in her Face\x94
145
After the War
146
\x93If you had known\x94
148
The Chapel-Organist
150
Fetching Her
157
\x93Could I but will\x94
159
She revisits alone the Church of her Marriage
161
At the Entering of the New Year
163
They would not come
165
After a Romantic Day
167
The Two Wives
168
\x93I knew a Lady\x94
170
A House with a History
171
A Procession of Dead Days
173
He follows Himself
176
The Singing Woman
178
Without, not within Her
179
\x93O I won\x92t lead a Homely Life\x94
180
In the Small Hours
181
The Little Old Table
183
Vagg Hollow
184
The Dream is\x97which?
186
The Country Wedding
187
First or Last
190
Lonely Days
191
p. xxiii\x93What did it mean?\x94
194
At the Dinner-table
196
The Marble Tablet
198
The Master and the Leaves
199
Last Words to a Dumb Friend
201
A Drizzling Easter morning
204
On One who lived and died where He was born
205
The Second Night
207
She who saw not
210
The Old Workman
212
The Sailor\x92s Mother
214
Outside the Casement
216
The Passer-by
218
\x93I was the Midmost\x94
220
A Sound in the Night
221
On a Discovered Curl of Hair
226
An Old Likeness
227
Her Apotheosis
229
\x93Sacred to the Memory\x94
230
To a Well-named Dwelling
231
The Whipper-in
232
A Military Appointment
234
The Milestone by the Rabbit-burrow
236
The Lament of the Looking-glass
237
Cross-currents
238
The Old Neighbour and the New
240
The Chosen
241
The Inscription
244
p. xxivThe Marble-streeted Town
251
A Woman driving
252
A Woman\x92s Trust
254
Best Times
256
The Casual Acquaintance
258
Intra Sepulchrum
260
The Whitewashed Wall
262
Just the Same
264
The Last Time
265
The Seven Times
266
The Sun\x92s Last Look on the Country Girl
269
In a London Flat
270
Drawing Details in an Old Church
272
Rake-hell muses
273
The Colour
277
Murmurs in the Gloom
279
Epitaph
281
An Ancient to Ancients
282
After reading psalms xxxix., xl.
285
Surview
287
LIFE'S LITTLE IRONIES And a set of tales with some colloquial sketches
entitled: A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
THE SON'S VETO
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
A TRAGEDY OF TWO AMBITIONS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
ON THE WESTERN CIRCUIT
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
THE FIDDLER OF THE REELS
A TRADITION OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR
A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS
TONY KYTES, THE ARCH-DECEIVER
THE HISTORY OF THE HARDCOMES
THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN'S STORY
ANDREY SATCHEL AND THE PARSON AND CLERK
OLD ANDREY'S EXPERIENCE AS A MUSICIAN
ABSENT-MINDEDNESS IN A PARISH CHOIR
THE WINTERS AND THE PALMLEYS
INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MR. GEORGE CROOKHILL
NETTY SARGENT'S COPYHOLD
A GROUP OF NOBLE DAMES
That is to say: The First Countess Of Wessex; Barbara Of The Hose Of
Grebe; The Marchioness Of Stonehenge; Lady Mottifont Squire Petrick's
Lady; The Lady Icenway Anna, Lady Baxby; The Lady Penelope; The Duchess
Of Hamptonshire; And The Honourable Laura
'. . . Store of Ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence.'-L'Allegro.
With a map of wessex By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
DAME THE FIRST-THE FIRST COUNTESS OF WESSEX
DAME THE SECOND-BARBARA OF THE HOUSE OF GREBE
DAME THE THIRD-THE MARCHIONESS OF STONEHENGE
DAME THE FOURTH-LADY MOTTISFONT
DAME THE FIFTH-THE LADY ICENWAY
DAME THE SIXTH-SQUIRE PETRICK'S LADY
DAME THE SEVENTH-ANNA, LADY BAXBY
DAME THE EIGHTH-THE LADY PENELOPE
DAME THE NINTH-THE DUCHESS OF HAMPTONSHIRE
DAME THE TENTH-THE HONOURABLE LAURA
WESSEX TALES
By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
AN IMAGINATIVE WOMAN
THE THREE STRANGERS
THE WITHERED ARM
CHAPTER I-A LORN MILKMAID
CHAPTER II-THE YOUNG WIFE
CHAPTER III-A VISION
CHAPTER IV-A SUGGESTION
CHAPTER V-CONJUROR TRENDLE
CHAPTER VI-A SECOND ATTEMPT
CHAPTER VII-A RIDE
VIII-A WATER-SIDE HERMIT
IX-A RENCOUNTER
FELLOW-TOWNSMEN
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP
I
II
III
IV
V
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
I-HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED
II-HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN
III-THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT
IV-AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON
V-HOW THEY WENT TO LULSTEAD COVE
VI-THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON
VII-THE WALK TO WARM'ELL CROSS AND AFTERWARDS
A CHANGED MAN AND OTHER TALES By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE
A CHANGED MAN
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
THE WAITING SUPPER
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
ALICIA'S DIARY
CHAPTER I.-SHE MISSES HER SISTER
CHAPTER II.-NEWS INTERESTING AND SERIOUS
CHAPTER III.-HER GLOOM LIGHTENS A LITTLE
CHAPTER IV.-SHE BEHOLDS THE ATTRACTIVE STRANGER
CHAPTER V.-HER SITUATION IS A TRYING ONE
CHAPTER VI.-HER INGENUITY INSTIGATES HER
CHAPTER VII.-A SURPRISE AWAITS HER
CHAPTER VIII.-SHE TRAVELS IN PURSUIT
CHAPTER IX.-SHE WITNESSES THE END
CHAPTER X.-SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER
THE GRAVE BY THE HANDPOST
ENTER A DRAGOON
A TRYST AT AN ANCIENT EARTH WORK
WHAT THE SHEPHERD SAW
A COMMITTEE-MAN OF 'THE TERROR'
MASTER JOHN HORSELEIGH, KNIGHT
THE DUKE'S REAPPEARANCE-A FAMILY TRADITION
A MERE INTERLUDE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA-A COMEDY IN CHAPTERS By Thomas Hardy
"Vitae post-scenia celant."-Lucretius.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY-A HEATH NEAR IT-INSIDE THE 'RED LION' INN
2. CHRISTOPHER'S HOUSE-SANDBOURNE TOWN-SANDBOURNE MOOR
3. SANDBOURNE MOOR (continued)
4. SANDBOURNE PIER-ROAD TO WYNDWAY-BALL-ROOM IN WYNDWAY HOUSE
5. AT THE WINDOW-THE ROAD HOME
6. THE SHORE BY WYNDWAY
7. THE DINING-ROOM OF A TOWN HOUSE-THE BUTLER'S PANTRY
8. CHRISTOPHER'S LODGINGS-THE GROUNDS ABOUT ROOKINGTON
9. A LADY'S DRAWING-ROOMS-ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM
10. LADY PETHERWIN'S HOUSE
11. SANDBOURNE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD-SOME LONDON STREETS
12. ARROWTHORNE PARK AND LODGE
13. THE LODGE (continued)-THE COPSE BEHIND
14. A TURNPIKE ROAD
15. AN INNER ROOM AT THE LODGE
16. A LARGE PUBLIC HALL
17. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
18. NEAR SANDBOURNE-LONDON STREETS-ETHELBERTA'S
19. ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM
20. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE HALL-THE ROAD HOME
21. A STREET-NEIGH'S ROOMS-CHRISTOPHER'S ROOMS
22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
23. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued)
24. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued)-THE BRITISH MUSEUM
25. THE ROYAL ACADEMY-THE FARNFIELD ESTATE
26. ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM
27. MRS. BELMAINE'S-CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH
28. ETHELBERTA'S-MR. CHICKEREL'S ROOM
29. ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM-MR. DONCASTLE'S HOUSE
30. ON THE HOUSETOP
31. KNOLLSEA-A LOFTY DOWN-A RUINED CASTLE
32. A ROOM IN ENCKWORTH COURT
33. THE ENGLISH CHANNEL-NORMANDY
34. THE H\xD4TEL BEAU S\xC9JOUR AND SPOTS NEAR IT
35. THE HOTEL (continued), AND THE QUAY IN FRONT
36. THE HOUSE IN TOWN
37. KNOLLSEA-AN ORNAMENTAL VILLA
38. ENCKWORTH COURT
39. KNOLLSEA-MELCHESTER
40. MELCHESTER (continued)
41. WORKSHOPS-AN INN-THE STREET
42. THE DONCASTLES' RESIDENCE, AND OUTSIDE THE SAME
43. THE RAILWAY-THE SEA-THE SHORE BEYOND
44. SANDBOURNE-A LONELY HEATH-THE 'RED LION'-THE HIGHWAY
45. KNOLLSEA-THE ROAD THENCE-ENCKWORTH
46. ENCKWORTH (continued)-THE ANGLEBURY HIGHWAY
47. ENCKWORTH AND ITS PRECINCTS-MELCHESTER
SEQUEL. ANGLEBURY-ENCKWORTH-SANDBOURNE
LIFE'S LITTLE IRONIES And a set of tales with some colloquial sketches
entitled: A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
THE SON'S VETO
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
A TRAGEDY OF TWO AMBITIONS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
ON THE WESTERN CIRCUIT
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
THE FIDDLER OF THE REELS
A TRADITION OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR
A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS
TONY KYTES, THE ARCH-DECEIVER
THE HISTORY OF THE HARDCOMES
THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN'S STORY
ANDREY SATCHEL AND THE PARSON AND CLERK
OLD ANDREY'S EXPERIENCE AS A MUSICIAN
ABSENT-MINDEDNESS IN A PARISH CHOIR
THE WINTERS AND THE PALMLEYS
INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MR. GEORGE CROOKHILL
NETTY SARGENT'S COPYHOLD
THE SON'S VETO
CHAPTER I
To the eyes of a man viewing it from behind, the nut-brown hair was a
wonder and a mystery. Under the black beaver hat, surmounted by its tuft
of black feathers, the long locks, braided and twisted and coiled like
the rushes of a basket, composed a rare, if somewhat barbaric, example
of ingenious art. One could understand such weavings and coilings being
wrought to last intact for a year, or even a calendar month; but that
they should be all demolished regularly at bedtime, after a single day
of permanence, seemed a reckless waste of successful fabrication.
And she had done it all herself, poor thing. She had no maid, and it was
almost the only accomplishment she could boast of. Hence the unstinted
pains.
She was a young invalid lady-not so very much of an invalid-sitting in a
wheeled chair, which had been pulled up in the front part of a green
enclosure, close to a bandstand, where a concert was going on, during a
warm June afternoon. It had place in one of the minor parks or private
gardens that are to be found in the suburbs of London, and was the
effort of a local association to raise money for some charity. There are
worlds within worlds in the great city, and though nobody outside the
immediate district had ever heard of the charity, or the band, or the
garden, the enclosure was filled with an interested audience
sufficiently informed on all these.
As the strains proceeded many of the listeners observed the chaired
lady, whose back hair, by reason of her prominent position, so
challenged inspection. Her face was not easily discernible, but the
aforesaid cunning tress-weavings, the white ear and poll, and the curve
of a cheek which was neither flaccid nor sallow, were signals that led
to the expectation of good beauty in front. Such expectations are not
infrequently disappointed as soon as the disclosure comes; and in the
present case, when the lady, by a turn of the head, at length revealed
herself, she was not so handsome as the people behind her had supposed,
and even hoped-they did not know why.
For one thing (alas! the commonness of this complaint), she was less
young than they had fancied her to be. Yet attractive her face
unquestionably was, and not at all sickly. The revelation of its details
came each time she turned to talk to a boy of twelve or thirteen who
stood beside her, and the shape of whose hat and jacket implied that he
belonged to a well-known public school. The immediate bystanders could
hear that he called her 'Mother.'
When the end of the recital was reached, and the audience withdrew, many
chose to find their way out by passing at her elbow. Almost all turned
their heads to take a full and near look at the interesting woman, who
remained stationary in the chair till the way should be clear enough for
her to be wheeled out without obstruction. As if she expected their
glances, and did not mind gratifying their curiosity, she met the eyes
of several of her observers by lifting her own, showing these to be
soft, brown, and affectionate orbs, a little plaintive in their regard.
She was conducted out of the gardens, and passed along the pavement till
she disappeared from view, the schoolboy walking beside her. To
inquiries made by some persons who watched her away, the answer came
that she was the second wife of the incumbent of a neighbouring parish,
and that she was lame. She was generally believed to be a woman with a
story-an innocent one, but a story of some sort or other.
In conversing with her on their way home the boy who walked at her elbow
said that he hoped his father had not missed them.
'He have been so comfortable these last few hours that I am sure he
cannot have missed us,' she replied.
'Has, dear mother-not have!' exclaimed the public-school boy, with an
impatient fastidiousness that was almost harsh. 'Surely you know that by
this time!'
His mother hastily adopted the correction, and did not resent his making
it, or retaliate, as she might well have done, by bidding him to wipe
that crumby mouth of his, whose condition had been caused by
surreptitious attempts to eat a piece of cake without taking it out of
the pocket wherein it lay concealed. After this the pretty woman and the
boy went onward in silence.
That question of grammar bore upon her history, and she fell into
reverie, of a somewhat sad kind to all appearance. It might have been
assumed that she was wondering if she had done wisely in shaping her
life as she had shaped it, to bring out such a result as this.
In a remote nook in North Wessex, forty miles from London, near the
thriving county-town of Aldbrickham, there stood a pretty village with
its church and parsonage, which she knew well enough, but her son had
never seen. It was her native village, Gaymead, and the first event
bearing upon her present situation had occurred at that place when she
was only a girl of nineteen.
How well she remembered it, that first act in her little tragi-comedy,
the death of her reverend husband's first wife. It happened on a spring
evening, and she who now and for many years had filled that first wife's
place was then parlour-maid in the parson's house.
When everything had been done that could be done, and the death was
announced, she had gone out in the dusk to visit her parents, who were
living in the same village, to tell them the sad news. As she opened the
white swing-gate and looked towards the trees which rose westward,
shutting out the pale light of the evening sky, she discerned, without
much surprise, the figure of a man standing in the hedge, though she
roguishly exclaimed as a matter of form, 'Oh, Sam, how you frightened
me!'
He was a young gardener of her acquaintance. She told him the
particulars of the late event, and they stood silent, these two young
people, in that elevated, calmly philosophic mind which is engendered
when a tragedy has happened close at hand, and has not happened to the
philosophers themselves. But it had its bearing upon their relations.
'And will you stay on now at the Vicarage, just the same?' asked he.
She had hardly thought of that. 'Oh, yes-I suppose!' she said.
'Everything will be just as usual, I imagine?'
He walked beside her towards her mother's. Presently his arm stole round
her waist. She gently removed it; but he placed it there again, and she
yielded the point. 'You see, dear Sophy, you don't know that you'll stay
on; you may want a home; and I shall be ready to offer one some day,
though I may not be ready just yet.
'Why, Sam, how can you be so fast! I've never even said I liked 'ee; and
it is all your own doing, coming after me!'
'Still, it is nonsense to say I am not to have a try at you like the
rest.' He stooped to kiss her a farewell, for they had reached her
mother's door.
'No, Sam; you sha'n't!' she cried, putting her hand over his mouth. 'You
ought to be more serious on such a night as this.' And she bade him
adieu without allowing him to kiss her or to come indoors.
The vicar just left a widower was at this time a man about forty years
of age, of good family, and childless. He had led a secluded existence
in this college living, partly because there were no resident
landowners; and his loss now intensified his habit of withdrawal from
outward observation. He was still less seen than heretofore, kept
himself still less in time with the rhythm and racket of the movements
called progress in the world without. For many months after his wife's
decease the economy of his household remained as before; the cook, the
housemaid, the parlour-maid, and the man out-of-doors performed their
duties or left them undone, just as Nature prompted them-the vicar knew
not which. It was then represented to him that his servants seemed to
have nothing to do in his small family of one. He was struck with the
truth of this representation, and decided to cut down his establishment.
But he was forestalled by Sophy, the parlour-maid, who said one evening
that she wished to leave him.
'And why?' said the parson.
'Sam Hobson has asked me to marry him, sir.'
'Well-do you want to marry?'
'Not much. But it would be a home for me. And we have heard that one of
us will have to leave.'
A day or two after she said: 'I don't want to leave just yet, sir, if
you don't wish it. Sam and I have quarrelled.'
He looked up at her. He had hardly ever observed her before, though he
had been frequently conscious of her soft presence in the room. What a
kitten-like, flexuous, tender creature she was! She was the only one of
the servants with whom he came into immediate and continuous relation.
What should he do if Sophy were gone?
Sophy did not go, but one of the others did, and things went on quietly
again.
When Mr. Twycott, the vicar, was ill, Sophy brought up his meals to him,
and she had no sooner left the room one day than he heard a noise on the
stairs. She had slipped down with the tray, and so twisted her foot that
she could not stand. The village surgeon was called in; the vicar got
better, but Sophy was incapacitated for a long time; and she was
informed that she must never again walk much or engage in any occupation
which required her to stand long on her feet. As soon as she was
comparatively well she spoke to him alone. Since she was forbidden to
walk and bustle about, and, indeed, could not do so, it became her duty
to leave. She could very well work at something sitting down, and she
had an aunt a seamstress.
The parson had been very greatly moved by what she had suffered on his
account, and he exclaimed, 'No, Sophy; lame or not lame, I cannot let
you go. You must never leave me again!'
He came close to her, and, though she could never exactly tell how it
happened, she became conscious of his lips upon her cheek. He then asked
her to marry him. Sophy did not exactly love him, but she had a respect
for him which almost amounted to veneration. Even if she had wished to
get away from him she hardly dared refuse a personage so reverend and
august in her eyes, and she assented forthwith to be his wife.
Thus it happened that one fine morning, when the doors of the church
were naturally open for ventilation, and the singing birds fluttered in
and alighted on the tie-beams of the roof, there was a marriage-service
at the communion-rails, which hardly a soul knew of. The parson and a
neighbouring curate had entered at one door, and Sophy at another,
followed by two necessary persons, whereupon in a short time there
emerged a newly-made husband and wife.
Mr. Twycott knew perfectly well that he had committed social suicide by
this step, despite Sophy's spotless character, and he had taken his
measures accordingly. An exchange of livings had been arranged with an
acquaintance who was incumbent of a church in the south of London, and
as soon as possible the couple removed thither, abandoning their pretty
country home, with trees and shrubs and glebe, for a narrow, dusty house
in a long, straight street, and their fine peal of bells for the
wretchedest one-tongued clangour that ever tortured mortal ears. It was
all on her account. They were, however, away from every one who had
known her former position; and also under less observation from without
than they would have had to put up with in any country parish.
Sophy the woman was as charming a partner as a man could possess, though
Sophy the lady had her deficiencies. She showed a natural aptitude for
little domestic refinements, so far as related to things and manners;
but in what is called culture she was less intuitive. She had now been
married more than fourteen years, and her husband had taken much trouble
with her education; but she still held confused ideas on the use of
'was' and 'were,' which did not beget a respect for her among the few
acquaintances she made. Her great grief in this relation was that her
only child, on whose education no expense had been and would be spared,
was now old enough to perceive these deficiencies in his mother, and not
only to see them but to feel irritated at their existence.
Thus she lived on in the city, and wasted hours in braiding her
beautiful hair, till her once apple cheeks waned to pink of the very
faintest. Her foot had never regained its natural strength after the
accident, and she was mostly obliged to avoid walking altogether. Her
husband had grown to like London for its freedom and its domestic
privacy; but he was twenty years his Sophy's senior, and had latterly
been seized with a serious illness. On this day, however, he had seemed
to be well enough to justify her accompanying her son Randolph to the
concert.
CHAPTER II
The next time we get a glimpse of her is when she appears in the
mournful attire of a widow.
Mr. Twycott had never rallied, and now lay in a well-packed cemetery to
the south of the great city, where, if all the dead it contained had
stood erect and alive, not one would have known him or recognized his
name. The boy had dutifully followed him to the grave, and was now again
at school.
Throughout these changes Sophy had been treated like the child she was
in nature though not in years. She was left with no control over
anything that had been her husband's beyond her modest personal income.
In his anxiety lest her inexperience should be overreached he had
safeguarded with trustees all he possibly could. The completion of the
boy's course at the public school, to be followed in due time by Oxford
and ordination, had been all previsioned and arranged, and she really
had nothing to occupy her in the world but to eat and drink, and make a
business of indolence, and go on weaving and coiling the nut-brown hair,
merely keeping a home open for the son whenever he came to her during
vacations.
Foreseeing his probable decease long years before her, her husband in
his lifetime had purchased for her use a semi-detached villa in the same
long, straight road whereon the church and parsonage faced, which was to
be hers as long as she chose to live in it. Here she now resided,
looking out upon the fragment of lawn in front, and through the railings
at the ever-flowing traffic; or, bending forward over the window-sill on
the first floor, stretching her eyes far up and down the vista of sooty
trees, hazy air, and drab house-fa\xE7ades, along which echoed the noises
common to a suburban main thoroughfare.
Somehow, her boy, with his aristocratic school-knowledge, his grammars,
and his aversions, was losing those wide infantine sympathies, extending
as far as to the sun and moon themselves, with which he, like other
children, had been born, and which his mother, a child of nature
herself, had loved in him; he was reducing their compass to a population
of a few thousand wealthy and titled people, the mere veneer of a
thousand million or so of others who did not interest him at all. He
drifted further and further away from her. Sophy's milieu being a suburb
of minor tradesmen and under-clerks, and her almost only companions the
two servants of her own house, it was not surprising that after her
husband's death she soon lost the little artificial tastes she had
acquired from him, and became-in her son's eyes-a mother whose mistakes
and origin it was his painful lot as a gentleman to blush for. As yet he
was far from being man enough-if he ever would be-to rate these sins of
hers at their true infinitesimal value beside the yearning fondness that
welled up and remained penned in her heart till it should be more fully
accepted by him, or by some other person or thing. If he had lived at
home with her he would have had all of it; but he seemed to require so
very little in present circumstances, and it remained stored.
Her life became insupportably dreary; she could not take walks, and had
no interest in going for drives, or, indeed, in travelling anywhere.
Nearly two years passed without an event, and still she looked on that
suburban road, thinking of the village in which she had been born, and
whither she would have gone back-O how gladly!-even to work in the
fields.
Taking no exercise, she often could not sleep, and would rise in the
night or early morning and look out upon the then vacant thoroughfare,
where the lamps stood like sentinels waiting for some procession to go
by. An approximation to such a procession was indeed made early every
morning about one o'clock, when the country vehicles passed up with
loads of vegetables for Covent Garden market. She often saw them
creeping along at this silent and dusky hour-waggon after waggon,
bearing green bastions of cabbages nodding to their fall, yet never
falling, walls of baskets enclosing masses of beans and peas, pyramids
of snow-white turnips, swaying howdahs of mixed produce-creeping along
behind aged night-horses, who seemed ever patiently wondering between
their hollow coughs why they had always to work at that still hour when
all other sentient creatures were privileged to rest. Wrapped in a
cloak, it was soothing to watch and sympathize with them when depression
and nervousness hindered sleep, and to see how the fresh green-stuff
brightened to life as it came opposite the lamp, and how the sweating
animals steamed and shone with their miles of travel.
They had an interest, almost a charm, for Sophy, these semirural people
and vehicles moving in an urban atmosphere, leading a life quite
distinct from that of the daytime toilers on the same road. One morning
a man who accompanied a waggon-load of potatoes gazed rather hard at the
house-fronts as he passed, and with a curious emotion she thought his
form was familiar to her. She looked out for him again. His being an
old-fashioned conveyance, with a yellow front, it was easily
recognizable, and on the third night after she saw it a second time. The
man alongside was, as she had fancied, Sam Hobson, formerly gardener at
Gaymead, who would at one time have married her.
She had occasionally thought of him, and wondered if life in a cottage
with him would not have been a happier lot than the life she had
accepted. She had not thought of him passionately, but her now dismal
situation lent an interest to his resurrection-a tender interest which
it is impossible to exaggerate. She went back to bed, and began
thinking. When did these market-gardeners, who travelled up to town so
regularly at one or two in the morning, come back? She dimly recollected
seeing their empty waggons, hardly noticeable amid the ordinary day-
traffic, passing down at some hour before noon.
It was only April, but that morning, after breakfast, she had the window
opened, and sat looking out, the feeble sun shining full upon her. She
affected to sew, but her eyes never left the street. Between ten and
eleven the desired waggon, now unladen, reappeared on its return
journey. But Sam was not looking round him then, and drove on in a
reverie.
'Sam!' cried she.
Turning with a start, his face lighted up. He called to him a little boy
to hold the horse, alighted, and came and stood under her window.
'I can't come down easily, Sam, or I would!' she said. 'Did you know I
lived here?'
'Well, Mrs. Twycott, I knew you lived along here somewhere. I have often
looked out for 'ee.'
He briefly explained his own presence on the scene. He had long since
given up his gardening in the village near Aldbrickham, and was now
manager at a market-gardener's on the south side of London, it being
part of his duty to go up to Covent Garden with waggon-loads of produce
two or three times a week. In answer to her curious inquiry, he admitted
that he had come to this particular district because he had seen in the
Aldbrickham paper, a year or two before, the announcement of the death
in South London of the aforetime vicar of Gaymead, which had revived an
interest in her dwelling-place that he could not extinguish, leading him
to hover about the locality till his present post had been secured.
They spoke of their native village in dear old North Wessex, the spots
in which they had played together as children. She tried to feel that
she was a dignified personage now, that she must not be too confidential
with Sam. But she could not keep it up, and the tears hanging in her
eyes were indicated in her voice.
'You are not happy, Mrs. Twycott, I'm afraid?' he said.
'O, of course not! I lost my husband only the year before last.'
'Ah! I meant in another way. You'd like to be home again?'
'This is my home-for life. The house belongs to me. But I understand'-
She let it out then. 'Yes, Sam. I long for home-our home! I should like
to be there, and never leave it, and die there.' But she remembered
herself. 'That's only a momentary feeling. I have a son, you know, a
dear boy. He's at school now.'
'Somewhere handy, I suppose? I see there's lots on 'em along this road.'
'O no! Not in one of these wretched holes! At a public school-one of the
most distinguished in England.'
'Chok' it all! of course! I forget, ma'am, that you've been a lady for
so many years.'
'No, I am not a lady,' she said sadly. 'I never shall be. But he's a
gentleman, and that-makes it-O how difficult for me!'
CHAPTER III
The acquaintance thus oddly reopened proceeded apace. She often looked
out to get a few words with him, by night or by day. Her sorrow was that
she could not accompany her one old friend on foot a little way, and
talk more freely than she could do while he paused before the house. One
night, at the beginning of June, when she was again on the watch after
an absence of some days from the window, he entered the gate and said
softly, 'Now, wouldn't some air do you good? I've only half a load this
morning. Why not ride up to Covent Garden with me? There's a nice seat
on the cabbages, where I've spread a sack. You can be home again in a
cab before anybody is up.'
She refused at first, and then, trembling with excitement, hastily
finished her dressing, and wrapped herself up in cloak and veil,
afterwards sidling downstairs by the aid of the handrail, in a way she
could adopt on an emergency. When she had opened the door she found Sam
on the step, and he lifted her bodily on his strong arm across the
little forecourt into his vehicle. Not a soul was visible or audible in
the infinite length of the straight, flat highway, with its ever-waiting
lamps converging to points in each direction. The air was fresh as
country air at this hour, and the stars shone, except to the north-
eastward, where there was a whitish light-the dawn. Sam carefully placed
her in the seat, and drove on.
They talked as they had talked in old days, Sam pulling himself up now
and then, when he thought himself too familiar. More than once she said
with misgiving that she wondered if she ought to have indulged in the
freak. 'But I am so lonely in my house,' she added, 'and this makes me
so happy!'
'You must come again, dear Mrs. Twycott. There is no time o' day for
taking the air like this.'
It grew lighter and lighter. The sparrows became busy in the streets,
and the city waxed denser around them. When they approached the river it
was day, and on the bridge they beheld the full blaze of morning
sunlight in the direction of St. Paul's, the river glistening towards
it, and not a craft stirring.
Near Covent Garden he put her into a cab, and they parted, looking into
each other's faces like the very old friends they were. She reached home
without adventure, limped to the door, and let herself in with her
latch-key unseen.
The air and Sam's presence had revived her: her cheeks were quite pink-
almost beautiful. She had something to live for in addition to her son.
A woman of pure instincts, she knew there had been nothing really wrong
in the journey, but supposed it conventionally to be very wrong indeed.
Soon, however, she gave way to the temptation of going with him again,
and on this occasion their conversation was distinctly tender, and Sam
said he never should forget her, notwithstanding that she had served him
rather badly at one time. After much hesitation he told her of a plan it
was in his power to carry out, and one he should like to take in hand,
since he did not care for London work: it was to set up as a master
greengrocer down at Aldbrickham, the county-town of their native place.
He knew of an opening-a shop kept by aged people who wished to retire.
'And why don't you do it, then, Sam?' she asked with a slight
heartsinking.
'Because I'm not sure if-you'd join me. I know you wouldn't-couldn't!
Such a lady as ye've been so long, you couldn't be a wife to a man like
me.'
'I hardly suppose I could!' she assented, also frightened at the idea.
'If you could,' he said eagerly, 'you'd on'y have to sit in the back
parlour and look through the glass partition when I was away sometimes-
just to keep an eye on things. The lameness wouldn't hinder that . . .
I'd keep you as genteel as ever I could, dear Sophy-if I might think of
it!' he pleaded.
'Sam, I'll be frank,' she said, putting her hand on his. 'If it were
only myself I would do it, and gladly, though everything I possess would
be lost to me by marrying again.'
'I don't mind that! It's more independent.'
'That's good of you, dear, dear Sam. But there's something else. I have
a son . . . I almost fancy when I am miserable sometimes that he is not
really mine, but one I hold in trust for my late husband. He seems to
belong so little to me personally, so entirely to his dead father. He is
so much educated and I so little that I do not feel dignified enough to
be his mother . . . Well, he would have to be told.'
'Yes. Unquestionably.' Sam saw her thought and her fear. 'Still, you can
do as you like, Sophy-Mrs. Twycott,' he added. 'It is not you who are
the child, but he.'
'Ah, you don't know! Sam, if I could, I would marry you, some day. But
you must wait a while, and let me think.'
It was enough for him, and he was blithe at their parting. Not so she.
To tell Randolph seemed impossible. She could wait till he had gone up
to Oxford, when what she did would affect his life but little. But would
he ever tolerate the idea? And if not, could she defy him?
She had not told him a word when the yearly cricket-match came on at
Lord's between the public schools, though Sam had already gone back to
Aldbrickham. Mrs. Twycott felt stronger than usual: she went to the
match with Randolph, and was able to leave her chair and walk about
occasionally. The bright idea occurred to her that she could casually
broach the subject while moving round among the spectators, when the
boy's spirits were high with interest in the game, and he would weigh
domestic matters as feathers in the scale beside the day's victory. They
promenaded under the lurid July sun, this pair, so wide apart, yet so
near, and Sophy saw the large proportion of boys like her own, in their
broad white collars and dwarf hats, and all around the rows of great
coaches under which was jumbled the d\xE9bris of luxurious luncheons;
bones, pie-crusts, champagne-bottles, glasses, plates, napkins, and the
family silver; while on the coaches sat the proud fathers and mothers;
but never a poor mother like her. If Randolph had not appertained to
these, had not centred all his interests in them, had not cared
exclusively for the class they belonged to, how happy would things have
been! A great huzza at some small performance with the bat burst from
the multitude of relatives, and Randolph jumped wildly into the air to
see what had happened. Sophy fetched up the sentence that had been
already shaped; but she could not get it out. The occasion was, perhaps,
an inopportune one. The contrast between her story and the display of
fashion to which Randolph had grown to regard himself as akin would be
fatal. She awaited a better time.
It was on an evening when they were alone in their plain suburban
residence, where life was not blue but brown, that she ultimately broke
silence, qualifying her announcement of a probable second marriage by
assuring him that it would not take place for a long time to come, when
he would be living quite independently of her.
The boy thought the idea a very reasonable one, and asked if she had
chosen anybody? She hesitated; and he seemed to have a misgiving. He
hoped his stepfather would be a gentleman? he said.
'Not what you call a gentleman,' she answered timidly. 'He'll be much as
I was before I knew your father;' and by degrees she acquainted him with
the whole. The youth's face remained fixed for a moment; then he
flushed, leant on the table, and burst into passionate tears.
His mother went up to him, kissed all of his face that she could get at,
and patted his back as if he were still the baby he once had been,
crying herself the while. When he had somewhat recovered from his
paroxysm he went hastily to his own room and fastened the door.
Parleyings were attempted through the keyhole, outside which she waited
and listened. It was long before he would reply, and when he did it was
to say sternly at her from within: 'I am ashamed of you! It will ruin
me! A miserable boor! a churl! a clown! It will degrade me in the eyes
of all the gentlemen of England!'
'Say no more-perhaps I am wrong! I will struggle against it!' she cried
miserably.
Before Randolph left her that summer a letter arrived from Sam to inform
her that he had been unexpectedly fortunate in obtaining the shop. He
was in possession; it was the largest in the town, combining fruit with
vegetables, and he thought it would form a home worthy even of her some
day. Might he not run up to town to see her?
She met him by stealth, and said he must still wait for her final
answer. The autumn dragged on, and when Randolph was home at Christmas
for the holidays she broached the matter again. But the young gentleman
was inexorable.
It was dropped for months; renewed again; abandoned under his
repugnance; again attempted; and thus the gentle creature reasoned and
pleaded till four or five long years had passed. Then the faithful Sam
revived his suit with some peremptoriness. Sophy's son, now an
undergraduate, was down from Oxford one Easter, when she again opened
the subject. As soon as he was ordained, she argued, he would have a
home of his own, wherein she, with her bad grammar and her ignorance,
would be an encumbrance to him. Better obliterate her as much as
possible.
He showed a more manly anger now, but would not agree. She on her side
was more persistent, and he had doubts whether she could be trusted in
his absence. But by indignation and contempt for her taste he completely
maintained his ascendency; and finally taking her before a little cross
and altar that he had erected in his bedroom for his private devotions,
there bade her kneel, and swear that she would not wed Samuel Hobson
without his consent. 'I owe this to my father!' he said.
The poor woman swore, thinking he would soften as soon as he was
ordained and in full swing of clerical work. But he did not. His
education had by this time sufficiently ousted his humanity to keep him
quite firm; though his mother might have led an idyllic life with her
faithful fruiterer and greengrocer, and nobody have been anything the
worse in the world.
Her lameness became more confirmed as time went on, and she seldom or
never left the house in the long southern thoroughfare, where she seemed
to be pining her heart away. 'Why mayn't I say to Sam that I'll marry
him? Why mayn't I?' she would murmur plaintively to herself when nobody
was near.
Some four years after this date a middle-aged man was standing at the
door of the largest fruiterer's shop in Aldbrickham. He was the
proprietor, but to-day, instead of his usual business attire, he wore a
neat suit of black; and his window was partly shuttered. From the
railway-station a funeral procession was seen approaching: it passed his
door and went out of the town towards the village of Gaymead. The man,
whose eyes were wet, held his hat in his hand as the vehicles moved by;
while from the mourning coach a young smooth-shaven priest in a high
waistcoat looked black as a cloud at the shop keeper standing there.
December 1891.
FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE
CHAPTER I
Whether the utilitarian or the intuitive theory of the moral sense be
upheld, it is beyond question that there are a few subtle-souled persons
with whom the absolute gratuitousness of an act of reparation is an
inducement to perform it; while exhortation as to its necessity would
breed excuses for leaving it undone. The case of Mr. Millborne and Mrs.
Frankland particularly illustrated this, and perhaps something more.
There were few figures better known to the local crossing-sweeper than
Mr. Millborne's, in his daily comings and goings along a familiar and
quiet London street, where he lived inside the door marked eleven,
though not as householder. In age he was fifty at least, and his habits
were as regular as those of a person can be who has no occupation but
the study of how to keep himself employed. He turned almost always to
the right on getting to the end of his street, then he went onward down
Bond Street to his club, whence he returned by precisely the same course
about six o'clock, on foot; or, if he went to dine, later on in a cab.
He was known to be a man of some means, though apparently not wealthy.
Being a bachelor he seemed to prefer his present mode of living as a
lodger in Mrs. Towney's best rooms, with the use of furniture which he
had bought ten times over in rent during his tenancy, to having a house
of his own.
None among his acquaintance tried to know him well, for his manner and
moods did not excite curiosity or deep friendship. He was not a man who
seemed to have anything on his mind, anything to conceal, anything to
impart. From his casual remarks it was generally understood that he was
country-born, a native of some place in Wessex; that he had come to
London as a young man in a banking-house, and had risen to a post of
responsibility; when, by the death of his father, who had been fortunate
in his investments, the son succeeded to an income which led him to
retire from a business life somewhat early.
One evening, when he had been unwell for several days, Doctor Bindon
came in, after dinner, from the adjoining medical quarter, and smoked
with him over the fire. The patient's ailment was not such as to require
much thought, and they talked together on indifferent subjects.
'I am a lonely man, Bindon-a lonely man,' Millborne took occasion to
say, shaking his head gloomily. 'You don't know such loneliness as mine
. . . And the older I get the more I am dissatisfied with myself. And
to-day I have been, through an accident, more than usually haunted by
what, above all other events of my life, causes that dissatisfaction-the
recollection of an unfulfilled promise made twenty years ago. In
ordinary affairs I have always been considered a man of my word and
perhaps it is on that account that a particular vow I once made, and did
not keep, comes back to me with a magnitude out of all proportion (I
daresay) to its real gravity, especially at this time of day. You know
the discomfort caused at night by the half-sleeping sense that a door or
window has been left unfastened, or in the day by the remembrance of
unanswered letters. So does that promise haunt me from time to time, and
has done to-day particularly.'
There was a pause, and they smoked on. Millborne's eyes, though fixed on
the fire, were really regarding attentively a town in the West of
England.
'Yes,' he continued, 'I have never quite forgotten it, though during the
busy years of my life it was shelved and buried under the pressure of my
pursuits. And, as I say, to-day in particular, an incident in the law-
report of a somewhat similar kind has brought it back again vividly.
However, what it was I can tell you in a few words, though no doubt you,
as a man of the world, will smile at the thinness of my skin when you
hear it . . . I came up to town at one-and-twenty, from Toneborough, in
Outer Wessex, where I was born, and where, before I left, I had won the
heart of a young woman of my own age. I promised her marriage, took
advantage of my promise, and-am a bachelor.'
'The old story.'
The other nodded.
'I left the place, and thought at the time I had done a very clever
thing in getting so easily out of an entanglement. But I have lived long
enough for that promise to return to bother me-to be honest, not
altogether as a pricking of the conscience, but as a dissatisfaction
with myself as a specimen of the heap of flesh called humanity. If I
were to ask you to lend me fifty pounds, which I would repay you next
midsummer, and I did not repay you, I should consider myself a shabby
sort of fellow, especially if you wanted the money badly. Yet I promised
that girl just as distinctly; and then coolly broke my word, as if doing
so were rather smart conduct than a mean action, for which the poor
victim herself, encumbered with a child, and not I, had really to pay
the penalty, in spite of certain pecuniary aid that was given. There,
that's the retrospective trouble that I am always unearthing; and you
may hardly believe that though so many years have elapsed, and it is all
gone by and done with, and she must be getting on for an old woman now,
as I am for an old man, it really often destroys my sense of self-
respect still.'
'O, I can understand it. All depends upon the temperament. Thousands of
men would have forgotten all about it; so would you, perhaps, if you had
married and had a family. Did she ever marry?'
'I don't think so. O no-she never did. She left Toneborough, and later
on appeared under another name at Exonbury, in the next county, where
she was not known. It is very seldom that I go down into that part of
the country, but in passing through Exonbury, on one occasion, I learnt
that she was quite a settled resident there, as a teacher of music, or
something of the kind. That much I casually heard when I was there two
or three years ago. But I have never set eyes on her since our original
acquaintance, and should not know her if I met her.'
'Did the child live?' asked the doctor.
'For several years, certainly,' replied his friend. 'I cannot say if she
is living now. It was a little girl. She might be married by this time
as far as years go.'
'And the mother-was she a decent, worthy young woman?'
'O yes; a sensible, quiet girl, neither attractive nor unattractive to
the ordinary observer; simply commonplace. Her position at the time of
our acquaintance was not so good as mine. My father was a solicitor, as
I think I have told you. She was a young girl in a music-shop; and it
was represented to me that it would be beneath my position to marry her.
Hence the result.'
'Well, all I can say is that after twenty years it is probably too late
to think of mending such a matter. It has doubtless by this time mended
itself. You had better dismiss it from your mind as an evil past your
control. Of course, if mother and daughter are alive, or either, you
might settle something upon them, if you were inclined, and had it to
spare.'
'Well, I haven't much to spare; and I have relations in narrow
circumstances-perhaps narrower than theirs. But that is not the point.
Were I ever so rich I feel I could not rectify the past by money. I did
not promise to enrich her. On the contrary, I told her it would probably
be dire poverty for both of us. But I did promise to make her my wife.'
'Then find her and do it,' said the doctor jocularly as he rose to
leave.
'Ah, Bindon. That, of course, is the obvious jest. But I haven't the
slightest desire for marriage; I am quite content to live as I have
lived. I am a bachelor by nature, and instinct, and habit, and
everything. Besides, though I respect her still (for she was not an atom
to blame), I haven't any shadow of love for her. In my mind she exists
as one of those women you think well of, but find uninteresting. It
would be purely with the idea of putting wrong right that I should hunt
her up, and propose to do it off-hand.'
'You don't think of it seriously?' said his surprised friend.
'I sometimes think that I would, if it were practicable; simply, as I
say, to recover my sense of being a man of honour.'
'I wish you luck in the enterprise,' said Doctor Bindon. 'You'll soon be
out of that chair, and then you can put your impulse to the test. But-
after twenty years of silence-I should say, don't!'
CHAPTER II
The doctor's advice remained counterpoised, in Millborne's mind, by the
aforesaid mood of seriousness and sense of principle, approximating
often to religious sentiment, which had been evolving itself in his
breast for months, and even years.
The feeling, however, had no immediate effect upon Mr. Millborne's
actions. He soon got over his trifling illness, and was vexed with
himself for having, in a moment of impulse, confided such a case of
conscience to anybody.
But the force which had prompted it, though latent, remained with him
and ultimately grew stronger. The upshot was that about four months
after the date of his illness and disclosure, Millborne found himself on
a mild spring morning at Paddington Station, in a train that was
starting for the west. His many intermittent thoughts on his broken
promise from time to time, in those hours when loneliness brought him
face to face with his own personality, had at last resulted in this
course.
The decisive stimulus had been given when, a day or two earlier, on
looking into a Post-Office Directory, he learnt that the woman he had
not met for twenty years was still living on at Exonbury under the name
she had assumed when, a year or two after her disappearance from her
native town and his, she had returned from abroad as a young widow with
a child, and taken up her residence at the former city. Her condition
was apparently but little changed, and her daughter seemed to be with
her, their names standing in the Directory as 'Mrs. Leonora Frankland
and Miss Frankland, Teachers of Music and Dancing.'
Mr. Millborne reached Exonbury in the afternoon, and his first business,
before even taking his luggage into the town, was to find the house
occupied by the teachers. Standing in a central and open place it was
not difficult to discover, a well-burnished brass doorplate bearing
their names prominently. He hesitated to enter without further
knowledge, and ultimately took lodgings over a toyshop opposite,
securing a sitting-room which faced a similar drawing or sitting-room at
the Franklands', where the dancing lessons were given. Installed here he
was enabled to make indirectly, and without suspicion, inquiries and
observations on the character of the ladies over the way, which he did
with much deliberateness.
He learnt that the widow, Mrs. Frankland, with her one daughter,
Frances, was of cheerful and excellent repute, energetic and painstaking
with her pupils, of whom she had a good many, and in whose tuition her
daughter assisted her. She was quite a recognized townswoman, and though
the dancing branch of her profession was perhaps a trifle worldly, she
was really a serious-minded lady who, being obliged to live by what she
knew how to teach, balanced matters by lending a hand at charitable
bazaars, assisting at sacred concerts, and giving musical recitations in
aid of funds for bewildering happy savages, and other such enthusiasms
of this enlightened country. Her daughter was one of the foremost of the
bevy of young women who decorated the churches at Easter and Christmas,
was organist in one of those edifices, and had subscribed to the
testimonial of a silver broth-basin that was presented to the Reverend
Mr. Walker as a token of gratitude for his faithful and arduous
intonations of six months as sub-precentor in the Cathedral. Altogether
mother and daughter appeared to be a typical and innocent pair among the
genteel citizens of Exonbury.
As a natural and simple way of advertising their profession they allowed
the windows of the music-room to be a little open, so that you had the
pleasure of hearing all along the street at any hour between sunrise and
sunset fragmentary gems of classical music as interpreted by the young
people of twelve or fourteen who took lessons there. But it was said
that Mrs. Frankland made most of her income by letting out pianos on
hire, and by selling them as agent for the makers.
The report pleased Millborne; it was highly creditable, and far better
than he had hoped. He was curious to get a view of the two women who led
such blameless lives.
He had not long to wait to gain a glimpse of Leonora. It was when she
was standing on her own doorstep, opening her parasol, on the morning
after his arrival. She was thin, though not gaunt; and a good, well-
wearing, thoughtful face had taken the place of the one which had
temporarily attracted him in the days of his nonage. She wore black, and
it became her in her character of widow. The daughter next appeared; she
was a smoothed and rounded copy of her mother, with the same decision in
her mien that Leonora had, and a bounding gait in which he traced a
faint resemblance to his own at her age.
For the first time he absolutely made up his mind to call on them. But
his antecedent step was to send Leonora a note the next morning, stating
his proposal to visit her, and suggesting the evening as the time,
because she seemed to be so greatly occupied in her professional
capacity during the day. He purposely worded his note in such a form as
not to require an answer from her which would be possibly awkward to
write.
No answer came. Naturally he should not have been surprised at this; and
yet he felt a little checked, even though she had only refrained from
volunteering a reply that was not demanded.
At eight, the hour fixed by himself, he crossed over and was passively
admitted by the servant. Mrs. Frankland, as she called herself, received
him in the large music-and-dancing room on the first-floor front, and
not in any private little parlour as he had expected. This cast a
distressingly business-like colour over their first meeting after so
many years of severance. The woman he had wronged stood before him,
well-dressed, even to his metropolitan eyes, and her manner as she came
up to him was dignified even to hardness. She certainly was not glad to
see him. But what could he expect after a neglect of twenty years!
'How do you do, Mr. Millborne?' she said cheerfully, as to any chance
caller. 'I am obliged to receive you here because my daughter has a
friend downstairs.'
'Your daughter-and mine.'
'Ah-yes, yes,' she replied hastily, as if the addition had escaped her
memory. 'But perhaps the less said about that the better, in fairness to
me. You will consider me a widow, please.'
'Certainly, Leonora . . . ' He could not get on, her manner was so cold
and indifferent. The expected scene of sad reproach, subdued to delicacy
by the run of years, was absent altogether. He was obliged to come to
the point without preamble.
'You are quite free, Leonora-I mean as to marriage? There is nobody who
has your promise, or-'
'O yes; quite free, Mr. Millborne,' she said, somewhat surprised.
'Then I will tell you why I have come. Twenty years ago I promised to
make you my wife; and I am here to fulfil that promise. Heaven forgive
my tardiness!'
Her surprise was increased, but she was not agitated. She seemed to
become gloomy, disapproving. 'I could not entertain such an idea at this
time of life,' she said after a moment or two. 'It would complicate
matters too greatly. I have a very fair income, and require no help of
any sort. I have no wish to marry . . . What could have induced you to
come on such an errand now? It seems quite extraordinary, if I may say
so!'
'It must-I daresay it does,' Millborne replied vaguely; 'and I must tell
you that impulse-I mean in the sense of passion-has little to do with
it. I wish to marry you, Leonora; I much desire to marry you. But it is
an affair of conscience, a case of fulfilment. I promised you, and it
was dishonourable of me to go away. I want to remove that sense of
dishonour before I die. No doubt we might get to love each other as
warmly as we did in old times?'
She dubiously shook her head. 'I appreciate your motives, Mr. Millborne;
but you must consider my position; and you will see that, short of the
personal wish to marry, which I don't feel, there is no reason why I
should change my state, even though by so doing I should ease your
conscience. My position in this town is a respected one; I have built it
up by my own hard labours, and, in short, I don't wish to alter it. My
daughter, too, is just on the verge of an engagement to be married, to a
young man who will make her an excellent husband. It will be in every
way a desirable match for her. He is downstairs now.'
'Does she know-anything about me?'
'O no, no; God forbid! Her father is dead and buried to her. So that,
you see, things are going on smoothly, and I don't want to disturb their
progress.'
He nodded. 'Very well,' he said, and rose to go. At the door, however,
he came back again.
'Still, Leonora,' he urged, 'I have come on purpose; and I don't see
what disturbance would be caused. You would simply marry an old friend.
Won't you reconsider? It is no more than right that we should be united,
remembering the girl.'
She shook her head, and patted with her foot nervously.
'Well, I won't detain you,' he added. 'I shall not be leaving Exonbury
yet. You will allow me to see you again?'
'Yes; I don't mind,' she said reluctantly.
The obstacles he had encountered, though they did not reanimate his dead
passion for Leonora, did certainly make it appear indispensable to his
peace of mind to overcome her coldness. He called frequently. The first
meeting with the daughter was a trying ordeal, though he did not feel
drawn towards her as he had expected to be; she did not excite his
sympathies. Her mother confided to Frances the errand of 'her old
friend,' which was viewed by the daughter with strong disfavour. His
desire being thus uncongenial to both, for a long time Millborne made
not the least impression upon Mrs. Frankland. His attentions pestered
her rather than pleased her. He was surprised at her firmness, and it
was only when he hinted at moral reasons for their union that she was
ever shaken. 'Strictly speaking,' he would say, 'we ought, as honest
persons, to marry; and that's the truth of it, Leonora.'
'I have looked at it in that light,' she said quickly. 'It struck me at
the very first. But I don't see the force of the argument. I totally
deny that after this interval of time I am bound to marry you for
honour's sake. I would have married you, as you know well enough, at the
proper time. But what is the use of remedies now?'
They were standing at the window. A scantly-whiskered young man, in
clerical attire, called at the door below. Leonora flushed with
interest.
'Who is he?' said Mr. Millborne.
'My Frances's lover. I am so sorry-she is not at home! Ah! they have
told him where she is, and he has gone to find her . . . I hope that
suit will prosper, at any rate!'
'Why shouldn't it?'
'Well, he cannot marry yet; and Frances sees but little of him now he
has left Exonbury. He was formerly doing duty here, but now he is curate
of St. John's, Ivell, fifty miles up the line. There is a tacit
agreement between them, but-there have been friends of his who object,
because of our vocation. However, he sees the absurdity of such an
objection as that, and is not influenced by it.'
'Your marriage with me would help the match, instead of hindering it, as
you have said.'
'Do you think it would?'
'It certainly would, by taking you out of this business altogether.'
By chance he had found the way to move her somewhat, and he followed it
up. This view was imparted to Mrs. Frankland's daughter, and it led her
to soften her opposition. Millborne, who had given up his lodging in
Exonbury, journeyed to and fro regularly, till at last he overcame her
negations, and she expressed a reluctant assent.
They were married at the nearest church; and the goodwill-whatever that
was-of the music-and-dancing connection was sold to a successor only too
ready to jump into the place, the Millbornes having decided to live in
London.
CHAPTER III
Millborne was a householder in his old district, though not in his old
street, and Mrs. Millborne and their daughter had turned themselves into
Londoners. Frances was well reconciled to the removal by her lover's
satisfaction at the change. It suited him better to travel from Ivell a
hundred miles to see her in London, where he frequently had other
engagements, than fifty in the opposite direction where nothing but
herself required his presence. So here they were, furnished up to the
attics, in one of the small but popular streets of the West district, in
a house whose front, till lately of the complexion of a chimney-sweep,
had been scraped to show to the surprised wayfarer the bright yellow and
red brick that had lain lurking beneath the soot of fifty years.
The social lift that the two women had derived from the alliance was
considerable; but when the exhilaration which accompanies a first
residence in London, the sensation of standing on a pivot of the world,
had passed, their lives promised to be somewhat duller than when, at
despised Exonbury, they had enjoyed a nodding acquaintance with three-
fourths of the town. Mr. Millborne did not criticise his wife; he could
not. Whatever defects of hardness and acidity his original treatment and
the lapse of years might have developed in her, his sense of a realized
idea, of a re-established self-satisfaction, was always thrown into the
scale on her side, and out-weighed all objections.
It was about a month after their settlement in town that the household
decided to spend a week at a watering-place in the Isle of Wight, and
while there the Reverend Percival Cope (the young curate aforesaid) came
to see them, Frances in particular. No formal engagement of the young
pair had been announced as yet, but it was clear that their mutual
understanding could not end in anything but marriage without grievous
disappointment to one of the parties at least. Not that Frances was
sentimental. She was rather of the imperious sort, indeed; and, to say
all, the young girl had not fulfilled her father's expectations of her.
But he hoped and worked for her welfare as sincerely as any father could
do.
Mr. Cope was introduced to the new head of the family, and stayed with
them in the Island two or three days. On the last day of his visit they
decided to venture on a two hours' sail in one of the small yachts which
lay there for hire. The trip had not progressed far before all, except
the curate, found that sailing in a breeze did not quite agree with
them; but as he seemed to enjoy the experience, the other three bore
their condition as well as they could without grimace or complaint, till
the young man, observing their discomfort, gave immediate directions to
tack about. On the way back to port they sat silent, facing each other.
Nausea in such circumstances, like midnight watching, fatigue, trouble,
fright, has this marked effect upon the countenance, that it often
brings out strongly the divergences of the individual from the norm of
his race, accentuating superficial peculiarities to radical
distinctions. Unexpected physiognomies will uncover themselves at these
times in well-known faces; the aspect becomes invested with the spectral
presence of entombed and forgotten ancestors; and family lineaments of
special or exclusive cast, which in ordinary moments are masked by a
stereotyped expression and mien, start up with crude insistence to the
view.
Frances, sitting beside her mother's husband, with Mr. Cope opposite,
was naturally enough much regarded by the curate during the tedious sail
home; at first with sympathetic smiles. Then, as the middle-aged father
and his child grew each gray-faced, as the pretty blush of Frances
disintegrated into spotty stains, and the soft rotundities of her
features diverged from their familiar and reposeful beauty into
elemental lines, Cope was gradually struck with the resemblance between
a pair in their discomfort who in their ease presented nothing to the
eye in common. Mr. Millborne and Frances in their indisposition were
strangely, startlingly alike.
The inexplicable fact absorbed Cope's attention quite. He forgot to
smile at Frances, to hold her hand; and when they touched the shore he
remained sitting for some moments like a man in a trance.
As they went homeward, and recovered their complexions and contours, the
similarities one by one disappeared, and Frances and Mr. Millborne were
again masked by the commonplace differences of sex and age. It was as
if, during the voyage, a mysterious veil had been lifted, temporarily
revealing a strange pantomime of the past.
During the evening he said to her casually: 'Is your step-father a
cousin of your mother, dear Frances?'
'Oh, no,' said she. 'There is no relationship. He was only an old friend
of hers. Why did you suppose such a thing?'
He did not explain, and the next morning started to resume his duties at
Ivell.
Cope was an honest young fellow, and shrewd withal. At home in his quiet
rooms in St. Peter's Street, Ivell, he pondered long and unpleasantly on
the revelations of the cruise. The tale it told was distinct enough, and
for the first time his position was an uncomfortable one. He had met the
Franklands at Exonbury as parishioners, had been attracted by Frances,
and had floated thus far into an engagement which was indefinite only
because of his inability to marry just yet. The Franklands' past had
apparently contained mysteries, and it did not coincide with his
judgment to marry into a family whose mystery was of the sort suggested.
So he sat and sighed, between his reluctance to lose Frances and his
natural dislike of forming a connection with people whose antecedents
would not bear the strictest investigation.
A passionate lover of the old-fashioned sort might possibly never have
halted to weigh these doubts; but though he was in the church Cope's
affections were fastidious-distinctly tempered with the alloys of the
century's decadence. He delayed writing to Frances for some while,
simply because he could not tune himself up to enthusiasm when worried
by suspicions of such a kind.
Meanwhile the Millbornes had returned to London, and Frances was growing
anxious. In talking to her mother of Cope she had innocently alluded to
his curious inquiry if her mother and her step-father were connected by
any tie of cousinship. Mrs. Millborne made her repeat the words. Frances
did so, and watched with inquisitive eyes their effect upon her elder.
'What is there so startling in his inquiry then?' she asked. 'Can it
have anything to do with his not writing to me?'
Her mother flinched, but did not inform her, and Frances also was now
drawn within the atmosphere of suspicion. That night when standing by
chance outside the chamber of her parents she heard for the first time
their voices engaged in a sharp altercation.
The apple of discord had, indeed, been dropped into the house of the
Millbornes. The scene within the chamber-door was Mrs. Millborne
standing before her dressing-table, looking across to her husband in the
dressing-room adjoining, where he was sitting down, his eyes fixed on
the floor.
'Why did you come and disturb my life a second time?' she harshly asked.
'Why did you pester me with your conscience, till I was driven to accept
you to get rid of your importunity? Frances and I were doing well: the
one desire of my life was that she should marry that good young man. And
now the match is broken off by your cruel interference! Why did you show
yourself in my world again, and raise this scandal upon my hard-won
respectability-won by such weary years of labour as none will ever
know!' She bent her face upon the table and wept passionately.
There was no reply from Mr. Millborne. Frances lay awake nearly all that
night, and when at breakfast-time the next morning still no letter
appeared from Mr. Cope, she entreated her mother to go to Ivell and see
if the young man were ill.
Mrs. Millborne went, returning the same day. Frances, anxious and
haggard, met her at the station.
Was all well? Her mother could not say it was; though he was not ill.
One thing she had found out, that it was a mistake to hunt up a man when
his inclinations were to hold aloof. Returning with her mother in the
cab Frances insisted upon knowing what the mystery was which plainly had
alienated her lover. The precise words which had been spoken at the
interview with him that day at Ivell Mrs. Millborne could not be induced
to repeat; but thus far she admitted, that the estrangement was
fundamentally owing to Mr. Millborne having sought her out and married
her.
'And why did he seek you out-and why were you obliged to marry him?'
asked the distressed girl. Then the evidences pieced themselves together
in her acute mind, and, her colour gradually rising, she asked her
mother if what they pointed to was indeed the fact. Her mother admitted
that it was.
A flush of mortification succeeded to the flush of shame upon the young
woman's face. How could a scrupulously correct clergyman and lover like
Mr. Cope ask her to be his wife after this discovery of her irregular
birth? She covered her eyes with her hands in a silent despair.
In the presence of Mr. Millborne they at first suppressed their anguish.
But by and by their feelings got the better of them, and when he was
asleep in his chair after dinner Mrs. Millborne's irritation broke out.
The embittered Frances joined her in reproaching the man who had come as
the spectre to their intended feast of Hymen, and turned its promise to
ghastly failure.
'Why were you so weak, mother, as to admit such an enemy to your house-
one so obviously your evil genius-much less accept him as a husband,
after so long? If you had only told me all, I could have advised you
better! But I suppose I have no right to reproach him, bitter as I feel,
and even though he has blighted my life for ever!'
'Frances, I did hold out; I saw it was a mistake to have any more to say
to a man who had been such an unmitigated curse to me! But he would not
listen; he kept on about his conscience and mine, till I was bewildered,
and said Yes! . . . Bringing us away from a quiet town where we were
known and respected-what an ill-considered thing it was! O the content
of those days! We had society there, people in our own position, who did
not expect more of us than we expected of them. Here, where there is so
much, there is nothing! He said London society was so bright and
brilliant that it would be like a new world. It may be to those who are
in it; but what is that to us two lonely women; we only see it flashing
past! . . . O the fool, the fool that I was!'
Now Millborne was not so soundly asleep as to prevent his hearing these
animadversions that were almost execrations, and many more of the same
sort. As there was no peace for him at home, he went again to his club,
where, since his reunion with Leonora, he had seldom if ever been seen.
But the shadow of the troubles in his household interfered with his
comfort here also; he could not, as formerly, settle down into his
favourite chair with the evening paper, reposeful in the celibate's
sense that where he was his world's centre had its fixture. His world
was now an ellipse, with a dual centrality, of which his own was not the
major.
The young curate of Ivell still held aloof, tantalizing Frances by his
elusiveness. Plainly he was waiting upon events. Millborne bore the
reproaches of his wife and daughter almost in silence; but by degrees he
grew meditative, as if revolving a new idea. The bitter cry about
blighting their existence at length became so impassioned that one day
Millborne calmly proposed to return again to the country; not
necessarily to Exonbury, but, if they were willing, to a little old
manor-house which he had found was to be let, standing a mile from Mr.
Cope's town of Ivell.
They were surprised, and, despite their view of him as the bringer of
ill, were disposed to accede. 'Though I suppose,' said Mrs. Millborne to
him, 'it will end in Mr. Cope's asking you flatly about the past, and
your being compelled to tell him; which may dash all my hopes for
Frances. She gets more and more like you every day, particularly when
she is in a bad temper. People will see you together, and notice it; and
I don't know what may come of it!'
'I don't think they will see us together,' he said; but he entered into
no argument when she insisted otherwise. The removal was eventually
resolved on; the town-house was disposed of; and again came the invasion
by furniture-men and vans, till all the movables and servants were
whisked away. He sent his wife and daughter to an hotel while this was
going on, taking two or three journeys himself to Ivell to superintend
the refixing, and the improvement of the grounds. When all was done he
returned to them in town.
The house was ready for their reception, he told them, and there only
remained the journey. He accompanied them and their personal luggage to
the station only, having, he said, to remain in town a short time on
business with his lawyer. They went, dubious and discontented-for the
much-loved Cope had made no sign.
'If we were going down to live here alone,' said Mrs Millborne to her
daughter in the train; 'and there was no intrusive tell-tale presence! .
. . But let it be!'
The house was a lovely little place in a grove of elms, and they liked
it much. The first person to call upon them as new residents was Mr.
Cope. He was delighted to find that they had come so near, and (though
he did not say this) meant to live in such excellent style. He had not,
however, resumed the manner of a lover.
'Your father spoils all!' murmured Mrs. Millborne.
But three days later she received a letter from her husband, which
caused her no small degree of astonishment. It was written from
Boulogne.
It began with a long explanation of settlements of his property, in
which he had been engaged since their departure. The chief feature in
the business was that Mrs. Millborne found herself the absolute owner of
a comfortable sum in personal estate, and Frances of a life-interest in
a larger sum, the principal to be afterwards divided amongst her
children if she had any. The remainder of his letter ran as hereunder:-
'I have learnt that there are some derelictions of duty which cannot be
blotted out by tardy accomplishment. Our evil actions do not remain
isolated in the past, waiting only to be reversed: like locomotive
plants they spread and re-root, till to destroy the original stem has no
material effect in killing them. I made a mistake in searching you out;
I admit it; whatever the remedy may be in such cases it is not marriage,
and the best thing for you and me is that you do not see me more. You
had better not seek me, for you will not be likely to find me: you are
well provided for, and we may do ourselves more harm than good by
meeting again.
'F. M.'
Millborne, in short, disappeared from that day forward. But a searching
inquiry would have revealed that, soon after the Millbornes went to
Ivell, an Englishman, who did not give the name of Millborne, took up
his residence in Brussels; a man who might have been recognized by Mrs.
Millborne if she had met him. One afternoon in the ensuing summer, when
this gentleman was looking over the English papers, he saw the
announcement of Miss Frances Frankland's marriage. She had become the
Reverend Mrs. Cope.
'Thank God!' said the gentleman.
But his momentary satisfaction was far from being happiness. As he
formerly had been weighted with a bad conscience, so now was he burdened
with the heavy thought which oppressed Antigone, that by honourable
observance of a rite he had obtained for himself the reward of
dishonourable laxity. Occasionally he had to be helped to his lodgings
by his servant from the Cercle he frequented, through having imbibed a
little too much liquor to be able to take care of himself. But he was
harmless, and even when he had been drinking said little.
March 1891.
A TRAGEDY OF TWO AMBITIONS
CHAPTER I
The shouts of the village-boys came in at the window, accompanied by
broken laughter from loungers at the inn-door; but the brothers
Halborough worked on.
They were sitting in a bedroom of the master-millwright's house, engaged
in the untutored reading of Greek and Latin. It was no tale of Homeric
blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that
inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding
away at the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and
difficult Epistle to the Hebrews.
The Dog-day sun in its decline reached the low ceiling with slanting
sides, and the shadows of the great goat's-willow swayed and
interchanged upon the walls like a spectral army manoeuvring. The open
casement which admitted the remoter sounds now brought the voice of some
one close at hand. It was their sister, a pretty girl of fourteen, who
stood in the court below.
'I can see the tops of your heads! What's the use of staying up there? I
like you not to go out with the street-boys; but do come and play with
me!'
They treated her as an inadequate interlocutor, and put her off with
some slight word. She went away disappointed. Presently there was a dull
noise of heavy footsteps at the side of the house, and one of the
brothers sat up. 'I fancy I hear him coming,' he murmured, his eyes on
the window.
A man in the light drab clothes of an old-fashioned country tradesman
approached from round the corner, reeling as he came. The elder son
flushed with anger, rose from his books, and descended the stairs. The
younger sat on, till, after the lapse of a few minutes, his brother re-
entered the room.
'Did Rosa see him?'
'No.'
'Nor anybody?'
'No.'
'What have you done with him?'
'He's in the straw-shed. I got him in with some trouble, and he has
fallen asleep. I thought this would be the explanation of his absence!
No stones dressed for Miller Kench, the great wheel of the saw-mills
waiting for new float-boards, even the poor folk not able to get their
waggons wheeled.'
'What is the use of poring over this!' said the younger, shutting up
Donnegan's Lexicon with a slap. 'O if we had only been able to keep
mother's nine hundred pounds, what we could have done!'
'How well she had estimated the sum necessary! Four hundred and fifty
each, she thought. And I have no doubt that we could have done it on
that, with care.'
This loss of the nine hundred pounds was the sharp thorn of their crown.
It was a sum which their mother had amassed with great exertion and
self-denial, by adding to a chance legacy such other small amounts as
she could lay hands on from time to time; and she had intended with the
hoard to indulge the dear wish of her heart-that of sending her sons,
Joshua and Cornelius, to one of the Universities, having been informed
that from four hundred to four hundred and fifty each might carry them
through their terms with such great economy as she knew she could trust
them to practise. But she had died a year or two before this time, worn
out by too keen a strain towards these ends; and the money, coming
unreservedly into the hands of their father, had been nearly dissipated.
With its exhaustion went all opportunity and hope of a university degree
for the sons.
'It drives me mad when I think of it,' said Joshua, the elder. 'And here
we work and work in our own bungling way, and the utmost we can hope for
is a term of years as national schoolmasters, and possible admission to
a Theological college, and ordination as despised licentiates.'
The anger of the elder was reflected as simple sadness in the face of
the other. 'We can preach the Gospel as well without a hood on our
surplices as with one,' he said with feeble consolation.
'Preach the Gospel-true,' said Joshua with a slight pursing of mouth.
'But we can't rise!'
'Let us make the best of it, and grind on.'
The other was silent, and they drearily bent over their books again.
The cause of all this gloom, the millwright Halborough, now snoring in
the shed, had been a thriving master-machinist, notwithstanding his free
and careless disposition, till a taste for a more than adequate quantity
of strong liquor took hold of him; since when his habits had interfered
with his business sadly. Already millers went elsewhere for their gear,
and only one set of hands was now kept going, though there were formerly
two. Already he found a difficulty in meeting his men at the week's end,
and though they had been reduced in number there was barely enough work
to do for those who remained.
The sun dropped lower and vanished, the shouts of the village children
ceased to resound, darkness cloaked the students' bedroom, and all the
scene outwardly breathed peace. None knew of the fevered youthful
ambitions that throbbed in two breasts within the quiet creeper-covered
walls of the millwright's house.
In a few months the brothers left the village of their birth to enter
themselves as students in a training college for schoolmasters; first
having placed their young sister Rosa under as efficient a tuition at a
fashionable watering-place as the means at their disposal could command.
CHAPTER II
A man in semi-clerical dress was walking along the road which led from
the railway-station into a provincial town. As he walked he read
persistently, only looking up once now and then to see that he was
keeping on the foot track and to avoid other passengers. At those
moments, whoever had known the former students at the millwright's would
have perceived that one of them, Joshua Halborough, was the peripatetic
reader here.
What had been simple force in the youth's face was energized judgment in
the man's. His character was gradually writing itself out in his
countenance. That he was watching his own career with deeper and deeper
interest, that he continually 'heard his days before him,' and cared to
hear little else, might have been hazarded from what was seen there. His
ambitions were, in truth, passionate, yet controlled; so that the germs
of many more plans than ever blossomed to maturity had place in him; and
forward visions were kept purposely in twilight, to avoid distraction.
Events so far had been encouraging. Shortly after assuming the
mastership of his first school he had obtained an introduction to the
Bishop of a diocese far from his native county, who had looked upon him
as a promising young man and taken him in hand. He was now in the second
year of his residence at the theological college of the cathedral-town,
and would soon be presented for ordination.
He entered the town, turned into a back street, and then into a yard,
keeping his book before him till he set foot under the arch of the
latter place. Round the arch was written 'National School,' and the
stonework of the jambs was worn away as nothing but boys and the waves
of ocean will wear it. He was soon amid the sing-song accents of the
scholars.
His brother Cornelius, who was the schoolmaster here, laid down the
pointer with which he was directing attention to the Capes of Europe,
and came forward.
'That's his brother Jos!' whispered one of the sixth standard boys.
'He's going to be a pa'son, he's now at college.'
'Corney is going to be one too, when he's saved enough money,' said
another.
After greeting his brother, whom he had not seen for several months, the
junior began to explain his system of teaching geography.
But Halborough the elder took no interest in the subject. 'How about
your own studies?' he asked. 'Did you get the books I sent?'
Cornelius had received them, and he related what he was doing.
'Mind you work in the morning. What time do you get up?'
The younger replied: 'Half-past five.'
'Half-past four is not a minute too soon this time of the year. There is
no time like the morning for construing. I don't know why, but when I
feel even too dreary to read a novel I can translate-there is something
mechanical about it I suppose. Now, Cornelius, you are rather
behindhand, and have some heavy reading before you if you mean to get
out of this next Christmas.'
'I am afraid I have.'
'We must soon sound the Bishop. I am sure you will get a title without
difficulty when he has heard all. The sub-dean, the principal of my
college, says that the best plan will be for you to come there when his
lordship is present at an examination, and he'll get you a personal
interview with him. Mind you make a good impression upon him. I found in
my case that that was everything and doctrine almost nothing. You'll do
for a deacon, Corney, if not for a priest.'
The younger remained thoughtful. 'Have you heard from Rosa lately?' he
asked; 'I had a letter this morning.'
'Yes. The little minx writes rather too often. She is homesick-though
Brussels must be an attractive place enough. But she must make the most
of her time over there. I thought a year would be enough for her, after
that high-class school at Sandbourne, but I have decided to give her
two, and make a good job of it, expensive as the establishment is.'
Their two rather harsh faces had softened directly they began to speak
of their sister, whom they loved more ambitiously than they loved
themselves.
'But where is the money to come from, Joshua?'
'I have already got it.' He looked round, and finding that some boys
were near withdrew a few steps. 'I have borrowed it at five per cent.
from the farmer who used to occupy the farm next our field. You remember
him.'
'But about paying him?'
'I shall pay him by degrees out of my stipend. No, Cornelius, it was no
use to do the thing by halves. She promises to be a most attractive, not
to say beautiful, girl. I have seen that for years; and if her face is
not her fortune, her face and her brains together will be, if I observe
and contrive aright. That she should be, every inch of her, an
accomplished and refined woman, was indispensable for the fulfilment of
her destiny, and for moving onwards and upwards with us; and she'll do
it, you will see. I'd half starve myself rather than take her away from
that school now.'
They looked round the school they were in. To Cornelius it was natural
and familiar enough, but to Joshua, with his limited human sympathies,
who had just dropped in from a superior sort of place, the sight jarred
unpleasantly, as being that of something he had left behind. 'I shall be
glad when you are out of this,' he said, 'and in your pulpit, and well
through your first sermon.'
'You may as well say inducted into my fat living, while you are about
it.'
'Ah, well-don't think lightly of the Church. There's a fine work for any
man of energy in the Church, as you'll find,' he said fervidly.
'Torrents of infidelity to be stemmed, new views of old subjects to be
expounded, truths in spirit to be substituted for truths in the letter .
. . ' He lapsed into reverie with the vision of his career, persuading
himself that it was ardour for Christianity which spurred him on, and
not pride of place. He had shouldered a body of doctrine, and was
prepared to defend it tooth and nail, solely for the honour and glory
that warriors win.
'If the Church is elastic, and stretches to the shape of the time,
she'll last, I suppose,' said Cornelius. 'If not-. Only think, I bought
a copy of Paley's Evidences, best edition, broad margins, excellent
preservation, at a bookstall the other day for-ninepence; and I thought
that at this rate Christianity must be in rather a bad way.'
'No, no!' said the other almost, angrily. 'It only shows that such
defences are no longer necessary. Men's eyes can see the truth without
extraneous assistance. Besides, we are in for Christianity, and must
stick to her whether or no. I am just now going right through Pusey's
Library of the Fathers.'
'You'll be a bishop, Joshua, before you have done!'
'Ah!' said the other bitterly, shaking his head. 'Perhaps I might have
been-I might have been! But where is my D.D. or LL.D.; and how be a
bishop without that kind of appendage? Archbishop Tillotson was the son
of a Sowerby clothier, but he was sent to Clare College. To hail Oxford
or Cambridge as alma mater is not for me-for us! My God! when I think of
what we should have been-what fair promise has been blighted by that
cursed, worthless-'
'Hush, hush! . . . But I feel it, too, as much as you. I have seen it
more forcibly lately. You would have obtained your degree long before
this time-possibly fellowship-and I should have been on my way to mine.'
'Don't talk of it,' said the other. 'We must do the best we can.'
They looked out of the window sadly, through the dusty panes, so high up
that only the sky was visible. By degrees the haunting trouble loomed
again, and Cornelius broke the silence with a whisper: 'He has called on
me!'
The living pulses died on Joshua's face, which grew arid as a
cIRONlinker. 'When was that?' he asked quickly.
'Last week.'
'How did he get here-so many miles?'
'Came by railway. He came to ask for money.'
'Ah!'
'He says he will call on you.'
Joshua replied resignedly. The theme of their conversation spoilt his
buoyancy for that afternoon. He returned in the evening, Cornelius
accompanying him to the station; but he did not read in the train which
took him back to the Fountall Theological College, as he had done on the
way out. That ineradicable trouble still remained as a squalid spot in
the expanse of his life. He sat with the other students in the cathedral
choir next day; and the recollection of the trouble obscured the purple
splendour thrown by the panes upon the floor.
It was afternoon. All was as still in the Close as a cathedral-green can
be between the Sunday services, and the incessant cawing of the rooks
was the only sound. Joshua Halborough had finished his ascetic lunch,
and had gone into the library, where he stood for a few moments looking
out of the large window facing the green. He saw walking slowly across
it a man in a fustian coat and a battered white hat with a much- ruffled
nap, having upon his arm a tall gipsy-woman wearing long brass earrings.
The man was staring quizzically at the west front of the cathedral, and
Halborough recognized in him the form and features of his father. Who
the woman was he knew not. Almost as soon as Joshua became conscious of
these things, the sub-dean, who was also the principal of the college,
and of whom the young man stood in more awe than of the Bishop himself,
emerged from the gate and entered a path across the Close. The pair met
the dignitary, and to Joshua's horror his father turned and addressed
the sub-dean.
What passed between them he could not tell. But as he stood in a cold
sweat he saw his father place his hand familiarly on the sub-dean's
shoulder; the shrinking response of the latter, and his quick
withdrawal, told his feeling. The woman seemed to say nothing, but when
the sub-dean had passed by they came on towards the college gate.
Halborough flew along the corridor and out at a side door, so as to
intercept them before they could reach the front entrance, for which
they were making. He caught them behind a clump of laurel.
'By Jerry, here's the very chap! Well, you're a fine fellow, Jos, never
to send your father as much as a twist o' baccy on such an occasion, and
to leave him to travel all these miles to find ye out!'
'First, who is this?' said Joshua Halborough with pale dignity, waving
his hand towards the buxom woman with the great earrings.
'Dammy, the mis'ess! Your step-mother! Didn't you know I'd married? She
helped me home from market one night, and we came to terms, and struck
the bargain. Didn't we, Selinar?'
'Oi, by the great Lord an' we did!' simpered the lady.
'Well, what sort of a place is this you are living in?' asked the
millwright. 'A kind of house-of-correction, apparently?'
Joshua listened abstractedly, his features set to resignation. Sick at
heart he was going to ask them if they were in want of any necessary,
any meal, when his father cut him short by saying, 'Why, we've called to
ask ye to come round and take pot-luck with us at the Cock-and-Bottle,
where we've put up for the day, on our way to see mis'ess's friends at
Binegar Fair, where they'll be lying under canvas for a night or two. As
for the victuals at the Cock I can't testify to 'em at all; but for the
drink, they've the rarest drop of Old Tom that I've tasted for many a
year.'
'Thanks; but I am a teetotaller; and I have lunched,' said Joshua, who
could fully believe his father's testimony to the gin, from the odour of
his breath. 'You see we have to observe regular habits here; and I
couldn't be seen at the Cock-and-Bottle just now.'
'O dammy, then don't come, your reverence. Perhaps you won't mind
standing treat for those who can be seen there?'
'Not a penny,' said the younger firmly. 'You've had enough already.'
'Thank you for nothing. By the bye, who was that spindle-legged, shoe-
buckled parson feller we met by now? He seemed to think we should poison
him!'
Joshua remarked coldly that it was the principal of his college,
guardedly inquiring, 'Did you tell him whom you were come to see?'
His father did not reply. He and his strapping gipsy wife-if she were
his wife-stayed no longer, and disappeared in the direction of the High
Street. Joshua Halborough went back to the library. Determined as was
his nature, he wept hot tears upon the books, and was immeasurably more
wretched that afternoon than the unwelcome millwright. In the evening he
sat down and wrote a letter to his brother, in which, after stating what
had happened, and expatiating upon this new disgrace in the gipsy wife,
he propounded a plan for raising money sufficient to induce the couple
to emigrate to Canada. 'It is our only chance,' he said. 'The case as it
stands is maddening. For a successful painter, sculptor, musician,
author, who takes society by storm, it is no drawback, it is sometimes
even a romantic recommendation, to hail from outcasts and profligates.
But for a clergyman of the Church of England! Cornelius, it is fatal! To
succeed in the Church, people must believe in you, first of all, as a
gentleman, secondly as a man of means, thirdly as a scholar, fourthly as
a preacher, fifthly, perhaps, as a Christian,-but always first as a
gentleman, with all their heart and soul and strength. I would have
faced the fact of being a small machinist's son, and have taken my
chance, if he'd been in any sense respectable and decent. The essence of
Christianity is humility, and by the help of God I would have brazened
it out. But this terrible vagabondage and disreputable connection! If he
does not accept my terms and leave the country, it will extinguish us
and kill me. For how can we live, and relinquish our high aim, and bring
down our dear sister Rosa to the level of a gipsy's step-daughter?'
CHAPTER III
There was excitement in the parish of Narrobourne one day. The
congregation had just come out from morning service, and the whole
conversation was of the new curate, Mr. Halborough, who had officiated
for the first time, in the absence of the rector.
Never before had the feeling of the villagers approached a level which
could be called excitement on such a matter as this. The droning which
had been the rule in that quiet old place for a century seemed ended at
last. They repeated the text to each other as a refrain: 'O Lord, be
thou my helper!' Not within living memory till to-day had the subject of
the sermon formed the topic of conversation from the church door to
church-yard gate, to the exclusion of personal remarks on those who had
been present, and on the week's news in general.
The thrilling periods of the preacher hung about their minds all that
day. The parish being steeped in indifferentism, it happened that when
the youths and maidens, middle-aged and old people, who had attended
church that morning, recurred as by a fascination to what Halborough had
said, they did so more or less indirectly, and even with the subterfuge
of a light laugh that was not real, so great was their shyness under the
novelty of their sensations.
What was more curious than that these unconventional villagers should
have been excited by a preacher of a new school after forty years of
familiarity with the old hand who had had charge of their souls, was the
effect of Halborough's address upon the occupants of the manor-house
pew, including the owner of the estate. These thought they knew how to
discount the mere sensational sermon, how to minimize flash oratory to
its bare proportions; but they had yielded like the rest of the assembly
to the charm of the newcomer.
Mr. Fellmer, the landowner, was a young widower, whose mother, still in
the prime of life, had returned to her old position in the family
mansion since the death of her son's wife in the year after her
marriage, at the birth of a fragile little girl. From the date of his
loss to the present time, Fellmer had led an inactive existence in the
seclusion of the parish; a lack of motive seemed to leave him listless.
He had gladly reinstated his mother in the gloomy house, and his main
occupation now lay in stewarding his estate, which was not large. Mrs.
Fellmer, who had sat beside him under Halborough this morning, was a
cheerful, straightforward woman, who did her marketing and her alms-
giving in person, was fond of old-fashioned flowers, and walked about
the village on very wet days visiting the parishioners. These, the only
two great ones of Narrobourne, were impressed by Joshua's eloquence as
much as the cottagers.
Halborough had been briefly introduced to them on his arrival some days
before, and, their interest being kindled, they waited a few moments
till he came out of the vestry, to walk down the churchyard-path with
him. Mrs. Fellmer spoke warmly of the sermon, of the good fortune of the
parish in his advent, and hoped he had found comfortable quarters.
Halborough, faintly flushing, said that he had obtained very fair
lodgings in the roomy house of a farmer, whom he named.
She feared he would find it very lonely, especially in the evenings, and
hoped they would see a good deal of him. When would he dine with them?
Could he not come that day-it must be so dull for him the first Sunday
evening in country lodgings?
Halborough replied that it would give him much pleasure, but that he
feared he must decline. 'I am not altogether alone,' he said. 'My
sister, who has just returned from Brussels, and who felt, as you do,
that I should be rather dismal by myself, has accompanied me hither to
stay a few days till she has put my rooms in order and set me going. She
was too fatigued to come to church, and is waiting for me now at the
farm.'
'Oh, but bring your sister-that will be still better! I shall be
delighted to know her. How I wish I had been aware! Do tell her, please,
that we had no idea of her presence.'
Halborough assured Mrs. Fellmer that he would certainly bear the
message; but as to her coming he was not so sure. The real truth was,
however, that the matter would be decided by him, Rosa having an almost
filial respect for his wishes. But he was uncertain as to the state of
her wardrobe, and had determined that she should not enter the manor-
house at a disadvantage that evening, when there would probably be
plenty of opportunities in the future of her doing so becomingly.
He walked to the farm in long strides. This, then, was the outcome of
his first morning's work as curate here. Things had gone fairly well
with him. He had been ordained; he was in a comfortable parish, where he
would exercise almost sole supervision, the rector being infirm. He had
made a deep impression at starting, and the absence of a hood seemed to
have done him no harm. Moreover, by considerable persuasion and payment,
his father and the dark woman had been shipped off to Canada, where they
were not likely to interfere greatly with his interests.
Rosa came out to meet him. 'Ah! you should have gone to church like a
good girl,' he said.
'Yes-I wished I had afterwards. But I do so hate church as a rule that
even your preaching was underestimated in my mind. It was too bad of
me!'
The girl who spoke thus playfully was fair, tall, and sylph-like, in a
muslin dress, and with just the coquettish d\xE9sinvolture which an English
girl brings home from abroad, and loses again after a few months of
native life. Joshua was the reverse of playful; the world was too
important a concern for him to indulge in light moods. He told her in
decided, practical phraseology of the invitation.
'Now, Rosa, we must go-that's settled-if you've a dress that can be made
fit to wear all on the hop like this. You didn't, of course, think of
bringing an evening dress to such an out-of-the-way place?'
But Rosa had come from the wrong city to be caught napping in those
matters. 'Yes, I did,' said she. 'One never knows what may turn up.'
'Well done! Then off we go at seven.'
The evening drew on, and at dusk they started on foot, Rosa pulling up
the edge of her skirt under her cloak out of the way of the dews, so
that it formed a great wind-bag all round her, and carrying her satin
shoes under her arm. Joshua would not let her wait till she got indoors
before changing them, as she proposed, but insisted on her performing
that operation under a tree, so that they might enter as if they had not
walked. He was nervously formal about such trifles, while Rosa took the
whole proceeding-walk, dressing, dinner, and all-as a pastime. To Joshua
it was a serious step in life.
A more unexpected kind of person for a curate's sister was never
presented at a dinner. The surprise of Mrs. Fellmer was unconcealed. She
had looked forward to a Dorcas, or Martha, or Rhoda at the outside, and
a shade of misgiving crossed her face. It was possible that, had the
young lady accompanied her brother to church, there would have been no
dining at Narrobourne House that day.
Not so with the young widower, her son. He resembled a sleeper who had
awaked in a summer noon expecting to find it only dawn. He could
scarcely help stretching his arms and yawning in their faces, so strong
was his sense of being suddenly aroused to an unforeseen thing. When
they had sat down to table he at first talked to Rosa somewhat with the
air of a ruler in the land; but the woman lurking in the acquaintance
soon brought him to his level, and the girl from Brussels saw him
looking at her mouth, her hands, her contour, as if he could not quite
comprehend how they got created: then he dropped into the more
satisfactory stage which discerns no particulars.
He talked but little; she said much. The homeliness of the Fellmers, to
her view, though they were regarded with such awe down here, quite
disembarrassed her. The squire had become so unpractised, had dropped so
far into the shade during the last year or so of his life, that he had
almost forgotten what the world contained till this evening reminded
him. His mother, after her first moments of doubt, appeared to think
that he must be left to his own guidance, and gave her attention to
Joshua.
With all his foresight and doggedness of aim, the result of that dinner
exceeded Halborough's expectations. In weaving his ambitions he had
viewed his sister Rosa as a slight, bright thing to be helped into
notice by his abilities; but it now began to dawn upon him that the
physical gifts of nature to her might do more for them both than
nature's intellectual gifts to himself. While he was patiently boring
the tunnel Rosa seemed about to fly over the mountain.
He wrote the next day to his brother, now occupying his own old rooms in
the theological college, telling him exultingly of the unanticipated
d\xE9but of Rosa at the manor-house. The next post brought him a reply of
congratulation, dashed with the counteracting intelligence that his
father did not like Canada-that his wife had deserted him, which made
him feel so dreary that he thought of returning home.
In his recent satisfaction at his own successes Joshua Halborough had
well-nigh forgotten his chronic trouble-latterly screened by distance.
But it now returned upon him; he saw more in this brief announcement
than his brother seemed to see. It was the cloud no bigger than a man's
hand.
CHAPTER IV
The following December, a day or two before Christmas, Mrs. Fellmer and
her son were walking up and down the broad gravel path which bordered
the east front of the house. Till within the last half-hour the morning
had been a drizzling one, and they had just emerged for a short turn
before luncheon.
'You see, dear mother,' the son was saying, 'it is the peculiarity of my
position which makes her appear to me in such a desirable light. When
you consider how I have been crippled at starting, how my life has been
maimed; that I feel anything like publicity distasteful, that I have ye
no political ambition, and that my chief aim and hope lie in the
education of the little thing Annie has left me, you must see how
desirable a wife like Miss Halborough would be, to prevent my becoming a
mere vegetable.'
'If you adore her, I suppose you must have her!' replied his mother with
dry indirectness. 'But you'll find that she will not be content to live
on here as you do, giving her whole mind to a young child.'
'That's just where we differ. Her very disqualification, that of being a
nobody, as you call it, is her recommendation in my eyes. Her lack of
influential connections limits her ambition. From what I know of her, a
life in this place is all that she would wish for. She would never care
to go outside the park-gates if it were necessary to stay within.'
'Being in love with her, Albert, and meaning to marry her, you invent
your practical reasons to make the case respectable. Well, do as you
will; I have no authority over you, so why should you consult me? You
mean to propose on this very occasion, no doubt. Don't you, now?'
'By no means. I am merely revolving the idea in my mind. If on further
acquaintance she turns out to be as good as she has hitherto seemed-
well, I shall see. Admit, now, that you like her.'
'I readily admit it. She is very captivating at first sight. But as a
stepmother to your child! You seem mighty anxious, Albert, to get rid of
me!'
'Not at all. And I am not so reckless as you think. I don't make up my
mind in a hurry. But the thought having occurred to me, I mention it to
you at once, mother. If you dislike it, say so.'
'I don't say anything. I will try to make the best of it if you are
determined. When does she come?'
'To-morrow.'
All this time there were great preparations in train at the curate's,
who was now a householder. Rosa, whose two or three weeks' stay on two
occasions earlier in the year had so affected the squire, was coming
again, and at the same time her younger brother Cornelius, to make up a
family party. Rosa, who journeyed from the Midlands, could not arrive
till late in the evening, but Cornelius was to get there in the
afternoon, Joshua going out to meet him in his walk across the fields
from the railway.
Everything being ready in Joshua's modest abode he started on his way,
his heart buoyant and thankful, if ever it was in his life. He was of
such good report himself that his brother's path into holy orders
promised to be unexpectedly easy; and he longed to compare experiences
with him, even though there was on hand a more exciting matter still.
From his youth he had held that, in old-fashioned country places, the
Church conferred social prestige up to a certain point at a cheaper
price than any other profession or pursuit; and events seemed to be
proving him right.
He had walked about half an hour when he saw Cornelius coming along the
path; and in a few minutes the two brothers met. The experiences of
Cornelius had been less immediately interesting than those of Joshua,
but his personal position was satisfactory, and there was nothing to
account for the singularly subdued manner that he exhibited, which at
first Joshua set down to the fatigue of over-study; and he proceeded to
the subject of Rosa's arrival in the evening, and the probable
consequences of this her third visit. 'Before next Easter she'll be his
wife, my boy,' said Joshua with grave exultation.
Cornelius shook his head. 'She comes too late!' he returned.
'What do you mean?'
'Look here.' He produced the Fountall paper, and placed his finger on a
paragraph, which Joshua read. It appeared under the report of Petty
Sessions, and was a commonplace case of disorderly conduct, in which a
man was sent to prison for seven days for breaking windows in that town.
'Well?' said Joshua.
'It happened during an evening that I was in the street; and the
offender is our father.'
'Not-how-I sent him more money on his promising to stay in Canada?'
'He is home, safe enough.' Cornelius in the same gloomy tone gave the
remainder of his information. He had witnessed the scene, unobserved of
his father, and had heard him say that he was on his way to see his
daughter, who was going to marry a rich gentleman. The only good fortune
attending the untoward incident was that the millwright's name had been
printed as Joshua Alborough.
'Beaten! We are to be beaten on the eve of our expected victory!' said
the elder brother. 'How did he guess that Rosa was likely to marry? Good
Heaven Cornelius, you seem doomed to bring bad news always, do you not!'
'I do,' said Cornelius. 'Poor Rosa!'
It was almost in tears, so great was their heart-sickness and shame,
that the brothers walked the remainder of the way to Joshua's dwelling.
In the evening they set out to meet Rosa, bringing her to the village in
a fly; and when she had come into the house, and was sitting down with
them, they almost forgot their secret anxiety in contemplating her, who
knew nothing about it.
Next day the Fellmers came, and the two or three days after that were a
lively time. That the squire was yielding to his impulses-making up his
mind-there could be no doubt. On Sunday Cornelius read the lessons, and
Joshua preached. Mrs. Fellmer was quite maternal towards Rosa, and it
appeared that she had decided to welcome the inevitable with a good
grace. The pretty girl was to spend yet another afternoon with the elder
lady, superintending some parish treat at the house in observance of
Christmas, and afterwards to stay on to dinner, her brothers to fetch
her in the evening. They were also invited to dine, but they could not
accept owing to an engagement.
The engagement was of a sombre sort. They were going to meet their
father, who would that day be released from Fountall Gaol, and try to
persuade him to keep away from Narrobourne. Every exertion was to be
made to get him back to Canada, to his old home in the Midlands-
anywhere, so that he would not impinge disastrously upon their courses,
and blast their sister's prospects of the auspicious marriage which was
just then hanging in the balance.
As soon as Rosa had been fetched away by her friends at the manor-house
her brothers started on their expedition, without waiting for dinner or
tea. Cornelius, to whom the millwright always addressed his letters when
he wrote any, drew from his pocket and re-read as he walked the curt
note which had led to this journey being undertaken; it was despatched
by their father the night before, immediately upon his liberation, and
stated that he was setting out for Narrobourne at the moment of writing;
that having no money he would be obliged to walk all the way; that he
calculated on passing through the intervening town of Ivell about six on
the following day, where he should sup at the Castle Inn, and where he
hoped they would meet him with a carriage-and-pair, or some other such
conveyance, that he might not disgrace them by arriving like a tramp.
'That sounds as if he gave a thought to our position,' said Cornelius.
Joshua knew the satire that lurked in the paternal words, and said
nothing. Silence prevailed during the greater part of their journey. The
lamps were lighted in Ivell when they entered the streets, and
Cornelius, who was quite unknown in this neighbourhood, and who,
moreover, was not in clerical attire, decided that he should be the one
to call at the Castle Inn. Here, in answer to his inquiry under the
darkness of the archway, they told him that such a man as he had
described left the house about a quarter of an hour earlier, after
making a meal in the kitchen-settle. He was rather the worse for liquor.
'Then,' said Joshua, when Cornelius joined him outside with this
intelligence, 'we must have met and passed him! And now that I think of
it, we did meet some one who was unsteady in his gait, under the trees
on the other side of Hendford Hill, where it was too dark to see him.'
They rapidly retraced their steps; but for a long stretch of the way
home could discern nobody. When, however, they had gone about three-
quarters of the distance, they became conscious of an irregular footfall
in front of them, and could see a whitish figure in the gloom. They
followed dubiously. The figure met another wayfarer-the single one that
had been encountered upon this lonely road-and they distinctly heard him
ask the way to Narrobourne. The stranger replied-what was quite true-
that the nearest way was by turning in at the stile by the next bridge,
and following the footpath which branched thence across the meadows.
When the brothers reached the stile they also entered the path, but did
not overtake the subject of their worry till they had crossed two or
three meads, and the lights from Narrobourne manor-house were visible
before them through the trees. Their father was no longer walking; he
was seated against the wet bank of an adjoining hedge. Observing their
forms he shouted, 'I'm going to Narrobourne; who may you be?'
They went up to him, and revealed themselves, reminding him of the plan
which he had himself proposed in his note, that they should meet him at
Ivell.
'By Jerry, I'd forgot it!' he said. 'Well, what do you want me to do?'
His tone was distinctly quarrelsome.
A long conversation followed, which became embittered at the first hint
from them that he should not come to the village. The millwright drew a
quart bottle from his pocket, and challenged them to drink if they meant
friendly and called themselves men. Neither of the two had touched
alcohol for years, but for once they thought it best to accept, so as
not to needlessly provoke him.
'What's in it?' said Joshua.
'A drop of weak gin-and-water. It won't hurt ye. Drin' from the bottle.'
Joshua did so, and his father pushed up the bottom of the vessel so as
to make him swallow a good deal in spite of himself. It went down into
his stomach like molten lead.
'Ha, ha, that's right!' said old Halborough. 'But 'twas raw spirit-ha,
ha!'
'Why should you take me in so!' said Joshua, losing his self-command,
try as he would to keep calm.
'Because you took me in, my lad, in banishing me to that cursed country
under pretence that it was for my good. You were a pair of hypocrites to
say so. It was done to get rid of me-no more nor less. But, by Jerry,
I'm a match for ye now! I'll spoil your souls for preaching. My daughter
is going to be married to the squire here. I've heard the news-I saw it
in a paper!'
'It is premature-'
'I know it is true; and I'm her father, and I shall give her away, or
there'll be a hell of a row, I can assure ye! Is that where the
gennleman lives?'
Joshua Halborough writhed in impotent despair. Fellmer had not yet
positively declared himself, his mother was hardly won round; a scene
with their father in the parish would demolish as fair a palace of hopes
as was ever builded. The millwright rose. 'If that's where the squire
lives I'm going to call. Just arrived from Canady with her fortune-ha,
ha! I wish no harm to the gennleman, and the gennleman will wish no harm
to me. But I like to take my place in the family, and stand upon my
rights, and lower people's pride!'
'You've succeeded already! Where's that woman you took with you-'
'Woman! She was my wife as lawful as the Constitution-a sight more
lawful than your mother was till some time after you were born!'
Joshua had for many years before heard whispers that his father had
cajoled his mother in their early acquaintance, and had made somewhat
tardy amends; but never from his father's lips till now. It was the last
stroke, and he could not bear it. He sank back against the hedge. 'It is
over!' he said. 'He ruins us all!'
The millwright moved on, waving his stick triumphantly, and the two
brothers stood still. They could see his drab figure stalking along the
path, and over his head the lights from the conservatory of Narrobourne
House, inside which Albert Fellmer might possibly be sitting with Rosa
at that moment, holding her hand, and asking her to share his home with
him.
The staggering whitey-brown form, advancing to put a blot on all this,
had been diminishing in the shade; and now suddenly disappeared beside a
weir. There was the noise of a flounce in the water.
'He has fallen in!' said Cornelius, starting forward to run for the
place at which his father had vanished.
Joshua, awaking from the stupefied reverie into which he had sunk,
rushed to the other's side before he had taken ten steps. 'Stop, stop,
what are you thinking of?' he whispered hoarsely, grasping Cornelius's
arm.
'Pulling him out!'
'Yes, yes-so am I. But-wait a moment-'
'But, Joshua!'
'Her life and happiness, you know-Cornelius-and your reputation and
mine-and our chance of rising together, all three-'
He clutched his brother's arm to the bone; and as they stood breathless
the splashing and floundering in the weir continued; over it they saw
the hopeful lights from the manor-house conservatory winking through the
trees as their bare branches waved to and fro.
The floundering and splashing grew weaker, and they could hear gurgling
words: 'Help-I'm drownded! Rosie-Rosie!'
'We'll go-we must save him. O Joshua!'
'Yes, yes! we must!'
Still they did not move, but waited, holding each other, each thinking
the same thought. Weights of lead seemed to be affixed to their feet,
which would no longer obey their wills. The mead became silent. Over it
they fancied they could see figures moving in the conservatory. The air
up there seemed to emit gentle kisses.
Cornelius started forward at last, and Joshua almost simultaneously. Two
or three minutes brought them to the brink of the stream. At first they
could see nothing in the water, though it was not so deep nor the night
so dark but that their father's light kerseymere coat would have been
visible if he had lain at the bottom. Joshua looked this way and that.
'He has drifted into the culvert,' he said.
Below the foot-bridge of the weir the stream suddenly narrowed to half
its width, to pass under a barrel arch or culvert constructed for
waggons to cross into the middle of the mead in haymaking time. It being
at present the season of high water the arch was full to the crown,
against which the ripples clucked every now and then. At this point he
had just caught sight of a pale object slipping under. In a moment it
was gone.
They went to the lower end, but nothing emerged. For a long time they
tried at both ends to effect some communication with the interior, but
to no purpose.
'We ought to have come sooner!' said the conscience-stricken Cornelius,
when they were quite exhausted, and dripping wet.
'I suppose we ought,' replied Joshua heavily. He perceived his father's
walking-stick on the bank; hastily picking it up he stuck it into the
mud among the sedge. Then they went on.
'Shall we-say anything about this accident?' whispered Cornelius as they
approached the door of Joshua's house.
'What's the use? It can do no good. We must wait until he is found.'
They went indoors and changed their clothes; after which they started
for the manor-house, reaching it about ten o'clock. Besides their sister
there were only three guests; an adjoining landowner and his wife, and
the infirm old rector.
Rosa, although she had parted from them so recently, grasped their hands
in an ecstatic, brimming, joyful manner, as if she had not seen them for
years. 'You look pale,' she said.
The brothers answered that they had had a long walk, and were somewhat
tired. Everybody in the room seemed charged full with some sort of
interesting knowledge: the squire's neighbour and his wife looked wisely
around; and Fellmer himself played the part of host with a preoccupied
bearing which approached fervour. They left at eleven, not accepting the
carriage offered, the distance being so short and the roads dry. The
squire came rather farther into the dark with them than he need have
done, and wished Rosa good-night in a mysterious manner, slightly apart
from the rest.
When they were walking along Joshua said, with desperate attempt at
joviality, 'Rosa, what's going on?'
'O, I-' she began between a gasp and a bound. 'He-'
'Never mind-if it disturbs you.'
She was so excited that she could not speak connectedly at first, the
practised air which she had brought home with her having disappeared.
Calming herself she added, 'I am not disturbed, and nothing has
happened. Only he said he wanted to ask me something, some day; and I
said never mind that now. He hasn't asked yet, and is coining to speak
to you about it. He would have done so to-night, only I asked him not to
be in a hurry. But he will come to-morrow, I am sure!'
CHAPTER V
It was summer-time, six months later, and mowers and haymakers were at
work in the meads. The manor-house, being opposite them, frequently
formed a peg for conversation during these operations; and the doings of
the squire, and the squire's young wife, the curate's sister-who was at
present the admired of most of them, and the interest of all-met with
their due amount of criticism.
Rosa was happy, if ever woman could be said to be so. She had not learnt
the fate of her father, and sometimes wondered-perhaps with a sense of
relief-why he did not write to her from his supposed home in Canada. Her
brother Joshua had been presented to a living in a small town, shortly
after her marriage, and Cornelius had thereupon succeeded to the vacant
curacy of Narrobourne.
These two had awaited in deep suspense the discovery of their father's
body; and yet the discovery had not been made. Every day they expected a
man or a boy to run up from the meads with the intelligence; but he had
never come. Days had accumulated to weeks and months; the wedding had
come and gone: Joshua had tolled and read himself in at his new parish;
and never a shout of amazement over the millwright's remains.
But now, in June, when they were mowing the meads, the hatches had to be
drawn and the water let out of its channels for the convenience of the
mowers. It was thus that the discovery was made. A man, stooping low
with his scythe, caught a view of the culvert lengthwise, and saw
something entangled in the recently bared weeds of its bed. A day or two
after there was an inquest; but the body was unrecognizable. Fish and
flood had been busy with the millwright; he had no watch or marked
article which could be identified; and a verdict of the accidental
drowning of a person unknown settled the matter.
As the body was found in Narrobourne parish, there it had to be buried.
Cornelius wrote to Joshua, begging him to come and read the service, or
to send some one; he himself could not do it. Rather than let in a
stranger Joshua came, and silently scanned the coroner's order handed
him by the undertaker:-
'I, Henry Giles, Coroner for the Mid-Division of Outer Wessex, do hereby
order the Burial of the Body now shown to the Inquest Jury as the Body
of an Adult Male Person Unknown . . . ,' etc.
Joshua Halborough got through the service in some way, and rejoined his
brother Cornelius at his house. Neither accepted an invitation to lunch
at their sister's; they wished to discuss parish matters together. In
the afternoon she came down, though they had already called on her, and
had not expected to see her again. Her bright eyes, brown hair, flowery
bonnet, lemon-coloured gloves, and flush beauty, were like an
irradiation into the apartment, which they in their gloom could hardly
bear.
'I forgot to tell you,' she said, 'of a curious thing which happened to
me a month or two before my marriage-something which I have thought may
have had a connection with the accident to the poor man you have buried
to-day. It was on that evening I was at the manor-house waiting for you
to fetch me; I was in the winter-garden with Albert, and we were sitting
silent together, when we fancied we heard a cry. We opened the door, and
while Albert ran to fetch his hat, leaving me standing there, the cry
was repeated, and my excited senses made me think I heard my own name.
When Albert came back all was silent, and we decided that it was only a
drunken shout, and not a cry for help. We both forgot the incident, and
it never has occurred to me till since the funeral to-day that it might
have been this stranger's cry. The name of course was only fancy, or he
might have had a wife or child with a name something like mine, poor
man!'
When she was gone the brothers were silent till Cornelius said, 'Now
mark this, Joshua. Sooner or later she'll know.'
'How?'
'From one of us. Do you think human hearts are iron-cased safes, that
you suppose we can keep this secret for ever?'
'Yes, I think they are, sometimes,' said Joshua.
'No. It will out. We shall tell.'
'What, and ruin her-kill her? Disgrace her children, and pull down the
whole auspicious house of Fellmer about our ears? No! May I-drown where
he was drowned before I do it! Never, never. Surely you can say the
same, Cornelius!'
Cornelius seemed fortified, and no more was said. For a long time after
that day he did not see Joshua, and before the next year was out a son
and heir was born to the Fellmers. The villagers rang the three bells
every evening for a week and more, and were made merry by Mr. Fellmer's
ale; and when the christening came on Joshua paid Narrobourne another
visit.
Among all the people who assembled on that day the brother clergymen
were the least interested. Their minds were haunted by a spirit in
kerseymere in the evening they walked together in the fields.
'She's all right,' said Joshua. 'But here are you doing journey-work,
Cornelius, and likely to continue at it till the end of the day, as far
as I can see. I, too, with my petty living-what am I after all? . . . To
tell the truth, the Church is a poor forlorn hope for people without
influence, particularly when their enthusiasm begins to flag. A social
regenerator has a better chance outside, where he is unhampered by dogma
and tradition. As for me, I would rather have gone on mending mills,
with my crust of bread and liberty.'
Almost automatically they had bent their steps along the margin of the
river; they now paused. They were standing on the brink of the well-
known weir. There were the hatches, there was the culvert; they could
see the pebbly bed of the stream through the pellucid water. The notes
of the church-bells were audible, still jangled by the enthusiastic
villagers.
'Why see-it was there I hid his walking-stick!' said Joshua, looking
towards the sedge. The next moment, during a passing breeze, something
flashed white on the spot to which the attention of Cornelius was drawn.
From the sedge rose a straight little silver-poplar, and it was the
leaves of this sapling which caused the flicker of whiteness.
'His walking-stick has grown!' Joshua added. 'It was a rough one-cut
from the hedge, I remember.'
At every puff of wind the tree turned white, till they could not bear to
look at it; and they walked away.
'I see him every night,' Cornelius murmured . . . 'Ah, we read our
Hebrews to little account, Jos! ?p?\xB5e??e sta????, a?s????? ?ataf????sa?.
To have endured the cross, despising the shame-there lay greatness! But
now I often feel that I should like to put an end to trouble here in
this self-same spot.'
'I have thought of it myself,' said Joshua.
'Perhaps we shall, some day,' murmured his brother. 'Perhaps,' said
Joshua moodily.
With that contingency to consider in the silence of their nights and
days they bent their steps homewards.
December 1888.
ON THE WESTERN CIRCUIT
CHAPTER I
The man who played the disturbing part in the two quiet lives hereafter
depicted-no great man, in any sense, by the way-first had knowledge of
them on an October evening, in the city of Melchester. He had been
standing in the Close, vainly endeavouring to gain amid the darkness a
glimpse of the most homogeneous pile of medi\xE6val architecture in
England, which towered and tapered from the damp and level sward in
front of him. While he stood the presence of the Cathedral walls was
revealed rather by the ear than by the eyes; he could not see them, but
they reflected sharply a roar of sound which entered the Close by a
street leading from the city square, and, falling upon the building, was
flung back upon him.
He postponed till the morrow his attempt to examine the deserted
edifice, and turned his attention to the noise. It was compounded of
steam barrel-organs, the clanging of gongs, the ringing of hand-bells,
the clack of rattles, and the undistinguishable shouts of men. A lurid
light hung in the air in the direction of the tumult. Thitherward he
went, passing under the arched gateway, along a straight street, and
into the square.
He might have searched Europe over for a greater contrast between
juxtaposed scenes. The spectacle was that of the eighth chasm of the
Inferno as to colour and flame, and, as to mirth, a development of the
Homeric heaven. A smoky glare, of the complexion of brass-filings,
ascended from the fiery tongues of innumerable naphtha lamps affixed to
booths, stalls, and other temporary erections which crowded the spacious
market-square. In front of this irradiation scores of human figures,
more or less in profile, were darting athwart and across, up, down, and
around, like gnats against a sunset.
Their motions were so rhythmical that they seemed to be moved by
machinery. And it presently appeared that they were moved by machinery
indeed; the figures being those of the patrons of swings, see-saws,
flying-leaps, above all of the three steam roundabouts which occupied
the centre of the position. It was from the latter that the din of
steam-organs came.
Throbbing humanity in full light was, on second thoughts, better than
architecture in the dark. The young man, lighting a short pipe, and
putting his hat on one side and one hand in his pocket, to throw himself
into harmony with his new environment, drew near to the largest and most
patronized of the steam circuses, as the roundabouts were called by
their owners. This was one of brilliant finish, and it was now in full
revolution. The musical instrument around which and to whose tones the
riders revolved, directed its trumpet-mouths of brass upon the young
man, and the long plate-glass mirrors set at angles, which revolved with
the machine, flashed the gyrating personages and hobby horses
kaleidoscopically into his eyes.
It could now be seen that he was unlike the majority of the crowd. A
gentlemanly young fellow, one of the species found in large towns only,
and London particularly, built on delicate lines, well, though not
fashionably dressed, he appeared to belong to the professional class; he
had nothing square or practical about his look, much that was
curvilinear and sensuous. Indeed, some would have called him a man not
altogether typical of the middle-class male of a century wherein sordid
ambition is the master-passion that seems to be taking the time-honoured
place of love.
The revolving figures passed before his eyes with an unexpected and
quiet grace in a throng whose natural movements did not suggest
gracefulness or quietude as a rule. By some contrivance there was
imparted to each of the hobby-horses a motion which was really the
triumph and perfection of roundabout inventiveness-a galloping rise and
fall, so timed that, of each pair of steeds, one was on the spring while
the other was on the pitch. The riders were quite fascinated by these
equine undulations in this most delightful holiday-game of our times.
There were riders as young as six, and as old as sixty years, with every
age between. At first it was difficult to catch a personality, but by
and by the observer's eyes centred on the prettiest girl out of the
several pretty ones revolving.
It was not that one with the light frock and light hat whom he had been
at first attracted by; no, it was the one with the black cape, grey
skirt, light gloves and-no, not even she, but the one behind her; she
with the crimson skirt, dark jacket, brown hat and brown gloves.
Unmistakably that was the prettiest girl.
Having finally selected her, this idle spectator studied her as well as
he was able during each of her brief transits across his visual field.
She was absolutely unconscious of everything save the act of riding: her
features were rapt in an ecstatic dreaminess; for the moment she did not
know her age or her history or her lineaments, much less her troubles.
He himself was full of vague latter-day glooms and popular melancholies,
and it was a refreshing sensation to behold this young thing then and
there, absolutely as happy as if she were in a Paradise.
Dreading the moment when the inexorable stoker, grimily lurking behind
the glittering rococo-work, should decide that this set of riders had
had their pennyworth, and bring the whole concern of steam-engine,
horses, mirrors, trumpets, drums, cymbals, and such-like to pause and
silence, he waited for her every reappearance, glancing indifferently
over the intervening forms, including the two plainer girls, the old
woman and child, the two youngsters, the newly-married couple, the old
man with a clay pipe, the sparkish youth with a ring, the young ladies
in the chariot, the pair of journeyman-carpenters, and others, till his
select country beauty followed on again in her place. He had never seen
a fairer product of nature, and at each round she made a deeper mark in
his sentiments. The stoppage then came, and the sighs of the riders were
audible.
He moved round to the place at which he reckoned she would alight; but
she retained her seat. The empty saddles began to refill, and she
plainly was deciding to have another turn. The young man drew up to the
side of her steed, and pleasantly asked her if she had enjoyed her ride.
'O yes!' she said, with dancing eyes. 'It has been quite unlike anything
I have ever felt in my life before!'
It was not difficult to fall into conversation with her. Unreserved-too
unreserved-by nature, she was not experienced enough to be reserved by
art, and after a little coaxing she answered his remarks readily. She
had come to live in Melchester from a village on the Great Plain, and
this was the first time that she had ever seen a steam-circus; she could
not understand how such wonderful machines were made. She had come to
the city on the invitation of Mrs. Harnham, who had taken her into her
household to train her as a servant, if she showed any aptitude. Mrs.
Harnham was a young lady who before she married had been Miss Edith
White, living in the country near the speaker's cottage; she was now
very kind to her through knowing her in childhood so well. She was even
taking the trouble to educate her. Mrs. Harnham was the only friend she
had in the world, and being without children had wished to have her near
her in preference to anybody else, though she had only lately come;
allowed her to do almost as she liked, and to have a holiday whenever
she asked for it. The husband of this kind young lady was a rich wine-
merchant of the town, but Mrs. Harnham did not care much about him. In
the daytime you could see the house from where they were talking. She,
the speaker, liked Melchester better than the lonely country, and she
was going to have a new hat for next Sunday that was to cost fifteen and
ninepence.
Then she inquired of her acquaintance where he lived, and he told her in
London, that ancient and smoky city, where everybody lived who lived at
all, and died because they could not live there. He came into Wessex two
or three times a year for professional reasons; he had arrived from
Wintoncester yesterday, and was going on into the next county in a day
or two. For one thing he did like the country better than the town, and
it was because it contained such girls as herself.
Then the pleasure-machine started again, and, to the light-hearted girl,
the figure of the handsome young man, the market-square with its lights
and crowd, the houses beyond, and the world at large, began moving round
as before, countermoving in the revolving mirrors on her right hand, she
being as it were the fixed point in an undulating, dazzling, lurid
universe, in which loomed forward most prominently of all the form of
her late interlocutor. Each time that she approached the half of her
orbit that lay nearest him they gazed at each other with smiles, and
with that unmistakable expression which means so little at the moment,
yet so often leads up to passion, heart-ache, union, disunion, devotion,
overpopulation, drudgery, content, resignation, despair.
When the horses slowed anew he stepped to her side and proposed another
heat. 'Hang the expense for once,' he said. 'I'll pay!'
She laughed till the tears came.
'Why do you laugh, dear?' said he.
'Because-you are so genteel that you must have plenty of money, and only
say that for fun!' she returned.
'Ha-ha!' laughed the young man in unison, and gallantly producing his
money she was enabled to whirl on again.
As he stood smiling there in the motley crowd, with his pipe in his
hand, and clad in the rough pea-jacket and wideawake that he had put on
for his stroll, who would have supposed him to be Charles Bradford Raye,
Esquire, stuff-gownsman, educated at Wintoncester, called to the Bar at
Lincoln's-Inn, now going the Western Circuit, merely detained in
Melchester by a small arbitration after his brethren had moved on to the
next county-town?
CHAPTER II
The square was overlooked from its remoter corner by the house of which
the young girl had spoken, a dignified residence of considerable size,
having several windows on each floor. Inside one of these, on the first
floor, the apartment being a large drawing-room, sat a lady, in
appearance from twenty-eight to thirty years of age. The blinds were
still undrawn, and the lady was absently surveying the weird scene
without, her cheek resting on her hand. The room was unlit from within,
but enough of the glare from the market-place entered it to reveal the
lady's face. She was what is called an interesting creature rather than
a handsome woman; dark-eyed, thoughtful, and with sensitive lips.
A man sauntered into the room from behind and came forward.
'O, Edith, I didn't see you,' he said. 'Why are you sitting here in the
dark?'
'I am looking at the fair,' replied the lady in a languid voice.
'Oh? Horrid nuisance every year! I wish it could be put a stop to'
'I like it.'
'H'm. There's no accounting for taste.'
For a moment he gazed from the window with her, for politeness sake, and
then went out again.
In a few minutes she rang.
'Hasn't Anna come in?' asked Mrs. Harnham.
'No m'm.'
'She ought to be in by this time. I meant her to go for ten minutes
only.'
'Shall I go and look for her, m'm?' said the house-maid alertly.
'No. It is not necessary: she is a good girl and will come soon.'
However, when the servant had gone Mrs. Harnham arose, went up to her
room, cloaked and bonneted herself, and proceeded downstairs, where she
found her husband.
'I want to see the fair,' she said; 'and I am going to look for Anna. I
have made myself responsible for her, and must see she comes to no harm.
She ought to be indoors. Will you come with me?'
'Oh, she's all right. I saw her on one of those whirligig things,
talking to her young man as I came in. But I'll go if you wish, though
I'd rather go a hundred miles the other way.'
'Then please do so. I shall come to no harm alone.'
She left the house and entered the crowd which thronged the market-
place, where she soon discovered Anna, seated on the revolving horse. As
soon as it stopped Mrs. Harnham advanced and said severely, 'Anna, how
can you be such a wild girl? You were only to be out for ten minutes.'
Anna looked blank, and the young man, who had dropped into the
background, came to her assistance.
'Please don't blame her,' he said politely. 'It is my fault that she has
stayed. She looked so graceful on the horse that I induced her to go
round again. I assure you that she has been quite safe.'
'In that case I'll leave her in your hands,' said Mrs. Harnham, turning
to retrace her steps.
But this for the moment it was not so easy to do. Something had
attracted the crowd to a spot in their rear, and the wine-merchant's
wife, caught by its sway, found herself pressed against Anna's
acquaintance without power to move away. Their faces were within a few
inches of each other, his breath fanned her cheek as well as Anna's.
They could do no other than smile at the accident; but neither spoke,
and each waited passively. Mrs. Harnham then felt a man's hand clasping
her fingers, and from the look of consciousness on the young fellow's
face she knew the hand to be his: she also knew that from the position
of the girl he had no other thought than that the imprisoned hand was
Anna's. What prompted her to refrain from undeceiving him she could
hardly tell. Not content with holding the hand, he playfully slipped two
of his fingers inside her glove, against her palm. Thus matters
continued till the pressure lessened; but several minutes passed before
the crowd thinned sufficiently to allow Mrs. Harnham to withdraw.
'How did they get to know each other, I wonder?' she mused as she
retreated. 'Anna is really very forward-and he very wicked and nice.'
She was so gently stirred with the stranger's manner and voice, with the
tenderness of his idle touch, that instead of re-entering the house she
turned back again and observed the pair from a screened nook. Really she
argued (being little less impulsive than Anna herself) it was very
excusable in Anna to encourage him, however she might have contrived to
make his acquaintance; he was so gentlemanly, so fascinating, had such
beautiful eyes. The thought that he was several years her junior
produced a reasonless sigh.
At length the couple turned from the roundabout towards the door of Mrs.
Harnham's house, and the young man could be heard saying that he would
accompany her home. Anna, then, had found a lover, apparently a very
devoted one. Mrs. Harnham was quite interested in him. When they drew
near the door of the wine-merchant's house, a comparatively deserted
spot by this time, they stood invisible for a little while in the shadow
of a wall, where they separated, Anna going on to the entrance, and her
acquaintance returning across the square.
'Anna,' said Mrs. Harnham, coming up. 'I've been looking at you! That
young man kissed you at parting I am almost sure.'
'Well,' stammered Anna; 'he said, if I didn't mind-it would do me no
harm, and, and, him a great deal of good!'
'Ah, I thought so! And he was a stranger till to-night?'
'Yes ma'am.'
'Yet I warrant you told him your name and every thing about yourself?'
'He asked me.'
'But he didn't tell you his?'
'Yes ma'am, he did!' cried Anna victoriously. 'It is Charles Bradford,
of London.'
'Well, if he's respectable, of course I've nothing to say against your
knowing him,' remarked her mistress, prepossessed, in spite of general
principles, in the young man's favour. 'But I must reconsider all that,
if he attempts to renew your acquaintance. A country-bred girl like you,
who has never lived in Melchester till this month, who had hardly ever
seen a black-coated man till you came here, to be so sharp as to capture
a young Londoner like him!'
'I didn't capture him. I didn't do anything,' said Anna, in confusion.
When she was indoors and alone Mrs. Harnham thought what a well-bred and
chivalrous young man Anna's companion had seemed. There had been a magic
in his wooing touch of her hand; and she wondered how he had come to be
attracted by the girl.
The next morning the emotional Edith Harnham went to the usual week-day
service in Melchester cathedral. In crossing the Close through the fog
she again perceived him who had interested her the previous evening,
gazing up thoughtfully at the high-piled architecture of the nave: and
as soon as she had taken her seat he entered and sat down in a stall
opposite hers.
He did not particularly heed her; but Mrs. Harnham was continually
occupying her eyes with him, and wondered more than ever what had
attracted him in her unfledged maid-servant. The mistress was almost as
unaccustomed as the maiden herself to the end-of-the-age young man, or
she might have wondered less. Raye, having looked about him awhile, left
abruptly, without regard to the service that was proceeding; and Mrs.
Harnham-lonely, impressionable creature that she was-took no further
interest in praising the Lord. She wished she had married a London man
who knew the subtleties of love-making as they were evidently known to
him who had mistakenly caressed her hand.
CHAPTER III
The calendar at Melchester had been light, occupying the court only a
few hours; and the assizes at Casterbridge, the next county-town on the
Western Circuit, having no business for Raye, he had not gone thither.
At the next town after that they did not open till the following Monday,
trials to begin on Tuesday morning. In the natural order of things Raye
would have arrived at the latter place on Monday afternoon; but it was
not till the middle of Wednesday that his gown and grey wig, curled in
tiers, in the best fashion of Assyrian bas-reliefs, were seen blowing
and bobbing behind him as he hastily walked up the High Street from his
lodgings. But though he entered the assize building there was nothing
for him to do, and sitting at the blue baize table in the well of the
court, he mended pens with a mind far away from the case in progress.
Thoughts of unpremeditated conduct, of which a week earlier he would not
have believed himself capable, threw him into a mood of dissatisfied
depression.
He had contrived to see again the pretty rural maiden Anna, the day
after the fair, had walked out of the city with her to the earthworks of
Old Melchester, and feeling a violent fancy for her, had remained in
Melchester all Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; by persuasion obtaining
walks and meetings with the girl six or seven times during the interval;
had in brief won her, body and soul.
He supposed it must have been owing to the seclusion in which he had
lived of late in town that he had given way so unrestrainedly to a
passion for an artless creature whose inexperience had, from the first,
led her to place herself unreservedly in his hands. Much he deplored
trifling with her feelings for the sake of a passing desire; and he
could only hope that she might not live to suffer on his account.
She had begged him to come to her again; entreated him; wept. He had
promised that he would do so, and he meant to carry out that promise. He
could not desert her now. Awkward as such unintentional connections
were, the interspace of a hundred miles-which to a girl of her limited
capabilities was like a thousand-would effectually hinder this summer
fancy from greatly encumbering his life; while thought of her simple
love might do him the negative good of keeping him from idle pleasures
in town when he wished to work hard. His circuit journeys would take him
to Melchester three or four times a year; and then he could always see
her.
The pseudonym, or rather partial name, that he had given her as his
before knowing how far the acquaintance was going to carry him, had been
spoken on the spur of the moment, without any ulterior intention
whatever. He had not afterwards disturbed Anna's error, but on leaving
her he had felt bound to give her an address at a stationer's not far
from his chambers, at which she might write to him under the initials
'C. B.'
In due time Raye returned to his London abode, having called at
Melchester on his way and spent a few additional hours with his
fascinating child of nature. In town he lived monotonously every day.
Often he and his rooms were enclosed by a tawny fog from all the world
besides, and when he lighted the gas to read or write by, his situation
seemed so unnatural that he would look into the fire and think of that
trusting girl at Melchester again and again. Often, oppressed by absurd
fondness for her, he would enter the dim religious nave of the Law
Courts by the north door, elbow other juniors habited like himself, and
like him unretained; edge himself into this or that crowded court where
a sensational case was going on, just as if he were in it, though the
police officers at the door knew as well as he knew himself that he had
no more concern with the business in hand than the patient idlers at the
gallery-door outside, who had waited to enter since eight in the morning
because, like him, they belonged to the classes that live on
expectation. But he would do these things to no purpose, and think how
greatly the characters in such scenes contrasted with the pink and
breezy Anna.
An unexpected feature in that peasant maiden's conduct was that she had
not as yet written to him, though he had told her she might do so if she
wished. Surely a young creature had never before been so reticent in
such circumstances. At length he sent her a brief line, positively
requesting her to write. There was no answer by the return post, but the
day after a letter in a neat feminine hand, and bearing the Melchester
post-mark, was handed to him by the stationer.
The fact alone of its arrival was sufficient to satisfy his imaginative
sentiment. He was not anxious to open the epistle, and in truth did not
begin to read it for nearly half-an-hour, anticipating readily its terms
of passionate retrospect and tender adjuration. When at last he turned
his feet to the fireplace and unfolded the sheet, he was surprised and
pleased to find that neither extravagance nor vulgarity was there. It
was the most charming little missive he had ever received from woman. To
be sure the language was simple and the ideas were slight; but it was so
self-possessed; so purely that of a young girl who felt her womanhood to
be enough for her dignity that he read it through twice. Four sides were
filled, and a few lines written across, after the fashion of former
days; the paper, too, was common, and not of the latest shade and
surface. But what of those things? He had received letters from women
who were fairly called ladies, but never so sensible, so human a letter
as this. He could not single out any one sentence and say it was at all
remarkable or clever; the ensemble of the letter it was which won him;
and beyond the one request that he would write or come to her again soon
there was nothing to show her sense of a claim upon him.
To write again and develop a correspondence was the last thing Raye
would have preconceived as his conduct in such a situation; yet he did
send a short, encouraging line or two, signed with his pseudonym, in
which he asked for another letter, and cheeringly promised that he would
try to see her again on some near day, and would never forget how much
they had been to each other during their short acquaintance.
CHAPTER IV
To return now to the moment at which Anna, at Melchester, had received
Raye's letter.
It had been put into her own hand by the postman on his morning rounds.
She flushed down to her neck on receipt of it, and turned it over and
over. 'It is mine?' she said.
'Why, yes, can't you see it is?' said the postman, smiling as he guessed
the nature of the document and the cause of the confusion.
'O yes, of course!' replied Anna, looking at the letter, forcedly
tittering, and blushing still more.
Her look of embarrassment did not leave her with the postman's
departure. She opened the envelope, kissed its contents, put away the
letter in her pocket, and remained musing till her eyes filled with
tears.
A few minutes later she carried up a cup of tea to Mrs. Harnham in her
bed-chamber. Anna's mistress looked at her, and said: 'How dismal you
seem this morning, Anna. What's the matter?'
'I'm not dismal, I'm glad; only I-' She stopped to stifle a sob.
'Well?'
'I've got a letter-and what good is it to me, if I can't read a word in
it!'
'Why, I'll read it, child, if necessary.'
'But this is from somebody-I don't want anybody to read it but myself!'
Anna murmured.
'I shall not tell anybody. Is it from that young man?'
'I think so.' Anna slowly produced the letter, saying: 'Then will you
read it to me, ma'am?'
This was the secret of Anna's embarrassment and flutterings. She could
neither read nor write. She had grown up under the care of an aunt by
marriage, at one of the lonely hamlets on the Great Mid-Wessex Plain
where, even in days of national education, there had been no school
within a distance of two miles. Her aunt was an ignorant woman; there
had been nobody to investigate Anna's circumstances, nobody to care
about her learning the rudiments; though, as often in such cases, she
had been well fed and clothed and not unkindly treated. Since she had
come to live at Melchester with Mrs. Harnham, the latter, who took a
kindly interest in the girl, had taught her to speak correctly, in which
accomplishment Anna showed considerable readiness, as is not unusual
with the illiterate; and soon became quite fluent in the use of her
mistress's phraseology. Mrs. Harnham also insisted upon her getting a
spelling and copy book, and beginning to practise in these. Anna was
slower in this branch of her education, and meanwhile here was the
letter.
Edith Harnham's large dark eyes expressed some interest in the contents,
though, in her character of mere interpreter, she threw into her tone as
much as she could of mechanical passiveness. She read the short epistle
on to its concluding sentence, which idly requested Anna to send him a
tender answer.
'Now-you'll do it for me, won't you, dear mistress?' said Anna eagerly.
'And you'll do it as well as ever you can, please? Because I couldn't
bear him to think I am not able to do it myself. I should sink into the
earth with shame if he knew that!'
From some words in the letter Mrs. Harnham was led to ask questions, and
the answers she received confirmed her suspicions. Deep concern filled
Edith's heart at perceiving how the girl had committed her happiness to
the issue of this new-sprung attachment. She blamed herself for not
interfering in a flirtation which had resulted so seriously for the poor
little creature in her charge; though at the time of seeing the pair
together she had a feeling that it was hardly within her province to nip
young affection in the bud. However, what was done could not be undone,
and it behoved her now, as Anna's only protector, to help her as much as
she could. To Anna's eager request that she, Mrs. Harnham, should
compose and write the answer to this young London man's letter, she felt
bound to accede, to keep alive his attachment to the girl if possible;
though in other circumstances she might have suggested the cook as an
amanuensis.
A tender reply was thereupon concocted, and set down in Edith Harnham's
hand. This letter it had been which Raye had received and delighted in.
Written in the presence of Anna it certainly was, and on Anna's humble
note-paper, and in a measure indited by the young girl; but the life,
the spirit, the individuality, were Edith Harnham's.
'Won't you at least put your name yourself?' she said. 'You can manage
to write that by this time?'
'No, no,' said Anna, shrinking back. 'I should do it so bad. He'd be
ashamed of me, and never see me again!'
The note, so prettily requesting another from him, had, as we have seen,
power enough in its pages to bring one. He declared it to be such a
pleasure to hear from her that she must write every week. The same
process of manufacture was accordingly repeated by Anna and her
mistress, and continued for several weeks in succession; each letter
being penned and suggested by Edith, the girl standing by; the answer
read and commented on by Edith, Anna standing by and listening again.
Late on a winter evening, after the dispatch of the sixth letter, Mrs.
Harnham was sitting alone by the remains of her fire. Her husband had
retired to bed, and she had fallen into that fixity of musing which
takes no count of hour or temperature. The state of mind had been
brought about in Edith by a strange thing which she had done that day.
For the first time since Raye's visit Anna had gone to stay over a night
or two with her cottage friends on the Plain, and in her absence had
arrived, out of its time, a letter from Raye. To this Edith had replied
on her own responsibility, from the depths of her own heart, without
waiting for her maid's collaboration. The luxury of writing to him what
would be known to no consciousness but his was great, and she had
indulged herself therein.
Why was it a luxury?
Edith Harnham led a lonely life. Influenced by the belief of the British
parent that a bad marriage with its aversions is better than free
womanhood with its interests, dignity, and leisure, she had consented to
marry the elderly wine-merchant as a pis aller, at the age of seven-and-
twenty-some three years before this date-to find afterwards that she had
made a mistake. That contract had left her still a woman whose deeper
nature had never been stirred.
She was now clearly realizing that she had become possessed to the
bottom of her soul with the image of a man to whom she was hardly so
much as a name. From the first he had attracted her by his looks and
voice; by his tender touch; and, with these as generators, the writing
of letter after letter and the reading of their soft answers had
insensibly developed on her side an emotion which fanned his; till there
had resulted a magnetic reciprocity between the correspondents,
notwithstanding that one of them wrote in a character not her own. That
he had been able to seduce another woman in two days was his crowning
though unrecognized fascination for her as the she-animal.
They were her own impassioned and pent-up ideas-lowered to monosyllabic
phraseology in order to keep up the disguise-that Edith put into letters
signed with another name, much to the shallow Anna's delight, who,
unassisted, could not for the world have conceived such pretty fancies
for winning him, even had she been able to write them. Edith found that
it was these, her own foisted-in sentiments, to which the young
barrister mainly responded. The few sentences occasionally added from
Anna's own lips made apparently no impression upon him.
The letter-writing in her absence Anna never discovered; but on her
return the next morning she declared she wished to see her lover about
something at once, and begged Mrs. Harnham to ask him to come.
There was a strange anxiety in her manner which did not escape Mrs.
Harnham, and ultimately resolved itself into a flood of tears. Sinking
down at Edith's knees, she made confession that the result of her
relations with her lover it would soon become necessary to disclose.
Edith Harnham was generous enough to be very far from inclined to cast
Anna adrift at this conjuncture. No true woman ever is so inclined from
her own personal point of view, however prompt she may be in taking such
steps to safeguard those dear to her. Although she had written to Raye
so short a time previously, she instantly penned another Anna-note
hinting clearly though delicately the state of affairs.
Raye replied by a hasty line to say how much he was affected by her
news: he felt that he must run down to see her almost immediately.
But a week later the girl came to her mistress's room with another note,
which on being read informed her that after all he could not find time
for the journey. Anna was broken with grief; but by Mrs. Harnham's
counsel strictly refrained from hurling at him the reproaches and
bitterness customary from young women so situated. One thing was
imperative: to keep the young man's romantic interest in her alive.
Rather therefore did Edith, in the name of her prot\xE9g\xE9e, request him on
no account to be distressed about the looming event, and not to
inconvenience himself to hasten down. She desired above everything to be
no weight upon him in his career, no clog upon his high activities. She
had wished him to know what had befallen: he was to dismiss it again
from his mind. Only he must write tenderly as ever, and when he should
come again on the spring circuit it would be soon enough to discuss what
had better be done.
It may well be supposed that Anna's own feelings had not been quite in
accord with these generous expressions; but the mistress's judgment had
ruled, and Anna had acquiesced. 'All I want is that niceness you can so
well put into your letters, my dear, dear mistress, and that I can't for
the life o' me make up out of my own head; though I mean the same thing
and feel it exactly when you've written it down!'
When the letter had been sent off, and Edith Harnham was left alone, she
bowed herself on the back of her chair and wept.
'I wish it was mine-I wish it was!' she murmured. 'Yet how can I say
such a wicked thing!'
CHAPTER V
The letter moved Raye considerably when it reached him. The intelligence
itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him
in relation to it. The absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to
his interests, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a
nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind.
'God forgive me!' he said tremulously. 'I have been a wicked wretch. I
did not know she was such a treasure as this!'
He reassured her instantly; declaring that he would not of course desert
her, that he would provide a home for her somewhere. Meanwhile she was
to stay where she was as long as her mistress would allow her.
But a misfortune supervened in this direction. Whether an inkling of
Anna's circumstances reached the knowledge of Mrs. Harnham's husband or
not cannot be said, but the girl was compelled, in spite of Edith's
entreaties, to leave the house. By her own choice she decided to go back
for a while to the cottage on the Plain. This arrangement led to a
consultation as to how the correspondence should be carried on; and in
the girl's inability to continue personally what had been begun in her
name, and in the difficulty of their acting in concert as heretofore,
she requested Mrs. Harnham-the only well-to-do friend she had in the
world-to receive the letters and reply to them off-hand, sending them on
afterwards to herself on the Plain, where she might at least get some
neighbour to read them to her, if a trustworthy one could be met with.
Anna and her box then departed for the Plain.
Thus it befel that Edith Harnham found herself in the strange position
of having to correspond, under no supervision by the real woman, with a
man not her husband, in terms which were virtually those of a wife,
concerning a condition that was not Edith's at all; the man being one
for whom, mainly through the sympathies involved in playing this part,
she secretly cherished a predilection, subtle and imaginative truly, but
strong and absorbing. She opened each letter, read it as if intended for
herself, and replied from the promptings of her own heart and no other.
Throughout this correspondence, carried on in the girl's absence, the
high-strung Edith Harnham lived in the ecstasy of fancy; the vicarious
intimacy engendered such a flow of passionateness as was never exceeded.
For conscience' sake Edith at first sent on each of his letters to Anna,
and even rough copies of her replies; but later on these so-called
copies were much abridged, and many letters on both sides were not sent
on at all.
Though selfish, and, superficially at least, infested with the self-
indulgent vices of artificial society, there was a substratum of honesty
and fairness in Raye's character. He had really a tender regard for the
country girl, and it grew more tender than ever when he found her
apparently capable of expressing the deepest sensibilities in the
simplest words. He meditated, he wavered; and finally resolved to
consult his sister, a maiden lady much older than himself, of lively
sympathies and good intent. In making this confidence he showed her some
of the letters.
'She seems fairly educated,' Miss Raye observed. 'And bright in ideas.
She expresses herself with a taste that must be innate.'
'Yes. She writes very prettily, doesn't she, thanks to these elementary
schools?'
'One is drawn out towards her, in spite of one's self, poor thing.'
The upshot of the discussion was that though he had not been directly
advised to do it, Raye wrote, in his real name, what he would never have
decided to write on his own responsibility; namely that he could not
live without her, and would come down in the spring and shelve her
looming difficulty by marrying her.
This bold acceptance of the situation was made known to Anna by Mrs.
Harnham driving out immediately to the cottage on the Plain. Anna jumped
for joy like a little child. And poor, crude directions for answering
appropriately were given to Edith Harnham, who on her return to the city
carried them out with warm intensification.
'O!' she groaned, as she threw down the pen. 'Anna-poor good little
fool-hasn't intelligence enough to appreciate him! How should she? While
I-don't bear his child!'
It was now February. The correspondence had continued altogether for
four months; and the next letter from Raye contained incidentally a
statement of his position and prospects. He said that in offering to wed
her he had, at first, contemplated the step of retiring from a
profession which hitherto had brought him very slight emolument, and
which, to speak plainly, he had thought might be difficult of practice
after his union with her. But the unexpected mines of brightness and
warmth that her letters had disclosed to be lurking in her sweet nature
had led him to abandon that somewhat sad prospect. He felt sure that,
with her powers of development, after a little private training in the
social forms of London under his supervision, and a little help from a
governess if necessary, she would make as good a professional man's wife
as could be desired, even if he should rise to the woolsack. Many a Lord
Chancellor's wife had been less intuitively a lady than she had shown
herself to be in her lines to him.
'O-poor fellow, poor fellow!' mourned Edith Harnham.
Her distress now raged as high as her infatuation. It was she who had
wrought him to this pitch-to a marriage which meant his ruin; yet she
could not, in mercy to her maid, do anything to hinder his plan. Anna
was coming to Melchester that week, but she could hardly show the girl
this last reply from the young man; it told too much of the second
individuality that had usurped the place of the first.
Anna came, and her mistress took her into her own room for privacy. Anna
began by saying with some anxiety that she was glad the wedding was so
near.
'O Anna!' replied Mrs. Harnham. 'I think we must tell him all-that I
have been doing your writing for you?-lest he should not know it till
after you become his wife, and it might lead to dissension and
recriminations-'
'O mis'ess, dear mis'ess-please don't tell him now!' cried Anna in
distress. 'If you were to do it, perhaps he would not marry me; and what
should I do then? It would be terrible what would come to me! And I am
getting on with my writing, too. I have brought with me the copybook you
were so good as to give me, and I practise every day, and though it is
so, so hard, I shall do it well at last, I believe, if I keep on
trying.'
Edith looked at the copybook. The copies had been set by herself, and
such progress as the girl had made was in the way of grotesque facsimile
of her mistress's hand. But even if Edith's flowing caligraphy were
reproduced the inspiration would be another thing.
'You do it so beautifully,' continued Anna, 'and say all that I want to
say so much better than I could say it, that I do hope you won't leave
me in the lurch just now!'
'Very well,' replied the other. 'But I-but I thought I ought not to go
on!'
'Why?'
Her strong desire to confide her sentiments led Edith to answer truly:
'Because of its effect upon me.'
'But it can't have any!'
'Why, child?'
'Because you are married already!' said Anna with lucid simplicity.
'Of course it can't,' said her mistress hastily; yet glad, despite her
conscience, that two or three outpourings still remained to her. 'But
you must concentrate your attention on writing your name as I write it
here.'
CHAPTER VI
Soon Raye wrote about the wedding. Having decided to make the best of
what he feared was a piece of romantic folly, he had acquired more zest
for the grand experiment. He wished the ceremony to be in London, for
greater privacy. Edith Harnham would have preferred it at Melchester;
Anna was passive. His reasoning prevailed, and Mrs. Harnham threw
herself with mournful zeal into the preparations for Anna's departure.
In a last desperate feeling that she must at every hazard be in at the
death of her dream, and see once again the man who by a species of
telepathy had exercised such an influence on her, she offered to go up
with Anna and be with her through the ceremony-'to see the end of her,'
as her mistress put it with forced gaiety; an offer which the girl
gratefully accepted; for she had no other friend capable of playing the
part of companion and witness, in the presence of a gentlemanly
bridegroom, in such a way as not to hasten an opinion that he had made
an irremediable social blunder.
It was a muddy morning in March when Raye alighted from a four-wheel cab
at the door of a registry-office in the S.W. district of London, and
carefully handed down Anna and her companion Mrs. Harnham. Anna looked
attractive in the somewhat fashionable clothes which Mrs. Harnham had
helped her to buy, though not quite so attractive as, an innocent child,
she had appeared in her country gown on the back of the wooden horse at
Melchester Fair.
Mrs. Harnham had come up this morning by an early train, and a young
man-a friend of Raye's-having met them at the door, all four entered the
registry-office together. Till an hour before this time Raye had never
known the wine-merchant's wife, except at that first casual encounter,
and in the flutter of the performance before them he had little
opportunity for more than a brief acquaintance. The contract of marriage
at a registry is soon got through; but somehow, during its progress,
Raye discovered a strange and secret gravitation between himself and
Anna's friend.
The formalities of the wedding-or rather ratification of a previous
union-being concluded, the four went in one cab to Raye's lodgings,
newly taken in a new suburb in preference to a house, the rent of which
he could ill afford just then. Here Anna cut the little cake which Raye
had bought at a pastrycook's on his way home from Lincoln's Inn the
night before. But she did not do much besides. Raye's friend was obliged
to depart almost immediately, and when he had left the only ones
virtually present were Edith and Raye who exchanged ideas with much
animation. The conversation was indeed theirs only, Anna being as a
domestic animal who humbly heard but understood not. Raye seemed
startled in awakening to this fact, and began to feel dissatisfied with
her inadequacy.
At last, more disappointed than he cared to own, he said, 'Mrs. Harnham,
my darling is so flurried that she doesn't know what she is doing or
saying. I see that after this event a little quietude will be necessary
before she gives tongue to that tender philosophy which she used to
treat me to in her letters.'
They had planned to start early that afternoon for Knollsea, to spend
the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for
departure was drawing near Raye asked his wife if she would go to the
writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his sister,
who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that
the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping
to know her well now that she was the writer's sister as well as
Charles's.
'Say it in the pretty poetical way you know so well how to adopt,' he
added, 'for I want you particularly to win her, and both of you to be
dear friends.'
Anna looked uneasy, but departed to her task, Raye remaining to talk to
their guest. Anna was a long while absent, and her husband suddenly rose
and went to her.
He found her still bending over the writing-table, with tears brimming
up in her eyes; and he looked down upon the sheet of note-paper with
some interest, to discover with what tact she had expressed her good-
will in the delicate circumstances. To his surprise she had progressed
but a few lines, in the characters and spelling of a child of eight, and
with the ideas of a goose.
'Anna,' he said, staring; 'what's this?'
'It only means-that I can't do it any better!' she answered, through her
tears.
'Eh? Nonsense!'
'I can't!' she insisted, with miserable, sobbing hardihood. 'I-I-didn't
write those letters, Charles! I only told her what to write! And not
always that! But I am learning, O so fast, my dear, dear husband! And
you'll forgive me, won't you, for not telling you before?' She slid to
her knees, abjectly clasped his waist and laid her face against him.
He stood a few moments, raised her, abruptly turned, and shut the door
upon her, rejoining Edith in the drawing-room. She saw that something
untoward had been discovered, and their eyes remained fixed on each
other.
'Do I guess rightly?' he asked, with wan quietude. 'You were her scribe
through all this?'
'It was necessary,' said Edith.
'Did she dictate every word you ever wrote to me?'
'Not every word.'
'In fact, very little?'
'Very little.'
'You wrote a great part of those pages every week from your own
conceptions, though in her name!'
'Yes.'
'Perhaps you wrote many of the letters when you were alone, without
communication with her?'
'I did.'
He turned to the bookcase, and leant with his hand over his face; and
Edith, seeing his distress, became white as a sheet.
'You have deceived me-ruined me!' he murmured.
'O, don't say it!' she cried in her anguish, jumping up and putting her
hand on his shoulder. 'I can't bear that!'
'Delighting me deceptively! Why did you do it-why did you!'
'I began doing it in kindness to her! How could I do otherwise than try
to save such a simple girl from misery? But I admit that I continued it
for pleasure to myself.'
Raye looked up. 'Why did it give you pleasure?' he asked.
'I must not tell,' said she.
He continued to regard her, and saw that her lips suddenly began to
quiver under his scrutiny, and her eyes to fill and droop. She started
aside, and said that she must go to the station to catch the return
train: could a cab be called immediately?
But Raye went up to her, and took her unresisting hand. 'Well, to think
of such a thing as this!' he said. 'Why, you and I are friends-lovers-
devoted lovers-by correspondence!'
'Yes; I suppose.'
'More.'
'More?'
'Plainly more. It is no use bIRONlinking that. Legally I have married
her-God help us both!-in soul and spirit I have married you, and no
other woman in the world!'
'Hush!'
'But I will not hush! Why should you try to disguise the full truth,
when you have already owned half of it? Yes, it is between you and me
that the bond is-not between me and her! Now I'll say no more. But, O my
cruel one, I think I have one claim upon you!'
She did not say what, and he drew her towards him, and bent over her.
'If it was all pure invention in those letters,' he said emphatically,
'give me your cheek only. If you meant what you said, let it be lips. It
is for the first and last time, remember!'
She put up her mouth, and he kissed her long. 'You forgive me?' she said
crying.
'Yes.'
'But you are ruined!'
'What matter!' he said shrugging his shoulders. 'It serves me right!'
She withdrew, wiped her eyes, entered and bade good-bye to Anna, who had
not expected her to go so soon, and was still wrestling with the letter.
Raye followed Edith downstairs, and in three minutes she was in a hansom
driving to the Waterloo station.
He went back to his wife. 'Never mind the letter, Anna, to-day,' he said
gently. 'Put on your things. We, too, must be off shortly.'
The simple girl, upheld by the sense that she was indeed married, showed
her delight at finding that he was as kind as ever after the disclosure.
She did not know that before his eyes he beheld as it were a galley, in
which he, the fastidious urban, was chained to work for the remainder of
his life, with her, the unlettered peasant, chained to his side.
Edith travelled back to Melchester that day with a face that showed the
very stupor of grief; her lips still tingling from the desperate
pressure of his kiss. The end of her impassioned dream had come. When at
dusk she reached the Melchester station her husband was there to meet
her, but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see
each other, and she went out of the station alone.
She walked mechanically homewards without calling a fly. Entering, she
could not bear the silence of the house, and went up in the dark to
where Anna had slept, where she remained thinking awhile. She then
returned to the drawing-room, and not knowing what she did, crouched
down upon the floor.
'I have ruined him!' she kept repeating. 'I have ruined him; because I
would not deal treacherously towards her!'
In the course of half an hour a figure opened the door of the apartment.
'Ah-who's that?' she said, starting up, for it was dark.
'Your husband-who should it be?' said the worthy merchant.
'Ah-my husband!-I forgot I had a husband!' she whispered to herself.
'I missed you at the station,' he continued. 'Did you see Anna safely
tied up? I hope so, for 'twas time.'
'Yes-Anna is married.'
Simultaneously with Edith's journey home Anna and her husband were
sitting at the opposite windows of a second-class carriage which sped
along to Knollsea. In his hand was a pocket-book full of creased sheets
closely written over. Unfolding them one after another he read them in
silence, and sighed.
'What are you doing, dear Charles?' she said timidly from the other
window, and drew nearer to him as if he were a god.
'Reading over all those sweet letters to me signed "Anna,"' he replied
with dreary resignation.
Autumn 1891.
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE
CHAPTER I
The interior of St. James's Church, in Havenpool Town, was slowly
darkening under the close clouds of a winter afternoon. It was Sunday:
service had just ended, the face of the parson in the pulpit was buried
in his hands, and the congregation, with a cheerful sigh of release,
were rising from their knees to depart.
For the moment the stillness was so complete that the surging of the sea
could be heard outside the harbour-bar. Then it was broken by the
footsteps of the clerk going towards the west door to open it in the
usual manner for the exit of the assembly. Before, however, he had
reached the doorway, the latch was lifted from without, and the dark
figure of a man in a sailor's garb appeared against the light.
The clerk stepped aside, the sailor closed the door gently behind him,
and advanced up the nave till he stood at the chancel-step. The parson
looked up from the private little prayer which, after so many for the
parish, he quite fairly took for himself; rose to his feet, and stared
at the intruder.
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said the sailor, addressing the minister in a
voice distinctly audible to all the congregation. 'I have come here to
offer thanks for my narrow escape from shipwreck. I am given to
understand that it is a proper thing to do, if you have no objection?'
The parson, after a moment's pause, said hesitatingly, 'I have no
objection; certainly. It is usual to mention any such wish before
service, so that the proper words may be used in the General
Thanksgiving. But, if you wish, we can read from the form for use after
a storm at sea.'
'Ay, sure; I ain't particular,' said the sailor.
The clerk thereupon directed the sailor to the page in the prayer-book
where the collect of thanksgiving would be found, and the rector began
reading it, the sailor kneeling where he stood, and repeating it after
him word by word in a distinct voice. The people, who had remained agape
and motionless at the proceeding, mechanically knelt down likewise; but
they continued to regard the isolated form of the sailor who, in the
precise middle of the chancel-step, remained fixed on his knees, facing
the east, his hat beside him, his hands joined, and he quite unconscious
of his appearance in their regard.
When his thanksgiving had come to an end he rose; the people rose also,
and all went out of church together. As soon as the sailor emerged, so
that the remaining daylight fell upon his face, old inhabitants began to
recognize him as no other than Shadrach Jolliffe, a young man who had
not been seen at Havenpool for several years. A son of the town, his
parents had died when he was quite young, on which account he had early
gone to sea, in the Newfoundland trade.
He talked with this and that townsman as he walked, informing them that,
since leaving his native place years before, he had become captain and
owner of a small coasting-ketch, which had providentially been saved
from the gale as well as himself. Presently he drew near to two girls
who were going out of the churchyard in front of him; they had been
sitting in the nave at his entry, and had watched his doings with deep
interest, afterwards discussing him as they moved out of church
together. One was a slight and gentle creature, the other a tall, large-
framed, deliberative girl. Captain Jolliffe regarded the loose curls of
their hair, their backs and shoulders, down to their heels, for some
time.
'Who may them two maids be?' he whispered to his neighbour.
'The little one is Emily Hanning; the tall one Joanna Phippard.'
'Ah! I recollect 'em now, to be sure.'
He advanced to their elbow, and genially stole a gaze at them.
'Emily, you don't know me?' said the sailor, turning his beaming brown
eyes on her.
'I think I do, Mr. Jolliffe,' said Emily shyly.
The other girl looked straight at him with her dark eyes.
'The face of Miss Joanna I don't call to mind so well,' he continued.
'But I know her beginnings and kindred.'
They walked and talked together, Jolliffe narrating particulars of his
late narrow escape, till they reached the corner of Sloop Lane, in which
Emily Hanning dwelt, when, with a nod and smile, she left them. Soon the
sailor parted also from Joanna, and, having no especial errand or
appointment, turned back towards Emily's house. She lived with her
father, who called himself an accountant, the daughter, however, keeping
a little stationery-shop as a supplemental provision for the gaps of his
somewhat uncertain business. On entering Jolliffe found father and
daughter about to begin tea.
'O, I didn't know it was tea-time,' he said. 'Ay, I'll have a cup with
much pleasure.'
He remained to tea and long afterwards, telling more tales of his
seafaring life. Several neighbours called to listen, and were asked to
come in. Somehow Emily Hanning lost her heart to the sailor that Sunday
night, and in the course of a week or two there was a tender
understanding between them.
One moonlight evening in the next month Shadrach was ascending out of
the town by the long straight road eastward, to an elevated suburb where
the more fashionable houses stood-if anything near this ancient port
could be called fashionable-when he saw a figure before him whom, from
her manner of glancing back, he took to be Emily. But, on coming up, he
found she was Joanna Phippard. He gave a gallant greeting, and walked
beside her.
'Go along,' she said, 'or Emily will be jealous!'
He seemed not to like the suggestion, and remained. What was said and
what was done on that walk never could be clearly recollected by
Shadrach; but in some way or other Joanna contrived to wean him away
from her gentler and younger rival. From that week onwards, Jolliffe was
seen more and more in the wake of Joanna Phippard and less in the
company of Emily; and it was soon rumoured about the quay that old
Jolliffe's son, who had come home from sea, was going to be married to
the former young woman, to the great disappointment of the latter.
Just after this report had gone about, Joanna dressed herself for a walk
one morning, and started for Emily's house in the little cross-street.
Intelligence of the deep sorrow of her friend on account of the loss of
Shadrach had reached her ears also, and her conscience reproached her
for winning him away.
Joanna was not altogether satisfied with the sailor. She liked his
attentions, and she coveted the dignity of matrimony; but she had never
been deeply in love with Jolliffe. For one thing, she was ambitious, and
socially his position was hardly so good as her own, and there was
always the chance of an attractive woman mating considerably above her.
It had long been in her mind that she would not strongly object to give
him back again to Emily if her friend felt so very badly about him. To
this end she had written a letter of renunciation to Shadrach, which
letter she carried in her hand, intending to send it if personal
observation of Emily convinced her that her friend was suffering.
Joanna entered Sloop Lane and stepped down into the stationery-shop,
which was below the pavement level. Emily's father was never at home at
this hour of the day, and it seemed as though Emily were not at home
either, for the visitor could make nobody hear. Customers came so seldom
hither that a five minutes' absence of the proprietor counted for
little. Joanna waited in the little shop, where Emily had tastefully set
out-as women can-articles in themselves of slight value, so as to
obscure the meagreness of the stock-in-trade; till she saw a figure
pausing without the window apparently absorbed in the contemplation of
the sixpenny books, packets of paper, and prints hung on a string. It
was Captain Shadrach Jolliffe, peering in to ascertain if Emily were
there alone. Moved by an impulse of reluctance to meet him in a spot
which breathed of Emily, Joanna slipped through the door that
communicated with the parlour at the back. She had frequently done so
before, for in her friendship with Emily she had the freedom of the
house without ceremony.
Jolliffe entered the shop. Through the thin blind which screened the
glass partition she could see that he was disappointed at not finding
Emily there. He was about to go out again, when Emily's form darkened
the doorway, hastening home from some errand. At sight of Jolliffe she
started back as if she would have gone out again.
'Don't run away, Emily; don't!' said he. 'What can make ye afraid?'
'I'm not afraid, Captain Jolliffe. Only-only I saw you all of a sudden,
and-it made me jump!' Her voice showed that her heart had jumped even
more than the rest of her.
'I just called as I was passing,' he said.
'For some paper?' She hastened behind the counter.
'No, no, Emily; why do ye get behind there? Why not stay by me? You seem
to hate me.'
'I don't hate you. How can I?'
'Then come out, so that we can talk like Christians.'
Emily obeyed with a fitful laugh, till she stood again beside him in the
open part of the shop.
'There's a dear,' he said.
'You mustn't say that, Captain Jolliffe; because the words belong to
somebody else.'
'Ah! I know what you mean. But, Emily, upon my life I didn't know till
this morning that you cared one bit about me, or I should not have done
as I have done. I have the best of feelings for Joanna, but I know that
from the beginning she hasn't cared for me more than in a friendly way;
and I see now the one I ought to have asked to be my wife. You know,
Emily, when a man comes home from sea after a long voyage he's as blind
as a bat-he can't see who's who in women. They are all alike to him,
beautiful creatures, and he takes the first that comes easy, without
thinking if she loves him, or if he might not soon love another better
than her. From the first I inclined to you most, but you were so
backward and shy that I thought you didn't want me to bother 'ee, and so
I went to Joanna.'
'Don't say any more, Mr. Jolliffe, don't!' said she, choking. 'You are
going to marry Joanna next month, and it is wrong to-to-'
'O, Emily, my darling!' he cried, and clasped her little figure in his
arms before she was aware.
Joanna, behind the curtain, turned pale, tried to withdraw her eyes, but
could not.
'It is only you I love as a man ought to love the woman he is going to
marry; and I know this from what Joanna has said, that she will
willingly let me off! She wants to marry higher I know, and only said
"Yes" to me out of kindness. A fine, tall girl like her isn't the sort
for a plain sailor's wife: you be the best suited for that.'
He kissed her and kissed her again, her flexible form quivering in the
agitation of his embrace.
'I wonder-are you sure-Joanna is going to break off with you? O, are you
sure? Because-'
'I know she would not wish to make us miserable. She will release me.'
'O, I hope-I hope she will! Don't stay any longer, Captain Jolliffe!'
He lingered, however, till a customer came for a penny stick of sealing-
wax, and then he withdrew.
Green envy had overspread Joanna at the scene. She looked about for a
way of escape. To get out without Emily's knowledge of her visit was
indispensable. She crept from the parlour into the passage, and thence
to the front door of the house, where she let herself noiselessly into
the street.
The sight of that caress had reversed all her resolutions. She could not
let Shadrach go. Reaching home she burnt the letter, and told her mother
that if Captain Jolliffe called she was too unwell to see him.
Shadrach, however, did not call. He sent her a note expressing in simple
language the state of his feelings; and asked to be allowed to take
advantage of the hints she had given him that her affection, too, was
little more than friendly, by cancelling the engagement.
Looking out upon the harbour and the island beyond he waited and waited
in his lodgings for an answer that did not come. The suspense grew to be
so intolerable that after dark he went up the High Street. He could not
resist calling at Joanna's to learn his fate.
Her mother said her daughter was too unwell to see him, and to his
questioning admitted that it was in consequence of a letter received
from himself; which had distressed her deeply.
'You know what it was about, perhaps, Mrs. Phippard?' he said.
Mrs. Phippard owned that she did, adding that it put them in a very
painful position. Thereupon Shadrach, fearing that he had been guilty of
an enormity, explained that if his letter had pained Joanna it must be
owing to a misunderstanding, since he had thought it would be a relief
to her. If otherwise, he would hold himself bound by his word, and she
was to think of the letter as never having been written.
Next morning he received an oral message from the young woman, asking
him to fetch her home from a meeting that evening. This he did, and
while walking from the Town Hall to her door, with her hand in his arm,
she said:
'It is all the same as before between us, isn't it, Shadrach? Your
letter was sent in mistake?'
'It is all the same as before,' he answered, 'if you say it must be.'
'I wish it to be,' she murmured, with hard lineaments, as she thought of
Emily.
Shadrach was a religious and scrupulous man, who respected his word as
his life. Shortly afterwards the wedding took place, Jolliffe having
conveyed to Emily as gently as possible the error he had fallen into
when estimating Joanna's mood as one of indifference.
CHAPTER II
A month after the marriage Joanna's mother died, and the couple were
obliged to turn their attention to very practical matters. Now that she
was left without a parent, Joanna could not bear the notion of her
husband going to sea again, but the question was, What could he do at
home? They finally decided to take on a grocer's shop in High Street,
the goodwill and stock of which were waiting to be disposed of at that
time. Shadrach knew nothing of shopkeeping, and Joanna very little, but
they hoped to learn.
To the management of this grocery business they now devoted all their
energies, and continued to conduct it for many succeeding years, without
great success. Two sons were born to them, whom their mother loved to
idolatry, although she had never passionately loved her husband; and she
lavished upon them all her forethought and care. But the shop did not
thrive, and the large dreams she had entertained of her sons' education
and career became attenuated in the face of realities. Their schooling
was of the plainest, but, being by the sea, they grew alert in all such
nautical arts and enterprises as were attractive to their age.
The great interest of the Jolliffes' married life, outside their own
immediate household, had lain in the marriage of Emily. By one of those
odd chances which lead those that lurk in unexpected corners to be
discovered, while the obvious are passed by, the gentle girl had been
seen and loved by a thriving merchant of the town, a widower, some years
older than herself, though still in the prime of life. At first Emily
had declared that she never, never could marry any one; but Mr. Lester
had quietly persevered, and had at last won her reluctant assent. Two
children also were the fruits of this union, and, as they grew and
prospered, Emily declared that she had never supposed that she could
live to be so happy.
The worthy merchant's home, one of those large, substantial brick
mansions frequently jammed up in old-fashioned towns, faced directly on
the High Street, nearly opposite to the grocery shop of the Jolliffes,
and it now became the pain of Joanna to behold the woman whose place she
had usurped out of pure covetousness, looking down from her position of
comparative wealth upon the humble shop-window with its dusty sugar-
loaves, heaps of raisins, and canisters of tea, over which it was her
own lot to preside. The business having so dwindled, Joanna was obliged
to serve in the shop herself; and it galled and mortified her that Emily
Lester, sitting in her large drawing-room over the way, could witness
her own dancings up and down behind the counter at the beck and call of
wretched twopenny customers, whose patronage she was driven to welcome
gladly: persons to whom she was compelled to be civil in the street,
while Emily was bounding along with her children and her governess, and
conversing with the genteelest people of the town and neighbourhood.
This was what she had gained by not letting Shadrach Jolliffe, whom she
had so faintly loved, carry his affection elsewhere.
Shadrach was a good and honest man, and he had been faithful to her in
heart and in deed. Time had clipped the wings of his love for Emily in
his devotion to the mother of his boys: he had quite lived down that
impulsive earlier fancy, and Emily had become in his regard nothing more
than a friend. It was the same with Emily's feelings for him. Possibly,
had she found the least cause for jealousy, Joanna would almost have
been better satisfied. It was in the absolute acquiescence of Emily and
Shadrach in the results she herself had contrived that her discontent
found nourishment.
Shadrach was not endowed with the narrow shrewdness necessary for
developing a retail business in the face of many competitors. Did a
customer inquire if the grocer could really recommend the wondrous
substitute for eggs which a persevering bagman had forced into his
stock, he would answer that 'when you did not put eggs into a pudding it
was difficult to taste them there'; and when he was asked if his 'real
Mocha coffee' was real Mocha, he would say grimly, 'as understood in
small shops.'
One summer day, when the big brick house opposite was reflecting the
oppressive sun's heat into the shop, and nobody was present but husband
and wife, Joanna looked across at Emily's door, where a wealthy
visitor's carriage had drawn up. Traces of patronage had been visible in
Emily's manner of late.
'Shadrach, the truth is, you are not a business-man,' his wife sadly
murmured. 'You were not brought up to shopkeeping, and it is impossible
for a man to make a fortune at an occupation he has jumped into, as you
did into this.'
Jolliffe agreed with her, in this as in everything else.
'Not that I care a rope's end about making a fortune,' he said
cheerfully. 'I am happy enough, and we can rub on somehow.'
She looked again at the great house through the screen of bottled
pickles.
'Rub on-yes,' she said bitterly. 'But see how well off Emmy Lester is,
who used to be so poor! Her boys will go to College, no doubt; and think
of yours-obliged to go to the Parish School!'
Shadrach's thoughts had flown to Emily.
'Nobody,' he said good-humouredly, 'ever did Emily a better turn than
you did, Joanna, when you warned her off me and put an end to that
little simpering nonsense between us, so as to leave it in her power to
say "Aye" to Lester when he came along.' This almost maddened her.
'Don't speak of bygones!' she implored, in stern sadness. 'But think,
for the boys' and my sake, if not for your own, what are we to do to get
richer?'
'Well,' he said, becoming serious, 'to tell the truth, I have always
felt myself unfit for this business, though I've never liked to say so.
I seem to want more room for sprawling; a more open space to strike out
in than here among friends and neighbours. I could get rich as well as
any man, if I tried my own way.'
'I wish you would! What is your way?'
'To go to sea again.'
She had been the very one to keep him at home, hating the semi-widowed
existence of sailors' wives. But her ambition checked her instincts now,
and she said: 'Do you think success really lies that way?'
'I am sure it lies in no other.'
'Do you want to go, Shadrach?'
'Not for the pleasure of it, I can tell 'ee. There's no such pleasure at
sea, Joanna, as I can find in my back parlour here. To speak honest, I
have no love for the brine. I never had much. But if it comes to a
question of a fortune for you and the lads, it is another thing. That's
the only way to it for one born and bred a seafarer as I.'
'Would it take long to earn?'
'Well, that depends; perhaps not.'
The next morning Shadrach pulled from a chest of drawers the nautical
jacket he had worn during the first months of his return, brushed out
the moths, donned it, and walked down to the quay. The port still did a
fair business in the Newfoundland trade, though not so much as formerly.
It was not long after this that he invested all he possessed in
purchasing a part-ownership in a brig, of which he was appointed
captain. A few months were passed in coast-trading, during which
interval Shadrach wore off the land-rust that had accumulated upon him
in his grocery phase; and in the spring the brig sailed for
Newfoundland.
Joanna lived on at home with her sons, who were now growing up into
strong lads, and occupying themselves in various ways about the harbour
and quay.
'Never mind, let them work a little,' their fond mother said to herself.
'Our necessities compel it now, but when Shadrach comes home they will
be only seventeen and eighteen, and they shall be removed from the port,
and their education thoroughly taken in hand by a tutor; and with the
money they'll have they will perhaps be as near to gentlemen as Emmy
Lester's precious two, with their algebra and their Latin!'
The date for Shadrach's return drew near and arrived, and he did not
appear. Joanna was assured that there was no cause for anxiety, sailing-
ships being so uncertain in their coming; which assurance proved to be
well grounded, for late one wet evening, about a month after the
calculated time, the ship was announced as at hand, and presently the
slip-slop step of Shadrach as the sailor sounded in the passage, and he
entered. The boys had gone out and had missed him, and Joanna was
sitting alone.
As soon as the first emotion of reunion between the couple had passed,
Jolliffe explained the delay as owing to a small speculative contract,
which had produced good results.
'I was determined not to disappoint 'ee,' he said; 'and I think you'll
own that I haven't!'
With this he pulled out an enormous canvas bag, full and rotund as the
money-bag of the giant whom Jack slew, untied it, and shook the contents
out into her lap as she sat in her low chair by the fire. A mass of
sovereigns and guineas (there were guineas on the earth in those days)
fell into her lap with a sudden thud, weighing down her gown to the
floor.
'There!' said Shadrach complacently. 'I told 'ee, dear, I'd do it; and
have I done it or no?'
Somehow her face, after the first excitement of possession, did not
retain its glory.
'It is a lot of gold, indeed,' she said. 'And-is this all?'
'All? Why, dear Joanna, do you know you can count to three hundred in
that heap? It is a fortune!'
'Yes-yes. A fortune-judged by sea; but judged by land-'
However, she banished considerations of the money for the nonce. Soon
the boys came in, and next Sunday Shadrach returned thanks to God-this
time by the more ordinary channel of the italics in the General
Thanksgiving. But a few days after, when the question of investing the
money arose, he remarked that she did not seem so satisfied as he had
hoped.
'Well you see, Shadrach,' she answered, 'we count by hundreds; they
count by thousands' (nodding towards the other side of the Street).
'They have set up a carriage and pair since you left.'
'O, have they?'
'My dear Shadrach, you don't know how the world moves. However, we'll do
the best we can with it. But they are rich, and we are poor still!'
The greater part of a year was desultorily spent. She moved sadly about
the house and shop, and the boys were still occupying themselves in and
around the harbour.
'Joanna,' he said, one day, 'I see by your movements that it is not
enough.'
'It is not enough,' said she. 'My boys will have to live by steering the
ships that the Lesters own; and I was once above her!'
Jolliffe was not an argumentative man, and he only murmured that he
thought he would make another voyage.
He meditated for several days, and coming home from the quay one
afternoon said suddenly:
'I could do it for 'ee, dear, in one more trip, for certain, if-if-'
'Do what, Shadrach?'
'Enable 'ee to count by thousands instead of hundreds.'
'If what?'
'If I might take the boys.'
She turned pale.
'Don't say that, Shadrach,' she answered hastily.
'Why?'
'I don't like to hear it! There's danger at sea. I want them to be
something genteel, and no danger to them. I couldn't let them risk their
lives at sea. O, I couldn't ever, ever!'
'Very well, dear, it shan't be done.'
Next day, after a silence, she asked a question:
'If they were to go with you it would make a great deal of difference, I
suppose, to the profit?'
''Twould treble what I should get from the venture single-handed. Under
my eye they would be as good as two more of myself.'
Later on she said: 'Tell me more about this.'
'Well, the boys are almost as clever as master-mariners in handling a
craft, upon my life! There isn't a more cranky place in the Northern
Seas than about the sandbanks of this harbour, and they've practised
here from their infancy. And they are so steady. I couldn't get their
steadiness and their trustworthiness in half a dozen men twice their
age.'
'And is it very dangerous at sea; now, too, there are rumours of war?'
she asked uneasily.
'O, well, there be risks. Still . . . '
The idea grew and magnified, and the mother's heart was crushed and
stifled by it. Emmy was growing too patronizing; it could not be borne.
Shadrach's wife could not help nagging him about their comparative
poverty. The young men, amiable as their father, when spoken to on the
subject of a voyage of enterprise, were quite willing to embark; and
though they, like their father, had no great love for the sea, they
became quite enthusiastic when the proposal was detailed.
Everything now hung upon their mother's assent. She withheld it long,
but at last gave the word: the young men might accompany their father.
Shadrach was unusually cheerful about it: Heaven had preserved him
hitherto, and he had uttered his thanks. God would not forsake those who
were faithful to him.
All that the Jolliffes possessed in the world was put into the
enterprise. The grocery stock was pared down to the least that possibly
could afford a bare sustenance to Joanna during the absence, which was
to last through the usual 'New-f'nland spell.' How she would endure the
weary time she hardly knew, for the boys had been with her formerly; but
she nerved herself for the trial.
The ship was laden with boots and shoes, ready-made clothing, fishing-
tackle, butter, cheese, cordage, sailcloth, and many other commodities;
and was to bring back oil, furs, skins, fish, cranberries, and what else
came to hand. But much trading to other ports was to be undertaken
between the voyages out and homeward, and thereby much money made.
CHAPTER III
The brig sailed on a Monday morning in spring; but Joanna did not
witness its departure. She could not bear the sight that she had been
the means of bringing about. Knowing this, her husband told her
overnight that they were to sail some time before noon next day hence
when, awakening at five the next morning, she heard them bustling about
downstairs, she did not hasten to descend, but lay trying to nerve
herself for the parting, imagining they would leave about nine, as her
husband had done on his previous voyage. When she did descend she beheld
words chalked upon the sloping face of the bureau; but no husband or
sons. In the hastily-scrawled lines Shadrach said they had gone off thus
not to pain her by a leave-taking; and the sons had chalked under his
words: 'Good-bye, mother!'
She rushed to the quay, and looked down the harbour towards the blue rim
of the sea, but she could only see the masts and bulging sails of the
Joanna; no human figures. ''Tis I have sent them!' she said wildly, and
burst into tears. In the house the chalked 'Good-bye' nearly broke her
heart. But when she had re-entered the front room, and looked across at
Emily's, a gleam of triumph lit her thin face at her anticipated release
from the thraldom of subservience.
To do Emily Lester justice, her assumption of superiority was mainly a
figment of Joanna's brain. That the circumstances of the merchant's wife
were more luxurious than Joanna's, the former could not conceal; though
whenever the two met, which was not very often now, Emily endeavoured to
subdue the difference by every means in her power.
The first summer lapsed away; and Joanna meagrely maintained herself by
the shop, which now consisted of little more than a window and a
counter. Emily was, in truth, her only large customer; and Mrs. Lester's
kindly readiness to buy anything and everything without questioning the
quality had a sting of bitterness in it, for it was the uncritical
attitude of a patron, and almost of a donor. The long dreary winter
moved on; the face of the bureau had been turned to the wall to protect
the chalked words of farewell, for Joanna could never bring herself to
rub them out; and she often glanced at them with wet eyes. Emily's
handsome boys came home for the Christmas holidays; the University was
talked of for them; and still Joanna subsisted as it were with held
breath, like a person submerged. Only one summer more, and the 'spell'
would end. Towards the close of the time Emily called on her quondam
friend. She had heard that Joanna began to feel anxious; she had
received no letter from husband or sons for some months. Emily's silks
rustled arrogantly when, in response to Joanna's almost dumb invitation,
she squeezed through the opening of the counter and into the parlour
behind the shop.
'You are all success, and I am all the other way!' said Joanna.
'But why do you think so?' said Emily. 'They are to bring back a
fortune, I hear.'
'Ah! will they come? The doubt is more than a woman can bear. All three
in one ship-think of that! And I have not heard of them for months!'
'But the time is not up. You should not meet misfortune half-way.'
'Nothing will repay me for the grief of their absence!'
'Then why did you let them go? You were doing fairly well.'
'I made them go!' she said, turning vehemently upon Emily. 'And I'll
tell you why! I could not bear that we should be only muddling on, and
you so rich and thriving! Now I have told you, and you may hate me if
you will!'
'I shall never hate you, Joanna.'
And she proved the truth of her words afterwards. The end of autumn
came, and the brig should have been in port; but nothing like the Joanna
appeared in the channel between the sands. It was now really time to be
uneasy. Joanna Jolliffe sat by the fire, and every gust of wind caused
her a cold thrill. She had always feared and detested the sea; to her it
was a treacherous, restless, slimy creature, glorying in the griefs of
women. 'Still,' she said, 'they must come!'
She recalled to her mind that Shadrach had said before starting that if
they returned safe and sound, with success crowning their enterprise, he
would go as he had gone after his shipwreck, and kneel with his sons in
the church, and offer sincere thanks for their deliverance. She went to
church regularly morning and afternoon, and sat in the most forward pew,
nearest the chancel-step. Her eyes were mostly fixed on that step, where
Shadrach had knelt in the bloom of his young manhood: she knew to an
inch the spot which his knees had pressed twenty winters before; his
outline as he had knelt, his hat on the step beside him. God was good.
Surely her husband must kneel there again: a son on each side as he had
said; George just here, Jim just there. By long watching the spot as she
worshipped it became as if she saw the three returned ones there
kneeling; the two slim outlines of her boys, the more bulky form between
them; their hands clasped, their heads shaped against the eastern wall.
The fancy grew almost to an hallucination: she could never turn her worn
eyes to the step without seeing them there.
Nevertheless they did not come. Heaven was merciful, but it was not yet
pleased to relieve her soul. This was her purgation for the sin of
making them the slaves of her ambition. But it became more than
purgation soon, and her mood approached despair. Months had passed since
the brig had been due, but it had not returned.
Joanna was always hearing or seeing evidences of their arrival. When on
the hill behind the port, whence a view of the open Channel could be
obtained, she felt sure that a little speck on the horizon, breaking the
eternally level waste of waters southward, was the truck of the Joana's
mainmast. Or when indoors, a shout or excitement of any kind at the
corner of the Town Cellar, where the High Street joined the Quay, caused
her to spring to her feet and cry: ''Tis they!'
But it was not. The visionary forms knelt every Sunday afternoon on the
chancel-step, but not the real. Her shop had, as it were, eaten itself
hollow. In the apathy which had resulted from her loneliness and grief
she had ceased to take in the smallest supplies, and thus had sent away
her last customer.
In this strait Emily Lester tried by every means in her power to aid the
afflicted woman; but she met with constant repulses.
'I don't like you! I can't bear to see you!' Joanna would whisper
hoarsely when Emily came to her and made advances.
'But I want to help and soothe you, Joanna,' Emily would say.
'You are a lady, with a rich husband and fine sons! What can you want
with a bereaved crone like me!'
'Joanna, I want this: I want you to come and live in my house, and not
stay alone in this dismal place any longer.'
'And suppose they come and don't find me at home? You wish to separate
me and mine! No, I'll stay here. I don't like you, and I can't thank
you, whatever kindness you do me!'
However, as time went on Joanna could not afford to pay the rent of the
shop and house without an income. She was assured that all hope of the
return of Shadrach and his sons was vain, and she reluctantly consented
to accept the asylum of the Lesters' house. Here she was allotted a room
of her own on the second floor, and went and came as she chose, without
contact with the family. Her hair greyed and whitened, deep lines
channeled her forehead, and her form grew gaunt and stooping. But she
still expected the lost ones, and when she met Emily on the staircase
she would say morosely: 'I know why you've got me here! They'll come,
and be disappointed at not finding me at home, and perhaps go away
again; and then you'll be revenged for my taking Shadrach away from
'ee!'
Emily Lester bore these reproaches from the grief-stricken soul. She was
sure-all the people of Havenpool were sure-that Shadrach and his sons
could not return. For years the vessel had been given up as lost.
Nevertheless, when awakened at night by any noise, Joanna would rise
from bed and glance at the shop opposite by the light from the
flickering lamp, to make sure it was not they.
It was a damp and dark December night, six years after the departure of
the brig Joanna. The wind was from the sea, and brought up a fishy mist
which mopped the face like moist flannel. Joanna had prayed her usual
prayer for the absent ones with more fervour and confidence than she had
felt for months, and had fallen asleep about eleven. It must have been
between one and two when she suddenly started up. She had certainly
heard steps in the street, and the voices of Shadrach and her sons
calling at the door of the grocery shop. She sprang out of bed, and,
hardly knowing what clothing she dragged on herself; hastened down
Emily's large and carpeted staircase, put the candle on the hall-table,
unfastened the bolts and chain, and stepped into the street. The mist,
blowing up the street from the Quay, hindered her seeing the shop,
although it was so near; but she had crossed to it in a moment. How was
it? Nobody stood there. The wretched woman walked wildly up and down
with her bare feet-there was not a soul. She returned and knocked with
all her might at the door which had once been her own-they might have
been admitted for the night, unwilling to disturb her till the morning.
It was not till several minutes had elapsed that the young man who now
kept the shop looked out of an upper window, and saw the skeleton of
something human standing below half-dressed.
'Has anybody come?' asked the form.
'O, Mrs. Jolliffe, I didn't know it was you,' said the young man kindly,
for he was aware how her baseless expectations moved her. 'No; nobody
has come.'
June 1891.
THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION
CHAPTER I
Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged
since those eventful days. A plough has never disturbed the turf, and
the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now. Here stood the camp;
here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the
cavalry, and spots where the midden-heaps lay are still to be observed.
At night, when I walk across the lonely place, it is impossible to avoid
hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the grass-bents and
thistles, the old trumpet and bugle calls, the rattle of the halters; to
help seeing rows of spectral tents and the impedimenta of the soldiery.
From within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and
broken songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the
King's German Legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that
time.
It was nearly ninety years ago. The British uniform of the period, with
its immense epaulettes, queer cocked-hat, breeches, gaiters, ponderous
cartridge-box, buckled shoes, and what not, would look strange and
barbarous now. Ideas have changed; invention has followed invention.
Soldiers were monumental objects then. A divinity still hedged kings
here and there; and war was considered a glorious thing.
Secluded old manor-houses and hamlets lie in the ravines and hollows
among these hills, where a stranger had hardly ever been seen till the
King chose to take the baths yearly at the sea-side watering-place a few
miles to the south; as a consequence of which battalions descended in a
cloud upon the open country around. Is it necessary to add that the
echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time,
still linger about here in more or less fragmentary form, to be caught
by the attentive ear? Some of them I have repeated; most of them I have
forgotten; one I have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget.
Phyllis told me the story with her own lips. She was then an old lady of
seventy-five, and her auditor a lad of fifteen. She enjoined silence as
to her share in the incident, till she should be 'dead, buried, and
forgotten.' Her life was prolonged twelve years after the day of her
narration, and she has now been dead nearly twenty. The oblivion which
in her modesty and humility she courted for herself has only partially
fallen on her, with the unfortunate result of inflicting an injustice
upon her memory; since such fragments of her story as got abroad at the
time, and have been kept alive ever since, are precisely those which are
most unfavourable to her character.
It all began with the arrival of the York Hussars, one of the foreign
regiments above alluded to. Before that day scarcely a soul had been
seen near her father's house for weeks. When a noise like the brushing
skirt of a visitor was heard on the doorstep, it proved to be a scudding
leaf; when a carriage seemed to be nearing the door, it was her father
grinding his sickle on the stone in the garden for his favourite
relaxation of trimming the box-tree borders to the plots. A sound like
luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun far away at sea; and what
looked like a tall man by the gate at dusk was a yew bush cut into a
quaint and attenuated shape. There is no such solitude in country places
now as there was in those old days.
Yet all the while King George and his court were at his favourite sea-
side resort, not more than five miles off.
The daughter's seclusion was great, but beyond the seclusion of the girl
lay the seclusion of the father. If her social condition was twilight,
his was darkness. Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while her twilight
oppressed her. Dr. Grove had been a professional man whose taste for
lonely meditation over metaphysical questions had diminished his
practice till it no longer paid him to keep it going; after which he had
relinquished it and hired at a nominal rent the small, dilapidated, half
farm half manor-house of this obscure inland nook, to make a sufficiency
of an income which in a town would have been inadequate for their
maintenance. He stayed in his garden the greater part of the day,
growing more and more irritable with the lapse of time, and the
increasing perception that he had wasted his life in the pursuit of
illusions. He saw his friends less and less frequently. Phyllis became
so shy that if she met a stranger anywhere in her short rambles she felt
ashamed at his gaze, walked awkwardly, and blushed to her shoulders.
Yet Phyllis was discovered even here by an admirer, and her hand most
unexpectedly asked in marriage.
The King, as aforesaid, was at the neighbouring town, where he had taken
up his abode at Gloucester Lodge and his presence in the town naturally
brought many county people thither. Among these idlers-many of whom
professed to have connections and interests with the Court-was one
Humphrey Gould, a bachelor; a personage neither young nor old; neither
good-looking nor positively plain. Too steady-going to be 'a buck' (as
fast and unmarried men were then called), he was an approximately
fashionable man of a mild type. This bachelor of thirty found his way to
the village on the down: beheld Phyllis; made her father's acquaintance
in order to make hers; and by some means or other she sufficiently
inflamed his heart to lead him in that direction almost daily; till he
became engaged to marry her.
As he was of an old local family, some of whose members were held in
respect in the county, Phyllis, in bringing him to her feet, had
accomplished what was considered a brilliant move for one in her
constrained position. How she had done it was not quite known to Phyllis
herself. In those days unequal marriages were regarded rather as a
violation of the laws of nature than as a mere infringement of
convention, the more modern view, and hence when Phyllis, of the
watering-place bourgeoisie, was chosen by such a gentlemanly fellow, it
was as if she were going to be taken to heaven, though perhaps the
uninformed would have seen no great difference in the respective
positions of the pair, the said Gould being as poor as a crow.
This pecuniary condition was his excuse-probably a true one-for
postponing their union, and as the winter drew nearer, and the King
departed for the season, Mr. Humphrey Gould set out for Bath, promising
to return to Phyllis in a few weeks. The winter arrived, the date of his
promise passed, yet Gould postponed his coming, on the ground that he
could not very easily leave his father in the city of their sojourn, the
elder having no other relative near him. Phyllis, though lonely in the
extreme, was content. The man who had asked her in marriage was a
desirable husband for her in many ways; her father highly approved of
his suit; but this neglect of her was awkward, if not painful, for
Phyllis. Love him in the true sense of the word she assured me she never
did, but she had a genuine regard for him; admired a certain methodical
and dogged way in which he sometimes took his pleasure; valued his
knowledge of what the Court was doing, had done, or was about to do; and
she was not without a feeling of pride that he had chosen her when he
might have exercised a more ambitious choice.
But he did not come; and the spring developed. His letters were regular
though formal; and it is not to be wondered that the uncertainty of her
position, IRONlinked with the fact that there was not much passion in
her thoughts of Humphrey, bred an indescribable dreariness in the heart
of Phyllis Grove. The spring was soon summer, and the summer brought the
King; but still no Humphrey Gould. All this while the engagement by
letter was maintained intact.
At this point of time a golden radiance flashed in upon the lives of
people here, and charged all youthful thought with emotional interest.
This radiance was the aforesaid York Hussars.
CHAPTER II
The present generation has probably but a very dim notion of the
celebrated York Hussars of ninety years ago. They were one of the
regiments of the King's German Legion, and (though they somewhat
degenerated later on) their brilliant uniform, their splendid horses,
and above all, their foreign air and mustachios (rare appendages then),
drew crowds of admirers of both sexes wherever they went. These with
other regiments had come to encamp on the downs and pastures, because of
the presence of the King in the neighbouring town.
The spot was high and airy, and the view extensive, commanding the Isle
of Portland in front, and reaching to St. Aldhelm's Head eastward, and
almost to the Start on the west.
Phyllis, though not precisely a girl of the village, was as interested
as any of them in this military investment. Her father's home stood
somewhat apart, and on the highest point of ground to which the lane
ascended, so that it was almost level with the top of the church tower
in the lower part of the parish. Immediately from the outside of the
garden-wall the grass spread away to a great distance, and it was
crossed by a path which came close to the wall. Ever since her childhood
it had been Phyllis's pleasure to clamber up this fence and sit on the
top-a feat not so difficult as it may seem, the walls in this district
being built of rubble, without mortar, so that there were plenty of
crevices for small toes.
She was sitting up here one day, listlessly surveying the pasture
without, when her attention was arrested by a solitary figure walking
along the path. It was one of the renowned German Hussars, and he moved
onward with his eyes on the ground, and with the manner of one who
wished to escape company. His head would probably have been bent like
his eyes but for his stiff neck-gear. On nearer view she perceived that
his face was marked with deep sadness. Without observing her, he
advanced by the footpath till it brought him almost immediately under
the wall.
Phyllis was much surprised to see a fine, tall soldier in such a mood as
this. Her theory of the military, and of the York Hussars in particular
(derived entirely from hearsay, for she had never talked to a soldier in
her life), was that their hearts were as gay as their accoutrements.
At this moment the Hussar lifted his eyes and noticed her on her perch,
the white muslin neckerchief which covered her shoulders and neck where
left bare by her low gown, and her white raiment in general, showing
conspicuously in the bright sunlight of this summer day. He blushed a
little at the suddenness of the encounter, and without halting a moment
from his pace passed on.
All that day the foreigner's face haunted Phyllis; its aspect was so
striking, so handsome, and his eyes were so blue, and sad, and
abstracted. It was perhaps only natural that on some following day at
the same hour she should look over that wall again, and wait till he had
passed a second time. On this occasion he was reading a letter, and at
the sight of her his manner was that of one who had half expected or
hoped to discover her. He almost stopped, smiled, and made a courteous
salute. The end of the meeting was that they exchanged a few words. She
asked him what he was reading, and he readily informed her that he was
re-perusing letters from his mother in Germany; he did not get them
often, he said, and was forced to read the old ones a great many times.
This was all that passed at the present interview, but others of the
same kind followed.
Phyllis used to say that his English, though not good, was quite
intelligible to her, so that their acquaintance was never hindered by
difficulties of speech. Whenever the subject became too delicate,
subtle, or tender, for such words of English as were at his command, the
eyes no doubt helped out the tongue, and-though this was later on-the
lips helped out the eyes. In short this acquaintance, unguardedly made,
and rash enough on her part, developed and ripened. Like Desdemona, she
pitied him, and learnt his history.
His name was Matth\xE4us Tina, and Saarbr\xFCck his native town, where his
mother was still living. His age was twenty-two, and he had already
risen to the grade of corporal, though he had not long been in the army.
Phyllis used to assert that no such refined or well-educated young man
could have been found in the ranks of the purely English regiments, some
of these foreign soldiers having rather the graceful manner and presence
of our native officers than of our rank and file.
She by degrees learnt from her foreign friend a circumstance about
himself and his comrades which Phyllis would least have expected of the
York Hussars. So far from being as gay as its uniform, the regiment was
pervaded by a dreadful melancholy, a chronic home-sickness, which
depressed many of the men to such an extent that they could hardly
attend to their drill. The worst sufferers were the younger soldiers who
had not been over here long. They hated England and English life; they
took no interest whatever in King George and his island kingdom, and
they only wished to be out of it and never to see it any more. Their
bodies were here, but their hearts and minds were always far away in
their dear fatherland, of which-brave men and stoical as they were in
many ways-they would speak with tears in their eyes. One of the worst of
the sufferers from this home-woe, as he called it in his own tongue, was
Matth\xE4us Tina, whose dreamy musing nature felt the gloom of exile still
more intensely from the fact that he had left a lonely mother at home
with nobody to cheer her.
Though Phyllis, touched by all this, and interested in his history, did
not disdain her soldier's acquaintance, she declined (according to her
own account, at least) to permit the young man to overstep the line of
mere friendship for a long while-as long, indeed, as she considered
herself likely to become the possession of another; though it is
probable that she had lost her heart to Matth\xE4us before she was herself
aware. The stone wall of necessity made anything like intimacy
difficult; and he had never ventured to come, or to ask to come, inside
the garden, so that all their conversation had been overtly conducted
across this boundary.
CHAPTER III
But news reached the village from a friend of Phyllis's father
concerning Mr. Humphrey Gould, her remarkably cool and patient
betrothed. This gentleman had been heard to say in Bath that he
considered his overtures to Miss Phyllis Grove to have reached only the
stage of a half-understanding; and in view of his enforced absence on
his father's account, who was too great an invalid now to attend to his
affairs, he thought it best that there should be no definite promise as
yet on either side. He was not sure, indeed, that he might not cast his
eyes elsewhere.
This account-though only a piece of hearsay, and as such entitled to no
absolute credit-tallied so well with the infrequency of his letters and
their lack of warmth, that Phyllis did not doubt its truth for one
moment; and from that hour she felt herself free to bestow her heart as
she should choose. Not so her father; he declared the whole story to be
a fabrication. He had known Mr. Gould's family from his boyhood; and if
there was one proverb which expressed the matrimonial aspect of that
family well, it was 'Love me little, love me long.' Humphrey was an
honourable man, who would not think of treating his engagement so
lightly. 'Do you wait in patience,' he said; 'all will be right enough
in time.'
From these words Phyllis at first imagined that her father was in
correspondence with Mr. Gould; and her heart sank within her; for in
spite of her original intentions she had been relieved to hear that her
engagement had come to nothing. But she presently learnt that her father
had heard no more of Humphrey Gould than she herself had done; while he
would not write and address her affianced directly on the subject, lest
it should be deemed an imputation on that bachelor's honour.
'You want an excuse for encouraging one or other of those foreign
fellows to flatter you with his unmeaning attentions,' her father
exclaimed, his mood having of late been a very unkind one towards her.
'I see more than I say. Don't you ever set foot outside that garden-
fence without my permission. If you want to see the camp I'll take you
myself some Sunday afternoon.'
Phyllis had not the smallest intention of disobeying him in her actions,
but she assumed herself to be independent with respect to her feelings.
She no longer checked her fancy for the Hussar, though she was far from
regarding him as her lover in the serious sense in which an Englishman
might have been regarded as such. The young foreign soldier was almost
an ideal being to her, with none of the appurtenances of an ordinary
house-dweller; one who had descended she knew not whence, and would
disappear she knew not whither; the subject of a fascinating dream-no
more.
They met continually now-mostly at dusk-during the brief interval
between the going down of the sun and the minute at which the last
trumpet-call summoned him to his tent. Perhaps her manner had become
less restrained latterly; at any rate that of the Hussar was so; he had
grown more tender every day, and at parting after these hurried
interviews she reached down her hand from the top of the wall that he
might press it. One evening he held it so long that she exclaimed, 'The
wall is white, and somebody in the field may see your shape against it!'
He lingered so long that night that it was with the greatest difficulty
that he could run across the intervening stretch of ground and enter the
camp in time. On the next occasion of his awaiting her she did not
appear in her usual place at the usual hour. His disappointment was
unspeakably keen; he remained staring blankly at the spot, like a man in
a trance. The trumpets and tattoo sounded, and still he did not go.
She had been delayed purely by an accident. When she arrived she was
anxious because of the lateness of the hour, having heard as well as he
the sounds denoting the closing of the camp. She implored him to leave
immediately.
'No,' he said gloomily. 'I shall not go in yet-the moment you come-I
have thought of your coming all day.'
'But you may be disgraced at being after time?'
'I don't mind that. I should have disappeared from the world some time
ago if it had not been for two persons-my beloved, here, and my mother
in Saarbr\xFCck. I hate the army. I care more for a minute of your company
than for all the promotion in the world.'
Thus he stayed and talked to her, and told her interesting details of
his native place, and incidents of his childhood, till she was in a
simmer of distress at his recklessness in remaining. It was only because
she insisted on bidding him good-night and leaving the wall that he
returned to his quarters.
The next time that she saw him he was without the stripes that had
adorned his sleeve. He had been broken to the level of private for his
lateness that night; and as Phyllis considered herself to be the cause
of his disgrace her sorrow was great. But the position was now reversed;
it was his turn to cheer her.
'Don't grieve, meine Liebliche!' he said. 'I have got a remedy for
whatever comes. First, even supposing I regain my stripes, would your
father allow you to marry a non-commissioned officer in the York
Hussars?'
She flushed. This practical step had not been in her mind in relation to
such an unrealistic person as he was; and a moment's reflection was
enough for it. 'My father would not-certainly would not,' she answered
unflinchingly. 'It cannot be thought of! My dear friend, please do
forget me: I fear I am ruining you and your prospects!'
'Not at all!' said he. 'You are giving this country of yours just
sufficient interest to me to make me care to keep alive in it. If my
dear land were here also, and my old parent, with you, I could be happy
as I am, and would do my best as a soldier. But it is not so. And now
listen. This is my plan. That you go with me to my own country, and be
my wife there, and live there with my mother and me. I am not a
Hanoverian, as you know, though I entered the army as such; my country
is by the Saar, and is at peace with France, and if I were once in it I
should be free.'
'But how get there?' she asked. Phyllis had been rather amazed than
shocked at his proposition. Her position in her father's house was
growing irksome and painful in the extreme; his parental affection
seemed to be quite dried up. She was not a native of the village, like
all the joyous girls around her; and in some way Matth\xE4us Tina had
infected her with his own passionate longing for his country, and
mother, and home.
'But how?' she repeated, finding that he did not answer. 'Will you buy
your discharge?'
'Ah, no,' he said. 'That's impossible in these times. No; I came here
against my will; why should I not escape? Now is the time, as we shall
soon be striking camp, and I might see you no more. This is my scheme. I
will ask you to meet me on the highway two miles off; on some calm night
next week that may be appointed. There will be nothing unbecoming in it,
or to cause you shame; you will not fly alone with me, for I will bring
with me my devoted young friend Christoph, an Alsatian, who has lately
joined the regiment, and who has agreed to assist in this enterprise. We
shall have come from yonder harbour, where we shall have examined the
boats, and found one suited to our purpose. Christoph has already a
chart of the Channel, and we will then go to the harbour, and at
midnight cut the boat from her moorings, and row away round the point
out of sight; and by the next morning we are on the coast of France,
near Cherbourg. The rest is easy, for I have saved money for the land
journey, and can get a change of clothes. I will write to my mother, who
will meet us on the way.'
He added details in reply to her inquiries, which left no doubt in
Phyllis's mind of the feasibility of the undertaking. But its magnitude
almost appalled her; and it is questionable if she would ever have gone
further in the wild adventure if, on entering the house that night, her
father had not accosted her in the most significant terms.
'How about the York Hussars?' he said.
'They are still at the camp; but they are soon going away, I believe.'
'It is useless for you to attempt to cloak your actions in that way. You
have been meeting one of those fellows; you have been seen walking with
him-foreign barbarians, not much better than the French themselves! I
have made up my mind-don't speak a word till I have done, please!-I have
made up my mind that you shall stay here no longer while they are on the
spot. You shall go to your aunt's.'
It was useless for her to protest that she had never taken a walk with
any soldier or man under the sun except himself. Her protestations were
feeble, too, for though he was not literally correct in his assertion,
he was virtually only half in error.
The house of her father's sister was a prison to Phyllis. She had quite
recently undergone experience of its gloom; and when her father went on
to direct her to pack what would be necessary for her to take, her heart
died within her. In after years she never attempted to excuse her
conduct during this week of agitation; but the result of her self-
communing was that she decided to join in the scheme of her lover and
his friend, and fly to the country which he had coloured with such
lovely hues in her imagination. She always said that the one feature in
his proposal which overcame her hesitation was the obvious purity and
straightforwardness of his intentions. He showed himself to be so
virtuous and kind; he treated her with a respect to which she had never
before been accustomed; and she was braced to the obvious risks of the
voyage by her confidence in him.
CHAPTER IV
It was on a soft, dark evening of the following week that they engaged
in the adventure. Tina was to meet her at a point in the highway at
which the lane to the village branched off. Christoph was to go ahead of
them to the harbour where the boat lay, row it round the Nothe-or Look-
out as it was called in those days-and pick them up on the other side of
the promontory, which they were to reach by crossing the harbour-bridge
on foot, and climbing over the Look-out hill.
As soon as her father had ascended to his room she left the house, and,
bundle in hand, proceeded at a trot along the lane. At such an hour not
a soul was afoot anywhere in the village, and she reached the junction
of the lane with the highway unobserved. Here she took up her position
in the obscurity formed by the angle of a fence, whence she could
discern every one who approached along the turnpike-road, without being
herself seen.
She had not remained thus waiting for her lover longer than a minute-
though from the tension of her nerves the lapse of even that short time
was trying-when, instead of the expected footsteps, the stage-coach
could be heard descending the hill. She knew that Tina would not show
himself till the road was clear, and waited impatiently for the coach to
pass. Nearing the corner where she was it slackened speed, and, instead
of going by as usual, drew up within a few yards of her. A passenger
alighted, and she heard his voice. It was Humphrey Gould's.
He had brought a friend with him, and luggage. The luggage was deposited
on the grass, and the coach went on its route to the royal watering-
place.
'I wonder where that young man is with the horse and trap?' said her
former admirer to his companion. 'I hope we shan't have to wait here
long. I told him half-past nine o'clock precisely.'
'Have you got her present safe?'
'Phyllis's? O, yes. It is in this trunk. I hope it will please her.'
'Of course it will. What woman would not be pleased with such a handsome
peace-offering?'
'Well-she deserves it. I've treated her rather badly. But she has been
in my mind these last two days much more than I should care to confess
to everybody. Ah, well; I'll say no more about that. It cannot be that
she is so bad as they make out. I am quite sure that a girl of her good
wit would know better than to get entangled with any of those Hanoverian
soldiers. I won't believe it of her, and there's an end on't.'
More words in the same strain were casually dropped as the two men
waited; words which revealed to her, as by a sudden illumination, the
enormity of her conduct. The conversation was at length cut off by the
arrival of the man with the vehicle. The luggage was placed in it, and
they mounted, and were driven on in the direction from which she had
just come.
Phyllis was so conscience-stricken that she was at first inclined to
follow them; but a moment's reflection led her to feel that it would
only be bare justice to Matth\xE4us to wait till he arrived, and explain
candidly that she had changed her mind-difficult as the struggle would
be when she stood face to face with him. She bitterly reproached herself
for having believed reports which represented Humphrey Gould as false to
his engagement, when, from what she now heard from his own lips, she
gathered that he had been living full of trust in her. But she knew well
enough who had won her love. Without him her life seemed a dreary
prospect, yet the more she looked at his proposal the more she feared to
accept it-so wild as it was, so vague, so venturesome. She had promised
Humphrey Gould, and it was only his assumed faithlessness which had led
her to treat that promise as nought. His solicitude in bringing her
these gifts touched her; her promise must be kept, and esteem must take
the place of love. She would preserve her self- respect. She would stay
at home, and marry him, and suffer.
Phyllis had thus braced herself to an exceptional fortitude when, a few
minutes later, the outline of Matth\xE4us Tina appeared behind a field-
gate, over which he lightly leapt as she stepped forward. There was no
evading it, he pressed her to his breast.
'It is the first and last time!' she wildly thought as she stood
encircled by his arms.
How Phyllis got through the terrible ordeal of that night she could
never clearly recollect. She always attributed her success in carrying
out her resolve to her lover's honour, for as soon as she declared to
him in feeble words that she had changed her mind, and felt that she
could not, dared not, fly with him, he forbore to urge her, grieved as
he was at her decision. Unscrupulous pressure on his part, seeing how
romantically she had become attached to him, would no doubt have turned
the balance in his favour. But he did nothing to tempt her unduly or
unfairly.
On her side, fearing for his safety, she begged him to remain. This, he
declared, could not be. 'I cannot break faith with my friend,' said he.
Had he stood alone he would have abandoned his plan. But Christoph, with
the boat and compass and chart, was waiting on the shore; the tide would
soon turn; his mother had been warned of his coming; go he must.
Many precious minutes were lost while he tarried, unable to tear himself
away. Phyllis held to her resolve, though it cost her many a bitter
pang. At last they parted, and he went down the hill. Before his
footsteps had quite died away she felt a desire to behold at least his
outline once more, and running noiselessly after him regained view of
his diminishing figure. For one moment she was sufficiently excited to
be on the point of rushing forward and IRONlinking her fate with his.
But she could not. The courage which at the critical instant failed
Cleopatra of Egypt could scarcely be expected of Phyllis Grove.
A dark shape, similar to his own, joined him in the highway. It was
Christoph, his friend. She could see no more; they had hastened on in
the direction of the town and harbour, four miles ahead. With a feeling
akin to despair she turned and slowly pursued her way homeward.
Tattoo sounded in the camp; but there was no camp for her now. It was as
dead as the camp of the Assyrians after the passage of the Destroying
Angel.
She noiselessly entered the house, seeing nobody, and went to bed.
Grief, which kept her awake at first, ultimately wrapped her in a heavy
sleep. The next morning her father met her at the foot of the stairs.
'Mr. Gould is come!' he said triumphantly.
Humphrey was staying at the inn, and had already called to inquire for
her. He had brought her a present of a very handsome looking-glass in a
frame of repouss\xE9 silverwork, which her father held in his hand. He had
promised to call again in the course of an hour, to ask Phyllis to walk
with him.
Pretty mirrors were rarer in country-houses at that day than they are
now, and the one before her won Phyllis's admiration. She looked into
it, saw how heavy her eyes were, and endeavoured to brighten them. She
was in that wretched state of mind which leads a woman to move
mechanically onward in what she conceives to be her allotted path. Mr.
Humphrey had, in his undemonstrative way, been adhering all along to the
old understanding; it was for her to do the same, and to say not a word
of her own lapse. She put on her bonnet and tippet, and when he arrived
at the hour named she was at the door awaiting him.
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 Matth\xE4us 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 Matth\xE4us, 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
Matth\xE4us 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. Matth\xE4us 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 he 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 be 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.
A 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 wounds 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 and 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 on the Sunday, as I say. During the week after, it
chanced that William's wife was staying up late one night to finish her
ironing, she doing the washing for Mr. and Mrs. Hardcome. Her husband
had finished his supper and gone to bed as usual some hour or two
before. While she ironed she heard him coming down stairs; he stopped to
put on his boots at the stair-foot, where he always left them, and then
came on into the living-room where she was ironing, passing through it
towards the door, this being the only way from the staircase to the
outside of the house. No word was said on either side, William not being
a man given to much speaking, and his wife being occupied with her work.
He went out and closed the door behind him. As her husband had now and
then gone out in this way at night before when unwell, or unable to
sleep for want of a pipe, she took no particular notice, and continued
at her ironing. This she finished shortly after, and as he had not come
in she waited awhile for him, putting away the irons and things, and
preparing the table for his breakfast in the morning. Still he did not
return, but supposing him not far off, and wanting to get to bed
herself, tired as she was, she left the door unbarred and went to the
stairs, after writing on the back of the door with chalk: Mind and do
the door (because he was a forgetful man).
'To her great surprise, and I might say alarm, on reaching the foot of
the stairs his boots were standing there as they always stood when he
had gone to rest; going up to their chamber she found him in bed
sleeping as sound as a rock. How he could have got back again without
her seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. It could only
have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with
the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible
that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. She
could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable
about it. However, she would not disturb him to question him then, and
went to bed herself.
'He rose and left for his work very early the next morning, before she
was awake, and she waited his return to breakfast with much anxiety for
an explanation, for thinking over the matter by daylight made it seem
only the more startling. When he came in to the meal he said, before she
could put her question, "What's the meaning of them words chalked on the
door?"
'She told him, and asked him about his going out the night before.
William declared that he had never left the bedroom after entering it,
having in fact undressed, lain down, and fallen asleep directly, never
once waking till the clock struck five, and he rose up to go to his
labour.
'Betty Privett was as certain in her own mind that he did go out as she
was of her own existence, and was little less certain that he did not
return. She felt too disturbed to argue with him, and let the subject
drop as though she must have been mistaken. When she was walking down
Longpuddle street later in the day she met Jim Weedle's daughter Nancy,
and said, "Well, Nancy, you do look sleepy to-day!"
'"Yes, Mrs. Privett," says Nancy. "Now don't tell anybody, but I don't
mind letting you know what the reason o't is. Last night, being Old
Midsummer Eve, some of us went to church porch, and didn't get home till
near one."
'"Did ye?" says Mrs. Privett. "Old Midsummer yesterday was it? Faith I
didn't think whe'r 'twas Midsummer or Michaelmas; I'd too much work to
do."
'"Yes. And we were frightened enough, I can tell 'ee, by what we saw."
'"What did ye see?"
'(You may not remember, sir, having gone off to foreign parts so young,
that on Midsummer Night it is believed hereabout that the faint shapes
of all the folk in the parish who are going to be at death's door within
the year can be seen entering the church. Those who get over their
illness come out again after a while; those that are doomed to die do
not return.)
'"What did you see?" asked William's wife.
'"Well," says Nancy, backwardly-"we needn't tell what we saw, or who we
saw."
'"You saw my husband," says Betty Privett, in a quiet way.
'"Well, since you put it so," says Nancy, hanging fire, "we-thought we
did see him; but it was darkish, and we was frightened, and of course it
might not have been he."
'"Nancy, you needn't mind letting it out, though 'tis kept back in
kindness. And he didn't come out of church again: I know it as well as
you."
'Nancy did not answer yes or no to that, and no more was said. But three
days after, William Privett was mowing with John Chiles in Mr.
Hardcome's meadow, and in the heat of the day they sat down to eat their
bit o' nunch under a tree, and empty their flagon. Afterwards both of
'em fell asleep as they sat. John Chiles was the first to wake, and as
he looked towards his fellow-mower he saw one of those great white
miller's-souls as we call 'em-that is to say, a miller-moth-come from
William's open mouth while he slept, and fly straight away. John thought
it odd enough, as William had worked in a mill for several years when he
was a boy. He then looked at the sun, and found by the place o't that
they had slept a long while, and as William did not wake, John called to
him and said it was high time to begin work again. He took no notice,
and then John went up and shook him, and found he was dead.
'Now on that very day old Philip Hookhorn was down at Longpuddle Spring
dipping up a pitcher of water; and as he turned away, who should he see
coming down to the spring on the other side but William, looking very
pale and odd. This surprised Philip Hookhorn very much, for years before
that time William's little son-his only child-had been drowned in that
spring while at play there, and this had so preyed upon William's mind
that he'd never been seen near the spring afterwards, and had been known
to go half a mile out of his way to avoid the place. On inquiry, it was
found that William in body could not have stood by the spring, being in
the mead two miles off; and it also came out that the time at which he
was seen at the spring was the very time when he died.'
'A rather melancholy story,' observed the emigrant, after a minute's
silence.
'Yes, yes. Well, we must take ups and downs together,' said the
seedsman's father.
'You don't know, Mr. Lackland, I suppose, what a rum start that was
between Andrey Satchel and Jane Vallens and the pa'son and clerk o'
Scrimpton?' said the master-thatcher, a man with a spark of subdued
liveliness in his eye, who had hitherto kept his attention mainly upon
small objects a long way ahead, as he sat in front of the van with his
feet outside. 'Theirs was a queerer experience of a pa'son and clerk
than some folks get, and may cheer 'ee up a little after this dampness
that's been flung over yer soul.'
The returned one replied that he knew nothing of the history, and should
be happy to hear it, quite recollecting the personality of the man
Satchel.
'Ah no; this Andrey Satchel is the son of the Satchel that you knew;
this one has not been married more than two or three years, and 'twas at
the time o' the wedding that the accident happened that I could tell 'ee
of, or anybody else here, for that matter.'
'No, no; you must tell it, neighbour, if anybody,' said several; a
request in which Mr. Lackland joined, adding that the Satchel family was
one he had known well before leaving home.
'I'll just mention, as you be a stranger,' whispered the carrier to
Lackland, 'that Christopher's stories will bear pruning.'
The emigrant nodded.
'Well, I can soon tell it,' said the master-thatcher, schooling himself
to a tone of actuality. 'Though as it has more to do with the pa'son and
clerk than with Andrey himself, it ought to be told by a better
churchman than I.'
ANDREY SATCHEL AND THE PARSON AND CLERK
'It all arose, you must know, from Andrey being fond of a drop of drink
at that time-though he's a sober enough man now by all account, so much
the better for him. Jane, his bride, you see, was somewhat older than
Andrey; how much older I don't pretend to say; she was not one of our
parish, and the register alone may be able to tell that. But, at any
rate, her being a little ahead of her young man in mortal years, coupled
with other bodily circumstances-'
('Ah, poor thing!' sighed the women.)
'-made her very anxious to get the thing done before he changed his
mind; and 'twas with a joyful countenance (they say) that she, with
Andrey and his brother and sister-in-law, marched off to church one
November morning as soon as 'twas day a'most, to be made one with Andrey
for the rest of her life. He had left our place long before it was
light, and the folks that were up all waved their lanterns at him, and
flung up their hats as he went.
'The church of her parish was a mile and more from the houses, and, as
it was a wonderful fine day for the time of year, the plan was that as
soon as they were married they would make out a holiday by driving
straight off to Port Bredy, to see the ships and the sea and the sojers,
instead of coming back to a meal at the house of the distant relation
she lived wi', and moping about there all the afternoon.
'Well, some folks noticed that Andrey walked with rather wambling steps
to church that morning; the truth o't was that his nearest neighbour's
child had been christened the day before, and Andrey, having stood
godfather, had stayed all night keeping up the christening, for he had
said to himself, "Not if I live to be thousand shall I again be made a
godfather one day, and a husband the next, and perhaps a father the
next, and therefore I'll make the most of the blessing." So that when he
started from home in the morning he had not been in bed at all. The
result was, as I say, that when he and his bride-to-he walked up the
church to get married, the pa'son (who was a very strict man inside the
church, whatever he was outside) looked hard at Andrey, and said, very
sharp:
'"How's this, my man? You are in liquor. And so early, too. I'm ashamed
of you!"
'"Well, that's true, sir," says Andrey. "But I can walk straight enough
for practical purposes. I can walk a chalk line," he says (meaning no
offence), "as well as some other folk: and-" (getting hotter)-"I reckon
that if you, Pa'son Billy Toogood, had kept up a christening all night
so thoroughly as I have done, you wouldn't be able to stand at all; d\x97-
me if you would!"
'This answer made Pa'son Billy-as they used to call him-rather spitish,
not to say hot, for he was a warm-tempered man if provoked, and he said,
very decidedly: "Well, I cannot marry you in this state; and I will not!
Go home and get sober!" And he slapped the book together like a rat-
trap.
'Then the bride burst out crying as if her heart would break, for very
fear that she would lose Andrey after all her hard work to get him, and
begged and implored the pa'son to go on with the ceremony. But no.
'"I won't be a party to your solemnizing matrimony with a tipsy man,"
says Mr. Toogood. "It is not right and decent. I am sorry for you, my
young woman, but you'd better go home again. I wonder how you could
think of bringing him here drunk like this!"
'"But if-if he don't come drunk he won't come at all, sir!" she says,
through her sobs.
'"I can't help that," says the pa'son; and plead as she might, it did
not move him. Then she tried him another way.
'"Well, then, if you'll go home, sir, and leave us here, and come back
to the church in an hour or two, I'll undertake to say that he shall be
as sober as a judge," she cries. "We'll bide here, with your permission;
for if he once goes out of this here church unmarried, all Van Amburgh's
horses won't drag him back again!"
'"Very well," says the parson. "I'll give you two hours, and then I'll
return."
'"And please, sir, lock the door, so that we can't escape!" says she.
'"Yes," says the parson.
'"And let nobody know that we are here."
'The pa'son then took off his clane white surplice, and went away; and
the others consulted upon the best means for keeping the matter a
secret, which it was not a very hard thing to do, the place being so
lonely, and the hour so early. The witnesses, Andrey's brother and
brother's wife, neither one o' which cared about Andrey's marrying Jane,
and had come rather against their will, said they couldn't wait two
hours in that hole of a place, wishing to get home to Longpuddle before
dinner-time. They were altogether so crusty that the clerk said there
was no difficulty in their doing as they wished. They could go home as
if their brother's wedding had actually taken place and the married
couple had gone onward for their day's pleasure jaunt to Port Bredy as
intended, he, the clerk, and any casual passer-by would act as witnesses
when the pa'son came back.
'This was agreed to, and away Andrey's relations went, nothing loath,
and the clerk shut the church door and prepared to lock in the couple.
The bride went up and whispered to him, with her eyes a-streaming still.
'"My dear good clerk," she says, "if we bide here in the church, folk
may see us through the winders, and find out what has happened; and
'twould cause such a talk and scandal that I never should get over it:
and perhaps, too, dear Andrey might try to get out and leave me! Will ye
lock us up in the tower, my dear good clerk?" she says. "I'll tole him
in there if you will."
'The clerk had no objection to do this to oblige the poor young woman,
and they toled Andrey into the tower, and the clerk locked 'em both up
straightway, and then went home, to return at the end of the two hours.
'Pa'son Toogood had not been long in his house after leaving the church
when he saw a gentleman in pink and top-boots ride past his windows, and
with a sudden flash of heat he called to mind that the hounds met that
day just on the edge of his parish. The pa'son was one who dearly loved
sport, and much he longed to be there.
'In short, except o' Sundays and at tide-times in the week, Pa'son Billy
was the life o' the Hunt. 'Tis true that he was poor, and that he rode
all of a heap, and that his black mare was rat-tailed and old, and his
tops older, and all over of one colour, whitey-brown, and full o'
cracks. But he'd been in at the death of three thousand foxes. And-being
a bachelor man-every time he went to bed in summer he used to open the
bed at bottom and crawl up head foremost, to mind 'em of the coming
winter and the good sport he'd have, and the foxes going to earth. And
whenever there was a christening at the Squire's, and he had dinner
there afterwards, as he always did, he never failed to christen the
chiel over again in a bottle of port wine.
'Now the clerk was the parson's groom and gardener and jineral manager,
and had just got back to his work in the garden when he, too, saw the
hunting man pass, and presently saw lots more of 'em, noblemen and
gentry, and then he saw the hounds, the huntsman, Jim Treadhedge, the
whipper-in, and I don't know who besides. The clerk loved going to cover
as frantical as the pa'son, so much so that whenever he saw or heard the
pack he could no more rule his feelings than if they were the winds of
heaven. He might be bedding, or he might be sowing-all was forgot. So he
throws down his spade and rushes in to the pa'son, who was by this time
as frantical to go as he.
'"That there mare of yours, sir, do want exercise bad, very bad, this
morning!" the clerk says, all of a tremble. "Don't ye think I'd better
trot her round the downs for an hour, sir?"
'"To be sure, she does want exercise badly. I'll trot her round myself,"
says the parson.
'"Oh-you'll trot her yerself? Well, there's the cob, sir. Really that
cob is getting oncontrollable through biding in a stable so long! If you
wouldn't mind my putting on the saddle-"
'"Very well. Take him out, certainly," says the pa'son, never caring
what the clerk did so long as he himself could get off immediately. So,
scrambling into his riding-boots and breeches as quick as he could, he
rode off towards the meet, intending to be back in an hour. No sooner
was he gone than the clerk mounted the cob, and was off after him. When
the pa'son got to the meet, he found a lot of friends, and was as jolly
as he could be: the hounds found a'most as soon as they threw off, and
there was great excitement. So, forgetting that he had meant to go back
at once, away rides the pa'son with the rest o' the hunt, all across the
fallow ground that lies between Lippet Wood and Green's Copse; and as he
galloped he looked behind for a moment, and there was the clerk close to
his heels.
'"Ha, ha, clerk-you here?" he says.
'"Yes, sir, here be I," says t'other.
'"Fine exercise for the horses!"
'"Ay, sir-hee, hee!" says the clerk.
'So they went on and on, into Green's Copse, then across to Higher
Jirton; then on across this very turnpike-road to Climmerston Ridge,
then away towards Yalbury Wood: up hill and down dale, like the very
wind, the clerk close to the pa'son, and the pa'son not far from the
hounds. Never was there a finer run knowed with that pack than they had
that day; and neither pa'son nor clerk thought one word about the
unmarried couple locked up in the church tower waiting to get j'ined.
'"These hosses of yours, sir, will be much improved by this!" says the
clerk as he rode along, just a neck behind the pa'son. "'Twas a happy
thought of your reverent mind to bring 'em out to-day. Why, it may be
frosty in a day or two, and then the poor things mid not be able to
leave the stable for weeks."
'"They may not, they may not, it is true. A merciful man is merciful to
his beast," says the pa'son.
'"Hee, hee!" says the clerk, glancing sly into the pa'son's eye.
'"Ha, ha!" says the pa'son, a-glancing back into the clerk's. "Halloo!"
he shouts, as he sees the fox break cover at that moment.
'"Halloo!" cries the clerk. "There he goes! Why, dammy, there's two
foxes-"
'"Hush, clerk, hush! Don't let me hear that word again! Remember our
calling."
'"True, sir, true. But really, good sport do carry away a man so, that
he's apt to forget his high persuasion!" And the next minute the corner
of the clerk's eye shot again into the corner of the pa'son's, and the
pa'son's back again to the clerk's. "Hee, hee!" said the clerk.
'"Ha, ha!" said Pa'son Toogood.
'"Ah, sir," says the clerk again, "this is better than crying Amen to
your Ever-and-ever on a winter's morning!"
'"Yes, indeed, clerk! To everything there's a season," says Pa'son
Toogood, quite pat, for he was a learned Christian man when he liked,
and had chapter and ve'se at his tongue's end, as a pa'son should.
'At last, late in the day, the hunting came to an end by the fox running
into a' old woman's cottage, under her table, and up the clock-case. The
pa'son and clerk were among the first in at the death, their faces a-
staring in at the old woman's winder, and the clock striking as he'd
never been heard to strik' before. Then came the question of finding
their way home.
'Neither the pa'son nor the clerk knowed how they were going to do this,
for their beasts were wellnigh tired down to the ground. But they
started back-along as well as they could, though they were so done up
that they could only drag along at a' amble, and not much of that at a
time.
'"We shall never, never get there!" groaned Mr. Toogood, quite bowed
down.
'"Never!" groans the clerk. "'Tis a judgment upon us for our
iniquities!"
'"I fear it is," murmurs the pa'son.
'Well, 'twas quite dark afore they entered the pa'sonage gate, having
crept into the parish as quiet as if they'd stole a hammer, little
wishing their congregation to know what they'd been up to all day long.
And as they were so dog-tired, and so anxious about the horses, never
once did they think of the unmarried couple. As soon as ever the horses
had been stabled and fed, and the pa'son and clerk had had a bit and a
sup theirselves, they went to bed.
'Next morning when Pa'son Toogood was at breakfast, thinking of the
glorious sport he'd had the day before, the clerk came in a hurry to the
door and asked to see him.
'"It has just come into my mind, sir, that we've forgot all about the
couple that we was to have married yesterday!"
'The half-chawed victuals dropped from the pa'son's mouth as if he'd
been shot. "Bless my soul," says he, "so we have! How very awkward!"
'"It is, sir; very. Perhaps we've ruined the 'ooman!"
'"Ah-to be sure-I remember! She ought to have been married before."
'"If anything has happened to her up in that there tower, and no doctor
or nuss-"
('Ah-poor thing!' sighed the women.)
'"-'twill be a quarter-sessions matter for us, not to speak of the
disgrace to the Church!"
'"Good God, clerk, don't drive me wild!" says the pa'son. "Why the hell
didn't I marry 'em, drunk or sober!" (Pa'sons used to cuss in them days
like plain honest men.) "Have you been to the church to see what
happened to them, or inquired in the village?"
'"Not I, sir! It only came into my head a moment ago, and I always like
to be second to you in church matters. You could have knocked me down
with a sparrer's feather when I thought o't, sir; I assure 'ee you
could!"
'Well, the parson jumped up from his breakfast, and together they went
off to the church.
'"It is not at all likely that they are there now," says Mr. Toogood, as
they went; "and indeed I hope they are not. They be pretty sure to have
'scaped and gone home."
'However, they opened the church-hatch, entered the churchyard, and
looking up at the tower, there they seed a little small white face at
the belfry-winder, and a little small hand waving. 'Twas the bride.
'"God my life, clerk," says Mr. Toogood, "I don't know how to face 'em!"
And he sank down upon a tombstone. "How I wish I hadn't been so cussed
particular!"
'"Yes-'twas a pity we didn't finish it when we'd begun," the clerk said.
"Still, since the feelings of your holy priestcraft wouldn't let ye, the
couple must put up with it."
'"True, clerk, true! Does she look as if anything premature had took
place?"
'"I can't see her no lower down than her arm-pits, sir."
'"Well-how do her face look?"
'"It do look mighty white!"
'"Well, we must know the worst! Dear me, how the small of my back do
ache from that ride yesterday! . . . But to more godly business!"
'They went on into the church, and unlocked the tower stairs, and
immediately poor Jane and Andrey busted out like starved mice from a
cupboard, Andrey limp and sober enough now, and his bride pale and cold,
but otherwise as usual.
'"What," says the pa'son, with a great breath of relief, "you haven't
been here ever since?"
'"Yes, we have, sir!" says the bride, sinking down upon a seat in her
weakness. "Not a morsel, wet or dry, have we had since! It was
impossible to get out without help, and here we've stayed!"
'"But why didn't you shout, good souls?" said the pa'son.
'"She wouldn't let me," says Andrey.
'"Because we were so ashamed at what had led to it," sobs Jane. "We felt
that if it were noised abroad it would cling to us all our lives! Once
or twice Andrey had a good mind to toll the bell, but then he said: "No;
I'll starve first. I won't bring disgrace on my name and yours, my
dear." And so we waited and waited, and walked round and round; but
never did you come till now!"
'"To my regret!" says the parson. "Now, then, we will soon get it over."
'"I-I should like some victuals," said Andrey, "'twould gie me courage
if it is only a crust o' bread and a' onion; for I am that leery that I
can feel my stomach rubbing against my backbone."
'"I think we had better get it done," said the bride, a bit anxious in
manner; "since we are all here convenient, too!"
'Andrey gave way about the victuals, and the clerk called in a second
witness who wouldn't be likely to gossip about it, and soon the knot was
tied, and the bride looked smiling and calm forthwith, and Andrey limper
than ever.
'"Now," said Pa'son Toogood, "you two must come to my house, and have a
good lining put to your insides before you go a step further."
'They were very glad of the offer, and went out of the churchyard by one
path while the pa'son and clerk went out by the other, and so did not
attract notice, it being still early. They entered the rectory as if
they'd just come back from their trip to Port Bredy; and then they
knocked in the victuals and drink till they could hold no more.
'It was a long while before the story of what they had gone through was
known, but it was talked of in time, and they themselves laugh over it
now; though what Jane got for her pains was no great bargain after all.
'Tis true she saved her name.'
'Was that the same Andrey who went to the squire's house as one of the
Christmas fiddlers?' asked the seedsman.
'No, no,' replied Mr. Profitt, the schoolmaster. 'It was his father did
that. Ay, it was all owing to his being such a man for eating and
drinking.' Finding that he had the ear of the audience, the schoolmaster
continued without delay:-
OLD ANDREY'S EXPERIENCE AS A MUSICIAN
'I was one of the choir-boys at that time, and we and the players were
to appear at the manor-house as usual that Christmas week, to play and
sing in the hall to the squire's people and visitors (among 'em being
the archdeacon, Lord and Lady Baxby, and I don't know who); afterwards
going, as we always did, to have a good supper in the servants' hall.
Andrew knew this was the custom, and meeting us when we were starting to
go, he said to us: "Lord, how I should like to join in that meal of
beef, and turkey, and plum-pudding, and ale, that you happy ones be
going to just now! One more or less will make no difference to the
squire. I am too old to pass as a singing boy, and too bearded to pass
as a singing girl; can ye lend me a fiddle, neighbours, that I may come
with ye as a bandsman?"
'Well, we didn't like to be hard upon him, and lent him an old one,
though Andrew knew no more of music than the Cerne Giant; and armed with
the instrument he walked up to the squire's house with the others of us
at the time appointed, and went in boldly, his fiddle under his arm. He
made himself as natural as he could in opening the music-books and
moving the candles to the best points for throwing light upon the notes;
and all went well till we had played and sung "While shepherds watch,"
and "Star, arise," and "Hark the glad sound." Then the squire's mother,
a tall gruff old lady, who was much interested in church-music, said
quite unexpectedly to Andrew: "My man, I see you don't play your
instrument with the rest. How is that?"
'Every one of the choir was ready to sink into the earth with concern at
the fix Andrew was in. We could see that he had fallen into a cold
sweat, and how he would get out of it we did not know.
'"I've had a misfortune, mem," he says, bowing as meek as a child.
"Coming along the road I fell down and broke my bow."
'"Oh, I am sorry to hear that," says she. "Can't it be mended?"
'"Oh no, mem," says Andrew. "'Twas broke all to splinters."
'"I'll see what I can do for you," says she.
'And then it seemed all over, and we played "Rejoice, ye drowsy mortals
all," in D and two sharps. But no sooner had we got through it than she
says to Andrew,
'"I've sent up into the attic, where we have some old musical
instruments, and found a bow for you." And she hands the bow to poor
wretched Andrew, who didn't even know which end to take hold of. "Now we
shall have the full accompaniment," says she.
'Andrew's face looked as if it were made of rotten apple as he stood in
the circle of players in front of his book; for if there was one person
in the parish that everybody was afraid of, 'twas this hook-nosed old
lady. However, by keeping a little behind the next man he managed to
make pretence of beginning, sawing away with his bow without letting it
touch the strings, so that it looked as if he were driving into the tune
with heart and soul. 'Tis a question if he wouldn't have got through all
right if one of the squire's visitors (no other than the archdeacon)
hadn't noticed that he held the fiddle upside down, the nut under his
chin, and the tail-piece in his hand; and they began to crowd round him,
thinking 'twas some new way of performing.
'This revealed everything; the squire's mother had Andrew turned out of
the house as a vile impostor, and there was great interruption to the
harmony of the proceedings, the squire declaring he should have notice
to leave his cottage that day fortnight. However, when we got to the
servants' hall there sat Andrew, who had been let in at the back door by
the orders of the squire's wife, after being turned out at the front by
the orders of the squire, and nothing more was heard about his leaving
his cottage. But Andrew never performed in public as a musician after
that night; and now he's dead and gone, poor man, as we all shall be!'
'I had quite forgotten the old choir, with their fiddles and bass-
viols,' said the home-comer, musingly. 'Are they still going on the same
as of old?'
'Bless the man!' said Christopher Twink, the master-thatcher; 'why,
they've been done away with these twenty year. A young teetotaler plays
the organ in church now, and plays it very well; though 'tis not quite
such good music as in old times, because the organ is one of them that
go with a winch, and the young teetotaler says he can't always throw the
proper feeling into the tune without wellnigh working his arms off.'
'Why did they make the change, then?'
'Well, partly because of fashion, partly because the old musicians got
into a sort of scrape. A terrible scrape 'twas too-wasn't it, John? I
shall never forget it-never! They lost their character as officers of
the church as complete as if they'd never had any character at all.'
'That was very bad for them.'
'Yes.' The master-thatcher attentively regarded past times as if they
lay about a mile off, and went on:-
ABSENT-MINDEDNESS IN A PARISH CHOIR
'It happened on Sunday after Christmas-the last Sunday ever they played
in Longpuddle church gallery, as it turned out, though they didn't know
it then. As you may know, sir, the players formed a very good band-
almost as good as the Mellstock parish players that were led by the
Dewys; and that's saying a great deal. There was Nicholas Puddingcome,
the leader, with the first fiddle; there was Timothy Thomas, the bass-
viol man; John Biles, the tenor fiddler; Dan'l Hornhead, with the
serpent; Robert Dowdle, with the clarionet; and Mr. Nicks, with the
oboe-all sound and powerful musicians, and strong-winded men-they that
blowed. For that reason they were very much in demand Christmas week for
little reels and dancing parties; for they could turn a jig or a
hornpipe out of hand as well as ever they could turn out a psalm, and
perhaps better, not to speak irreverent. In short, one half-hour they
could be playing a Christmas carol in the squire's hall to the ladies
and gentlemen, and drinking tea and coffee with 'em as modest as saints;
and the next, at The Tinker's Arms, blazing away like wild horses with
the "Dashing White Sergeant" to nine couple of dancers and more, and
swallowing rum-and-cider hot as flame.
'Well, this Christmas they'd been out to one rattling randy after
another every night, and had got next to no sleep at all. Then came the
Sunday after Christmas, their fatal day. 'Twas so mortal cold that year
that they could hardly sit in the gallery; for though the congregation
down in the body of the church had a stove to keep off the frost, the
players in the gallery had nothing at all. So Nicholas said at morning
service, when 'twas freezing an inch an hour, "Please the Lord I won't
stand this numbing weather no longer: this afternoon we'll have
something in our insides to make us warm, if it cost a king's ransom."
'So he brought a gallon of hot brandy and beer, ready mixed, to church
with him in the afternoon, and by keeping the jar well wrapped up in
Timothy Thomas's bass-viol bag it kept drinkably warm till they wanted
it, which was just a thimbleful in the Absolution, and another after the
Creed, and the remainder at the beginning o' the sermon. When they'd had
the last pull they felt quite comfortable and warm, and as the sermon
went on-most unfortunately for 'em it was a long one that afternoon-they
fell asleep, every man jack of 'em; and there they slept on as sound as
rocks.
''Twas a very dark afternoon, and by the end of the sermon all you could
see of the inside of the church were the pa'son's two candles alongside
of him in the pulpit, and his spaking face behind 'em. The sermon being
ended at last, the pa'son gie'd out the Evening Hymn. But no choir set
about sounding up the tune, and the people began to turn their heads to
learn the reason why, and then Levi Limpet, a boy who sat in the
gallery, nudged Timothy and Nicholas, and said, "Begin! begin!"
'"Hey? what?" says Nicholas, starting up; and the church being so dark
and his head so muddled he thought he was at the party they had played
at all the night before, and away he went, bow and fiddle, at "The Devil
among the Tailors," the favourite jig of our neighbourhood at that time.
The rest of the band, being in the same state of mind and nothing
doubting, followed their leader with all their strength, according to
custom. They poured out that there tune till the lower bass notes of
"The Devil among the Tailors" made the cobwebs in the roof shiver like
ghosts; then Nicholas, seeing nobody moved, shouted out as he scraped
(in his usual commanding way at dances when the folk didn't know the
figures), "Top couples cross hands! And when I make the fiddle squeak at
the end, every man kiss his pardner under the mistletoe!"
'The boy Levi was so frightened that he bolted down the gallery stairs
and out homeward like lightning. The pa'son's hair fairly stood on end
when he heard the evil tune raging through the church, and thinking the
choir had gone crazy he held up his hand and said: "Stop, stop, stop!
Stop, stop! What's this?" But they didn't hear'n for the noise of their
own playing, and the more he called the louder they played.
'Then the folks came out of their pews, wondering down to the ground,
and saying: "What do they mean by such wickedness! We shall be consumed
like Sodom and Gomorrah!"
'Then the squire came out of his pew lined wi' green baize, where lots
of lords and ladies visiting at the house were worshipping along with
him, and went and stood in front of the gallery, and shook his fist in
the musicians' faces, saying, "What! In this reverent edifice! What!"
'And at last they heard'n through their playing, and stopped.
'"Never such an insulting, disgraceful thing-never!" says the squire,
who couldn't rule his passion.
'"Never!" says the pa'son, who had come down and stood beside him.
'"Not if the Angels of Heaven," says the squire (he was a wickedish man,
the squire was, though now for once he happened to be on the Lord's
side)-"not if the Angels of Heaven come down," he says, "shall one of
you villanous players ever sound a note in this church again; for the
insult to me, and my family, and my visitors, and God Almighty, that
you've a-perpetrated this afternoon!"
'Then the unfortunate church band came to their senses, and remembered
where they were; and 'twas a sight to see Nicholas Pudding come and
Timothy Thomas and John Biles creep down the gallery stairs with their
fiddles under their arms, and poor Dan'l Hornhead with his serpent, and
Robert Dowdle with his clarionet, all looking as little as ninepins; and
out they went. The pa'son might have forgi'ed 'em when he learned the
truth o't, but the squire would not. That very week he sent for a
barrel-organ that would play two-and-twenty new psalm-tunes, so exact
and particular that, however sinful inclined you was, you could play
nothing but psalm-tunes whatsomever. He had a really respectable man to
turn the winch, as I said, and the old players played no more.'
'And, of course, my old acquaintance, the annuitant, Mrs. Winter, who
always seemed to have something on her mind, is dead and gone?' said the
home-comer, after a long silence.
Nobody in the van seemed to recollect the name.
'O yes, she must be dead long since: she was seventy when I as a child
knew her,' he added.
'I can recollect Mrs. Winter very well, if nobody else can,' said the
aged groceress. 'Yes, she's been dead these five-and-twenty year at
least. You knew what it was upon her mind, sir, that gave her that
hollow-eyed look, I suppose?'
'It had something to do with a son of hers, I think I once was told. But
I was too young to know particulars.'
The groceress sighed as she conjured up a vision of days long past.
'Yes,' she murmured, 'it had all to do with a son.' Finding that the van
was still in a listening mood, she spoke on:-
THE WINTERS AND THE PALMLEYS
'To go back to the beginning-if one must-there were two women in the
parish when I was a child, who were to a certain extent rivals in good
looks. Never mind particulars, but in consequence of this they were at
daggers-drawn, and they did not love each other any better when one of
them tempted the other's lover away from her and married him. He was a
young man of the name of Winter, and in due time they had a son.
'The other woman did not marry for many years: but when she was about
thirty a quiet man named Palmley asked her to be his wife, and she
accepted him. You don't mind when the Palmleys were Longpuddle folk, but
I do well. She had a son also, who was, of course, nine or ten years
younger than the son of the first. The child proved to be of rather weak
intellect, though his mother loved him as the apple of her eye.
'This woman's husband died when the child was eight years old, and left
his widow and boy in poverty. Her former rival, also a widow now, but
fairly well provided for, offered for pity's sake to take the child as
errand-boy, small as he was, her own son, Jack, being hard upon
seventeen. Her poor neighbour could do no better than let the child go
there. And to the richer woman's house little Palmley straightway went.
'Well, in some way or other-how, it was never exactly known-the thriving
woman, Mrs. Winter, sent the little boy with a message to the next
village one December day, much against his will. It was getting dark,
and the child prayed to be allowed not to go, because he would be afraid
coming home. But the mistress insisted, more out of thoughtlessness than
cruelty, and the child went. On his way back he had to pass through
Yalbury Wood, and something came out from behind a tree and frightened
him into fits. The child was quite ruined by it; he became quite a
drivelling idiot, and soon afterward died.
'Then the other woman had nothing left to live for, and vowed vengeance
against that rival who had first won away her lover, and now had been
the cause of her bereavement. This last affliction was certainly not
intended by her thriving acquaintance, though it must be owned that when
it was done she seemed but little concerned. Whatever vengeance poor
Mrs. Palmley felt, she had no opportunity of carrying it out, and time
might have softened her feelings into forgetfulness of her supposed
wrongs as she dragged on her lonely life. So matters stood when, a year
after the death of the child, Mrs. Palmley's niece, who had been born
and bred in the city of Exonbury, came to live with her.
'This young woman-Miss Harriet Palmley-was a proud and handsome girl,
very well brought up, and more stylish and genteel than the people of
our village, as was natural, considering where she came from. She
regarded herself as much above Mrs. Winter and her son in position as
Mrs. Winter and her son considered themselves above poor Mrs. Palmley.
But love is an unceremonious thing, and what in the world should happen
but that young Jack Winter must fall wofully and wildly in love with
Harriet Palmley almost as soon as he saw her.
'She, being better educated than he, and caring nothing for the village
notion of his mother's superiority to her aunt, did not give him much
encouragement. But Longpuddle being no very large world, the two could
not help seeing a good deal of each other while she was staying there,
and, disdainful young woman as she was, she did seem to take a little
pleasure in his attentions and advances.
'One day when they were picking apples together, he asked her to marry
him. She had not expected anything so practical as that at so early a
time, and was led by her surprise into a half-promise; at any rate she
did not absolutely refuse him, and accepted some little presents that he
made her.
'But he saw that her view of him was rather as a simple village lad than
as a young man to look up to, and he felt that he must do something bold
to secure her. So he said one day, "I am going away, to try to get into
a better position than I can get here." In two or three weeks he wished
her good-bye, and went away to Monksbury, to superintend a farm, with a
view to start as a farmer himself; and from there he wrote regularly to
her, as if their marriage were an understood thing.
'Now Harriet liked the young man's presents and the admiration of his
eyes; but on paper he was less attractive to her. Her mother had been a
school-mistress, and Harriet had besides a natural aptitude for pen-and-
ink work, in days when to be a ready writer was not such a common thing
as it is now, and when actual handwriting was valued as an
accomplishment in itself. Jack Winter's performances in the shape of
love-letters quite jarred her city nerves and her finer taste, and when
she answered one of them, in the lovely running hand that she took such
pride in, she very strictly and loftily bade him to practise with a pen
and spelling-book if he wished to please her. Whether he listened to her
request or not nobody knows, but his letters did not improve. He
ventured to tell her in his clumsy way that if her heart were more warm
towards him she would not be so nice about his handwriting and spelling;
which indeed was true enough.
'Well, in Jack's absence the weak flame that had been set alight in
Harriet's heart soon sank low, and at last went out altogether. He wrote
and wrote, and begged and prayed her to give a reason for her coldness;
and then she told him plainly that she was town born, and he was not
sufficiently well educated to please her.
'Jack Winter's want of pen-and-ink training did not make him less thin-
skinned than others; in fact, he was terribly tender and touchy about
anything. This reason that she gave for finally throwing him over
grieved him, shamed him, and mortified him more than can be told in
these times, the pride of that day in being able to write with beautiful
flourishes, and the sorrow at not being able to do so, raging so high.
Jack replied to her with an angry note, and then she hit back with smart
little stings, telling him how many words he had misspelt in his last
letter, and declaring again that this alone was sufficient justification
for any woman to put an end to an understanding with him. Her husband
must be a better scholar.
'He bore her rejection of him in silence, but his suffering was sharp-
all the sharper in being untold. She communicated with Jack no more; and
as his reason for going out into the world had been only to provide a
home worthy of her, he had no further object in planning such a home now
that she was lost to him. He therefore gave up the farming occupation by
which he had hoped to make himself a master-farmer, and left the spot to
return to his mother.
'As soon as he got back to Longpuddle he found that Harriet had already
looked wi' favour upon another lover. He was a young road-contractor,
and Jack could not but admit that his rival was both in manners and
scholarship much ahead of him. Indeed, a more sensible match for the
beauty who had been dropped into the village by fate could hardly have
been found than this man, who could offer her so much better a chance
than Jack could have done, with his uncertain future and narrow
abilities for grappling with the world. The fact was so clear to him
that he could hardly blame her.
'One day by accident Jack saw on a scrap of paper the handwriting of
Harriet's new beloved. It was flowing like a stream, well spelt, the
work of a man accustomed to the ink-bottle and the dictionary, of a man
already called in the parish a good scholar. And then it struck all of a
sudden into Jack's mind what a contrast the letters of this young man
must make to his own miserable old letters, and how ridiculous they must
make his lines appear. He groaned and wished he had never written to
her, and wondered if she had ever kept his poor performances. Possibly
she had kept them, for women are in the habit of doing that, he thought,
and whilst they were in her hands there was always a chance of his
honest, stupid love-assurances to her being joked over by Harriet with
her present lover, or by anybody who should accidentally uncover them.
'The nervous, moody young man could not bear the thought of it, and at
length decided to ask her to return them, as was proper when engagements
were broken off. He was some hours in framing, copying, and recopying
the short note in which he made his request, and having finished it he
sent it to her house. His messenger came back with the answer, by word
of mouth, that Miss Palmley bade him say she should not part with what
was hers, and wondered at his boldness in troubling her.
'Jack was much affronted at this, and determined to go for his letters
himself. He chose a time when he knew she was at home, and knocked and
went in without much ceremony; for though Harriet was so high and
mighty, Jack had small respect for her aunt, Mrs. Palmley, whose little
child had been his boot-cleaner in earlier days. Harriet was in the
room, this being the first time they had met since she had jilted him.
He asked for his letters with a stern and bitter look at her.
'At first she said he might have them for all that she cared, and took
them out of the bureau where she kept them. Then she glanced over the
outside one of the packet, and suddenly altering her mind, she told him
shortly that his request was a silly one, and slipped the letters into
her aunt's work-box, which stood open on the table, locking it, and
saying with a bantering laugh that of course she thought it best to keep
'em, since they might be useful to produce as evidence that she had good
cause for declining to marry him.
'He blazed up hot. "Give me those letters!" he said. "They are mine!"
'"No, they are not," she replied; "they are mine."
'"Whos'ever they are I want them back," says he. "I don't want to be
made sport of for my penmanship: you've another young man now! he has
your confidence, and you pour all your tales into his ear. You'll be
showing them to him!"
'"Perhaps," said my lady Harriet, with calm coolness, like the heartless
woman that she was.
'Her manner so maddened him that he made a step towards the work-box,
but she snatched it up, locked it in the bureau, and turned upon him
triumphant. For a moment he seemed to be going to wrench the key of the
bureau out of her hand; but he stopped himself, and swung round upon his
heel and went away.
'When he was out-of-doors alone, and it got night, he walked about
restless, and stinging with the sense of being beaten at all points by
her. He could not help fancying her telling her new lover or her
acquaintances of this scene with himself, and laughing with them over
those poor blotted, crooked lines of his that he had been so anxious to
obtain. As the evening passed on he worked himself into a dogged
resolution to have them back at any price, come what might.
'At the dead of night he came out of his mother's house by the back
door, and creeping through the garden hedge went along the field
adjoining till he reached the back of her aunt's dwelling. The moon
struck bright and flat upon the walls, 'twas said, and every shiny leaf
of the creepers was like a little looking-glass in the rays. From long
acquaintance Jack knew the arrangement and position of everything in
Mrs. Palmley's house as well as in his own mother's. The back window
close to him was a casement with little leaded squares, as it is to this
day, and was, as now, one of two lighting the sitting-room. The other,
being in front, was closed up with shutters, but this back one had not
even a blind, and the moonlight as it streamed in showed every article
of the furniture to him outside. To the right of the room is the
fireplace, as you may remember; to the left was the bureau at that time;
inside the bureau was Harriet's work-box, as he supposed (though it was
really her aunt's), and inside the work-box were his letters. Well, he
took out his pocket-knife, and without noise lifted the leading of one
of the panes, so that he could take out the glass, and putting his hand
through the hole he unfastened the casement, and climbed in through the
opening. All the household-that is to say, Mrs. Palmley, Harriet, and
the little maid-servant-were asleep. Jack went straight to the bureau,
so he said, hoping it might have been unfastened again-it not being kept
locked in ordinary-but Harriet had never unfastened it since she secured
her letters there the day before. Jack told afterward how he thought of
her asleep upstairs, caring nothing for him, and of the way she had made
sport of him and of his letters; and having advanced so far, he was not
to be hindered now. By forcing the large blade of his knife under the
flap of the bureau, he burst the weak lock; within was the rosewood
work-box just as she had placed it in her hurry to keep it from him.
There being no time to spare for getting the letters out of it then, he
took it under his arm, shut the bureau, and made the best of his way out
of the house, latching the casement behind him, and refixing the pane of
glass in its place.
'Winter found his way back to his mother's as he had come, and being
dog-tired, crept upstairs to bed, hiding the box till he could destroy
its contents. The next morning early he set about doing this, and
carried it to the linhay at the back of his mother's dwelling. Here by
the hearth he opened the box, and began burning one by one the letters
that had cost him so much labour to write and shame to think of, meaning
to return the box to Harriet, after repairing the slight damage he had
caused it by opening it without a key, with a note-the last she would
ever receive from him-telling her triumphantly that in refusing to
return what he had asked for she had calculated too surely upon his
submission to her whims.
'But on removing the last letter from the box he received a shock; for
underneath it, at the very bottom, lay money-several golden guineas-
"Doubtless Harriet's pocket-money," he said to himself; though it was
not, but Mrs. Palmley's. Before he had got over his qualms at this
discovery he heard footsteps coming through the house-passage to where
he was. In haste he pushed the box and what was in it under some
brushwood which lay in the linhay; but Jack had been already seen. Two
constables entered the out-house, and seized him as he knelt before the
fireplace, securing the work-box and all it contained at the same
moment. They had come to apprehend him on a charge of breaking into the
dwelling-house of Mrs. Palmley on the night preceding; and almost before
the lad knew what had happened to him they were leading him along the
lane that connects that end of the village with this turnpike-road, and
along they marched him between 'em all the way to Casterbridge jail.
'Jack's act amounted to night burglary-though he had never thought of
it-and burglary was felony, and a capital offence in those days. His
figure had been seen by some one against the bright wall as he came away
from Mrs. Palmley's back window, and the box and money were found in his
possession, while the evidence of the broken bureau-lock and tinkered
window-pane was more than enough for circumstantial detail. Whether his
protestation that he went only for his letters, which he believed to be
wrongfully kept from him, would have availed him anything if supported
by other evidence I do not know; but the one person who could have borne
it out was Harriet, and she acted entirely under the sway of her aunt.
That aunt was deadly towards Jack Winter. Mrs. Palmley's time had come.
Here was her revenge upon the woman who had first won away her lover,
and next ruined and deprived her of her heart's treasure-her little son.
When the assize week drew on, and Jack had to stand his trial, Harriet
did not appear in the case at all, which was allowed to take its course,
Mrs. Palmley testifying to the general facts of the burglary. Whether
Harriet would have come forward if Jack had appealed to her is not
known; possibly she would have done it for pity's sake; but Jack was too
proud to ask a single favour of a girl who had jilted him; and he let
her alone. The trial was a short one, and the death sentence was passed.
'The day o' young Jack's execution was a cold dusty Saturday in March.
He was so boyish and slim that they were obliged in mercy to hang him in
the heaviest fetters kept in the jail, lest his heft should not break
his neck, and they weighed so upon him that he could hardly drag himself
up to the drop. At that time the gover'ment was not strict about burying
the body of an executed person within the precincts of the prison, and
at the earnest prayer of his poor mother his body was allowed to be
brought home. All the parish waited at their cottage doors in the
evening for its arrival: I remember how, as a very little girl, I stood
by my mother's side. About eight o'clock, as we hearkened on our door-
stones in the cold bright starlight, we could hear the faint crackle of
a waggon from the direction of the turnpike-road. The noise was lost as
the waggon dropped into a hollow, then it was plain again as it lumbered
down the next long incline, and presently it entered Longpuddle. The
coffin was laid in the belfry for the night, and the next day, Sunday,
between the services, we buried him. A funeral sermon was preached the
same afternoon, the text chosen being, "He was the only son of his
mother, and she was a widow." . . . Yes, they were cruel times!
'As for Harriet, she and her lover were married in due time; but by all
account her life was no jocund one. She and her good-man found that they
could not live comfortably at Longpuddle, by reason of her connection
with Jack's misfortunes, and they settled in a distant town, and were no
more heard of by us; Mrs. Palmley, too, found it advisable to join 'em
shortly after. The dark-eyed, gaunt old Mrs. Winter, remembered by the
emigrant gentleman here, was, as you will have foreseen, the Mrs. Winter
of this story; and I can well call to mind how lonely she was, how
afraid the children were of her, and how she kept herself as a stranger
among us, though she lived so long.'
'Longpuddle has had her sad experiences as well as her sunny ones,' said
Mr. Lackland.
'Yes, yes. But I am thankful to say not many like that, though good and
bad have lived among us.'
'There was Georgy Crookhill-he was one of the shady sort, as I have
reason to know,' observed the registrar, with the manner of a man who
would like to have his say also.
'I used to hear what he was as a boy at school.'
'Well, as he began so he went on. It never got so far as a hanging
matter with him, to be sure; but he had some narrow escapes of penal
servitude; and once it was a case of the biter bit.'
INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MR. GEORGE CROOKHILL
'One day,' the registrar continued, 'Georgy was ambling out of
Melchester on a miserable screw, the fair being just over, when he saw
in front of him a fine-looking young farmer riding out of the town in
the same direction. He was mounted on a good strong handsome animal,
worth fifty guineas if worth a crown. When they were going up Bissett
Hill, Georgy made it his business to overtake the young farmer. They
passed the time o' day to one another; Georgy spoke of the state of the
roads, and jogged alongside the well-mounted stranger in very friendly
conversation. The farmer had not been inclined to say much to Georgy at
first, but by degrees he grew quite affable too-as friendly as Georgy
was toward him. He told Crookhill that he had been doing business at
Melchester fair, and was going on as far as Shottsford-Forum that night,
so as to reach Casterbridge market the next day. When they came to
Woodyates Inn they stopped to bait their horses, and agreed to drink
together; with this they got more friendly than ever, and on they went
again. Before they had nearly reached Shottsford it came on to rain, and
as they were now passing through the village of Trantridge, and it was
quite dark, Georgy persuaded the young farmer to go no further that
night; the rain would most likely give them a chill. For his part he had
heard that the little inn here was comfortable, and he meant to stay. At
last the young farmer agreed to put up there also; and they dismounted,
and entered, and had a good supper together, and talked over their
affairs like men who had known and proved each other a long time. When
it was the hour for retiring they went upstairs to a double-bedded room
which Georgy Crookhill had asked the landlord to let them share, so
sociable were they.
'Before they fell asleep they talked across the room about one thing and
another, running from this to that till the conversation turned upon
disguises, and changing clothes for particular ends. The farmer told
Georgy that he had often heard tales of people doing it; but Crookhill
professed to be very ignorant of all such tricks; and soon the young
farmer sank into slumber.
'Early in the morning, while the tall young farmer was still asleep (I
tell the story as 'twas told me), honest Georgy crept out of his bed by
stealth, and dressed himself in the farmer's clothes, in the pockets of
the said clothes being the farmer's money. Now though Georgy
particularly wanted the farmer's nice clothes and nice horse, owing to a
little transaction at the fair which made it desirable that he should
not be too easily recognized, his desires had their bounds: he did not
wish to take his young friend's money, at any rate more of it than was
necessary for paying his bill. This he abstracted, and leaving the
farmer's purse containing the rest on the bedroom table, went
downstairs. The inn folks had not particularly noticed the faces of
their customers, and the one or two who were up at this hour had no
thought but that Georgy was the farmer; so when he had paid the bill
very liberally, and said he must be off, no objection was made to his
getting the farmer's horse saddled for himself; and he rode away upon it
as if it were his own.
'About half an hour after the young farmer awoke, and looking across the
room saw that his friend Georgy had gone away in clothes which didn't
belong to him, and had kindly left for himself the seedy ones worn by
Georgy. At this he sat up in a deep thought for some time, instead of
hastening to give an alarm. "The money, the money is gone," he said to
himself, "and that's bad. But so are the clothes."
'He then looked upon the table and saw that the money, or most of it,
had been left behind.
'"Ha, ha, ha!" he cried, and began to dance about the room. "Ha, ha,
ha!" he said again, and made beautiful smiles to himself in the shaving
glass and in the brass candlestick; and then swung about his arms for
all the world as if he were going through the sword exercise.
'When he had dressed himself in Georgy's clothes and gone downstairs, he
did not seem to mind at all that they took him for the other; and even
when he saw that he had been left a bad horse for a good one, he was not
inclined to cry out. They told him his friend had paid the bill, at
which he seemed much pleased, and without waiting for breakfast he
mounted Georgy's horse and rode away likewise, choosing the nearest by-
lane in preference to the high-road, without knowing that Georgy had
chosen that by-lane also.
'He had not trotted more than two miles in the personal character of
Georgy Crookhill when, suddenly rounding a bend that the lane made
thereabout, he came upon a man struggling in the hands of two village
constables. It was his friend Georgy, the borrower of his clothes and
horse. But so far was the young farmer from showing any alacrity in
rushing forward to claim his property that he would have turned the poor
beast he rode into the wood adjoining, if he had not been already
perceived.
'"Help, help, help!" cried the constables. "Assistance in the name of
the Crown!"
'The young farmer could do nothing but ride forward. "What's the
matter?" he inquired, as coolly as he could.
'"A deserter-a deserter!" said they. "One who's to be tried by court-
martial and shot without parley. He deserted from the Dragoons at
Cheltenham some days ago, and was tracked; but the search-party can't
find him anywhere, and we told 'em if we met him we'd hand him on to 'em
forthwith. The day after he left the barracks the rascal met a
respectable farmer and made him drunk at an inn, and told him what a
fine soldier he would make, and coaxed him to change clothes, to see how
well a military uniform would become him. This the simple farmer did;
when our deserter said that for a joke he would leave the room and go to
the landlady, to see if she would know him in that dress. He never came
back, and Farmer Jollice found himself in soldier's clothes, the money
in his pockets gone, and, when he got to the stable, his horse gone
too."
'"A scoundrel!" says the young man in Georgy's clothes. "And is this the
wretched caitiff?" (pointing to Georgy).
'"No, no!" cries Georgy, as innocent as a babe of this matter of the
soldier's desertion. "He's the man! He was wearing Farmer Jollice's suit
o' clothes, and he slept in the same room wi' me, and brought up the
subject of changing clothes, which put it into my head to dress myself
in his suit before he was awake. He's got on mine!"
'"D'ye hear the villain?" groans the tall young man to the constables.
"Trying to get out of his crime by charging the first innocent man with
it that he sees! No, master soldier-that won't do!"
'"No, no! That won't do!" the constables chimed in. "To have the
impudence to say such as that, when we caught him in the act almost!
But, thank God, we've got the handcuffs on him at last."
'"We have, thank God," said the tall young man. "Well, I must move on.
Good luck to ye with your prisoner!" And off he went, as fast as his
poor jade would carry him.
'The constables then, with Georgy handcuffed between 'em, and leading
the horse, marched off in the other direction, toward the village where
they had been accosted by the escort of soldiers sent to bring the
deserter back, Georgy groaning: "I shall be shot, I shall be shot!" They
had not gone more than a mile before they met them.
'"Hoi, there!" says the head constable.
'"Hoi, yerself!" says the corporal in charge.
'"We've got your man," says the constable.
'"Where?" says the corporal.
'"Here, between us," said the constable. "Only you don't recognize him
out o' uniform."
'The corporal looked at Georgy hard enough; then shook his head and said
he was not the absconder.
'"But the absconder changed clothes with Farmer Jollice, and took his
horse; and this man has 'em, d'ye see!"
'"'Tis not our man," said the soldiers. "He's a tall young fellow with a
mole on his right cheek, and a military bearing, which this man
decidedly has not."
'"I told the two officers of justice that 'twas the other!" pleaded
Georgy. "But they wouldn't believe me."
'And so it became clear that the missing dragoon was the tall young
farmer, and not Georgy Crookhill-a fact which Farmer Jollice himself
corroborated when he arrived on the scene. As Georgy had only robbed the
robber, his sentence was comparatively light. The deserter from the
Dragoons was never traced: his double shift of clothing having been of
the greatest advantage to him in getting off; though he left Georgy's
horse behind him a few miles ahead, having found the poor creature more
hindrance than aid.'
The man from abroad seemed to be less interested in the questionable
characters of Longpuddle and their strange adventures than in the
ordinary inhabitants and the ordinary events, though his local fellow-
travellers preferred the former as subjects of discussion. He now for
the first time asked concerning young persons of the opposite sex-or
rather those who had been young when he left his native land. His
informants, adhering to their own opinion that the remarkable was better
worth telling than the ordinary, would not allow him to dwell upon the
simple chronicles of those who had merely come and gone. They asked him
if he remembered Netty Sargent.
'Netty Sargent-I do, just remember her. She was a young woman living
with her uncle when I left, if my childish recollection may be trusted.'
'That was the maid. She was a oneyer, if you like, sir. Not any harm in
her, you know, but up to everything. You ought to hear how she got the
copyhold of her house extended. Oughtn't he, Mr. Day?'
'He ought,' replied the world-ignored old painter.
'Tell him, Mr. Day. Nobody can do it better than you, and you know the
legal part better than some of us.'
Day apologized, and began:-
NETTY SARGENT'S COPYHOLD
'She continued to live with her uncle, in the lonely house by the copse,
just as at the time you knew her; a tall spry young woman. Ah, how well
one can remember her black hair and dancing eyes at that time, and her
sly way of screwing up her mouth when she meant to tease ye! Well, she
was hardly out of short frocks before the chaps were after her, and by
long and by late she was courted by a young man whom perhaps you did not
know-Jasper Cliff was his name-and, though she might have had many a
better fellow, he so greatly took her fancy that 'twas Jasper or nobody
for her. He was a selfish customer, always thinking less of what he was
going to do than of what he was going to gain by his doings. Jasper's
eyes might have been fixed upon Netty, but his mind was upon her uncle's
house; though he was fond of her in his way-I admit that.
'This house, built by her great-great-grandfather, with its garden and
little field, was copyhold-granted upon lives in the old way, and had
been so granted for generations. Her uncle's was the last life upon the
property; so that at his death, if there was no admittance of new lives,
it would all fall into the hands of the lord of the manor. But 'twas
easy to admit-a slight "fine," as 'twas called, of a few pounds, was
enough to entitle him to a new deed o' grant by the custom of the manor;
and the lord could not hinder it.
'Now there could be no better provision for his niece and only relative
than a sure house over her head, and Netty's uncle should have seen to
the renewal in time, owing to the peculiar custom of forfeiture by the
dropping of the last life before the new fine was paid; for the Squire
was very anxious to get hold of the house and land; and every Sunday
when the old man came into the church and passed the Squire's pew, the
Squire would say, "A little weaker in his knees, a little crookeder in
his back-and the readmittance not applied for: ha! ha! I shall be able
to make a complete clearing of that corner of the manor some day!"
''Twas extraordinary, now we look back upon it, that old Sargent should
have been so dilatory; yet some people are like it; and he put off
calling at the Squire's agent's office with the fine week after week,
saying to himself, "I shall have more time next market-day than I have
now." One unfortunate hindrance was that he didn't very well like Jasper
Cliff; and as Jasper kept urging Netty, and Netty on that account kept
urging her uncle, the old man was inclined to postpone the re- liveing
as long as he could, to spite the selfish young lover. At last old Mr.
Sargent fell ill, and then Jasper could bear it no longer: he produced
the fine-money himself, and handed it to Netty, and spoke to her
plainly.
'"You and your uncle ought to know better. You should press him more.
There's the money. If you let the house and ground slip between ye, I
won't marry; hang me if I will! For folks won't deserve a husband that
can do such things."
'The worried girl took the money and went home, and told her uncle that
it was no house no husband for her. Old Mr. Sargent pooh-poohed the
money, for the amount was not worth consideration, but he did now bestir
himself; for he saw she was bent upon marrying Jasper, and he did not
wish to make her unhappy, since she was so determined. It was much to
the Squire's annoyance that he found Sargent had moved in the matter at
last; but he could not gainsay it, and the documents were prepared (for
on this manor the copy-holders had writings with their holdings, though
on some manors they had none). Old Sargent being now too feeble to go to
the agent's house, the deed was to be brought to his house signed, and
handed over as a receipt for the money; the counterpart to be signed by
Sargent, and sent back to the Squire.
'The agent had promised to call on old Sargent for this purpose at five
o'clock, and Netty put the money into her desk to have it close at hand.
While doing this she heard a slight cry from her uncle, and turning
round, saw that he had fallen forward in his chair. She went and lifted
him, but he was unconscious; and unconscious he remained. Neither
medicine nor stimulants would bring him to himself. She had been told
that he might possibly go off in that way, and it seemed as if the end
had come. Before she had started for a doctor his face and extremities
grew quite cold and white, and she saw that help would be useless. He
was stone-dead.
'Netty's situation rose upon her distracted mind in all its seriousness.
The house, garden, and field were lost-by a few hours-and with them a
home for herself and her lover. She would not think so meanly of Jasper
as to suppose that he would adhere to the resolution declared in a
moment of impatience; but she trembled, nevertheless. Why could not her
uncle have lived a couple of hours longer, since he had lived so long?
It was now past three o'clock; at five the agent was to call, and, if
all had gone well, by ten minutes past five the house and holding would
have been securely hers for her own and Jasper's lives, these being two
of the three proposed to be added by paying the fine. How that wretched
old Squire would rejoice at getting the little tenancy into his hands!
He did not really require it, but constitutionally hated these tiny
copyholds and leaseholds and freeholds, which made islands of
independence in the fair, smooth ocean of his estates.
'Then an idea struck into the head of Netty how to accomplish her object
in spite of her uncle's negligence. It was a dull December afternoon:
and the first step in her scheme-so the story goes, and I see no reason
to doubt it-'
''Tis true as the light,' affirmed Christopher Twink. 'I was just
passing by.'
'The first step in her scheme was to fasten the outer door, to make sure
of not being interrupted. Then she set to work by placing her uncle's
small, heavy oak table before the fire; then she went to her uncle's
corpse, sitting in the chair as he had died-a stuffed arm-chair, on
casters, and rather high in the seat, so it was told me-and wheeled the
chair, uncle and all, to the table, placing him with his back toward the
window, in the attitude of bending over the said oak table, which I knew
as a boy as well as I know any piece of furniture in my own house. On
the table she laid the large family Bible open before him, and placed
his forefinger on the page; and then she opened his eyelids a bit, and
put on him his spectacles, so that from behind he appeared for all the
world as if he were reading the Scriptures. Then she unfastened the door
and sat down, and when it grew dark she lit a candle, and put it on the
table beside her uncle's book.
'Folk may well guess how the time passed with her till the agent came,
and how, when his knock sounded upon the door, she nearly started out of
her skin-at least that's as it was told me. Netty promptly went to the
door.
'"I am sorry, sir," she says, under her breath; "my uncle is not so well
to-night, and I'm afraid he can't see you."
'"H'm!-that's a pretty tale," says the steward. "So I've come all this
way about this trumpery little job for nothing!"
'"O no, sir-I hope not," says Netty. "I suppose the business of granting
the new deed can be done just the same?"
'"Done? Certainly not. He must pay the renewal money, and sign the
parchment in my presence."
'She looked dubious. "Uncle is so dreadful nervous about law business,"
says she, "that, as you know, he's put it off and put it off for years;
and now to-day really I've feared it would verily drive him out of his
mind. His poor three teeth quite chattered when I said to him that you
would be here soon with the parchment writing. He always was afraid of
agents, and folks that come for rent, and such-like."
'"Poor old fellow-I'm sorry for him. Well, the thing can't be done
unless I see him and witness his signature."
'"Suppose, sir, that you see him sign, and he don't see you looking at
him? I'd soothe his nerves by saying you weren't strict about the form
of witnessing, and didn't wish to come in. So that it was done in your
bare presence it would be sufficient, would it not? As he's such an old,
shrinking, shivering man, it would be a great considerateness on your
part if that would do?"
'"In my bare presence would do, of course-that's all I come for. But how
can I be a witness without his seeing me?"
'"Why, in this way, sir; if you'll oblige me by just stepping here." She
conducted him a few yards to the left, till they were opposite the
parlour window. The blind had been left up purposely, and the candle-
light shone out upon the garden bushes. Within the agent could see, at
the other end of the room, the back and side of the old man's head, and
his shoulders and arm, sitting with the book and candle before him, and
his spectacles on his nose, as she had placed him.
'"He's reading his Bible, as you see, sir," she says, quite in her
meekest way.
'"Yes. I thought he was a careless sort of man in matters of religion?"
'"He always was fond of his Bible," Netty assured him. "Though I think
he's nodding over it just at this moment However, that's natural in an
old man, and unwell. Now you could stand here and see him sign, couldn't
you, sir, as he's such an invalid?"
'"Very well," said the agent, lighting a cigar. "You have ready by you
the merely nominal sum you'll have to pay for the admittance, of
course?"
'"Yes," said Netty. "I'll bring it out." She fetched the cash, wrapped
in paper, and handed it to him, and when he had counted it the steward
took from his breast pocket the precious parchments and gave one to her
to be signed.
'"Uncle's hand is a little paralyzed," she said. "And what with his
being half asleep, too, really I don't know what sort of a signature
he'll be able to make."
'"Doesn't matter, so that he signs."
'"Might I hold his hand?"
'"Ay, hold his hand, my young woman-that will be near enough."
'Netty re-entered the house, and the agent continued smoking outside the
window. Now came the ticklish part of Netty's performance. The steward
saw her put the inkhorn-"horn," says I in my old-fashioned way-the
inkstand, before her uncle, and touch his elbow as to arouse him, and
speak to him, and spread out the deed; when she had pointed to show him
where to sign she dipped the pen and put it into his hand. To hold his
hand she artfully stepped behind him, so that the agent could only see a
little bit of his head, and the hand she held; but he saw the old man's
hand trace his name on the document. As soon as 'twas done she came out
to the steward with the parchment in her hand, and the steward signed as
witness by the light from the parlour window. Then he gave her the deed
signed by the Squire, and left; and next morning Netty told the
neighbours that her uncle was dead in his bed.'
'She must have undressed him and put him there.'
'She must. Oh, that girl had a nerve, I can tell ye! Well, to cut a long
story short, that's how she got back the house and field that were,
strictly speaking, gone from her; and by getting them, got her a
husband.
'Every virtue has its reward, they say. Netty had hers for her ingenious
contrivance to gain Jasper. Two years after they were married he took to
beating her-not hard, you know; just a smack or two, enough to set her
in a temper, and let out to the neighbours what she had done to win him,
and how she repented of her pains. When the old Squire was dead, and his
son came into the property, this confession of hers began to be
whispered about. But Netty was a pretty young woman, and the Squire's
son was a pretty young man at that time, and wider-minded than his
father, having no objection to little holdings; and he never took any
proceedings against her.'
There was now a lull in the discourse, and soon the van descended the
hill leading into the long straggling village. When the houses were
reached the passengers dropped off one by one, each at his or her own
door. Arrived at the inn, the returned emigrant secured a bed, and
having eaten a light meal, sallied forth upon the scene he had known so
well in his early days. Though flooded with the light of the rising
moon, none of the objects wore the attractiveness in this their real
presentation that had ever accompanied their images in the field of his
imagination when he was more than two thousand miles removed from them.
The peculiar charm attaching to an old village in an old country, as
seen by the eyes of an absolute foreigner, was lowered in his case by
magnified expectations from infantine memories. He walked on, looking at
this chimney and that old wall, till he came to the churchyard, which he
entered.
The head-stones, whitened by the moon, were easily decipherable; and now
for the first time Lackland began to feel himself amid the village
community that he had left behind him five-and-thirty years before.
Here, besides the Sallets, the Darths, the Pawles, the Privetts, the
Sargents, and others of whom he had just heard, were names he remembered
even better than those: the Jickses, and the Crosses, and the Knights,
and the Olds. Doubtless representatives of these families, or some of
them, were yet among the living; but to him they would all be as
strangers. Far from finding his heart ready-supplied with roots and
tendrils here, he perceived that in returning to this spot it would be
incumbent upon him to re-establish himself from the beginning, precisely
as though he had never known the place, nor it him. Time had not
condescended to wait his pleasure, nor local life his greeting.
The figure of Mr. Lackland was seen at the inn, and in the village
street, and in the fields and lanes about Upper Longpuddle, for a few
days after his arrival, and then, ghost-like, it silently disappeared.
He had told some of the villagers that his immediate purpose in coming
had been fulfilled by a sight of the place, and by conversation with its
inhabitants: but that his ulterior purpose-of coming to spend his latter
days among them-would probably never be carried out. It is now a dozen
or fifteen years since his visit was paid, and his face has not again
been seen.
March 1891.
A GROUP OF NOBLE DAMES
That is to say: The First Countess Of Wessex; Barbara Of The Hose Of
Grebe; The Marchioness Of Stonehenge; Lady Mottifont Squire Petrick's
Lady; The Lady Icenway Anna, Lady Baxby; The Lady Penelope; The Duchess
Of Hamptonshire; And The Honourable Laura
'. . . Store of Ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence.'-L'Allegro.
With a map of wessex By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
DAME THE FIRST-THE FIRST COUNTESS OF WESSEX
DAME THE SECOND-BARBARA OF THE HOUSE OF GREBE
DAME THE THIRD-THE MARCHIONESS OF STONEHENGE
DAME THE FOURTH-LADY MOTTISFONT
DAME THE FIFTH-THE LADY ICENWAY
DAME THE SIXTH-SQUIRE PETRICK'S LADY
DAME THE SEVENTH-ANNA, LADY BAXBY
DAME THE EIGHTH-THE LADY PENELOPE
DAME THE NINTH-THE DUCHESS OF HAMPTONSHIRE
DAME THE TENTH-THE HONOURABLE LAURA
PREFACE
The pedigrees of our county families, arranged in diagrams on the pages
of county histories, mostly appear at first sight to be as barren of any
touch of nature as a table of logarithms. But given a clue-the faintest
tradition of what went on behind the scenes, and this dryness as of dust
may be transformed into a palpitating drama. More, the careful
comparison of dates alone-that of birth with marriage, of marriage with
death, of one marriage, birth, or death with a kindred marriage, birth,
or death-will often effect the same transformation, and anybody
practised in raising images from such genealogies finds himself
unconsciously filling into the framework the motives, passions, and
personal qualities which would appear to be the single explanation
possible of some extraordinary conjunction in times, events, and
personages that occasionally marks these reticent family records.
Out of such pedigrees and supplementary material most of the following
stories have arisen and taken shape.
I would make this preface an opportunity of expressing my sense of the
courtesy and kindness of several bright-eyed Noble Dames yet in the
flesh, who, since the first publication of these tales in periodicals,
six or seven years ago, have given me interesting comments and
conjectures on such of the narratives as they have recognized to be
connected with their own families, residences, or traditions; in which
they have shown a truly philosophic absence of prejudice in their regard
of those incidents whose relation has tended more distinctly to
dramatize than to eulogize their ancestors. The outlines they have also
given of other singular events in their family histories for use in a
second "Group of Noble Dames," will, I fear, never reach the printing-
press through me; but I shall store them up in memory of my informants'
good nature. T. H.
June 1896.
DAME THE FIRST-THE FIRST COUNTESS OF WESSEX By the Local Historian
King's-Hintock Court (said the narrator, turning over his memoranda for
reference)-King's-Hintock Court is, as we know, one of the most imposing
of the mansions that overlook our beautiful Blackmoor or Blakemore Vale.
On the particular occasion of which I have to speak this building stood,
as it had often stood before, in the perfect silence of a calm clear
night, lighted only by the cold shine of the stars. The season was
winter, in days long ago, the last century having run but little more
than a third of its length. North, south, and west, not a casement was
unfastened, not a curtain undrawn; eastward, one window on the upper
floor was open, and a girl of twelve or thirteen was leaning over the
sill. That she had not taken up the position for purposes of observation
was apparent at a glance, for she kept her eyes covered with her hands.
The room occupied by the girl was an inner one of a suite, to be reached
only by passing through a large bedchamber adjoining. From this
apartment voices in altercation were audible, everything else in the
building being so still. It was to avoid listening to these voices that
the girl had left her little cot, thrown a cloak round her head and
shoulders, and stretched into the night air.
But she could not escape the conversation, try as she would. The words
reached her in all their painfulness, one sentence in masculine tones,
those of her father, being repeated many times.
'I tell 'ee there shall be no such betrothal! I tell 'ee there sha'n't!
A child like her!'
She knew the subject of dispute to be herself. A cool feminine voice,
her mother's, replied:
'Have done with you, and be wise. He is willing to wait a good five or
six years before the marriage takes place, and there's not a man in the
county to compare with him.'
'It shall not be! He is over thirty. It is wickedness.'
'He is just thirty, and the best and finest man alive-a perfect match
for her.'
'He is poor!'
'But his father and elder brothers are made much of at Court-none so
constantly at the palace as they; and with her fortune, who knows? He
may be able to get a barony.'
'I believe you are in love with en yourself!'
'How can you insult me so, Thomas! And is it not monstrous for you to
talk of my wickedness when you have a like scheme in your own head? You
know you have. Some bumpkin of your own choosing-some petty gentleman
who lives down at that outlandish place of yours, Falls-Park-one of your
pot-companions' sons-'
There was an outburst of imprecation on the part of her husband in lieu
of further argument. As soon as he could utter a connected sentence he
said: 'You crow and you domineer, mistress, because you are heiress-
general here. You are in your own house; you are on your own land. But
let me tell 'ee that if I did come here to you instead of taking you to
me, it was done at the dictates of convenience merely. H\x97-! I'm no
beggar! Ha'n't I a place of my own? Ha'n't I an avenue as long as thine?
Ha'n't I beeches that will more than match thy oaks? I should have lived
in my own quiet house and land, contented, if you had not called me off
with your airs and graces. Faith, I'll go back there; I'll not stay with
thee longer! If it had not been for our Betty I should have gone long
ago!'
After this there were no more words; but presently, hearing the sound of
a door opening and shutting below, the girl again looked from the
window. Footsteps crunched on the gravel-walk, and a shape in a drab
greatcoat, easily distinguishable as her father, withdrew from the
house. He moved to the left, and she watched him diminish down the long
east front till he had turned the corner and vanished. He must have gone
round to the stables.
She closed the window and shrank into bed, where she cried herself to
sleep. This child, their only one, Betty, beloved ambitiously by her
mother, and with uncalculating passionateness by her father, was
frequently made wretched by such episodes as this; though she was too
young to care very deeply, for her own sake, whether her mother
betrothed her to the gentleman discussed or not.
The Squire had often gone out of the house in this manner, declaring
that he would never return, but he had always reappeared in the morning.
The present occasion, however, was different in the issue: next day she
was told that her father had ridden to his estate at Falls-Park early in
the morning on business with his agent, and might not come back for some
days.
Falls-Park was over twenty miles from King's-Hintock Court, and was
altogether a more modest centre-piece to a more modest possession than
the latter. But as Squire Dornell came in view of it that February
morning, he thought that he had been a fool ever to leave it, though it
was for the sake of the greatest heiress in Wessex. Its classic front,
of the period of the second Charles, derived from its regular features a
dignity which the great, battlemented, heterogeneous mansion of his wife
could not eclipse. Altogether he was sick at heart, and the gloom which
the densely-timbered park threw over the scene did not tend to remove
the depression of this rubicund man of eight-and-forty, who sat so
heavily upon his gelding. The child, his darling Betty: there lay the
root of his trouble. He was unhappy when near his wife, he was unhappy
when away from his little girl; and from this dilemma there was no
practicable escape. As a consequence he indulged rather freely in the
pleasures of the table, became what was called a three bottle man, and,
in his wife's estimation, less and less presentable to her polite
friends from town.
He was received by the two or three old servants who were in charge of
the lonely place, where a few rooms only were kept habitable for his use
or that of his friends when hunting; and during the morning he was made
more comfortable by the arrival of his faithful servant Tupcombe from
King's-Hintock. But after a day or two spent here in solitude he began
to feel that he had made a mistake in coming. By leaving King's-Hintock
in his anger he had thrown away his best opportunity of counteracting
his wife's preposterous notion of promising his poor little Betty's hand
to a man she had hardly seen. To protect her from such a repugnant
bargain he should have remained on the spot. He felt it almost as a
misfortune that the child would inherit so much wealth. She would be a
mark for all the adventurers in the kingdom. Had she been only the
heiress to his own unassuming little place at Falls, how much better
would have been her chances of happiness!
His wife had divined truly when she insinuated that he himself had a
lover in view for this pet child. The son of a dear deceased friend of
his, who lived not two miles from where the Squire now was, a lad a
couple of years his daughter's senior, seemed in her father's opinion
the one person in the world likely to make her happy. But as to
breathing such a scheme to either of the young people with the indecent
haste that his wife had shown, he would not dream of it; years hence
would be soon enough for that. They had already seen each other, and the
Squire fancied that he noticed a tenderness on the youth's part which
promised well. He was strongly tempted to profit by his wife's example,
and forestall her match-making by throwing the two young people together
there at Falls. The girl, though marriageable in the views of those
days, was too young to be in love, but the lad was fifteen, and already
felt an interest in her.
Still better than keeping watch over her at King's Hintock, where she
was necessarily much under her mother's influence, would it be to get
the child to stay with him at Falls for a time, under his exclusive
control. But how accomplish this without using main force? The only
possible chance was that his wife might, for appearance' sake, as she
had done before, consent to Betty paying him a day's visit, when he
might find means of detaining her till Reynard, the suitor whom his wife
favoured, had gone abroad, which he was expected to do the following
week. Squire Dornell determined to return to King's-Hintock and attempt
the enterprise. If he were refused, it was almost in him to pick up
Betty bodily and carry her off.
The journey back, vague and Quixotic as were his intentions, was
performed with a far lighter heart than his setting forth. He would see
Betty, and talk to her, come what might of his plan.
So he rode along the dead level which stretches between the hills
skirting Falls-Park and those bounding the town of Ivell, trotted
through that borough, and out by the King's-Hintock highway, till,
passing the villages he entered the mile-long drive through the park to
the Court. The drive being open, without an avenue, the Squire could
discern the north front and door of the Court a long way off, and was
himself visible from the windows on that side; for which reason he hoped
that Betty might perceive him coming, as she sometimes did on his return
from an outing, and run to the door or wave her handkerchief.
But there was no sign. He inquired for his wife as soon as he set foot
to earth.
'Mistress is away. She was called to London, sir.'
'And Mistress Betty?' said the Squire blankly.
'Gone likewise, sir, for a little change. Mistress has left a letter for
you.'
The note explained nothing, merely stating that she had posted to London
on her own affairs, and had taken the child to give her a holiday. On
the fly-leaf were some words from Betty herself to the same effect,
evidently written in a state of high jubilation at the idea of her
jaunt. Squire Dornell murmured a few expletives, and submitted to his
disappointment. How long his wife meant to stay in town she did not say;
but on investigation he found that the carriage had been packed with
sufficient luggage for a sojourn of two or three weeks.
King's-Hintock Court was in consequence as gloomy as Falls-Park had
been. He had lost all zest for hunting of late, and had hardly attended
a meet that season. Dornell read and re-read Betty's scrawl, and hunted
up some other such notes of hers to look over, this seeming to be the
only pleasure there was left for him. That they were really in London he
learnt in a few days by another letter from Mrs. Dornell, in which she
explained that they hoped to be home in about a week, and that she had
had no idea he was coming back to King's-Hintock so soon, or she would
not have gone away without telling him.
Squire Dornell wondered if, in going or returning, it had been her plan
to call at the Reynards' place near Melchester, through which city their
journey lay. It was possible that she might do this in furtherance of
her project, and the sense that his own might become the losing game was
harassing.
He did not know how to dispose of himself, till it occurred to him that,
to get rid of his intolerable heaviness, he would invite some friends to
dinner and drown his cares in grog and wine. No sooner was the carouse
decided upon than he put it in hand; those invited being mostly
neighbouring landholders, all smaller men than himself, members of the
hunt; also the doctor from Evershead, and the like-some of them
rollicking blades whose presence his wife would not have countenanced
had she been at home. 'When the cat's away-!' said the Squire.
They arrived, and there were indications in their manner that they meant
to make a night of it. Baxby of Sherton Castle was late, and they waited
a quarter of an hour for him, he being one of the liveliest of Dornell's
friends; without whose presence no such dinner as this would be
considered complete, and, it may be added, with whose presence no dinner
which included both sexes could be conducted with strict propriety. He
had just returned from London, and the Squire was anxious to talk to
him-for no definite reason; but he had lately breathed the atmosphere in
which Betty was.
At length they heard Baxby driving up to the door, whereupon the host
and the rest of his guests crossed over to the dining-room. In a moment
Baxby came hastily in at their heels, apologizing for his lateness.
'I only came back last night, you know,' he said; 'and the truth o't is,
I had as much as I could carry.' He turned to the Squire. 'Well,
Dornell-so cunning Reynard has stolen your little ewe lamb? Ha, ha!'
'What?' said Squire Dornell vacantly, across the dining-table, round
which they were all standing, the cold March sunlight streaming in upon
his full-clean shaven face.
'Surely th'st know what all the town knows?-you've had a letter by this
time?-that Stephen Reynard has married your Betty? Yes, as I'm a living
man. It was a carefully-arranged thing: they parted at once, and are not
to meet for five or six years. But, Lord, you must know!'
A thud on the floor was the only reply of the Squire. They quickly
turned. He had fallen down like a log behind the table, and lay
motionless on the oak boards.
Those at hand hastily bent over him, and the whole group were in
confusion. They found him to be quite unconscious, though puffing and
panting like a blacksmith's bellows. His face was livid, his veins
swollen, and beads of perspiration stood upon his brow.
'What's happened to him?' said several.
'An apoplectic fit,' said the doctor from Evershead, gravely.
He was only called in at the Court for small ailments, as a rule, and
felt the importance of the situation. He lifted the Squire's head,
loosened his cravat and clothing, and rang for the servants, who took
the Squire upstairs.
There he lay as if in a drugged sleep. The surgeon drew a basin-full of
blood from him, but it was nearly six o'clock before he came to himself.
The dinner was completely disorganized, and some had gone home long ago;
but two or three remained.
'Bless my soul,' Baxby kept repeating, 'I didn't know things had come to
this pass between Dornell and his lady! I thought the feast he was
spreading to-day was in honour of the event, though privately kept for
the present! His little maid married without his knowledge!'
As soon as the Squire recovered consciousness he gasped: ''Tis
abduction! 'Tis a capital felony! He can be hung! Where is Baxby? I am
very well now. What items have ye heard, Baxby?'
The bearer of the untoward news was extremely unwilling to agitate
Dornell further, and would say little more at first. But an hour after,
when the Squire had partially recovered and was sitting up, Baxby told
as much as he knew, the most important particular being that Betty's
mother was present at the marriage, and showed every mark of approval.
'Everything appeared to have been done so regularly that I, of course,
thought you knew all about it,' he said.
'I knew no more than the underground dead that such a step was in the
wind! A child not yet thirteen! How Sue hath outwitted me! Did Reynard
go up to Lon'on with 'em, d'ye know?'
'I can't say. All I know is that your lady and daughter were walking
along the street, with the footman behind 'em; that they entered a
jeweller's shop, where Reynard was standing; and that there, in the
presence o' the shopkeeper and your man, who was called in on purpose,
your Betty said to Reynard-so the story goes: 'pon my soul I don't vouch
for the truth of it-she said, "Will you marry me?" or, "I want to marry
you: will you have me-now or never?" she said.'
'What she said means nothing,' murmured the Squire, with wet eyes. 'Her
mother put the words into her mouth to avoid the serious consequences
that would attach to any suspicion of force. The words be not the
child's: she didn't dream of marriage-how should she, poor little maid!
Go on.'
'Well, be that as it will, they were all agreed apparently. They bought
the ring on the spot, and the marriage took place at the nearest church
within half-an-hour.'
A day or two later there came a letter from Mrs. Dornell to her husband,
written before she knew of his stroke. She related the circumstances of
the marriage in the gentlest manner, and gave cogent reasons and excuses
for consenting to the premature union, which was now an accomplished
fact indeed. She had no idea, till sudden pressure was put upon her,
that the contract was expected to be carried out so soon, but being
taken half unawares, she had consented, having learned that Stephen
Reynard, now their son-in-law, was becoming a great favourite at Court,
and that he would in all likelihood have a title granted him before
long. No harm could come to their dear daughter by this early marriage-
contract, seeing that her life would be continued under their own eyes,
exactly as before, for some years. In fine, she had felt that no other
such fair opportunity for a good marriage with a shrewd courtier and
wise man of the world, who was at the same time noted for his excellent
personal qualities, was within the range of probability, owing to the
rusticated lives they led at King's-Hintock. Hence she had yielded to
Stephen's solicitation, and hoped her husband would forgive her. She
wrote, in short, like a woman who, having had her way as to the deed, is
prepared to make any concession as to words and subsequent behaviour.
All this Dornell took at its true value, or rather, perhaps, at less
than its true value. As his life depended upon his not getting into a
passion, he controlled his perturbed emotions as well as he was able,
going about the house sadly and utterly unlike his former self. He took
every precaution to prevent his wife knowing of the incidents of his
sudden illness, from a sense of shame at having a heart so tender; a
ridiculous quality, no doubt, in her eyes, now that she had become so
imbued with town ideas. But rumours of his seizure somehow reached her,
and she let him know that she was about to return to nurse him. He
thereupon packed up and went off to his own place at Falls-Park.
Here he lived the life of a recluse for some time. He was still too
unwell to entertain company, or to ride to hounds or elsewhither; but
more than this, his aversion to the faces of strangers and
acquaintances, who knew by that time of the trick his wife had played
him, operated to hold him aloof.
Nothing could influence him to censure Betty for her share in the
exploit. He never once believed that she had acted voluntarily. Anxious
to know how she was getting on, he despatched the trusty servant
Tupcombe to Evershead village, close to King's-Hintock, timing his
journey so that he should reach the place under cover of dark. The
emissary arrived without notice, being out of livery, and took a seat in
the chimney-corner of the Sow-and-Acorn.
The conversation of the droppers-in was always of the nine days' wonder-
the recent marriage. The smoking listener learnt that Mrs. Dornell and
the girl had returned to King's-Hintock for a day or two, that Reynard
had set out for the Continent, and that Betty had since been packed off
to school. She did not realize her position as Reynard's child-wife-so
the story went-and though somewhat awe-stricken at first by the
ceremony, she had soon recovered her spirits on finding that her freedom
was in no way to be interfered with.
After that, formal messages began to pass between Dornell and his wife,
the latter being now as persistently conciliating as she was formerly
masterful. But her rustic, simple, blustering husband still held
personally aloof. Her wish to be reconciled-to win his forgiveness for
her stratagem-moreover, a genuine tenderness and desire to soothe his
sorrow, which welled up in her at times, brought her at last to his door
at Falls-Park one day.
They had not met since that night of altercation, before her departure
for London and his subsequent illness. She was shocked at the change in
him. His face had become expressionless, as blank as that of a puppet,
and what troubled her still more was that she found him living in one
room, and indulging freely in stimulants, in absolute disobedience to
the physician's order. The fact was obvious that he could no longer be
allowed to live thus uncouthly.
So she sympathized, and begged his pardon, and coaxed. But though after
this date there was no longer such a complete estrangement as before,
they only occasionally saw each other, Dornell for the most part making
Falls his headquarters still.
Three or four years passed thus. Then she came one day, with more
animation in her manner, and at once moved him by the simple statement
that Betty's schooling had ended; she had returned, and was grieved
because he was away. She had sent a message to him in these words: 'Ask
father to come home to his dear Betty.'
'Ah! Then she is very unhappy!' said Squire Dornell.
His wife was silent.
''Tis that accursed marriage!' continued the Squire.
Still his wife would not dispute with him. 'She is outside in the
carriage,' said Mrs. Dornell gently.
'What-Betty?'
'Yes.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' Dornell rushed out, and there was the girl
awaiting his forgiveness, for she supposed herself, no less than her
mother, to be under his displeasure.
Yes, Betty had left school, and had returned to King's-Hintock. She was
nearly seventeen, and had developed to quite a young woman. She looked
not less a member of the household for her early marriage-contract,
which she seemed, indeed, to have almost forgotten. It was like a dream
to her; that clear cold March day, the London church, with its gorgeous
pews, and green-baize linings, and the great organ in the west gallery-
so different from their own little church in the shrubbery of King's-
Hintock Court-the man of thirty, to whose face she had looked up with so
much awe, and with a sense that he was rather ugly and formidable; the
man whom, though they corresponded politely, she had never seen since;
one to whose existence she was now so indifferent that if informed of
his death, and that she would never see him more, she would merely have
replied, 'Indeed!' Betty's passions as yet still slept.
'Hast heard from thy husband lately?' said Squire Dornell, when they
were indoors, with an ironical laugh of fondness which demanded no
answer.
The girl winced, and he noticed that his wife looked appealingly at him.
As the conversation went on, and there were signs that Dornell would
express sentiments that might do harm to a position which they could not
alter, Mrs. Dornell suggested that Betty should leave the room till her
father and herself had finished their private conversation; and this
Betty obediently did.
Dornell renewed his animadversions freely. 'Did you see how the sound of
his name frightened her?' he presently added. 'If you didn't, I did.
Zounds! what a future is in store for that poor little unfortunate wench
o' mine! I tell 'ee, Sue, 'twas not a marriage at all, in morality, and
if I were a woman in such a position, I shouldn't feel it as one. She
might, without a sign of sin, love a man of her choice as well now as if
she were chained up to no other at all. There, that's my mind, and I
can't help it. Ah, Sue, my man was best! He'd ha' suited her.'
'I don't believe it,' she replied incredulously.
'You should see him; then you would. He's growing up a fine fellow, I
can tell 'ee.'
'Hush! not so loud!' she answered, rising from her seat and going to the
door of the next room, whither her daughter had betaken herself. To Mrs.
Dornell's alarm, there sat Betty in a reverie, her round eyes fixed on
vacancy, musing so deeply that she did not perceive her mother's
entrance. She had heard every word, and was digesting the new knowledge.
Her mother felt that Falls-Park was dangerous ground for a young girl of
the susceptible age, and in Betty's peculiar position, while Dornell
talked and reasoned thus. She called Betty to her, and they took leave.
The Squire would not clearly promise to return and make King's-Hintock
Court his permanent abode; but Betty's presence there, as at former
times, was sufficient to make him agree to pay them a visit soon.
All the way home Betty remained preoccupied and silent. It was too plain
to her anxious mother that Squire Dornell's free views had been a sort
of awakening to the girl.
The interval before Dornell redeemed his pledge to come and see them was
unexpectedly short. He arrived one morning about twelve o'clock, driving
his own pair of black-bays in the curricle-phaeton with yellow panels
and red wheels, just as he had used to do, and his faithful old Tupcombe
on horseback behind. A young man sat beside the Squire in the carriage,
and Mrs. Dornell's consternation could scarcely be concealed when,
abruptly entering with his companion, the Squire announced him as his
friend Phelipson of Elm-Cranlynch.
Dornell passed on to Betty in the background and tenderly kissed her.
'Sting your mother's conscience, my maid!' he whispered. 'Sting her
conscience by pretending you are struck with Phelipson, and would ha'
loved him, as your old father's choice, much more than him she has
forced upon 'ee.'
The simple-souled speaker fondly imagined that it as entirely in
obedience to this direction that Betty's eyes stole interested glances
at the frank and impulsive Phelipson that day at dinner, and he laughed
grimly within himself to see how this joke of his, as he imagined it to
be, was disturbing the peace of mind of the lady of the house. 'Now Sue
sees what a mistake she has made!' said he.
Mrs. Dornell was verily greatly alarmed, and as soon as she could speak
a word with him alone she upbraided him. 'You ought not to have brought
him here. Oh Thomas, how could you be so thoughtless! Lord, don't you
see, dear, that what is done cannot be undone, and how all this foolery
jeopardizes her happiness with her husband? Until you interfered, and
spoke in her hearing about this Phelipson, she was as patient and as
willing as a lamb, and looked forward to Mr. Reynard's return with real
pleasure. Since her visit to Falls-Park she has been monstrous close-
mouthed and busy with her own thoughts. What mischief will you do? How
will it end?'
'Own, then, that my man was best suited to her. I only brought him to
convince you.'
'Yes, yes; I do admit it. But oh! do take him back again at once! Don't
keep him here! I fear she is even attracted by him already.'
'Nonsense, Sue. 'Tis only a little trick to tease 'ee!'
Nevertheless her motherly eye was not so likely to be deceived as his,
and if Betty were really only playing at being love-struck that day, she
played at it with the perfection of a Rosalind, and would have deceived
the best professors into a belief that it was no counterfeit. The
Squire, having obtained his victory, was quite ready to take back the
too attractive youth, and early in the afternoon they set out on their
return journey.
A silent figure who rode behind them was as interested as Dornell in
that day's experiment. It was the staunch Tupcombe, who, with his eyes
on the Squire's and young Phelipson's backs, thought how well the latter
would have suited Betty, and how greatly the former had changed for the
worse during these last two or three years. He cursed his mistress as
the cause of the change.
After this memorable visit to prove his point, the lives of the Dornell
couple flowed on quietly enough for the space of a twelvemonth, the
Squire for the most part remaining at Falls, and Betty passing and
repassing between them now and then, once or twice alarming her mother
by not driving home from her father's house till midnight.
The repose of King's-Hintock was broken by the arrival of a special
messenger. Squire Dornell had had an access of gout so violent as to be
serious. He wished to see Betty again: why had she not come for so long?
Mrs. Dornell was extremely reluctant to take Betty in that direction too
frequently; but the girl was so anxious to go, her interests latterly
seeming to be so entirely bound up in Falls-Park and its neighbourhood,
that there was nothing to be done but to let her set out and accompany
her.
Squire Dornell had been impatiently awaiting her arrival. They found him
very ill and irritable. It had been his habit to take powerful medicines
to drive away his enemy, and they had failed in their effect on this
occasion.
The presence of his daughter, as usual, calmed him much, even while, as
usual too, it saddened him; for he could never forget that she had
disposed of herself for life in opposition to his wishes, though she had
secretly assured him that she would never have consented had she been as
old as she was now.
As on a former occasion, his wife wished to speak to him alone about the
girl's future, the time now drawing nigh at which Reynard was expected
to come and claim her. He would have done so already, but he had been
put off by the earnest request of the young woman herself, which
accorded with that of her parents, on the score of her youth. Reynard
had deferentially submitted to their wishes in this respect, the
understanding between them having been that he would not visit her
before she was eighteen, except by the mutual consent of all parties.
But this could not go on much longer, and there was no doubt, from the
tenor of his last letter, that he would soon take possession of her
whether or no.
To be out of the sound of this delicate discussion Betty was accordingly
sent downstairs, and they soon saw her walking away into the
shrubberies, looking very pretty in her sweeping green gown, and
flapping broad-brimmed hat overhung with a feather.
On returning to the subject, Mrs. Dornell found her husband's reluctance
to reply in the affirmative to Reynard's letter to be as great as ever.
'She is three months short of eighteen!' he exclaimed. ''Tis too soon. I
won't hear of it! If I have to keep him off sword in hand, he shall not
have her yet.'
'But, my dear Thomas,' she expostulated, 'consider if anything should
happen to you or to me, how much better it would be that she should be
settled in her home with him!'
'I say it is too soon!' he argued, the veins of his forehead beginning
to swell. 'If he gets her this side o' Candlemas I'll challenge en-I'll
take my oath on't! I'll be back to King's-Hintock in two or three days,
and I'll not lose sight of her day or night!'
She feared to agitate him further, and gave way, assuring him, in
obedience to his demand, that if Reynard should write again before he
got back, to fix a time for joining Betty, she would put the letter in
her husband's hands, and he should do as he chose. This was all that
required discussion privately, and Mrs. Dornell went to call in Betty,
hoping that she had not heard her father's loud tones.
She had certainly not done so this time. Mrs. Dornell followed the path
along which she had seen Betty wandering, but went a considerable
distance without perceiving anything of her. The Squire's wife then
turned round to proceed to the other side of the house by a short cut
across the grass, when, to her surprise and consternation, she beheld
the object of her search sitting on the horizontal bough of a cedar,
beside her being a young man, whose arm was round her waist. He moved a
little, and she recognized him as young Phelipson.
Alas, then, she was right. The so-called counterfeit love was real. What
Mrs. Dornell called her husband at that moment, for his folly in
originally throwing the young people together, it is not necessary to
mention. She decided in a moment not to let the lovers know that she had
seen them. She accordingly retreated, reached the front of the house by
another route, and called at the top of her voice from a window,
'Betty!'
For the first time since her strategic marriage of the child, Susan
Dornell doubted the wisdom of that step.
Her husband had, as it were, been assisted by destiny to make his
objection, originally trivial, a valid one. She saw the outlines of
trouble in the future. Why had Dornell interfered? Why had he insisted
upon producing his man? This, then, accounted for Betty's pleading for
postponement whenever the subject of her husband's return was broached;
this accounted for her attachment to Falls-Park. Possibly this very
meeting that she had witnessed had been arranged by letter.
Perhaps the girl's thoughts would never have strayed for a moment if her
father had not filled her head with ideas of repugnance to her early
union, on the ground that she had been coerced into it before she knew
her own mind; and she might have rushed to meet her husband with open
arms on the appointed day.
Betty at length appeared in the distance in answer to the call, and came
up pale, but looking innocent of having seen a living soul. Mrs. Dornell
groaned in spirit at such duplicity in the child of her bosom. This was
the simple creature for whose development into womanhood they had all
been so tenderly waiting-a forward minx, old enough not only to have a
lover, but to conceal his existence as adroitly as any woman of the
world! Bitterly did the Squire's lady regret that Stephen Reynard had
not been allowed to come to claim her at the time he first proposed.
The two sat beside each other almost in silence on their journey back to
King's-Hintock. Such words as were spoken came mainly from Betty, and
their formality indicated how much her mind and heart were occupied with
other things.
Mrs. Dornell was far too astute a mother to openly attack Betty on the
matter. That would be only fanning flame. The indispensable course
seemed to her to be that of keeping the treacherous girl under lock and
key till her husband came to take her off her mother's hands. That he
would disregard Dornell's opposition, and come soon, was her devout
wish.
It seemed, therefore, a fortunate coincidence that on her arrival at
King's-Hintock a letter from Reynard was put into Mrs. Dornell's hands.
It was addressed to both her and her husband, and courteously informed
them that the writer had landed at Bristol, and proposed to come on to
King's-Hintock in a few days, at last to meet and carry off his darling
Betty, if she and her parents saw no objection.
Betty had also received a letter of the same tenor. Her mother had only
to look at her face to see how the girl received the information. She
was as pale as a sheet.
'You must do your best to welcome him this time, my dear Betty,' her
mother said gently.
'But-but-I-'
'You are a woman now,' added her mother severely, 'and these
postponements must come to an end.'
'But my father-oh, I am sure he will not allow this! I am not ready. If
he could only wait a year longer-if he could only wait a few months
longer! Oh, I wish-I wish my dear father were here! I will send to him
instantly.' She broke off abruptly, and falling upon her mother's neck,
burst into tears, saying, 'O my mother, have mercy upon me-I do not love
this man, my husband!'
The agonized appeal went too straight to Mrs. Dornell's heart for her to
hear it unmoved. Yet, things having come to this pass, what could she
do? She was distracted, and for a moment was on Betty's side. Her
original thought had been to write an affirmative reply to Reynard,
allow him to come on to King's-Hintock, and keep her husband in
ignorance of the whole proceeding till he should arrive from Falls on
some fine day after his recovery, and find everything settled, and
Reynard and Betty living together in harmony. But the events of the day,
and her daughter's sudden outburst of feeling, had overthrown this
intention. Betty was sure to do as she had threatened, and communicate
instantly with her father, possibly attempt to fly to him. Moreover,
Reynard's letter was addressed to Mr. Dornell and herself conjointly,
and she could not in conscience keep it from her husband.
'I will send the letter on to your father instantly,' she replied
soothingly. 'He shall act entirely as he chooses, and you know that will
not be in opposition to your wishes. He would ruin you rather than
thwart you. I only hope he may be well enough to bear the agitation of
this news. Do you agree to this?'
Poor Betty agreed, on condition that she should actually witness the
despatch of the letter. Her mother had no objection to offer to this;
but as soon as the horseman had cantered down the drive toward the
highway, Mrs. Dornell's sympathy with Betty's recalcitration began to
die out. The girl's secret affection for young Phelipson could not
possibly be condoned. Betty might communicate with him, might even try
to reach him. Ruin lay that way. Stephen Reynard must be speedily
installed in his proper place by Betty's side.
She sat down and penned a private letter to Reynard, which threw light
upon her plan.
'It is Necessary that I should now tell you,' she said, 'what I have
never Mentioned before-indeed I may have signified the Contrary-that her
Father's Objection to your joining her has not as yet been overcome. As
I personally Wish to delay you no longer-am indeed as anxious for your
Arrival as you can be yourself, having the good of my Daughter at Heart-
no course is left open to me but to assist your Cause without my
Husband's Knowledge. He, I am sorry to say, is at present ill at Falls-
Park, but I felt it my Duty to forward him your Letter. He will
therefore be like to reply with a peremptory Command to you to go back
again, for some Months, whence you came, till the Time he originally
stipulated has expir'd. My Advice is, if you get such a Letter, to take
no Notice of it, but to come on hither as you had proposed, letting me
know the Day and Hour (after dark, if possible) at which we may expect
you. Dear Betty is with me, and I warrant ye that she shall be in the
House when you arrive.'
Mrs. Dornell, having sent away this epistle unsuspected of anybody, next
took steps to prevent her daughter leaving the Court, avoiding if
possible to excite the girl's suspicions that she was under restraint.
But, as if by divination, Betty had seemed to read the husband's
approach in the aspect of her mother's face.
'He is coming!' exclaimed the maiden.
'Not for a week,' her mother assured her.
'He is then-for certain?'
'Well, yes.'
Betty hastily retired to her room, and would not be seen.
To lock her up, and hand over the key to Reynard when he should appear
in the hall, was a plan charming in its simplicity, till her mother
found, on trying the door of the girl's chamber softly, that Betty had
already locked and bolted it on the inside, and had given directions to
have her meals served where she was, by leaving them on a dumb-waiter
outside the door.
Thereupon Mrs. Dornell noiselessly sat down in her boudoir, which, as
well as her bed-chamber, was a passage-room to the girl's apartment, and
she resolved not to vacate her post night or day till her daughter's
husband should appear, to which end she too arranged to breakfast, dine,
and sup on the spot. It was impossible now that Betty should escape
without her knowledge, even if she had wished, there being no other door
to the chamber, except one admitting to a small inner dressing-room
inaccessible by any second way.
But it was plain that the young girl had no thought of escape. Her ideas
ran rather in the direction of intrenchment: she was prepared to stand a
siege, but scorned flight. This, at any rate, rendered her secure. As to
how Reynard would contrive a meeting with her coy daughter while in such
a defensive humour, that, thought her mother, must be left to his own
ingenuity to discover.
Betty had looked so wild and pale at the announcement of her husband's
approaching visit, that Mrs. Dornell, somewhat uneasy, could not leave
her to herself. She peeped through the keyhole an hour later. Betty lay
on the sofa, staring listlessly at the ceiling.
'You are looking ill, child,' cried her mother. 'You've not taken the
air lately. Come with me for a drive.'
Betty made no objection. Soon they drove through the park towards the
village, the daughter still in the strained, strung-up silence that had
fallen upon her. They left the park to return by another route, and on
the open road passed a cottage.
Betty's eye fell upon the cottage-window. Within it she saw a young girl
about her own age, whom she knew by sight, sitting in a chair and
propped by a pillow. The girl's face was covered with scales, which
glistened in the sun. She was a convalescent from smallpox-a disease
whose prevalence at that period was a terror of which we at present can
hardly form a conception.
An idea suddenly energized Betty's apathetic features. She glanced at
her mother; Mrs. Dornell had been looking in the opposite direction.
Betty said that she wished to go back to the cottage for a moment to
speak to a girl in whom she took an interest. Mrs. Dornell appeared
suspicious, but observing that the cottage had no back-door, and that
Betty could not escape without being seen, she allowed the carriage to
be stopped. Betty ran back and entered the cottage, emerging again in
about a minute, and resuming her seat in the carriage. As they drove on
she fixed her eyes upon her mother and said, 'There, I have done it
now!' Her pale face was stormy, and her eyes full of waiting tears.
'What have you done?' said Mrs. Dornell.
'Nanny Priddle is sick of the smallpox, and I saw her at the window, and
I went in and kissed her, so that I might take it; and now I shall have
it, and he won't be able to come near me!'
'Wicked girl!' cries her mother. 'Oh, what am I to do! What-bring a
distemper on yourself, and usurp the sacred prerogative of God, because
you can't palate the man you've wedded!'
The alarmed woman gave orders to drive home as rapidly as possible, and
on arriving, Betty, who was by this time also somewhat frightened at her
own enormity, was put into a bath, and fumigated, and treated in every
way that could be thought of to ward off the dreadful malady that in a
rash moment she had tried to acquire.
There was now a double reason for isolating the rebellious daughter and
wife in her own chamber, and there she accordingly remained for the rest
of the day and the days that followed; till no ill results seemed likely
to arise from her wilfulness.
Meanwhile the first letter from Reynard, announcing to Mrs. Dornell and
her husband jointly that he was coming in a few days, had sped on its
way to Falls-Park. It was directed under cover to Tupcombe, the
confidential servant, with instructions not to put it into his master's
hands till he had been refreshed by a good long sleep. Tupcombe much
regretted his commission, letters sent in this way always disturbing the
Squire; but guessing that it would be infinitely worse in the end to
withhold the news than to reveal it, he chose his time, which was early
the next morning, and delivered the missive.
The utmost effect that Mrs. Dornell had anticipated from the message was
a peremptory order from her husband to Reynard to hold aloof a few
months longer. What the Squire really did was to declare that he would
go himself and confront Reynard at Bristol, and have it out with him
there by word of mouth.
'But, master,' said Tupcombe, 'you can't. You cannot get out of bed.'
'You leave the room, Tupcombe, and don't say "can't" before me! Have
Jerry saddled in an hour.'
The long-tried Tupcombe thought his employer demented, so utterly
helpless was his appearance just then, and he went out reluctantly. No
sooner was he gone than the Squire, with great difficulty, stretched
himself over to a cabinet by the bedside, unlocked it, and took out a
small bottle. It contained a gout specific, against whose use he had
been repeatedly warned by his regular physician, but whose warning he
now cast to the winds.
He took a double dose, and waited half an hour. It seemed to produce no
effect. He then poured out a treble dose, swallowed it, leant back upon
his pillow, and waited. The miracle he anticipated had been worked at
last. It seemed as though the second draught had not only operated with
its own strength, but had kindled into power the latent forces of the
first. He put away the bottle, and rang up Tupcombe.
Less than an hour later one of the housemaids, who of course was quite
aware that the Squire's illness was serious, was surprised to hear a
bold and decided step descending the stairs from the direction of Mr.
Dornell's room, accompanied by the humming of a tune. She knew that the
doctor had not paid a visit that morning, and that it was too heavy to
be the valet or any other man-servant. Looking up, she saw Squire
Dornell fully dressed, descending toward her in his drab caped riding-
coat and boots, with the swinging easy movement of his prime. Her face
expressed her amazement.
'What the devil beest looking at?' said the Squire. 'Did you never see a
man walk out of his house before, wench?'
Resuming his humming-which was of a defiant sort-he proceeded to the
library, rang the bell, asked if the horses were ready, and directed
them to be brought round. Ten minutes later he rode away in the
direction of Bristol, Tupcombe behind him, trembling at what these
movements might portend.
They rode on through the pleasant woodlands and the monotonous straight
lanes at an equal pace. The distance traversed might have been about
fifteen miles when Tupcombe could perceive that the Squire was getting
tired-as weary as he would have been after riding three times the
distance ten years before. However, they reached Bristol without any
mishap, and put up at the Squire's accustomed inn. Dornell almost
immediately proceeded on foot to the inn which Reynard had given as his
address, it being now about four o'clock.
Reynard had already dined-for people dined early then-and he was staying
indoors. He had already received Mrs. Dornell's reply to his letter; but
before acting upon her advice and starting for King's-Hintock he made up
his mind to wait another day, that Betty's father might at least have
time to write to him if so minded. The returned traveller much desired
to obtain the Squire's assent, as well as his wife's, to the proposed
visit to his bride, that nothing might seem harsh or forced in his
method of taking his position as one of the family. But though he
anticipated some sort of objection from his father-in-law, in
consequence of Mrs. Dornell's warning, he was surprised at the
announcement of the Squire in person.
Stephen Reynard formed the completest of possible contrasts to Dornell
as they stood confronting each other in the best parlour of the Bristol
tavern. The Squire, hot-tempered, gouty, impulsive, generous, reckless;
the younger man, pale, tall, sedate, self-possessed-a man of the world,
fully bearing out at least one couplet in his epitaph, still extant in
King's-Hintock church, which places in the inventory of his good
qualities
'Engaging Manners, cultivated Mind, Adorn'd by Letters, and in Courts
refin'd.'
He was at this time about five-and-thirty, though careful living and an
even, unemotional temperament caused him to look much younger than his
years.
Squire Dornell plunged into his errand without much ceremony or preface.
'I am your humble servant, sir,' he said. 'I have read your letter writ
to my wife and myself, and considered that the best way to answer it
would be to do so in person.'
'I am vastly honoured by your visit, sir,' said Mr. Stephen Reynard,
bowing.
'Well, what's done can't be undone,' said Dornell, 'though it was mighty
early, and was no doing of mine. She's your wife; and there's an end
on't. But in brief, sir, she's too young for you to claim yet; we
mustn't reckon by years; we must reckon by nature. She's still a girl;
'tis onpolite of 'ee to come yet; next year will be full soon enough for
you to take her to you.'
Now, courteous as Reynard could be, he was a little obstinate when his
resolution had once been formed. She had been promised him by her
eighteenth birthday at latest-sooner if she were in robust health. Her
mother had fixed the time on her own judgment, without a word of
interference on his part. He had been hanging about foreign courts till
he was weary. Betty was now as woman, if she would ever be one, and
there was not, in his mind, the shadow of an excuse for putting him off
longer. Therefore, fortified as he was by the support of her mother, he
blandly but firmly told the Squire that he had been willing to waive his
rights, out of deference to her parents, to any reasonable extent, but
must now, in justice to himself and her insist on maintaining them. He
therefore, since she had not come to meet him, should proceed to King's-
Hintock in a few days to fetch her.
This announcement, in spite of the urbanity with which it was delivered,
set Dornell in a passion.
'Oh dammy, sir; you talk about rights, you do, after stealing her away,
a mere child, against my will and knowledge! If we'd begged and prayed
'ee to take her, you could say no more.'
'Upon my honour, your charge is quite baseless, sir,' said his son-in-
law. 'You must know by this time-or if you do not, it has been a
monstrous cruel injustice to me that I should have been allowed to
remain in your mind with such a stain upon my character-you must know
that I used no seductiveness or temptation of any kind. Her mother
assented; she assented. I took them at their word. That you was really
opposed to the marriage was not known to me till afterwards.'
Dornell professed to believe not a word of it. 'You sha'n't have her
till she's dree sixes full-no maid ought to be married till she's dree
sixes!-and my daughter sha'n't be treated out of nater!' So he stormed
on till Tupcombe, who had been alarmedly listening in the next room,
entered suddenly, declaring to Reynard that his master's life was in
danger if the interview were prolonged, he being subject to apoplectic
strokes at these crises. Reynard immediately said that he would be the
last to wish to injure Squire Dornell, and left the room, and as soon as
the Squire had recovered breath and equanimity, he went out of the inn,
leaning on the arm of Tupcombe.
Tupcombe was for sleeping in Bristol that night, but Dornell, whose
energy seemed as invincible as it was sudden, insisted upon mounting and
getting back as far as Falls-Park, to continue the journey to King's-
Hintock on the following day. At five they started, and took the
southern road toward the Mendip Hills. The evening was dry and windy,
and, excepting that the sun did not shine, strongly reminded Tupcombe of
the evening of that March month, nearly five years earlier, when news
had been brought to King's-Hintock Court of the child Betty's marriage
in London-news which had produced upon Dornell such a marked effect for
the worse ever since, and indirectly upon the household of which he was
the head. Before that time the winters were lively at Falls-Park, as
well as at King's-Hintock, although the Squire had ceased to make it his
regular residence. Hunting-guests and shooting-guests came and went, and
open house was kept. Tupcombe disliked the clever courtier who had put a
stop to this by taking away from the Squire the only treasure he valued.
It grew darker with their progress along the lanes, and Tupcombe
discovered from Mr. Dornell's manner of riding that his strength was
giving way; and spurring his own horse close alongside, he asked him how
he felt.
'Oh, bad; damn bad, Tupcombe! I can hardly keep my seat. I shall never
be any better, I fear! Have we passed Three-Man-Gibbet yet?'
'Not yet by a long ways, sir.'
'I wish we had. I can hardly hold on.' The Squire could not repress a
groan now and then, and Tupcombe knew he was in great pain. 'I wish I
was underground-that's the place for such fools as I! I'd gladly be
there if it were not for Mistress Betty. He's coming on to King's-
Hintock to-morrow-he won't put it off any longer; he'll set out and
reach there to-morrow night, without stopping at Falls; and he'll take
her unawares, and I want to be there before him.'
'I hope you may be well enough to do it, sir. But really-'
'I must, Tupcombe! You don't know what my trouble is; it is not so much
that she is married to this man without my agreeing-for, after all,
there's nothing to say against him, so far as I know; but that she don't
take to him at all, seems to fear him-in fact, cares nothing about him;
and if he comes forcing himself into the house upon her, why, 'twill be
rank cruelty. Would to the Lord something would happen to prevent him!'
How they reached home that night Tupcombe hardly knew. The Squire was in
such pain that he was obliged to recline upon his horse, and Tupcombe
was afraid every moment lest he would fall into the road. But they did
reach home at last, and Mr. Dornell was instantly assisted to bed.
Next morning it was obvious that he could not possibly go to King's-
Hintock for several days at least, and there on the bed he lay, cursing
his inability to proceed on an errand so personal and so delicate that
no emissary could perform it. What he wished to do was to ascertain from
Betty's own lips if her aversion to Reynard was so strong that his
presence would be positively distasteful to her. Were that the case, he
would have borne her away bodily on the saddle behind him.
But all that was hindered now, and he repeated a hundred times in
Tupcombe's hearing, and in that of the nurse and other servants, 'I wish
to God something would happen to him!'
This sentiment, reiterated by the Squire as he tossed in the agony
induced by the powerful drugs of the day before, entered sharply into
the soul of Tupcombe and of all who were attached to the house of
Dornell, as distinct from the house of his wife at King's-Hintock.
Tupcombe, who was an excitable man, was hardly less disquieted by the
thought of Reynard's return than the Squire himself was. As the week
drew on, and the afternoon advanced at which Reynard would in all
probability be passing near Falls on his way to the Court, the Squire's
feelings became acuter, and the responsive Tupcombe could hardly bear to
come near him. Having left him in the hands of the doctor, the former
went out upon the lawn, for he could hardly breathe in the contagion of
excitement caught from the employer who had virtually made him his
confidant. He had lived with the Dornells from his boyhood, had been
born under the shadow of their walls; his whole life was annexed and
welded to the life of the family in a degree which has no counterpart in
these latter days.
He was summoned indoors, and learnt that it had been decided to send for
Mrs. Dornell: her husband was in great danger. There were two or three
who could have acted as messenger, but Dornell wished Tupcombe to go,
the reason showing itself when, Tupcombe being ready to start, Squire
Dornell summoned him to his chamber and leaned down so that he could
whisper in his ear:
'Put Peggy along smart, Tupcombe, and get there before him, you know-
before him. This is the day he fixed. He has not passed Falls cross-
roads yet. If you can do that you will be able to get Betty to come-d'ye
see?-after her mother has started; she'll have a reason for not waiting
for him. Bring her by the lower road-he'll go by the upper. Your
business is to make 'em miss each other-d'ye see?-but that's a thing I
couldn't write down.'
Five minutes after, Tupcombe was astride the horse and on his way-the
way he had followed so many times since his master, a florid young
countryman, had first gone wooing to King's-Hintock Court. As soon as he
had crossed the hills in the immediate neighbourhood of the manor, the
road lay over a plain, where it ran in long straight stretches for
several miles. In the best of times, when all had been gay in the united
houses, that part of the road had seemed tedious. It was gloomy in the
extreme now that he pursued it, at night and alone, on such an errand.
He rode and brooded. If the Squire were to die, he, Tupcombe, would be
alone in the world and friendless, for he was no favourite with Mrs.
Dornell; and to find himself baffled, after all, in what he had set his
mind on, would probably kill the Squire. Thinking thus, Tupcombe stopped
his horse every now and then, and listened for the coming husband. The
time was drawing on to the moment when Reynard might be expected to pass
along this very route. He had watched the road well during the
afternoon, and had inquired of the tavern-keepers as he came up to each,
and he was convinced that the premature descent of the stranger-husband
upon his young mistress had not been made by this highway as yet.
Besides the girl's mother, Tupcombe was the only member of the household
who suspected Betty's tender feelings towards young Phelipson, so
unhappily generated on her return from school; and he could therefore
imagine, even better than her fond father, what would be her emotions on
the sudden announcement of Reynard's advent that evening at King's-
Hintock Court.
So he rode and rode, desponding and hopeful by turns. He felt assured
that, unless in the unfortunate event of the almost immediate arrival of
her son-in law at his own heels, Mrs. Dornell would not be able to
hinder Betty's departure for her father's bedside.
It was about nine o'clock that, having put twenty miles of country
behind him, he turned in at the lodge-gate nearest to Ivell and King's-
Hintock village, and pursued the long north drive-itself much like a
turnpike road-which led thence through the park to the Court. Though
there were so many trees in King's-Hintock park, few bordered the
carriage roadway; he could see it stretching ahead in the pale night
light like an unrolled deal shaving. Presently the irregular frontage of
the house came in view, of great extent, but low, except where it rose
into the outlines of a broad square tower.
As Tupcombe approached he rode aside upon the grass, to make sure, if
possible, that he was the first comer, before letting his presence be
known. The Court was dark and sleepy, in no respect as if a bridegroom
were about to arrive.
While pausing he distinctly heard the tread of a horse upon the track
behind him, and for a moment despaired of arriving in time: here,
surely, was Reynard! Pulling up closer to the densest tree at hand he
waited, and found he had retreated nothing too soon, for the second
rider avoided the gravel also, and passed quite close to him. In the
profile he recognized young Phelipson.
Before Tupcombe could think what to do, Phelipson had gone on; but not
to the door of the house. Swerving to the left, he passed round to the
east angle, where, as Tupcombe knew, were situated Betty's apartments.
Dismounting, he left the horse tethered to a hanging bough, and walked
on to the house.
Suddenly his eye caught sight of an object which explained the position
immediately. It was a ladder stretching from beneath the trees, which
there came pretty close to the house, up to a first-floor window-one
which lighted Miss Betty's rooms. Yes, it was Betty's chamber; he knew
every room in the house well.
The young horseman who had passed him, having evidently left his steed
somewhere under the trees also, was perceptible at the top of the
ladder, immediately outside Betty's window. While Tupcombe watched, a
cloaked female figure stepped timidly over the sill, and the two
cautiously descended, one before the other, the young man's arms
enclosing the young woman between his grasp of the ladder, so that she
could not fall. As soon as they reached the bottom, young Phelipson
quickly removed the ladder and hid it under the bushes. The pair
disappeared; till, in a few minutes, Tupcombe could discern a horse
emerging from a remoter part of the umbrage. The horse carried double,
the girl being on a pillion behind her lover.
Tupcombe hardly knew what to do or think; yet, though this was not
exactly the kind of flight that had been intended, she had certainly
escaped. He went back to his own animal, and rode round to the servants'
door, where he delivered the letter for Mrs. Dornell. To leave a verbal
message for Betty was now impossible.
The Court servants desired him to stay over the night, but he would not
do so, desiring to get back to the Squire as soon as possible and tell
what he had seen. Whether he ought not to have intercepted the young
people, and carried off Betty himself to her father, he did not know.
However, it was too late to think of that now, and without wetting his
lips or swallowing a crumb, Tupcombe turned his back upon King's-Hintock
Court.
It was not till he had advanced a considerable distance on his way
homeward that, halting under the lantern of a roadside-inn while the
horse was watered, there came a traveller from the opposite direction in
a hired coach; the lantern lit the stranger's face as he passed along
and dropped into the shade. Tupcombe exulted for the moment, though he
could hardly have justified his exultation. The belated traveller was
Reynard; and another had stepped in before him.
You may now be willing to know of the fortunes of Miss Betty. Left much
to herself through the intervening days, she had ample time to brood
over her desperate attempt at the stratagem of infection-thwarted,
apparently, by her mother's promptitude. In what other way to gain time
she could not think. Thus drew on the day and the hour of the evening on
which her husband was expected to announce himself.
At some period after dark, when she could not tell, a tap at the window,
twice and thrice repeated, became audible. It caused her to start up,
for the only visitant in her mind was the one whose advances she had so
feared as to risk health and life to repel them. She crept to the
window, and heard a whisper without.
'It is I-Charley,' said the voice.
Betty's face fired with excitement. She had latterly begun to doubt her
admirer's staunchness, fancying his love to be going off in mere
attentions which neither committed him nor herself very deeply. She
opened the window, saying in a joyous whisper, 'Oh Charley; I thought
you had deserted me quite!'
He assured her he had not done that, and that he had a horse in waiting,
if she would ride off with him. 'You must come quickly,' he said; 'for
Reynard's on the way!'
To throw a cloak round herself was the work of a moment, and assuring
herself that her door was locked against a surprise, she climbed over
the window-sill and descended with him as we have seen.
Her mother meanwhile, having received Tupcombe's note, found the news of
her husband's illness so serious, as to displace her thoughts of the
coming son-in-law, and she hastened to tell her daughter of the Squire's
dangerous condition, thinking it might be desirable to take her to her
father's bedside. On trying the door of the girl's room, she found it
still locked. Mrs. Dornell called, but there was no answer. Full of
misgivings, she privately fetched the old house-steward and bade him
burst open the door-an order by no means easy to execute, the joinery of
the Court being massively constructed. However, the lock sprang open at
last, and she entered Betty's chamber only to find the window unfastened
and the bird flown.
For a moment Mrs. Dornell was staggered. Then it occurred to her that
Betty might have privately obtained from Tupcombe the news of her
father's serious illness, and, fearing she might be kept back to meet
her husband, have gone off with that obstinate and biassed servitor to
Falls-Park. The more she thought it over the more probable did the
supposition appear; and binding her own head-man to secrecy as to
Betty's movements, whether as she conjectured, or otherwise, Mrs.
Dornell herself prepared to set out.
She had no suspicion how seriously her husband's malady had been
aggravated by his ride to Bristol, and thought more of Betty's affairs
than of her own. That Betty's husband should arrive by some other road
to-night, and find neither wife nor mother-in-law to receive him, and no
explanation of their absence, was possible; but never forgetting
chances, Mrs. Dornell as she journeyed kept her eyes fixed upon the
highway on the off-side, where, before she had reached the town of
Ivell, the hired coach containing Stephen Reynard flashed into the
lamplight of her own carriage.
Mrs. Dornell's coachman pulled up, in obedience to a direction she had
given him at starting; the other coach was hailed, a few words passed,
and Reynard alighted and came to Mrs. Dornell's carriage-window.
'Come inside,' says she. 'I want to speak privately to you. Why are you
so late?'
'One hindrance and another,' says he. 'I meant to be at the Court by
eight at latest. My gratitude for your letter. I hope-'
'You must not try to see Betty yet,' said she. 'There be far other and
newer reasons against your seeing her now than there were when I wrote.'
The circumstances were such that Mrs. Dornell could not possibly conceal
them entirely; nothing short of knowing some of the facts would prevent
his blindly acting in a manner which might be fatal to the future.
Moreover, there are times when deeper intriguers than Mrs. Dornell feel
that they must let out a few truths, if only in self-indulgence. So she
told so much of recent surprises as that Betty's heart had been
attracted by another image than his, and that his insisting on visiting
her now might drive the girl to desperation. 'Betty has, in fact, rushed
off to her father to avoid you,' she said. 'But if you wait she will
soon forget this young man, and you will have nothing to fear.'
As a woman and a mother she could go no further, and Betty's desperate
attempt to infect herself the week before as a means of repelling him,
together with the alarming possibility that, after all, she had not gone
to her father but to her lover, was not revealed.
'Well,' sighed the diplomatist, in a tone unexpectedly quiet, 'such
things have been known before. After all, she may prefer me to him some
day, when she reflects how very differently I might have acted than I am
going to act towards her. But I'll say no more about that now. I can
have a bed at your house for to-night?'
'To-night, certainly. And you leave to-morrow morning early?' She spoke
anxiously, for on no account did she wish him to make further
discoveries. 'My husband is so seriously ill,' she continued, 'that my
absence and Betty's on your arrival is naturally accounted for.'
He promised to leave early, and to write to her soon. 'And when I think
the time is ripe,' he said, 'I'll write to her. I may have something to
tell her that will bring her to graciousness.'
It was about one o'clock in the morning when Mrs. Dornell reached Falls-
Park. A double blow awaited her there. Betty had not arrived; her flight
had been elsewhither; and her stricken mother divined with whom. She
ascended to the bedside of her husband, where to her concern she found
that the physician had given up all hope. The Squire was sinking, and
his extreme weakness had almost changed his character, except in the
particular that his old obstinacy sustained him in a refusal to see a
clergyman. He shed tears at the least word, and sobbed at the sight of
his wife. He asked for Betty, and it was with a heavy heart that Mrs.
Dornell told him that the girl had not accompanied her.
'He is not keeping her away?'
'No, no. He is going back-he is not coming to her for some time.'
'Then what is detaining her-cruel, neglectful maid!'
'No, no, Thomas; she is- She could not come.'
'How's that?'
Somehow the solemnity of these last moments of his gave him
inquisitorial power, and the too cold wife could not conceal from him
the flight which had taken place from King's-Hintock that night.
To her amazement, the effect upon him was electrical.
'What-Betty-a trump after all? Hurrah! She's her father's own maid!
She's game! She knew he was her father's own choice! She vowed that my
man should win! Well done, Bet!-haw! haw! Hurrah!'
He had raised himself in bed by starts as he spoke, and now fell back
exhausted. He never uttered another word, and died before the dawn.
People said there had not been such an ungenteel death in a good county
family for years.
Now I will go back to the time of Betty's riding off on the pillion
behind her lover. They left the park by an obscure gate to the east, and
presently found themselves in the lonely and solitary length of the old
Roman road now called Long-Ash Lane.
By this time they were rather alarmed at their own performance, for they
were both young and inexperienced. Hence they proceeded almost in
silence till they came to a mean roadside inn which was not yet closed;
when Betty, who had held on to him with much misgiving all this while,
felt dreadfully unwell, and said she thought she would like to get down.
They accordingly dismounted from the jaded animal that had brought them,
and were shown into a small dark parlour, where they stood side by side
awkwardly, like the fugitives they were. A light was brought, and when
they were left alone Betty threw off the cloak which had enveloped her.
No sooner did young Phelipson see her face than he uttered an alarmed
exclamation.
'Why, Lord, Lord, you are sickening for the small-pox!' he cried.
'Oh-I forgot!' faltered Betty. And then she informed him that, on
hearing of her husband's approach the week before, in a desperate
attempt to keep him from her side, she had tried to imbibe the
infection-an act which till this moment she had supposed to have been
ineffectual, imagining her feverishness to be the result of her
excitement.
The effect of this discovery upon young Phelipson was overwhelming.
Better-seasoned men than he would not have been proof against it, and he
was only a little over her own age. 'And you've been holding on to me!'
he said. 'And suppose you get worse, and we both have it, what shall we
do? Won't you be a fright in a month or two, poor, poor Betty!'
In his horror he attempted to laugh, but the laugh ended in a weakly
giggle. She was more woman than girl by this time, and realized his
feeling.
'What-in trying to keep off him, I keep off you?' she said miserably.
'Do you hate me because I am going to be ugly and ill?'
'Oh-no, no!' he said soothingly. 'But I-I am thinking if it is quite
right for us to do this. You see, dear Betty, if you was not married it
would be different. You are not in honour married to him we've often
said; still you are his by law, and you can't be mine whilst he's alive.
And with this terrible sickness coming on, perhaps you had better let me
take you back, and-climb in at the window again.'
'Is this your love?' said Betty reproachfully. 'Oh, if you was sickening
for the plague itself, and going to be as ugly as the Ooser in the
church-vestry, I wouldn't-'
'No, no, you mistake, upon my soul!'
But Betty with a swollen heart had rewrapped herself and gone out of the
door. The horse was still standing there. She mounted by the help of the
upping-stock, and when he had followed her she said, 'Do not come near
me, Charley; but please lead the horse, so that if you've not caught
anything already you'll not catch it going back. After all, what keeps
off you may keep off him. Now onward.'
He did not resist her command, and back they went by the way they had
come, Betty shedding bitter tears at the retribution she had already
brought upon herself; for though she had reproached Phelipson, she was
staunch enough not to blame him in her secret heart for showing that his
love was only skin-deep. The horse was stopped in the plantation, and
they walked silently to the lawn, reaching the bushes wherein the ladder
still lay.
'Will you put it up for me?' she asked mournfully.
He re-erected the ladder without a word; but when she approached to
ascend he said, 'Good-bye, Betty!'
'Good-bye!' said she; and involuntarily turned her face towards his. He
hung back from imprinting the expected kiss: at which Betty started as
if she had received a poignant wound. She moved away so suddenly that he
hardly had time to follow her up the ladder to prevent her falling.
'Tell your mother to get the doctor at once!' he said anxiously.
She stepped in without looking behind; he descended, withdrew the
ladder, and went away.
Alone in her chamber, Betty flung herself upon her face on the bed, and
burst into shaking sobs. Yet she would not admit to herself that her
lover's conduct was unreasonable; only that her rash act of the previous
week had been wrong. No one had heard her enter, and she was too worn
out, in body and mind, to think or care about medical aid. In an hour or
so she felt yet more unwell, positively ill; and nobody coming to her at
the usual bedtime, she looked towards the door. Marks of the lock having
been forced were visible, and this made her chary of summoning a
servant. She opened the door cautiously and sallied forth downstairs.
In the dining-parlour, as it was called, the now sick and sorry Betty
was startled to see at that late hour not her mother, but a man sitting,
calmly finishing his supper. There was no servant in the room. He
turned, and she recognized her husband.
'Where's my mamma?' she demanded without preface.
'Gone to your father's. Is that-' He stopped, aghast.
'Yes, sir. This spotted object is your wife! I've done it because I
don't want you to come near me!'
He was sixteen years her senior; old enough to be compassionate. 'My
poor child, you must get to bed directly! Don't be afraid of me-I'll
carry you upstairs, and send for a doctor instantly.'
'Ah, you don't know what I am!' she cried. 'I had a lover once; but now
he's gone! 'Twasn't I who deserted him. He has deserted me; because I am
ill he wouldn't kiss me, though I wanted him to!'
'Wouldn't he? Then he was a very poor slack-twisted sort of fellow.
Betty, I've never kissed you since you stood beside me as my little
wife, twelve years and a half old! May I kiss you now?'
Though Betty by no means desired his kisses, she had enough of the
spirit of Cunigonde in Schiller's ballad to test his daring. 'If you
have courage to venture, yes sir!' said she. 'But you may die for it,
mind!'
He came up to her and imprinted a deliberate kiss full upon her mouth,
saying, 'May many others follow!'
She shook her head, and hastily withdrew, though secretly pleased at his
hardihood. The excitement had supported her for the few minutes she had
passed in his presence, and she could hardly drag herself back to her
room. Her husband summoned the servants, and, sending them to her
assistance, went off himself for a doctor.
The next morning Reynard waited at the Court till he had learnt from the
medical man that Betty's attack promised to be a very light one-or, as
it was expressed, 'very fine'; and in taking his leave sent up a note to
her:
'Now I must be Gone. I promised your Mother I would not see You yet, and
she may be anger'd if she finds me here. Promise to see me as Soon as
you are well?'
He was of all men then living one of the best able to cope with such an
untimely situation as this. A contriving, sagacious, gentle-mannered
man, a philosopher who saw that the only constant attribute of life is
change, he held that, as long as she lives, there is nothing finite in
the most impassioned attitude a woman may take up. In twelve months his
girl-wife's recent infatuation might be as distasteful to her mind as it
was now to his own. In a few years her very flesh would change-so said
the scientific;-her spirit, so much more ephemeral, was capable of
changing in one. Betty was his, and it became a mere question of means
how to effect that change.
During the day Mrs. Dornell, having closed her husband's eyes, returned
to the Court. She was truly relieved to find Betty there, even though on
a bed of sickness. The disease ran its course, and in due time Betty
became convalescent, without having suffered deeply for her rashness,
one little speck beneath her ear, and one beneath her chin, being all
the marks she retained.
The Squire's body was not brought back to King's-Hintock. Where he was
born, and where he had lived before wedding his Sue, there he had wished
to be buried. No sooner had she lost him than Mrs. Dornell, like certain
other wives, though she had never shown any great affection for him
while he lived, awoke suddenly to his many virtues, and zealously
embraced his opinion about delaying Betty's union with her husband,
which she had formerly combated strenuously. 'Poor man! how right he
was, and how wrong was I!' Eighteen was certainly the lowest age at
which Mr. Reynard should claim her child-nay, it was too low! Far too
low!
So desirous was she of honouring her lamented husband's sentiments in
this respect, that she wrote to her son-in-law suggesting that, partly
on account of Betty's sorrow for her father's loss, and out of
consideration for his known wishes for delay, Betty should not be taken
from her till her nineteenth birthday.
However much or little Stephen Reynard might have been to blame in his
marriage, the patient man now almost deserved to be pitied. First
Betty's skittishness; now her mother's remorseful volte-face: it was
enough to exasperate anybody; and he wrote to the widow in a tone which
led to a little coolness between those hitherto firm friends. However,
knowing that he had a wife not to claim but to win, and that young
Phelipson had been packed off to sea by his parents, Stephen was
complaisant to a degree, returning to London, and holding quite aloof
from Betty and her mother, who remained for the present in the country.
In town he had a mild visitation of the distemper he had taken from
Betty, and in writing to her he took care not to dwell upon its
mildness. It was now that Betty began to pity him for what she had
inflicted upon him by the kiss, and her correspondence acquired a
distinct flavour of kindness thenceforward.
Owing to his rebuffs, Reynard had grown to be truly in love with Betty
in his mild, placid, durable way-in that way which perhaps, upon the
whole, tends most generally to the woman's comfort under the institution
of marriage, if not particularly to her ecstasy. Mrs. Dornell's
exaggeration of her husband's wish for delay in their living together
was inconvenient, but he would not openly infringe it. He wrote tenderly
to Betty, and soon announced that he had a little surprise in store for
her. The secret was that the King had been graciously pleased to inform
him privately, through a relation, that His Majesty was about to offer
him a Barony. Would she like the title to be Ivell? Moreover, he had
reason for knowing that in a few years the dignity would be raised to
that of an Earl, for which creation he thought the title of Wessex would
be eminently suitable, considering the position of much of their
property. As Lady Ivell, therefore, and future Countess of Wessex, he
should beg leave to offer her his heart a third time.
He did not add, as he might have added, how greatly the consideration of
the enormous estates at King's-Hintock and elsewhere which Betty would
inherit, and her children after her, had conduced to this desirable
honour.
Whether the impending titles had really any effect upon Betty's regard
for him I cannot state, for she was one of those close characters who
never let their minds be known upon anything. That such honour was
absolutely unexpected by her from such a quarter is, however, certain;
and she could not deny that Stephen had shown her kindness, forbearance,
even magnanimity; had forgiven her for an errant passion which he might
with some reason have denounced, notwithstanding her cruel position as a
child entrapped into marriage ere able to understand its bearings.
Her mother, in her grief and remorse for the loveless life she had led
with her rough, though open-hearted, husband, made now a creed of his
merest whim; and continued to insist that, out of respect to his known
desire, her son-in-law should not reside with Betty till the girl's
father had been dead a year at least, at which time the girl would still
be under nineteen. Letters must suffice for Stephen till then.
'It is rather long for him to wait,' Betty hesitatingly said one day.
'What!' said her mother. 'From you? not to respect your dear father-'
'Of course it is quite proper,' said Betty hastily. 'I don't gainsay it.
I was but thinking that-that-'
In the long slow months of the stipulated interval her mother tended and
trained Betty carefully for her duties. Fully awake now to the many
virtues of her dear departed one, she, among other acts of pious
devotion to his memory, rebuilt the church of King's-Hintock village,
and established valuable charities in all the villages of that name, as
far as to Little-Hintock, several miles eastward.
In superintending these works, particularly that of the church-building,
her daughter Betty was her constant companion, and the incidents of
their execution were doubtless not without a soothing effect upon the
young creature's heart. She had sprung from girl to woman by a sudden
bound, and few would have recognized in the thoughtful face of Betty now
the same person who, the year before, had seemed to have absolutely no
idea whatever of responsibility, moral or other. Time passed thus till
the Squire had been nearly a year in his vault; and Mrs. Dornell was
duly asked by letter by the patient Reynard if she were willing for him
to come soon. He did not wish to take Betty away if her mother's sense
of loneliness would be too great, but would willingly live at King's-
Hintock awhile with them.
Before the widow had replied to this communication, she one day happened
to observe Betty walking on the south terrace in the full sunlight,
without hat or mantle, and was struck by her child's figure. Mrs.
Dornell called her in, and said suddenly: 'Have you seen your husband
since the time of your poor father's death?'
'Well-yes, mamma,' says Betty, colouring.
'What-against my wishes and those of your dear father! I am shocked at
your disobedience!'
'But my father said eighteen, ma'am, and you made it much longer-'
'Why, of course-out of consideration for you! When have ye seen him?'
'Well,' stammered Betty, 'in the course of his letters to me he said
that I belonged to him, and if nobody knew that we met it would make no
difference. And that I need not hurt your feelings by telling you.'
'Well?'
'So I went to Casterbridge that time you went to London about five
months ago-'
'And met him there? When did you come back?'
'Dear mamma, it grew very late, and he said it was safer not to go back
till next day, as the roads were bad; and as you were away from home-'
'I don't want to hear any more! This is your respect for your father's
memory,' groaned the widow. 'When did you meet him again?'
'Oh-not for more than a fortnight.'
'A fortnight! How many times have ye seen him altogether?'
'I'm sure, mamma, I've not seen him altogether a dozen times.'
'A dozen! And eighteen and a half years old barely!'
'Twice we met by accident,' pleaded Betty. 'Once at Abbot's-Cernel, and
another time at the Red Lion, Melchester.'
'O thou deceitful girl!' cried Mrs. Dornell. 'An accident took you to
the Red Lion whilst I was staying at the White Hart! I remember-you came
in at twelve o'clock at night and said you'd been to see the cathedral
by the light o' the moon!'
'My ever-honoured mamma, so I had! I only went to the Red Lion with him
afterwards.'
'Oh Betty, Betty! That my child should have deceived me even in my
widowed days!'
'But, my dearest mamma, you made me marry him!' says Betty with spirit,
'and of course I've to obey him more than you now!'
Mrs. Dornell sighed. 'All I have to say is, that you'd better get your
husband to join you as soon as possible,' she remarked. 'To go on
playing the maiden like this-I'm ashamed to see you!'
She wrote instantly to Stephen Reynard: 'I wash my hands of the whole
matter as between you two; though I should advise you to openly join
each other as soon as you can-if you wish to avoid scandal.'
He came, though not till the promised title had been granted, and he
could call Betty archly 'My Lady.'
People said in after years that she and her husband were very happy.
However that may be, they had a numerous family; and she became in due
course first Countess of Wessex, as he had foretold.
The little white frock in which she had been married to him at the
tender age of twelve was carefully preserved among the relics at King's-
Hintock Court, where it may still be seen by the curious-a yellowing,
pathetic testimony to the small count taken of the happiness of an
innocent child in the social strategy of those days, which might have
led, but providentially did not lead, to great unhappiness.
When the Earl died Betty wrote him an epitaph, in which she described
him as the best of husbands, fathers, and friends, and called herself
his disconsolate widow.
Such is woman; or rather (not to give offence by so sweeping an
assertion), such was Betty Dornell.
It was at a meeting of one of the Wessex Field and Antiquarian Clubs
that the foregoing story, partly told, partly read from a manuscript,
was made to do duty for the regulation papers on deformed butterflies,
fossil ox-horns, prehistoric dung-mixens, and such like, that usually
occupied the more serious attention of the members.
This Club was of an inclusive and intersocial character; to a degree,
indeed, remarkable for the part of England in which it had its being-
dear, delightful Wessex, whose statuesque dynasties are even now only
just beginning to feel the shaking of the new and strange spirit
without, like that which entered the lonely valley of Ezekiel's vision
and made the dry bones move: where the honest squires, tradesmen,
parsons, clerks, and people still praise the Lord with one voice for His
best of all possible worlds.
The present meeting, which was to extend over two days, had opened its
proceedings at the museum of the town whose buildings and environs were
to be visited by the members. Lunch had ended, and the afternoon
excursion had been about to be undertaken, when the rain came down in an
obstinate spatter, which revealed no sign of cessation. As the members
waited they grew chilly, although it was only autumn, and a fire was
lighted, which threw a cheerful shine upon the varnished skulls, urns,
penates, tesser\xE6, costumes, coats of mail, weapons, and missals,
animated the fossilized ichthyosaurus and iguanodon; while the dead eyes
of the stuffed birds-those never-absent familiars in such collections,
though murdered to extinction out of doors-flashed as they had flashed
to the rising sun above the neighbouring moors on the fatal morning when
the trigger was pulled which ended their little flight. It was then that
the historian produced his manuscript, which he had prepared, he said,
with a view to publication. His delivery of the story having concluded
as aforesaid, the speaker expressed his hope that the constraint of the
weather, and the paucity of more scientific papers, would excuse any
inappropriateness in his subject.
Several members observed that a storm-bound club could not presume to be
selective, and they were all very much obliged to him for such a curious
chapter from the domestic histories of the county.
The President looked gloomily from the window at the descending rain,
and broke a short silence by saying that though the Club had met, there
seemed little probability of its being able to visit the objects of
interest set down among the agenda.
The Treasurer observed that they had at least a roof over their heads;
and they had also a second day before them.
A sentimental member, leaning back in his chair, declared that he was in
no hurry to go out, and that nothing would please him so much as another
county story, with or without manuscript.
The Colonel added that the subject should be a lady, like the former, to
which a gentleman known as the Spark said 'Hear, hear!'
Though these had spoken in jest, a rural dean who was present observed
blandly that there was no lack of materials. Many, indeed, were the
legends and traditions of gentle and noble dames, renowned in times past
in that part of England, whose actions and passions were now, but for
men's memories, buried under the brief inscription on a tomb or an entry
of dates in a dry pedigree.
Another member, an old surgeon, a somewhat grim though sociable
personage, was quite of the speaker's opinion, and felt quite sure that
the memory of the reverend gentleman must abound with such curious tales
of fair dames, of their loves and hates, their joys and their
misfortunes, their beauty and their fate.
The parson, a trifle confused, retorted that their friend the surgeon,
the son of a surgeon, seemed to him, as a man who had seen much and
heard more during the long course of his own and his father's practice,
the member of all others most likely to be acquainted with such lore.
The bookworm, the Colonel, the historian, the Vice-president, the
churchwarden, the two curates, the gentleman-tradesman, the sentimental
member, the crimson maltster, the quiet gentleman, the man of family,
the Spark, and several others, quite agreed, and begged that he would
recall something of the kind. The old surgeon said that, though a
meeting of the Mid-Wessex Field and Antiquarian Club was the last place
at which he should have expected to be called upon in this way, he had
no objection; and the parson said he would come next. The surgeon then
reflected, and decided to relate the history of a lady named Barbara,
who lived towards the end of the last century, apologizing for his tale
as being perhaps a little too professional. The crimson maltster winked
to the Spark at hearing the nature of the apology, and the surgeon
began.
DAME THE SECOND-BARBARA OF THE HOUSE OF GREBE By the Old Surgeon
It was apparently an idea, rather than a passion, that inspired Lord
Uplandtowers' resolve to win her. Nobody ever knew when he formed it, or
whence he got his assurance of success in the face of her manifest
dislike of him. Possibly not until after that first important act of her
life which I shall presently mention. His matured and cynical doggedness
at the age of nineteen, when impulse mostly rules calculation, was
remarkable, and might have owed its existence as much to his succession
to the earldom and its accompanying local honours in childhood, as to
the family character; an elevation which jerked him into maturity, so to
speak, without his having known adolescence. He had only reached his
twelfth year when his father, the fourth Earl, died, after a course of
the Bath waters.
Nevertheless, the family character had a great deal to do with it.
Determination was hereditary in the bearers of that escutcheon;
sometimes for good, sometimes for evil.
The seats of the two families were about ten miles apart, the way
between them lying along the now old, then new, turnpike-road connecting
Havenpool and Warborne with the city of Melchester: a road which, though
only a branch from what was known as the Great Western Highway, is
probably, even at present, as it has been for the last hundred years,
one of the finest examples of a macadamized turnpike-track that can be
found in England.
The mansion of the Earl, as well as that of his neighbour, Barbara's
father, stood back about a mile from the highway, with which each was
connected by an ordinary drive and lodge. It was along this particular
highway that the young Earl drove on a certain evening at Christmastide
some twenty years before the end of the last century, to attend a ball
at Chene Manor, the home of Barbara, and her parents Sir John and Lady
Grebe. Sir John's was a baronetcy created a few years before the
breaking out of the Civil War, and his lands were even more extensive
than those of Lord Uplandtowers himself; comprising this Manor of Chene,
another on the coast near, half the Hundred of Cockdene, and well-
enclosed lands in several other parishes, notably Warborne and those
contiguous. At this time Barbara was barely seventeen, and the ball is
the first occasion on which we have any tradition of Lord Uplandtowers
attempting tender relations with her; it was early enough, God knows.
An intimate friend-one of the Drenkhards-is said to have dined with him
that day, and Lord Uplandtowers had, for a wonder, communicated to his
guest the secret design of his heart.
'You'll never get her-sure; you'll never get her!' this friend had said
at parting. 'She's not drawn to your lordship by love: and as for
thought of a good match, why, there's no more calculation in her than in
a bird.'
'We'll see,' said Lord Uplandtowers impassively.
He no doubt thought of his friend's forecast as he travelled along the
highway in his chariot; but the sculptural repose of his profile against
the vanishing daylight on his right hand would have shown his friend
that the Earl's equanimity was undisturbed. He reached the solitary
wayside tavern called Lornton Inn-the rendezvous of many a daring
poacher for operations in the adjoining forest; and he might have
observed, if he had taken the trouble, a strange post-chaise standing in
the halting-space before the inn. He duly sped past it, and half-an-
hour after through the little town of Warborne. Onward, a mile farther,
was the house of his entertainer.
At this date it was an imposing edifice-or, rather, congeries of
edifices-as extensive as the residence of the Earl himself; though far
less regular. One wing showed extreme antiquity, having huge chimneys,
whose substructures projected from the external walls like towers; and a
kitchen of vast dimensions, in which (it was said) breakfasts had been
cooked for John of Gaunt. Whilst he was yet in the forecourt he could
hear the rhythm of French horns and clarionets, the favourite
instruments of those days at such entertainments.
Entering the long parlour, in which the dance had just been opened by
Lady Grebe with a minuet-it being now seven o'clock, according to the
tradition-he was received with a welcome befitting his rank, and looked
round for Barbara. She was not dancing, and seemed to be preoccupied-
almost, indeed, as though she had been waiting for him. Barbara at this
time was a good and pretty girl, who never spoke ill of any one, and
hated other pretty women the very least possible. She did not refuse him
for the country-dance which followed, and soon after was his partner in
a second.
The evening wore on, and the horns and clarionets tootled merrily.
Barbara evinced towards her lover neither distinct preference nor
aversion; but old eyes would have seen that she pondered something.
However, after supper she pleaded a headache, and disappeared. To pass
the time of her absence, Lord Uplandtowers went into a little room
adjoining the long gallery, where some elderly ones were sitting by the
fire-for he had a phlegmatic dislike of dancing for its own sake,-and,
lifting the window-curtains, he looked out of the window into the park
and wood, dark now as a cavern. Some of the guests appeared to be
leaving even so soon as this, two lights showing themselves as turning
away from the door and sinking to nothing in the distance.
His hostess put her head into the room to look for partners for the
ladies, and Lord Uplandtowers came out. Lady Grebe informed him that
Barbara had not returned to the ball-room: she had gone to bed in sheer
necessity.
'She has been so excited over the ball all day,' her mother continued,
'that I feared she would be worn out early . . . But sure, Lord
Uplandtowers, you won't be leaving yet?'
He said that it was near twelve o'clock, and that some had already left.
'I protest nobody has gone yet,' said Lady Grebe.
To humour her he stayed till midnight, and then set out. He had made no
progress in his suit; but he had assured himself that Barbara gave no
other guest the preference, and nearly everybody in the neighbourhood
was there.
''Tis only a matter of time,' said the calm young philosopher.
The next morning he lay till near ten o'clock, and he had only just come
out upon the head of the staircase when he heard hoofs upon the gravel
without; in a few moments the door had been opened, and Sir John Grebe
met him in the hall, as he set foot on the lowest stair.
'My lord-where's Barbara-my daughter?'
Even the Earl of Uplandtowers could not repress amazement. 'What's the
matter, my dear Sir John,' says he.
The news was startling, indeed. From the Baronet's disjointed
explanation Lord Uplandtowers gathered that after his own and the other
guests' departure Sir John and Lady Grebe had gone to rest without
seeing any more of Barbara; it being understood by them that she had
retired to bed when she sent word to say that she could not join the
dancers again. Before then she had told her maid that she would dispense
with her services for this night; and there was evidence to show that
the young lady had never lain down at all, the bed remaining unpressed.
Circumstances seemed to prove that the deceitful girl had feigned
indisposition to get an excuse for leaving the ball-room, and that she
had left the house within ten minutes, presumably during the first dance
after supper.
'I saw her go,' said Lord Uplandtowers.
'The devil you did!' says Sir John.
'Yes.' And he mentioned the retreating carriage-lights, and how he was
assured by Lady Grebe that no guest had departed.
'Surely that was it!' said the father. 'But she's not gone alone, d'ye
know!'
'Ah-who is the young man?'
'I can on'y guess. My worst fear is my most likely guess. I'll say no
more. I thought-yet I would not believe-it possible that you was the
sinner. Would that you had been! But 'tis t'other, 'tis t'other, by G-
\x97! I must e'en up, and after 'em!'
'Whom do you suspect?'
Sir John would not give a name, and, stultified rather than agitated,
Lord Uplandtowers accompanied him back to Chene. He again asked upon
whom were the Baronet's suspicions directed; and the impulsive Sir John
was no match for the insistence of Uplandtowers.
He said at length, 'I fear 'tis Edmond Willowes.'
'Who's he?'
'A young fellow of Shottsford-Forum-a widow-woman's son,' the other told
him, and explained that Willowes's father, or grandfather, was the last
of the old glass-painters in that place, where (as you may know) the art
lingered on when it had died out in every other part of England.
'By G\x97- that's bad-mighty bad!' said Lord Uplandtowers, throwing himself
back in the chaise in frigid despair.
They despatched emissaries in all directions; one by the Melchester
Road, another by Shottsford-Forum, another coastwards.
But the lovers had a ten-hours' start; and it was apparent that sound
judgment had been exercised in choosing as their time of flight the
particular night when the movements of a strange carriage would not be
noticed, either in the park or on the neighbouring highway, owing to the
general press of vehicles. The chaise which had been seen waiting at
Lornton Inn was, no doubt, the one they had escaped in; and the pair of
heads which had planned so cleverly thus far had probably contrived
marriage ere now.
The fears of her parents were realized. A letter sent by special
messenger from Barbara, on the evening of that day, briefly informed
them that her lover and herself were on the way to London, and before
this communication reached her home they would be united as husband and
wife. She had taken this extreme step because she loved her dear Edmond
as she could love no other man, and because she had seen closing round
her the doom of marriage with Lord Uplandtowers, unless she put that
threatened fate out of possibility by doing as she had done. She had
well considered the step beforehand, and was prepared to live like any
other country-townsman's wife if her father repudiated her for her
action.
'D\x97- her!' said Lord Uplandtowers, as he drove homeward that night. 'D\x97-
her for a fool!'-which shows the kind of love he bore her.
Well; Sir John had already started in pursuit of them as a matter of
duty, driving like a wild man to Melchester, and thence by the direct
highway to the capital. But he soon saw that he was acting to no
purpose; and by and by, discovering that the marriage had actually taken
place, he forebore all attempts to unearth them in the City, and
returned and sat down with his lady to digest the event as best they
could.
To proceed against this Willowes for the abduction of our heiress was,
possibly, in their power; yet, when they considered the now unalterable
facts, they refrained from violent retribution. Some six weeks passed,
during which time Barbara's parents, though they keenly felt her loss,
held no communication with the truant, either for reproach or
condonation. They continued to think of the disgrace she had brought
upon herself; for, though the young man was an honest fellow, and the
son of an honest father, the latter had died so early, and his widow had
had such struggles to maintain herself; that the son was very
imperfectly educated. Moreover, his blood was, as far as they knew, of
no distinction whatever, whilst hers, through her mother, was compounded
of the best juices of ancient baronial distillation, containing
tinctures of Maundeville, and Mohun, and Syward, and Peverell, and
Culliford, and Talbot, and Plantagenet, and York, and Lancaster, and God
knows what besides, which it was a thousand pities to throw away.
The father and mother sat by the fireplace that was spanned by the four-
centred arch bearing the family shields on its haunches, and groaned
aloud-the lady more than Sir John.
'To think this should have come upon us in our old age!' said he.
'Speak for yourself!' she snapped through her sobs. 'I am only one-and-
forty! . . . Why didn't ye ride faster and overtake 'em!'
In the meantime the young married lovers, caring no more about their
blood than about ditch-water, were intensely happy-happy, that is, in
the descending scale which, as we all know, Heaven in its wisdom has
ordained for such rash cases; that is to say, the first week they were
in the seventh heaven, the second in the sixth, the third week
temperate, the fourth reflective, and so on; a lover's heart after
possession being comparable to the earth in its geologic stages, as
described to us sometimes by our worthy President; first a hot coal,
then a warm one, then a cooling cinder, then chilly-the simile shall be
pursued no further. The long and the short of it was that one day a
letter, sealed with their daughter's own little seal, came into Sir John
and Lady Grebe's hands; and, on opening it, they found it to contain an
appeal from the young couple to Sir John to forgive them for what they
had done, and they would fall on their naked knees and be most dutiful
children for evermore.
Then Sir John and his lady sat down again by the fireplace with the
four-centred arch, and consulted, and re-read the letter. Sir John
Grebe, if the truth must be told, loved his daughter's happiness far
more, poor man, than he loved his name and lineage; he recalled to his
mind all her little ways, gave vent to a sigh; and, by this time
acclimatized to the idea of the marriage, said that what was done could
not be undone, and that he supposed they must not be too harsh with her.
Perhaps Barbara and her husband were in actual need; and how could they
let their only child starve?
A slight consolation had come to them in an unexpected manner. They had
been credibly informed that an ancestor of plebeian Willowes was once
honoured with intermarriage with a scion of the aristocracy who had gone
to the dogs. In short, such is the foolishness of distinguished parents,
and sometimes of others also, that they wrote that very day to the
address Barbara had given them, informing her that she might return home
and bring her husband with her; they would not object to see him, would
not reproach her, and would endeavour to welcome both, and to discuss
with them what could best be arranged for their future.
In three or four days a rather shabby post-chaise drew up at the door of
Chene Manor-house, at sound of which the tender-hearted baronet and his
wife ran out as if to welcome a prince and princess of the blood. They
were overjoyed to see their spoilt child return safe and sound-though
she was only Mrs. Willowes, wife of Edmond Willowes of nowhere. Barbara
burst into penitential tears, and both husband and wife were contrite
enough, as well they might be, considering that they had not a guinea to
call their own.
When the four had calmed themselves, and not a word of chiding had been
uttered to the pair, they discussed the position soberly, young Willowes
sitting in the background with great modesty till invited forward by
Lady Grebe in no frigid tone.
'How handsome he is!' she said to herself. 'I don't wonder at Barbara's
craze for him.'
He was, indeed, one of the handsomest men who ever set his lips on a
maid's. A blue coat, murrey waistcoat, and breeches of drab set off a
figure that could scarcely be surpassed. He had large dark eyes, anxious
now, as they glanced from Barbara to her parents and tenderly back again
to her; observing whom, even now in her trepidation, one could see why
the sang froid of Lord Uplandtowers had been raised to more than
lukewarmness. Her fair young face (according to the tale handed down by
old women) looked out from under a gray conical hat, trimmed with white
ostrich-feathers, and her little toes peeped from a buff petticoat worn
under a puce gown. Her features were not regular: they were almost
infantine, as you may see from miniatures in possession of the family,
her mouth showing much sensitiveness, and one could be sure that her
faults would not lie on the side of bad temper unless for urgent
reasons.
Well, they discussed their state as became them, and the desire of the
young couple to gain the goodwill of those upon whom they were literally
dependent for everything induced them to agree to any temporizing
measure that was not too irksome. Therefore, having been nearly two
months united, they did not oppose Sir John's proposal that he should
furnish Edmond Willowes with funds sufficient for him to travel a year
on the Continent in the company of a tutor, the young man undertaking to
lend himself with the utmost diligence to the tutor's instructions, till
he became polished outwardly and inwardly to the degree required in the
husband of such a lady as Barbara. He was to apply himself to the study
of languages, manners, history, society, ruins, and everything else that
came under his eyes, till he should return to take his place without
blushing by Barbara's side.
'And by that time,' said worthy Sir John, 'I'll get my little place out
at Yewsholt ready for you and Barbara to occupy on your return. The
house is small and out of the way; but it will do for a young couple for
a while.'
'If 'twere no bigger than a summer-house it would do!' says Barbara.
'If 'twere no bigger than a sedan-chair!' says Willowes. 'And the more
lonely the better.'
'We can put up with the loneliness,' said Barbara, with less zest. 'Some
friends will come, no doubt.'
All this being laid down, a travelled tutor was called in-a man of many
gifts and great experience,-and on a fine morning away tutor and pupil
went. A great reason urged against Barbara accompanying her youthful
husband was that his attentions to her would naturally be such as to
prevent his zealously applying every hour of his time to learning and
seeing-an argument of wise prescience, and unanswerable. Regular days
for letter-writing were fixed, Barbara and her Edmond exchanged their
last kisses at the door, and the chaise swept under the archway into the
drive.
He wrote to her from Le Havre, as soon as he reached that port, which
was not for seven days, on account of adverse winds; he wrote from
Rouen, and from Paris; described to her his sight of the King and Court
at Versailles, and the wonderful marble-work and mirrors in that palace;
wrote next from Lyons; then, after a comparatively long interval, from
Turin, narrating his fearful adventures in crossing Mont Cenis on mules,
and how he was overtaken with a terrific snowstorm, which had well-nigh
been the end of him, and his tutor, and his guides. Then he wrote
glowingly of Italy; and Barbara could see the development of her
husband's mind reflected in his letters month by month; and she much
admired the forethought of her father in suggesting this education for
Edmond. Yet she sighed sometimes-her husband being no longer in evidence
to fortify her in her choice of him-and timidly dreaded what
mortifications might be in store for her by reason of this m\xE9salliance.
She went out very little; for on the one or two occasions on which she
had shown herself to former friends she noticed a distinct difference in
their manner, as though they should say, 'Ah, my happy swain's wife;
you're caught!'
Edmond's letters were as affectionate as ever; even more affectionate,
after a while, than hers were to him. Barbara observed this growing
coolness in herself; and like a good and honest lady was horrified and
grieved, since her only wish was to act faithfully and uprightly. It
troubled her so much that she prayed for a warmer heart, and at last
wrote to her husband to beg him, now that he was in the land of Art, to
send her his portrait, ever so small, that she might look at it all day
and every day, and never for a moment forget his features.
Willowes was nothing loth, and replied that he would do more than she
wished: he had made friends with a sculptor in Pisa, who was much
interested in him and his history; and he had commissioned this artist
to make a bust of himself in marble, which when finished he would send
her. What Barbara had wanted was something immediate; but she expressed
no objection to the delay; and in his next communication Edmund told her
that the sculptor, of his own choice, had decided to increase the bust
to a full-length statue, so anxious was he to get a specimen of his
skill introduced to the notice of the English aristocracy. It was
progressing well, and rapidly.
Meanwhile, Barbara's attention began to be occupied at home with
Yewsholt Lodge, the house that her kind-hearted father was preparing for
her residence when her husband returned. It was a small place on the
plan of a large one-a cottage built in the form of a mansion, having a
central hall with a wooden gallery running round it, and rooms no bigger
than closets to follow this introduction. It stood on a slope so
solitary, and surrounded by trees so dense, that the birds who inhabited
the boughs sang at strange hours, as if they hardly could distinguish
night from day.
During the progress of repairs at this bower Barbara frequently visited
it. Though so secluded by the dense growth, it was near the high road,
and one day while looking over the fence she saw Lord Uplandtowers
riding past. He saluted her courteously, yet with mechanical stiffness,
and did not halt. Barbara went home, and continued to pray that she
might never cease to love her husband. After that she sickened, and did
not come out of doors again for a long time.
The year of education had extended to fourteen months, and the house was
in order for Edmond's return to take up his abode there with Barbara,
when, instead of the accustomed letter for her, came one to Sir John
Grebe in the handwriting of the said tutor, informing him of a terrible
catastrophe that had occurred to them at Venice. Mr Willowes and himself
had attended the theatre one night during the Carnival of the preceding
week, to witness the Italian comedy, when, owing to the carelessness of
one of the candle-snuffers, the theatre had caught fire, and been burnt
to the ground. Few persons had lost their lives, owing to the superhuman
exertions of some of the audience in getting out the senseless
sufferers; and, among them all, he who had risked his own life the most
heroically was Mr. Willowes. In re-entering for the fifth time to save
his fellow-creatures some fiery beams had fallen upon him, and he had
been given up for lost. He was, however, by the blessing of Providence,
recovered, with the life still in him, though he was fearfully burnt;
and by almost a miracle he seemed likely to survive, his constitution
being wondrously sound. He was, of course, unable to write, but he was
receiving the attention of several skilful surgeons. Further report
would be made by the next mail or by private hand.
The tutor said nothing in detail of poor Willowes's sufferings, but as
soon as the news was broken to Barbara she realized how intense they
must have been, and her immediate instinct was to rush to his side,
though, on consideration, the journey seemed impossible to her. Her
health was by no means what it had been, and to post across Europe at
that season of the year, or to traverse the Bay of Biscay in a sailing-
craft, was an undertaking that would hardly be justified by the result.
But she was anxious to go till, on reading to the end of the letter, her
husband's tutor was found to hint very strongly against such a step if
it should be contemplated, this being also the opinion of the surgeons.
And though Willowes's comrade refrained from giving his reasons, they
disclosed themselves plainly enough in the sequel.
The truth was that the worst of the wounds resulting from the fire had
occurred to his head and face-that handsome face which had won her heart
from her,-and both the tutor and the surgeons knew that for a sensitive
young woman to see him before his wounds had healed would cause more
misery to her by the shock than happiness to him by her ministrations.
Lady Grebe blurted out what Sir John and Barbara had thought, but had
had too much delicacy to express.
'Sure, 'tis mighty hard for you, poor Barbara, that the one little gift
he had to justify your rash choice of him-his wonderful good looks-
should be taken away like this, to leave 'ee no excuse at all for your
conduct in the world's eyes . . . Well, I wish you'd married t'other-
that do I!' And the lady sighed.
'He'll soon get right again,' said her father soothingly.
Such remarks as the above were not often made; but they were frequent
enough to cause Barbara an uneasy sense of self-stultification. She
determined to hear them no longer; and the house at Yewsholt being ready
and furnished, she withdrew thither with her maids, where for the first
time she could feel mistress of a home that would be hers and her
husband's exclusively, when he came.
After long weeks Willowes had recovered sufficiently to be able to write
himself; and slowly and tenderly he enlightened her upon the full extent
of his injuries. It was a mercy, he said, that he had not lost his sight
entirely; but he was thankful to say that he still retained full vision
in one eye, though the other was dark for ever. The sparing manner in
which he meted out particulars of his condition told Barbara how
appalling had been his experience. He was grateful for her assurance
that nothing could change her; but feared she did not fully realize that
he was so sadly disfigured as to make it doubtful if she would recognize
him. However, in spite of all, his heart was as true to her as it ever
had been.
Barbara saw from his anxiety how much lay behind. She replied that she
submitted to the decrees of Fate, and would welcome him in any shape as
soon as he could come. She told him of the pretty retreat in which she
had taken up her abode, pending their joint occupation of it, and did
not reveal how much she had sighed over the information that all his
good looks were gone. Still less did she say that she felt a certain
strangeness in awaiting him, the weeks they had lived together having
been so short by comparison with the length of his absence.
Slowly drew on the time when Willowes found himself well enough to come
home. He landed at Southampton, and posted thence towards Yewsholt.
Barbara arranged to go out to meet him as far as Lornton Inn-the spot
between the Forest and the Chase at which he had waited for night on the
evening of their elopement. Thither she drove at the appointed hour in a
little pony-chaise, presented her by her father on her birthday for her
especial use in her new house; which vehicle she sent back on arriving
at the inn, the plan agreed upon being that she should perform the
return journey with her husband in his hired coach.
There was not much accommodation for a lady at this wayside tavern; but,
as it was a fine evening in early summer, she did not mind-walking about
outside, and straining her eyes along the highway for the expected one.
But each cloud of dust that enlarged in the distance and drew near was
found to disclose a conveyance other than his post-chaise. Barbara
remained till the appointment was two hours passed, and then began to
fear that owing to some adverse wind in the Channel he was not coming
that night.
While waiting she was conscious of a curious trepidation that was not
entirely solicitude, and did not amount to dread; her tense state of
incertitude bordered both on disappointment and on relief. She had lived
six or seven weeks with an imperfectly educated yet handsome husband
whom now she had not seen for seventeen months, and who was so changed
physically by an accident that she was assured she would hardly know
him. Can we wonder at her compound state of mind?
But her immediate difficulty was to get away from Lornton Inn, for her
situation was becoming embarrassing. Like too many of Barbara's actions,
this drive had been undertaken without much reflection. Expecting to
wait no more than a few minutes for her husband in his post-chaise, and
to enter it with him, she had not hesitated to isolate herself by
sending back her own little vehicle. She now found that, being so well
known in this neighbourhood, her excursion to meet her long-absent
husband was exciting great interest. She was conscious that more eyes
were watching her from the inn-windows than met her own gaze. Barbara
had decided to get home by hiring whatever kind of conveyance the tavern
afforded, when, straining her eyes for the last time over the now
darkening highway, she perceived yet another dust-cloud drawing near.
She paused; a chariot ascended to the inn, and would have passed had not
its occupant caught sight of her standing expectantly. The horses were
checked on the instant.
'You here-and alone, my dear Mrs. Willowes?' said Lord Uplandtowers,
whose carriage it was.
She explained what had brought her into this lonely situation; and, as
he was going in the direction of her own home, she accepted his offer of
a seat beside him. Their conversation was embarrassed and fragmentary at
first; but when they had driven a mile or two she was surprised to find
herself talking earnestly and warmly to him: her impulsiveness was in
truth but the natural consequence of her late existence-a somewhat
desolate one by reason of the strange marriage she had made; and there
is no more indiscreet mood than that of a woman surprised into talk who
has long been imposing upon herself a policy of reserve. Therefore her
ingenuous heart rose with a bound into her throat when, in response to
his leading questions, or rather hints, she allowed her troubles to leak
out of her. Lord Uplandtowers took her quite to her own door, although
he had driven three miles out of his way to do so; and in handing her
down she heard from him a whisper of stern reproach: 'It need not have
been thus if you had listened to me!'
She made no reply, and went indoors. There, as the evening wore away,
she regretted more and more that she had been so friendly with Lord
Uplandtowers. But he had launched himself upon her so unexpectedly: if
she had only foreseen the meeting with him, what a careful line of
conduct she would have marked out! Barbara broke into a perspiration of
disquiet when she thought of her unreserve, and, in self-chastisement,
resolved to sit up till midnight on the bare chance of Edmond's return;
directing that supper should be laid for him, improbable as his arrival
till the morrow was.
The hours went past, and there was dead silence in and round about
Yewsholt Lodge, except for the soughing of the trees; till, when it was
near upon midnight, she heard the noise of hoofs and wheels approaching
the door. Knowing that it could only be her husband, Barbara instantly
went into the hall to meet him. Yet she stood there not without a
sensation of faintness, so many were the changes since their parting!
And, owing to her casual encounter with Lord Uplandtowers, his voice and
image still remained with her, excluding Edmond, her husband, from the
inner circle of her impressions.
But she went to the door, and the next moment a figure stepped inside,
of which she knew the outline, but little besides. Her husband was
attired in a flapping black cloak and slouched hat, appearing altogether
as a foreigner, and not as the young English burgess who had left her
side. When he came forward into the light of the lamp, she perceived
with surprise, and almost with fright, that he wore a mask. At first she
had not noticed this-there being nothing in its colour which would lead
a casual observer to think he was looking on anything but a real
countenance.
He must have seen her start of dismay at the unexpectedness of his
appearance, for he said hastily: 'I did not mean to come in to you like
this-I thought you would have been in bed. How good you are, dear
Barbara!' He put his arm round her, but he did not attempt to kiss her.
'O Edmond-it is you?-it must be?' she said, with clasped hands, for
though his figure and movement were almost enough to prove it, and the
tones were not unlike the old tones, the enunciation was so altered as
to seem that of a stranger.
'I am covered like this to hide myself from the curious eyes of the inn-
servants and others,' he said, in a low voice. 'I will send back the
carriage and join you in a moment.'
'You are quite alone?'
'Quite. My companion stopped at Southampton.'
The wheels of the post-chaise rolled away as she entered the dining-
room, where the supper was spread; and presently he rejoined her there.
He had removed his cloak and hat, but the mask was still retained; and
she could now see that it was of special make, of some flexible material
like silk, coloured so as to represent flesh; it joined naturally to the
front hair, and was otherwise cleverly executed.
'Barbara-you look ill,' he said, removing his glove, and taking her
hand.
'Yes-I have been ill,' said she.
'Is this pretty little house ours?'
'O-yes.' She was hardly conscious of her words, for the hand he had
ungloved in order to take hers was contorted, and had one or two of its
fingers missing; while through the mask she discerned the twinkle of one
eye only.
'I would give anything to kiss you, dearest, now, at this moment!' he
continued, with mournful passionateness. 'But I cannot-in this guise.
The servants are abed, I suppose?'
'Yes,' said she. 'But I can call them? You will have some supper?'
He said he would have some, but that it was not necessary to call
anybody at that hour. Thereupon they approached the table, and sat down,
facing each other.
Despite Barbara's scared state of mind, it was forced upon her notice
that her husband trembled, as if he feared the impression he was
producing, or was about to produce, as much as, or more than, she. He
drew nearer, and took her hand again.
'I had this mask made at Venice,' he began, in evident embarrassment.
'My darling Barbara-my dearest wife-do you think you-will mind when I
take it off? You will not dislike me-will you?'
'O Edmond, of course I shall not mind,' said she. 'What has happened to
you is our misfortune; but I am prepared for it.'
'Are you sure you are prepared?'
'O yes! You are my husband.'
'You really feel quite confident that nothing external can affect you?'
he said again, in a voice rendered uncertain by his agitation.
'I think I am-quite,' she answered faintly.
He bent his head. 'I hope, I hope you are,' he whispered.
In the pause which followed, the ticking of the clock in the hall seemed
to grow loud; and he turned a little aside to remove the mask. She
breathlessly awaited the operation, which was one of some tediousness,
watching him one moment, averting her face the next; and when it was
done she shut her eyes at the hideous spectacle that was revealed. A
quick spasm of horror had passed through her; but though she quailed she
forced herself to regard him anew, repressing the cry that would
naturally have escaped from her ashy lips. Unable to look at him longer,
Barbara sank down on the floor beside her chair, covering her eyes.
'You cannot look at me!' he groaned in a hopeless way. 'I am too
terrible an object even for you to bear! I knew it; yet I hoped against
it. Oh, this is a bitter fate-curse the skill of those Venetian surgeons
who saved me alive! . . . Look up, Barbara,' he continued beseechingly;
'view me completely; say you loathe me, if you do loathe me, and settle
the case between us for ever!'
His unhappy wife pulled herself together for a desperate strain. He was
her Edmond; he had done her no wrong; he had suffered. A momentary
devotion to him helped her, and lifting her eyes as bidden she regarded
this human remnant, this \xE9corch\xE9, a second time. But the sight was too
much. She again involuntarily looked aside and shuddered.
'Do you think you can get used to this?' he said. 'Yes or no! Can you
bear such a thing of the charnel-house near you? Judge for yourself;
Barbara. Your Adonis, your matchless man, has come to this!'
The poor lady stood beside him motionless, save for the restlessness of
her eyes. All her natural sentiments of affection and pity were driven
clean out of her by a sort of panic; she had just the same sense of
dismay and fearfulness that she would have had in the presence of an
apparition. She could nohow fancy this to be her chosen one-the man she
had loved; he was metamorphosed to a specimen of another species. 'I do
not loathe you,' she said with trembling. 'But I am so horrified-so
overcome! Let me recover myself. Will you sup now? And while you do so
may I go to my room to-regain my old feeling for you? I will try, if I
may leave you awhile? Yes, I will try!'
Without waiting for an answer from him, and keeping her gaze carefully
averted, the frightened woman crept to the door and out of the room. She
heard him sit down to the table, as if to begin supper though, Heaven
knows, his appetite was slight enough after a reception which had
confirmed his worst surmises. When Barbara had ascended the stairs and
arrived in her chamber she sank down, and buried her face in the
coverlet of the bed.
Thus she remained for some time. The bed-chamber was over the dining-
room, and presently as she knelt Barbara heard Willowes thrust back his
chair, and rise to go into the hall. In five minutes that figure would
probably come up the stairs and confront her again; it,-this new and
terrible form, that was not her husband's. In the loneliness of this
night, with neither maid nor friend beside her, she lost all self-
control, and at the first sound of his footstep on the stairs, without
so much as flinging a cloak round her, she flew from the room, ran along
the gallery to the back staircase, which she descended, and, unlocking
the back door, let herself out. She scarcely was aware what she had done
till she found herself in the greenhouse, crouching on a flower- stand.
Here she remained, her great timid eyes strained through the glass upon
the garden without, and her skirts gathered up, in fear of the field-
mice which sometimes came there. Every moment she dreaded to hear
footsteps which she ought by law to have longed for, and a voice that
should have been as music to her soul. But Edmond Willowes came not that
way. The nights were getting short at this season, and soon the dawn
appeared, and the first rays of the sun. By daylight she had less fear
than in the dark. She thought she could meet him, and accustom herself
to the spectacle.
So the much-tried young woman unfastened the door of the hot-house, and
went back by the way she had emerged a few hours ago. Her poor husband
was probably in bed and asleep, his journey having been long; and she
made as little noise as possible in her entry. The house was just as she
had left it, and she looked about in the hall for his cloak and hat, but
she could not see them; nor did she perceive the small trunk which had
been all that he brought with him, his heavier baggage having been left
at Southampton for the road-waggon. She summoned courage to mount the
stairs; the bedroom-door was open as she had left it. She fearfully
peeped round; the bed had not been pressed. Perhaps he had lain down on
the dining-room sofa. She descended and entered; he was not there. On
the table beside his unsoiled plate lay a note, hastily written on the
leaf of a pocket-book. It was something like this:
'My ever-beloved Wife-The effect that my forbidding appearance has
produced upon you was one which I foresaw as quite possible. I hoped
against it, but foolishly so. I was aware that no human love could
survive such a catastrophe. I confess I thought yours divine; but, after
so long an absence, there could not be left sufficient warmth to
overcome the too natural first aversion. It was an experiment, and it
has failed. I do not blame you; perhaps, even, it is better so. Good-
bye. I leave England for one year. You will see me again at the
expiration of that time, if I live. Then I will ascertain your true
feeling; and, if it be against me, go away for ever. E. W.'
On recovering from her surprise, Barbara's remorse was such that she
felt herself absolutely unforgiveable. She should have regarded him as
an afflicted being, and not have been this slave to mere eyesight, like
a child. To follow him and entreat him to return was her first thought.
But on making inquiries she found that nobody had seen him: he had
silently disappeared.
More than this, to undo the scene of last night was impossible. Her
terror had been too plain, and he was a man unlikely to be coaxed back
by her efforts to do her duty. She went and confessed to her parents all
that had occurred; which, indeed, soon became known to more persons than
those of her own family.
The year passed, and he did not return; and it was doubted if he were
alive. Barbara's contrition for her unconquerable repugnance was now
such that she longed to build a church-aisle, or erect a monument, and
devote herself to deeds of charity for the remainder of her days. To
that end she made inquiry of the excellent parson under whom she sat on
Sundays, at a vertical distance of twenty feet. But he could only adjust
his wig and tap his snuff-box; for such was the lukewarm state of
religion in those days, that not an aisle, steeple, porch, east window,
Ten-Commandment board, lion-and-unicorn, or brass candlestick, was
required anywhere at all in the neighbourhood as a votive offering from
a distracted soul-the last century contrasting greatly in this respect
with the happy times in which we live, when urgent appeals for
contributions to such objects pour in by every morning's post, and
nearly all churches have been made to look like new pennies. As the poor
lady could not ease her conscience this way, she determined at least to
be charitable, and soon had the satisfaction of finding her porch
thronged every morning by the raggedest, idlest, most drunken,
hypocritical, and worthless tramps in Christendom.
But human hearts are as prone to change as the leaves of the creeper on
the wall, and in the course of time, hearing nothing of her husband,
Barbara could sit unmoved whilst her mother and friends said in her
hearing, 'Well, what has happened is for the best.' She began to think
so herself; for even now she could not summon up that lopped and
mutilated form without a shiver, though whenever her mind flew back to
her early wedded days, and the man who had stood beside her then, a
thrill of tenderness moved her, which if quickened by his living
presence might have become strong. She was young and inexperienced, and
had hardly on his late return grown out of the capricious fancies of
girlhood.
But he did not come again, and when she thought of his word that he
would return once more, if living, and how unlikely he was to break his
word, she gave him up for dead. So did her parents; so also did another
person-that man of silence, of irresistible incisiveness, of still
countenance, who was as awake as seven sentinels when he seemed to be as
sound asleep as the figures on his family monument. Lord Uplandtowers,
though not yet thirty, had chuckled like a caustic fogey of threescore
when he heard of Barbara's terror and flight at her husband's return,
and of the latter's prompt departure. He felt pretty sure, however, that
Willowes, despite his hurt feelings, would have reappeared to claim his
bright-eyed property if he had been alive at the end of the twelve
months.
As there was no husband to live with her, Barbara had relinquished the
house prepared for them by her father, and taken up her abode anew at
Chene Manor, as in the days of her girlhood. By degrees the episode with
Edmond Willowes seemed but a fevered dream, and as the months grew to
years Lord Uplandtowers' friendship with the people at Chene-which had
somewhat cooled after Barbara's elopement-revived considerably, and he
again became a frequent visitor there. He could not make the most
trivial alteration or improvement at Knollingwood Hall, where he lived,
without riding off to consult with his friend Sir John at Chene; and
thus putting himself frequently under her eyes, Barbara grew accustomed
to him, and talked to him as freely as to a brother. She even began to
look up to him as a person of authority, judgment, and prudence; and
though his severity on the bench towards poachers, smugglers, and
turnip-stealers was matter of common notoriety, she trusted that much of
what was said might be misrepresentation.
Thus they lived on till her husband's absence had stretched to years,
and there could be no longer any doubt of his death. A passionless
manner of renewing his addresses seemed no longer out of place in Lord
Uplandtowers. Barbara did not love him, but hers was essentially one of
those sweet-pea or with-wind natures which require a twig of stouter
fibre than its own to hang upon and bloom. Now, too, she was older, and
admitted to herself that a man whose ancestor had run scores of Saracens
through and through in fighting for the site of the Holy Sepulchre was a
more desirable husband, socially considered, than one who could only
claim with certainty to know that his father and grandfather were
respectable burgesses.
Sir John took occasion to inform her that she might legally consider
herself a widow; and, in brief; Lord Uplandtowers carried his point with
her, and she married him, though he could never get her to own that she
loved him as she had loved Willowes. In my childhood I knew an old lady
whose mother saw the wedding, and she said that when Lord and Lady
Uplandtowers drove away from her father's house in the evening it was in
a coach-and-four, and that my lady was dressed in green and silver, and
wore the gayest hat and feather that ever were seen; though whether it
was that the green did not suit her complexion, or otherwise, the
Countess looked pale, and the reverse of blooming. After their marriage
her husband took her to London, and she saw the gaieties of a season
there; then they returned to Knollingwood Hall, and thus a year passed
away.
Before their marriage her husband had seemed to care but little about
her inability to love him passionately. 'Only let me win you,' he had
said, 'and I will submit to all that.' But now her lack of warmth seemed
to irritate him, and he conducted himself towards her with a
resentfulness which led to her passing many hours with him in painful
silence. The heir-presumptive to the title was a remote relative, whom
Lord Uplandtowers did not exclude from the dislike he entertained
towards many persons and things besides, and he had set his mind upon a
lineal successor. He blamed her much that there was no promise of this,
and asked her what she was good for.
On a particular day in her gloomy life a letter, addressed to her as
Mrs. Willowes, reached Lady Uplandtowers from an unexpected quarter. A
sculptor in Pisa, knowing nothing of her second marriage, informed her
that the long-delayed life-size statue of Mr. Willowes, which, when her
husband left that city, he had been directed to retain till it was sent
for, was still in his studio. As his commission had not wholly been
paid, and the statue was taking up room he could ill spare, he should be
glad to have the debt cleared off, and directions where to forward the
figure. Arriving at a time when the Countess was beginning to have
little secrets (of a harmless kind, it is true) from her husband, by
reason of their growing estrangement, she replied to this letter without
saying a word to Lord Uplandtowers, sending off the balance that was
owing to the sculptor, and telling him to despatch the statue to her
without delay.
It was some weeks before it arrived at Knollingwood Hall, and, by a
singular coincidence, during the interval she received the first
absolutely conclusive tidings of her Edmond's death. It had taken place
years before, in a foreign land, about six months after their parting,
and had been induced by the sufferings he had already undergone, coupled
with much depression of spirit, which had caused him to succumb to a
slight ailment. The news was sent her in a brief and formal letter from
some relative of Willowes's in another part of England.
Her grief took the form of passionate pity for his misfortunes, and of
reproach to herself for never having been able to conquer her aversion
to his latter image by recollection of what Nature had originally made
him. The sad spectacle that had gone from earth had never been her
Edmond at all to her. O that she could have met him as he was at first!
Thus Barbara thought. It was only a few days later that a waggon with
two horses, containing an immense packing-case, was seen at breakfast-
time both by Barbara and her husband to drive round to the back of the
house, and by-and-by they were informed that a case labelled 'Sculpture'
had arrived for her ladyship.
'What can that be?' said Lord Uplandtowers.
'It is the statue of poor Edmond, which belongs to me, but has never
been sent till now,' she answered.
'Where are you going to put it?' asked he.
'I have not decided,' said the Countess. 'Anywhere, so that it will not
annoy you.'
'Oh, it won't annoy me,' says he.
When it had been unpacked in a back room of the house, they went to
examine it. The statue was a full-length figure, in the purest Carrara
marble, representing Edmond Willowes in all his original beauty, as he
had stood at parting from her when about to set out on his travels; a
specimen of manhood almost perfect in every line and contour. The work
had been carried out with absolute fidelity.
'Phoebus-Apollo, sure,' said the Earl of Uplandtowers, who had never
seen Willowes, real or represented, till now.
Barbara did not hear him. She was standing in a sort of trance before
the first husband, as if she had no consciousness of the other husband
at her side. The mutilated features of Willowes had disappeared from her
mind's eye; this perfect being was really the man she had loved, and not
that later pitiable figure; in whom love and truth should have seen this
image always, but had not done so.
It was not till Lord Uplandtowers said roughly, 'Are you going to stay
here all the morning worshipping him?' that she roused herself.
Her husband had not till now the least suspicion that Edmond Willowes
originally looked thus, and he thought how deep would have been his
jealousy years ago if Willowes had been known to him. Returning to the
Hall in the afternoon he found his wife in the gallery, whither the
statue had been brought.
She was lost in reverie before it, just as in the morning.
'What are you doing?' he asked.
She started and turned. 'I am looking at my husb\x97- my statue, to see if
it is well done,' she stammered. 'Why should I not?'
'There's no reason why,' he said. 'What are you going to do with the
monstrous thing? It can't stand here for ever.'
'I don't wish it,' she said. 'I'll find a place.'
In her boudoir there was a deep recess, and while the Earl was absent
from home for a few days in the following week, she hired joiners from
the village, who under her directions enclosed the recess with a
panelled door. Into the tabernacle thus formed she had the statue
placed, fastening the door with a lock, the key of which she kept in her
pocket.
When her husband returned he missed the statue from the gallery, and,
concluding that it had been put away out of deference to his feelings,
made no remark. Yet at moments he noticed something on his lady's face
which he had never noticed there before. He could not construe it; it
was a sort of silent ecstasy, a reserved beatification. What had become
of the statue he could not divine, and growing more and more curious,
looked about here and there for it till, thinking of her private room,
he went towards that spot. After knocking he heard the shutting of a
door, and the click of a key; but when he entered his wife was sitting
at work, on what was in those days called knotting. Lord Uplandtowers'
eye fell upon the newly-painted door where the recess had formerly been.
'You have been carpentering in my absence then, Barbara,' he said
carelessly.
'Yes, Uplandtowers.'
'Why did you go putting up such a tasteless enclosure as that-spoiling
the handsome arch of the alcove?'
'I wanted more closet-room; and I thought that as this was my own
apartment-'
'Of course,' he returned. Lord Uplandtowers knew now where the statue of
young Willowes was.
One night, or rather in the smallest hours of the morning, he missed the
Countess from his side. Not being a man of nervous imaginings he fell
asleep again before he had much considered the matter, and the next
morning had forgotten the incident. But a few nights later the same
circumstances occurred. This time he fully roused himself; but before he
had moved to search for her, she entered the chamber in her dressing-
gown, carrying a candle, which she extinguished as she approached,
deeming him asleep. He could discover from her breathing that she was
strangely moved; but not on this occasion either did he reveal that he
had seen her. Presently, when she had lain down, affecting to wake, he
asked her some trivial questions. 'Yes, Edmond,' she replied absently.
Lord Uplandtowers became convinced that she was in the habit of leaving
the chamber in this queer way more frequently than he had observed, and
he determined to watch. The next midnight he feigned deep sleep, and
shortly after perceived her stealthily rise and let herself out of the
room in the dark. He slipped on some clothing and followed. At the
farther end of the corridor, where the clash of flint and steel would be
out of the hearing of one in the bed-chamber, she struck a light. He
stepped aside into an empty room till she had lit a taper and had passed
on to her boudoir. In a minute or two he followed. Arrived at the door
of the boudoir, he beheld the door of the private recess open, and
Barbara within it, standing with her arms clasped tightly round the neck
of her Edmond, and her mouth on his. The shawl which she had thrown
round her nightclothes had slipped from her shoulders, and her long
white robe and pale face lent her the blanched appearance of a second
statue embracing the first. Between her kisses, she apostrophized it in
a low murmur of infantine tenderness:
'My only love-how could I be so cruel to you, my perfect one-so good and
true-I am ever faithful to you, despite my seeming infidelity! I always
think of you-dream of you-during the long hours of the day, and in the
night-watches! O Edmond, I am always yours!' Such words as these,
intermingled with sobs, and streaming tears, and dishevelled hair,
testified to an intensity of feeling in his wife which Lord Uplandtowers
had not dreamed of her possessing.
'Ha, ha!' says he to himself. 'This is where we evaporate-this is where
my hopes of a successor in the title dissolve-ha, ha! This must be seen
to, verily!'
Lord Uplandtowers was a subtle man when once he set himself to strategy;
though in the present instance he never thought of the simple stratagem
of constant tenderness. Nor did he enter the room and surprise his wife
as a blunderer would have done, but went back to his chamber as silently
as he had left it. When the Countess returned thither, shaken by spent
sobs and sighs, he appeared to be soundly sleeping as usual. The next
day he began his countermoves by making inquiries as to the whereabouts
of the tutor who had travelled with his wife's first husband; this
gentleman, he found, was now master of a grammar-school at no great
distance from Knollingwood. At the first convenient moment Lord
Uplandtowers went thither and obtained an interview with the said
gentleman. The schoolmaster was much gratified by a visit from such an
influential neighbour, and was ready to communicate anything that his
lordship desired to know.
After some general conversation on the school and its progress, the
visitor observed that he believed the schoolmaster had once travelled a
good deal with the unfortunate Mr. Willowes, and had been with him on
the occasion of his accident. He, Lord Uplandtowers, was interested in
knowing what had really happened at that time, and had often thought of
inquiring. And then the Earl not only heard by word of mouth as much as
he wished to know, but, their chat becoming more intimate, the
schoolmaster drew upon paper a sketch of the disfigured head, explaining
with bated breath various details in the representation.
'It was very strange and terrible!' said Lord Uplandtowers, taking the
sketch in his hand. 'Neither nose nor ears!'
A poor man in the town nearest to Knollingwood Hall, who combined the
art of sign-painting with ingenious mechanical occupations, was sent for
by Lord Uplandtowers to come to the Hall on a day in that week when the
Countess had gone on a short visit to her parents. His employer made the
man understand that the business in which his assistance was demanded
was to be considered private, and money insured the observance of this
request. The lock of the cupboard was picked, and the ingenious mechanic
and painter, assisted by the schoolmaster's sketch, which Lord
Uplandtowers had put in his pocket, set to work upon the god-like
countenance of the statue under my lord's direction. What the fire had
maimed in the original the chisel maimed in the copy. It was a fiendish
disfigurement, ruthlessly carried out, and was rendered still more
shocking by being tinted to the hues of life, as life had been after the
wreck.
Six hours after, when the workman was gone, Lord Uplandtowers looked
upon the result, and smiled grimly, and said:
'A statue should represent a man as he appeared in life, and that's as
he appeared. Ha! ha! But 'tis done to good purpose, and not idly.'
He locked the door of the closet with a skeleton key, and went his way
to fetch the Countess home.
That night she slept, but he kept awake. According to the tale, she
murmured soft words in her dream; and he knew that the tender converse
of her imaginings was held with one whom he had supplanted but in name.
At the end of her dream the Countess of Uplandtowers awoke and arose,
and then the enactment of former nights was repeated. Her husband
remained still and listened. Two strokes sounded from the clock in the
pediment without, when, leaving the chamber-door ajar, she passed along
the corridor to the other end, where, as usual, she obtained a light. So
deep was the silence that he could even from his bed hear her softly
blowing the tinder to a glow after striking the steel. She moved on into
the boudoir, and he heard, or fancied he heard, the turning of the key
in the closet-door. The next moment there came from that direction a
loud and prolonged shriek, which resounded to the farthest corners of
the house. It was repeated, and there was the noise of a heavy fall.
Lord Uplandtowers sprang out of bed. He hastened along the dark corridor
to the door of the boudoir, which stood ajar, and, by the light of the
candle within, saw his poor young Countess lying in a heap in her
nightdress on the floor of the closet. When he reached her side he found
that she had fainted, much to the relief of his fears that matters were
worse. He quickly shut up and locked in the hated image which had done
the mischief; and lifted his wife in his arms, where in a few instants
she opened her eyes. Pressing her face to his without saying a word, he
carried her back to her room, endeavouring as he went to disperse her
terrors by a laugh in her ear, oddly compounded of causticity,
predilection, and brutality.
'Ho-ho-ho!' says he. 'Frightened, dear one, hey? What a baby 'tis! Only
a joke, sure, Barbara-a splendid joke! But a baby should not go to
closets at midnight to look for the ghost of the dear departed! If it do
it must expect to be terrified at his aspect-ho-ho-ho!'
When she was in her bed-chamber, and had quite come to herself; though
her nerves were still much shaken, he spoke to her more sternly. 'Now,
my lady, answer me: do you love him-eh?'
'No-no!' she faltered, shuddering, with her expanded eyes fixed on her
husband. 'He is too terrible-no, no!'
'You are sure?'
'Quite sure!' replied the poor broken-spirited Countess. But her natural
elasticity asserted itself. Next morning he again inquired of her: 'Do
you love him now?'
She quailed under his gaze, but did not reply.
'That means that you do still, by G\x97-!' he continued.
'It means that I will not tell an untruth, and do not wish to incense my
lord,' she answered, with dignity.
'Then suppose we go and have another look at him?' As he spoke, he
suddenly took her by the wrist, and turned as if to lead her towards the
ghastly closet.
'No-no! Oh-no!' she cried, and her desperate wriggle out of his hand
revealed that the fright of the night had left more impression upon her
delicate soul than superficially appeared.
'Another dose or two, and she will be cured,' he said to himself.
It was now so generally known that the Earl and Countess were not in
accord, that he took no great trouble to disguise his deeds in relation
to this matter. During the day he ordered four men with ropes and
rollers to attend him in the boudoir. When they arrived, the closet was
open, and the upper part of the statue tied up in canvas. He had it
taken to the sleeping-chamber. What followed is more or less matter of
conjecture. The story, as told to me, goes on to say that, when Lady
Uplandtowers retired with him that night, she saw near the foot of the
heavy oak four-poster, a tall dark wardrobe, which had not stood there
before; but she did not ask what its presence meant.
'I have had a little whim,' he explained when they were in the dark.
'Have you?' says she.
'To erect a little shrine, as it may be called.'
'A little shrine?'
'Yes; to one whom we both equally adore-eh? I'll show you what it
contains.'
He pulled a cord which hung covered by the bed-curtains, and the doors
of the wardrobe slowly opened, disclosing that the shelves within had
been removed throughout, and the interior adapted to receive the ghastly
figure, which stood there as it had stood in the boudoir, but with a
wax-candle burning on each side of it to throw the cropped and distorted
features into relief. She clutched him, uttered a low scream, and buried
her head in the bedclothes. 'Oh, take it away-please take it away!' she
implored.
'All in good time namely, when you love me best,' he returned calmly.
'You don't quite yet-eh?'
'I don't know-I think-O Uplandtowers, have mercy-I cannot bear it-O, in
pity, take it away!'
'Nonsense; one gets accustomed to anything. Take another gaze.'
In short, he allowed the doors to remain unclosed at the foot of the
bed, and the wax-tapers burning; and such was the strange fascination of
the grisly exhibition that a morbid curiosity took possession of the
Countess as she lay, and, at his repeated request, she did again look
out from the coverlet, shuddered, hid her eyes, and looked again, all
the while begging him to take it away, or it would drive her out of her
senses. But he would not do so as yet, and the wardrobe was not locked
till dawn.
The scene was repeated the next night. Firm in enforcing his ferocious
correctives, he continued the treatment till the nerves of the poor lady
were quivering in agony under the virtuous tortures inflicted by her
lord, to bring her truant heart back to faithfulness.
The third night, when the scene had opened as usual, and she lay staring
with immense wild eyes at the horrid fascination, on a sudden she gave
an unnatural laugh; she laughed more and more, staring at the image,
till she literally shrieked with laughter: then there was silence, and
he found her to have become insensible. He thought she had fainted, but
soon saw that the event was worse: she was in an epileptic fit. He
started up, dismayed by the sense that, like many other subtle
personages, he had been too exacting for his own interests. Such love as
he was capable of, though rather a selfish gloating than a cherishing
solicitude, was fanned into life on the instant. He closed the wardrobe
with the pulley, clasped her in his arms, took her gently to the window,
and did all he could to restore her.
It was a long time before the Countess came to herself, and when she did
so, a considerable change seemed to have taken place in her emotions.
She flung her arms around him, and with gasps of fear abjectly kissed
him many times, at last bursting into tears. She had never wept in this
scene before.
'You'll take it away, dearest-you will!' she begged plaintively.
'If you love me.'
'I do-oh, I do!'
'And hate him, and his memory?'
'Yes-yes!'
'Thoroughly?'
'I cannot endure recollection of him!' cried the poor Countess
slavishly. 'It fills me with shame-how could I ever be so depraved! I'll
never behave badly again, Uplandtowers; and you will never put the hated
statue again before my eyes?'
He felt that he could promise with perfect safety. 'Never,' said he.
'And then I'll love you,' she returned eagerly, as if dreading lest the
scourge should be applied anew. 'And I'll never, never dream of thinking
a single thought that seems like faithlessness to my marriage vow.'
The strange thing now was that this fictitious love wrung from her by
terror took on, through mere habit of enactment, a certain quality of
reality. A servile mood of attachment to the Earl became distinctly
visible in her contemporaneously with an actual dislike for her late
husband's memory. The mood of attachment grew and continued when the
statue was removed. A permanent revulsion was operant in her, which
intensified as time wore on. How fright could have effected such a
change of idiosyncrasy learned physicians alone can say; but I believe
such cases of reactionary instinct are not unknown.
The upshot was that the cure became so permanent as to be itself a new
disease. She clung to him so tightly, that she would not willingly be
out of his sight for a moment. She would have no sitting-room apart from
his, though she could not help starting when he entered suddenly to her.
Her eyes were well-nigh always fixed upon him. If he drove out, she
wished to go with him; his slightest civilities to other women made her
frantically jealous; till at length her very fidelity became a burden to
him, absorbing his time, and curtailing his liberty, and causing him to
curse and swear. If he ever spoke sharply to her now, she did not
revenge herself by flying off to a mental world of her own; all that
affection for another, which had provided her with a resource, was now a
cold black cinder.
From that time the life of this scared and enervated lady-whose
existence might have been developed to so much higher purpose but for
the ignoble ambition of her parents and the conventions of the time-was
one of obsequious amativeness towards a perverse and cruel man. Little
personal events came to her in quick succession-half a dozen, eight,
nine, ten such events,-in brief; she bore him no less than eleven
children in the eight following years, but half of them came prematurely
into the world, or died a few days old; only one, a girl, attained to
maturity; she in after years became the wife of the Honourable Mr.
Beltonleigh, who was created Lord D'Almaine, as may be remembered.
There was no living son and heir. At length, completely worn out in mind
and body, Lady Uplandtowers was taken abroad by her husband, to try the
effect of a more genial climate upon her wasted frame. But nothing
availed to strengthen her, and she died at Florence, a few months after
her arrival in Italy.
Contrary to expectation, the Earl of Uplandtowers did not marry again.
Such affection as existed in him-strange, hard, brutal as it was-seemed
untransferable, and the title, as is known, passed at his death to his
nephew. Perhaps it may not be so generally known that, during the
enlargement of the Hall for the sixth Earl, while digging in the grounds
for the new foundations, the broken fragments of a marble statue were
unearthed. They were submitted to various antiquaries, who said that, so
far as the damaged pieces would allow them to form an opinion, the
statue seemed to be that of a mutilated Roman satyr; or if not, an
allegorical figure of Death. Only one or two old inhabitants guessed
whose statue those fragments had composed.
I should have added that, shortly after the death of the Countess, an
excellent sermon was preached by the Dean of Melchester, the subject of
which, though names were not mentioned, was unquestionably suggested by
the aforesaid events. He dwelt upon the folly of indulgence in sensuous
love for a handsome form merely; and showed that the only rational and
virtuous growths of that affection were those based upon intrinsic
worth. In the case of the tender but somewhat shallow lady whose life I
have related, there is no doubt that an infatuation for the person of
young Willowes was the chief feeling that induced her to marry him;
which was the more deplorable in that his beauty, by all tradition, was
the least of his recommendations, every report bearing out the inference
that he must have been a man of steadfast nature, bright intelligence,
and promising life.
The company thanked the old surgeon for his story, which the rural dean
declared to be a far more striking one than anything he could hope to
tell. An elderly member of the Club, who was mostly called the Bookworm,
said that a woman's natural instinct of fidelity would, indeed, send
back her heart to a man after his death in a truly wonderful manner
sometimes-if anything occurred to put before her forcibly the original
affection between them, and his original aspect in her eyes,-whatever
his inferiority may have been, social or otherwise; and then a general
conversation ensued upon the power that a woman has of seeing the actual
in the representation, the reality in the dream-a power which (according
to the sentimental member) men have no faculty of equalling.
The rural dean thought that such cases as that related by the surgeon
were rather an illustration of passion electrified back to life than of
a latent, true affection. The story had suggested that he should try to
recount to them one which he had used to hear in his youth, and which
afforded an instance of the latter and better kind of feeling, his
heroine being also a lady who had married beneath her, though he feared
his narrative would be of a much slighter kind than the surgeon's. The
Club begged him to proceed, and the parson began.
DAME THE THIRD-THE MARCHIONESS OF STONEHENGE By the Rural Dean
I would have you know, then, that a great many years ago there lived in
a classical mansion with which I used to be familiar, standing not a
hundred miles from the city of Melchester, a lady whose personal charms
were so rare and unparalleled that she was courted, flattered, and
spoilt by almost all the young noblemen and gentlemen in that part of
Wessex. For a time these attentions pleased her well. But as, in the
words of good Robert South (whose sermons might be read much more than
they are), the most passionate lover of sport, if tied to follow his
hawks and hounds every day of his life, would find the pursuit the
greatest torment and calamity, and would fly to the mines and galleys
for his recreation, so did this lofty and beautiful lady after a while
become satiated with the constant iteration of what she had in its
novelty enjoyed; and by an almost natural revulsion turned her regards
absolutely netherward, socially speaking. She perversely and
passionately centred her affection on quite a plain-looking young man of
humble birth and no position at all; though it is true that he was
gentle and delicate in nature, of good address, and guileless heart. In
short, he was the parish-clerk's son, acting as assistant to the land-
steward of her father, the Earl of Avon, with the hope of becoming some
day a land-steward himself. It should be said that perhaps the Lady
Caroline (as she was called) was a little stimulated in this passion by
the discovery that a young girl of the village already loved the young
man fondly, and that he had paid some attentions to her, though merely
of a casual and good-natured kind.
Since his occupation brought him frequently to the manor-house and its
environs, Lady Caroline could make ample opportunities of seeing and
speaking to him. She had, in Chaucer's phrase, 'all the craft of fine
loving' at her fingers' ends, and the young man, being of a readily-
kindling heart, was quick to notice the tenderness in her eyes and
voice. He could not at first believe in his good fortune, having no
understanding of her weariness of more artificial men; but a time comes
when the stupidest sees in an eye the glance of his other half; and it
came to him, who was quite the reverse of dull. As he gained confidence
accidental encounters led to encounters by design; till at length when
they were alone together there was no reserve on the matter. They
whispered tender words as other lovers do, and were as devoted a pair as
ever was seen. But not a ray or symptom of this attachment was allowed
to show itself to the outer world.
Now, as she became less and less scrupulous towards him under the
influence of her affection, and he became more and more reverential
under the influence of his, and they looked the situation in the face
together, their condition seemed intolerable in its hopelessness. That
she could ever ask to be allowed to marry him, or could hold her tongue
and quietly renounce him, was equally beyond conception. They resolved
upon a third course, possessing neither of the disadvantages of these
two: to wed secretly, and live on in outward appearance the same as
before. In this they differed from the lovers of my friend's story.
Not a soul in the parental mansion guessed, when Lady Caroline came
coolly into the hall one day after a visit to her aunt, that, during
that visit, her lover and herself had found an opportunity of uniting
themselves till death should part them. Yet such was the fact; the young
woman who rode fine horses, and drove in pony-chaises, and was saluted
deferentially by every one, and the young man who trudged about, and
directed the tree-felling, and the laying out of fish-ponds in the park,
were husband and wife.
As they had planned, so they acted to the letter for the space of a
month and more, clandestinely meeting when and where they best could do
so; both being supremely happy and content. To be sure, towards the
latter part of that month, when the first wild warmth of her love had
gone off, the Lady Caroline sometimes wondered within herself how she,
who might have chosen a peer of the realm, baronet, knight; or, if
serious-minded, a bishop or judge of the more gallant sort who prefer
young wives, could have brought herself to do a thing so rash as to make
this marriage; particularly when, in their private meetings, she
perceived that though her young husband was full of ideas, and fairly
well read, they had not a single social experience in common. It was his
custom to visit her after nightfall, in her own house, when he could
find no opportunity for an interview elsewhere; and to further this
course she would contrive to leave unfastened a window on the ground-
floor overlooking the lawn, by entering which a back stair-case was
accessible; so that he could climb up to her apartments, and gain
audience of his lady when the house was still.
One dark midnight, when he had not been able to see her during the day,
he made use of this secret method, as he had done many times before; and
when they had remained in company about an hour he declared that it was
time for him to descend.
He would have stayed longer, but that the interview had been a somewhat
painful one. What she had said to him that night had much excited and
angered him, for it had revealed a change in her; cold reason had come
to his lofty wife; she was beginning to have more anxiety about her own
position and prospects than ardour for him. Whether from the agitation
of this perception or not, he was seized with a spasm; he gasped, rose,
and in moving towards the window for air he uttered in a short thick
whisper, 'Oh, my heart!'
With his hand upon his chest he sank down to the floor before he had
gone another step. By the time that she had relighted the candle, which
had been extinguished in case any eye in the opposite grounds should
witness his egress, she found that his poor heart had ceased to beat;
and there rushed upon her mind what his cottage-friends had once told
her, that he was liable to attacks of heart-disease, one of which, the
doctor had informed them, might some day carry him off.
Accustomed as she was to doctoring the other parishioners, nothing that
she could effect upon him in that kind made any difference whatever; and
his stillness, and the increasing coldness of his feet and hands,
disclosed too surely to the affrighted young woman that her husband was
dead indeed. For more than an hour, however, she did not abandon her
efforts to restore him; when she fully realized the fact that he was a
corpse she bent over his body, distracted and bewildered as to what step
she next should take.
Her first feelings had undoubtedly been those of passionate grief at the
loss of him; her second thoughts were concern at her own position as the
daughter of an earl. 'Oh, why, why, my unfortunate husband, did you die
in my chamber at this hour!' she said piteously to the corpse. 'Why not
have died in your own cottage if you would die! Then nobody would ever
have known of our imprudent union, and no syllable would have been
breathed of how I mismated myself for love of you!'
The clock in the courtyard striking the hour of one aroused Lady
Caroline from the stupor into which she had fallen, and she stood up,
and went towards the door. To awaken and tell her mother seemed her only
way out of this terrible situation; yet when she put her hand on the key
to unlock it she withdrew herself again. It would be impossible to call
even her mother's assistance without risking a revelation to all the
world through the servants; while if she could remove the body
unassisted to a distance she might avert suspicion of their union even
now. This thought of immunity from the social consequences of her rash
act, of renewed freedom, was indubitably a relief to her, for, as has
been said, the constraint and riskiness of her position had begun to
tell upon the Lady Caroline's nerves.
She braced herself for the effort, and hastily dressed herself; and then
dressed him. Tying his dead hands together with a handkerchief; she laid
his arms round her shoulders, and bore him to the landing and down the
narrow stairs. Reaching the bottom by the window, she let his body slide
slowly over the sill till it lay on the ground without. She then climbed
over the window-sill herself, and, leaving the sash open, dragged him on
to the lawn with a rustle not louder than the rustle of a broom. There
she took a securer hold, and plunged with him under the trees.
Away from the precincts of the house she could apply herself more
vigorously to her task, which was a heavy one enough for her, robust as
she was; and the exertion and fright she had already undergone began to
tell upon her by the time she reached the corner of a beech-plantation
which intervened between the manor-house and the village. Here she was
so nearly exhausted that she feared she might have to leave him on the
spot. But she plodded on after a while, and keeping upon the grass at
every opportunity she stood at last opposite the poor young man's
garden-gate, where he lived with his father, the parish-clerk. How she
accomplished the end of her task Lady Caroline never quite knew; but, to
avoid leaving traces in the road, she carried him bodily across the
gravel, and laid him down at the door. Perfectly aware of his ways of
coming and going, she searched behind the shutter for the cottage door-
key, which she placed in his cold hand. Then she kissed his face for the
last time, and with silent little sobs bade him farewell.
Lady Caroline retraced her steps, and reached the mansion without
hindrance; and to her great relief found the window open just as she had
left it. When she had climbed in she listened attentively, fastened the
window behind her, and ascending the stairs noiselessly to her room, set
everything in order, and returned to bed.
The next morning it was speedily echoed around that the amiable and
gentle young villager had been found dead outside his father's door,
which he had apparently been in the act of unlocking when he fell. The
circumstances were sufficiently exceptional to justify an inquest, at
which syncope from heart-disease was ascertained to be beyond doubt the
explanation of his death, and no more was said about the matter then.
But, after the funeral, it was rumoured that some man who had been
returning late from a distant horse-fair had seen in the gloom of night
a person, apparently a woman, dragging a heavy body of some sort towards
the cottage-gate, which, by the light of after events, would seem to
have been the corpse of the young fellow. His clothes were thereupon
examined more particularly than at first, with the result that marks of
friction were visible upon them here and there, precisely resembling
such as would be left by dragging on the ground.
Our beautiful and ingenious Lady Caroline was now in great
consternation; and began to think that, after all, it might have been
better to honestly confess the truth. But having reached this stage
without discovery or suspicion, she determined to make another effort
towards concealment; and a bright idea struck her as a means of securing
it. I think I mentioned that, before she cast eyes on the unfortunate
steward's clerk, he had been the beloved of a certain village damsel,
the woodman's daughter, his neighbour, to whom he had paid some
attentions; and possibly he was beloved of her still. At any rate, the
Lady Caroline's influence on the estates of her father being
considerable, she resolved to seek an interview with the young girl in
furtherance of her plan to save her reputation, about which she was now
exceedingly anxious; for by this time, the fit being over, she began to
be ashamed of her mad passion for her late husband, and almost wished
she had never seen him.
In the course of her parish-visiting she lighted on the young girl
without much difficulty, and found her looking pale and sad, and wearing
a simple black gown, which she had put on out of respect for the young
man's memory, whom she had tenderly loved, though he had not loved her.
'Ah, you have lost your lover, Milly,' said Lady Caroline.
The young woman could not repress her tears. 'My lady, he was not quite
my lover,' she said. 'But I was his-and now he is dead I don't care to
live any more!'
'Can you keep a secret about him?' asks the lady; 'one in which his
honour is involved-which is known to me alone, but should be known to
you?'
The girl readily promised, and, indeed, could be safely trusted on such
a subject, so deep was her affection for the youth she mourned.
'Then meet me at his grave to-night, half-an-hour after sunset, and I
will tell it to you,' says the other.
In the dusk of that spring evening the two shadowy figures of the young
women converged upon the assistant-steward's newly-turfed mound; and at
that solemn place and hour, the one of birth and beauty unfolded her
tale: how she had loved him and married him secretly; how he had died in
her chamber; and how, to keep her secret, she had dragged him to his own
door.
'Married him, my lady!' said the rustic maiden, starting back.
'I have said so,' replied Lady Caroline. 'But it was a mad thing, and a
mistaken course. He ought to have married you. You, Milly, were
peculiarly his. But you lost him.'
'Yes,' said the poor girl; 'and for that they laughed at me. "Ha-ha, you
mid love him, Milly," they said; "but he will not love you!"'
'Victory over such unkind jeerers would be sweet,' said Lady Caroline.
'You lost him in life; but you may have him in death as if you had had
him in life; and so turn the tables upon them.'
'How?' said the breathless girl.
The young lady then unfolded her plan, which was that Milly should go
forward and declare that the young man had contracted a secret marriage
(as he truly had done); that it was with her, Milly, his sweetheart;
that he had been visiting her in her cottage on the evening of his
death; when, on finding he was a corpse, she had carried him to his
house to prevent discovery by her parents, and that she had meant to
keep the whole matter a secret till the rumours afloat had forced it
from her.
'And how shall I prove this?' said the woodman's daughter, amazed at the
boldness of the proposal.
'Quite sufficiently. You can say, if necessary, that you were married to
him at the church of St. Michael, in Bath City, in my name, as the first
that occurred to you, to escape detection. That was where he married me.
I will support you in this.'
'Oh-I don't quite like-'
'If you will do so,' said the lady peremptorily, 'I will always be your
father's friend and yours; if not, it will be otherwise. And I will give
you my wedding-ring, which you shall wear as yours.'
'Have you worn it, my lady?'
'Only at night.'
There was not much choice in the matter, and Milly consented. Then this
noble lady took from her bosom the ring she had never been able openly
to exhibit, and, grasping the young girl's hand, slipped it upon her
finger as she stood upon her lover's grave.
Milly shivered, and bowed her head, saying, 'I feel as if I had become a
corpse's bride!'
But from that moment the maiden was heart and soul in the substitution.
A blissful repose came over her spirit. It seemed to her that she had
secured in death him whom in life she had vainly idolized; and she was
almost content. After that the lady handed over to the young man's new
wife all the little mementoes and trinkets he had given herself; even to
a locket containing his hair.
The next day the girl made her so-called confession, which the simple
mourning she had already worn, without stating for whom, seemed to bear
out; and soon the story of the little romance spread through the village
and country-side, almost as far as Melchester. It was a curious
psychological fact that, having once made the avowal, Milly seemed
possessed with a spirit of ecstasy at her position. With the liberal sum
of money supplied to her by Lady Caroline she now purchased the garb of
a widow, and duly appeared at church in her weeds, her simple face
looking so sweet against its margin of crape that she was almost envied
her state by the other village-girls of her age. And when a woman's
sorrow for her beloved can maim her young life so obviously as it had
done Milly's there was, in truth, little subterfuge in the case. Her
explanation tallied so well with the details of her lover's latter
movements-those strange absences and sudden returnings, which had
occasionally puzzled his friends-that nobody supposed for a moment that
the second actor in these secret nuptials was other than she. The actual
and whole truth would indeed have seemed a preposterous assertion beside
this plausible one, by reason of the lofty demeanour of the Lady
Caroline and the unassuming habits of the late villager. There being no
inheritance in question, not a soul took the trouble to go to the city
church, forty miles off, and search the registers for marriage
signatures bearing out so humble a romance.
In a short time Milly caused a decent tombstone to be erected over her
nominal husband's grave, whereon appeared the statement that it was
placed there by his heartbroken widow, which, considering that the
payment for it came from Lady Caroline and the grief from Milly, was as
truthful as such inscriptions usually are, and only required pluralizing
to render it yet more nearly so.
The impressionable and complaisant Milly, in her character of widow,
took delight in going to his grave every day, and indulging in sorrow
which was a positive luxury to her. She placed fresh flowers on his
grave, and so keen was her emotional imaginativeness that she almost
believed herself to have been his wife indeed as she walked to and fro
in her garb of woe. One afternoon, Milly being busily engaged in this
labour of love at the grave, Lady Caroline passed outside the churchyard
wall with some of her visiting friends, who, seeing Milly there, watched
her actions with interest, remarked upon the pathos of the scene, and
upon the intense affection the young man must have felt for such a
tender creature as Milly. A strange light, as of pain, shot from the
Lady Caroline's eye, as if for the first time she begrudged to the young
girl the position she had been at such pains to transfer to her; it
showed that a slumbering affection for her husband still had life in
Lady Caroline, obscured and stifled as it was by social considerations.
An end was put to this smooth arrangement by the sudden appearance in
the churchyard one day of the Lady Caroline, when Milly had come there
on her usual errand of laying flowers. Lady Caroline had been anxiously
awaiting her behind the chancel, and her countenance was pale and
agitated.
'Milly!' she said, 'come here! I don't know how to say to you what I am
going to say. I am half dead!'
'I am sorry for your ladyship,' says Milly, wondering.
'Give me that ring!' says the lady, snatching at the girl's left hand.
Milly drew it quickly away.
'I tell you give it to me!' repeated Caroline, almost fiercely. 'Oh-but
you don't know why? I am in a grief and a trouble I did not expect!' And
Lady Caroline whispered a few words to the girl.
'O my lady!' said the thunderstruck Milly. 'What will you do?'
'You must say that your statement was a wicked lie, an invention, a
scandal, a deadly sin-that I told you to make it to screen me! That it
was I whom he married at Bath. In short, we must tell the truth, or I am
ruined-body, mind, and reputation-for ever!'
But there is a limit to the flexibility of gentle-souled women. Milly by
this time had so grown to the idea of being one flesh with this young
man, of having the right to bear his name as she bore it; had so
thoroughly come to regard him as her husband, to dream of him as her
husband, to speak of him as her husband, that she could not relinquish
him at a moment's peremptory notice.
'No, no,' she said desperately, 'I cannot, I will not give him up! Your
ladyship took him away from me alive, and gave him back to me only when
he was dead. Now I will keep him! I am truly his widow. More truly than
you, my lady! for I love him and mourn for him, and call myself by his
dear name, and your ladyship does neither!'
'I do love him!' cries Lady Caroline with flashing eyes, 'and I cling to
him, and won't let him go to such as you! How can I, when he is the
father of this poor babe that's coming to me? I must have him back
again! Milly, Milly, can't you pity and understand me, perverse girl
that you are, and the miserable plight that I am in? Oh, this
precipitancy-it is the ruin of women! Why did I not consider, and wait!
Come, give me back all that I have given you, and assure me you will
support me in confessing the truth!'
'Never, never!' persisted Milly, with woe-begone passionateness. 'Look
at this headstone! Look at my gown and bonnet of crape-this ring: listen
to the name they call me by! My character is worth as much to me as
yours is to you! After declaring my Love mine, myself his, taking his
name, making his death my own particular sorrow, how can I say it was
not so? No such dishonour for me! I will outswear you, my lady; and I
shall be believed. My story is so much the more likely that yours will
be thought false. But, O please, my lady, do not drive me to this! In
pity let me keep him!'
The poor nominal widow exhibited such anguish at a proposal which would
have been truly a bitter humiliation to her, that Lady Caroline was
warmed to pity in spite of her own condition.
'Yes, I see your position,' she answered. 'But think of mine! What can I
do? Without your support it would seem an invention to save me from
disgrace; even if I produced the register, the love of scandal in the
world is such that the multitude would slur over the fact, say it was a
fabrication, and believe your story. I do not know who were the
witnesses, or anything!'
In a few minutes these two poor young women felt, as so many in a strait
have felt before, that union was their greatest strength, even now; and
they consulted calmly together. The result of their deliberations was
that Milly went home as usual, and Lady Caroline also, the latter
confessing that very night to the Countess her mother of the marriage,
and to nobody else in the world. And, some time after, Lady Caroline and
her mother went away to London, where a little while later still they
were joined by Milly, who was supposed to have left the village to
proceed to a watering-place in the North for the benefit of her health,
at the expense of the ladies of the Manor, who had been much interested
in her state of lonely and defenceless widowhood.
Early the next year the widow Milly came home with an infant in her
arms, the family at the Manor House having meanwhile gone abroad. They
did not return from their tour till the autumn ensuing, by which time
Milly and the child had again departed from the cottage of her father
the woodman, Milly having attained to the dignity of dwelling in a
cottage of her own, many miles to the eastward of her native village; a
comfortable little allowance had moreover been settled on her and the
child for life, through the instrumentality of Lady Caroline and her
mother.
Two or three years passed away, and the Lady Caroline married a
nobleman-the Marquis of Stonehenge-considerably her senior, who had
wooed her long and phlegmatically. He was not rich, but she led a placid
life with him for many years, though there was no child of the marriage.
Meanwhile Milly's boy, as the youngster was called, and as Milly herself
considered him, grew up, and throve wonderfully, and loved her as she
deserved to be loved for her devotion to him, in whom she every day
traced more distinctly the lineaments of the man who had won her girlish
heart, and kept it even in the tomb.
She educated him as well as she could with the limited means at her
disposal, for the allowance had never been increased, Lady Caroline, or
the Marchioness of Stonehenge as she now was, seeming by degrees to care
little what had become of them. Milly became extremely ambitious on the
boy's account; she pinched herself almost of necessaries to send him to
the Grammar School in the town to which they retired, and at twenty he
enlisted in a cavalry regiment, joining it with a deliberate intent of
making the Army his profession, and not in a freak of idleness. His
exceptional attainments, his manly bearing, his steady conduct, speedily
won him promotion, which was furthered by the serious war in which this
country was at that time engaged. On his return to England after the
peace he had risen to the rank of riding-master, and was soon after
advanced another stage, and made quartermaster, though still a young
man.
His mother-his corporeal mother, that is, the Marchioness of Stonehenge-
heard tidings of this unaided progress; it reawakened her maternal
instincts, and filled her with pride. She became keenly interested in
her successful soldier-son; and as she grew older much wished to see him
again, particularly when, the Marquis dying, she was left a solitary and
childless widow. Whether or not she would have gone to him of her own
impulse I cannot say; but one day, when she was driving in an open
carriage in the outskirts of a neighbouring town, the troops lying at
the barracks hard by passed her in marching order. She eyed them
narrowly, and in the finest of the horsemen recognized her son from his
likeness to her first husband.
This sight of him doubly intensified the motherly emotions which had
lain dormant in her for so many years, and she wildly asked herself how
she could so have neglected him? Had she possessed the true courage of
affection she would have owned to her first marriage, and have reared
him as her son! What would it have mattered if she had never obtained
this precious coronet of pearls and gold leaves, by comparison with the
gain of having the love and protection of such a noble and worthy son?
These and other sad reflections cut the gloomy and solitary lady to the
heart; and she repented of her pride in disclaiming her first husband
more bitterly than she had ever repented of her infatuation in marrying
him.
Her yearning was so strong, that at length it seemed to her that she
could not live without announcing herself to him as his mother. Come
what might, she would do it: late as it was, she would have him away
from that woman whom she began to hate with the fierceness of a deserted
heart, for having taken her place as the mother of her only child. She
felt confidently enough that her son would only too gladly exchange a
cottage-mother for one who was a peeress of the realm. Being now, in her
widowhood, free to come and go as she chose, without question from
anybody, Lady Stonehenge started next day for the little town where
Milly yet lived, still in her robes of sable for the lost lover of her
youth.
'He is my son,' said the Marchioness, as soon as she was alone in the
cottage with Milly. 'You must give him back to me, now that I am in a
position in which I can defy the world's opinion. I suppose he comes to
see you continually?'
'Every month since he returned from the war, my lady. And sometimes he
stays two or three days, and takes me about seeing sights everywhere!'
She spoke with quiet triumph.
'Well, you will have to give him up,' said the Marchioness calmly. 'It
shall not be the worse for you-you may see him when you choose. I am
going to avow my first marriage, and have him with me.'
'You forget that there are two to be reckoned with, my lady. Not only
me, but himself.'
'That can be arranged. You don't suppose that he wouldn't-' But not
wishing to insult Milly by comparing their positions, she said, 'He is
my own flesh and blood, not yours.'
'Flesh and blood's nothing!' said Milly, flashing with as much scorn as
a cottager could show to a peeress, which, in this case, was not so
little as may be supposed. 'But I will agree to put it to him, and let
him settle it for himself.'
'That's all I require,' said Lady Stonehenge. 'You must ask him to come,
and I will meet him here.'
The soldier was written to, and the meeting took place. He was not so
much astonished at the disclosure of his parentage as Lady Stonehenge
had been led to expect, having known for years that there was a little
mystery about his birth. His manner towards the Marchioness, though
respectful, was less warm than she could have hoped. The alternatives as
to his choice of a mother were put before him. His answer amazed and
stupefied her.
'No, my lady,' he said. 'Thank you much, but I prefer to let things be
as they have been. My father's name is mine in any case. You see, my
lady, you cared little for me when I was weak and helpless; why should I
come to you now I am strong? She, dear devoted soul [pointing to Milly],
tended me from my birth, watched over me, nursed me when I was ill, and
deprived herself of many a little comfort to push me on. I cannot love
another mother as I love her. She is my mother, and I will always be her
son!' As he spoke he put his manly arm round Milly's neck, and kissed
her with the tenderest affection.
The agony of the poor Marchioness was pitiable. 'You kill me!' she said,
between her shaking sobs. 'Cannot you-love-me-too?'
'No, my lady. If I must say it, you were ashamed of my poor father, who
was a sincere and honest man; therefore, I am ashamed of you.'
Nothing would move him; and the suffering woman at last gasped, 'Cannot-
oh, cannot you give one kiss to me-as you did to her? It is not much-it
is all I ask-all!'
'Certainly,' he replied.
He kissed her coldly, and the painful scene came to an end. That day was
the beginning of death to the unfortunate Marchioness of Stonehenge. It
was in the perverseness of her human heart that his denial of her should
add fuel to the fire of her craving for his love. How long afterwards
she lived I do not know with any exactness, but it was no great length
of time. That anguish that is sharper than a serpent's tooth wore her
out soon. Utterly reckless of the world, its ways, and its opinions, she
allowed her story to become known; and when the welcome end supervened
(which, I grieve to say, she refused to lighten by the consolations of
religion), a broken heart was the truest phrase in which to sum up its
cause.
The rural dean having concluded, some observations upon his tale were
made in due course. The sentimental member said that Lady Caroline's
history afforded a sad instance of how an honest human affection will
become shamefaced and mean under the frost of class-division and social
prejudices. She probably deserved some pity; though her offspring,
before he grew up to man's estate, had deserved more. There was no
pathos like the pathos of childhood, when a child found itself in a
world where it was not wanted, and could not understand the reason why.
A tale by the speaker, further illustrating the same subject, though
with different results from the last, naturally followed.
DAME THE FOURTH-LADY MOTTISFONT By the Sentimental Member
Of all the romantic towns in Wessex, Wintoncester is probably the most
convenient for meditative people to live in; since there you have a
cathedral with a nave so long that it affords space in which to walk and
summon your remoter moods without continually turning on your heel, or
seeming to do more than take an afternoon stroll under cover from the
rain or sun. In an uninterrupted course of nearly three hundred steps
eastward, and again nearly three hundred steps westward amid those
magnificent tombs, you can, for instance, compare in the most leisurely
way the dry dustiness which ultimately pervades the persons of kings and
bishops with the damper dustiness that is usually the final shape of
commoners, curates, and others who take their last rest out of doors.
Then, if you are in love, you can, by sauntering in the chapels and
behind the episcopal chantries with the bright-eyed one, so steep and
mellow your ecstasy in the solemnities around, that it will assume a
rarer and finer tincture, even more grateful to the understanding, if
not to the senses, than that form of the emotion which arises from such
companionship in spots where all is life, and growth, and fecundity.
It was in this solemn place, whither they had withdrawn from the sight
of relatives on one cold day in March, that Sir Ashley Mottisfont asked
in marriage, as his second wife, Philippa, the gentle daughter of plain
Squire Okehall. Her life had been an obscure one thus far; while Sir
Ashley, though not a rich man, had a certain distinction about him; so
that everybody thought what a convenient, elevating, and, in a word,
blessed match it would be for such a supernumerary as she. Nobody
thought so more than the amiable girl herself. She had been smitten with
such affection for him that, when she walked the cathedral aisles at his
side on the before-mentioned day, she did not know that her feet touched
hard pavement; it seemed to her rather that she was floating in space.
Philippa was an ecstatic, heart-thumping maiden, and could not
understand how she had deserved to have sent to her such an illustrious
lover, such a travelled personage, such a handsome man.
When he put the question, it was in no clumsy language, such as the
ordinary bucolic county landlords were wont to use on like quivering
occasions, but as elegantly as if he had been taught it in Enfield's
Speaker. Yet he hesitated a little-for he had something to add.
'My pretty Philippa,' he said (she was not very pretty by the way), 'I
have, you must know, a little girl dependent upon me: a little waif I
found one day in a patch of wild oats [such was this worthy baronet's
humour] when I was riding home: a little nameless creature, whom I wish
to take care of till she is old enough to take care of herself; and to
educate in a plain way. She is only fifteen months old, and is at
present in the hands of a kind villager's wife in my parish. Will you
object to give some attention to the little thing in her helplessness?'
It need hardly be said that our innocent young lady, loving him so
deeply and joyfully as she did, replied that she would do all she could
for the nameless child; and, shortly afterwards, the pair were married
in the same cathedral that had echoed the whispers of his declaration,
the officiating minister being the Bishop himself; a venerable and
experienced man, so well accomplished in uniting people who had a mind
for that sort of experiment, that the couple, with some sense of
surprise, found themselves one while they were still vaguely gazing at
each other as two independent beings.
After this operation they went home to Deansleigh Park, and made a
beginning of living happily ever after. Lady Mottisfont, true to her
promise, was always running down to the village during the following
weeks to see the baby whom her husband had so mysteriously lighted on
during his ride home-concerning which interesting discovery she had her
own opinion; but being so extremely amiable and affectionate that she
could have loved stocks and stones if there had been no living creatures
to love, she uttered none of her thoughts. The little thing, who had
been christened Dorothy, took to Lady Mottisfont as if the baronet's
young wife had been her mother; and at length Philippa grew so fond of
the child that she ventured to ask her husband if she might have Dorothy
in her own home, and bring her up carefully, just as if she were her
own. To this he answered that, though remarks might be made thereon, he
had no objection; a fact which was obvious, Sir Ashley seeming rather
pleased than otherwise with the proposal.
After this they lived quietly and uneventfully for two or three years at
Sir Ashley Mottisfont's residence in that part of England, with as near
an approach to bliss as the climate of this country allows. The child
had been a godsend to Philippa, for there seemed no great probability of
her having one of her own: and she wisely regarded the possession of
Dorothy as a special kindness of Providence, and did not worry her mind
at all as to Dorothy's possible origin. Being a tender and impulsive
creature, she loved her husband without criticism, exhaustively and
religiously, and the child not much otherwise. She watched the little
foundling as if she had been her own by nature, and Dorothy became a
great solace to her when her husband was absent on pleasure or business;
and when he came home he looked pleased to see how the two had won each
other's hearts. Sir Ashley would kiss his wife, and his wife would kiss
little Dorothy, and little Dorothy would kiss Sir Ashley, and after this
triangular burst of affection Lady Mottisfont would say, 'Dear me-I
forget she is not mine!'
'What does it matter?' her husband would reply. 'Providence is fore-
knowing. He has sent us this one because he is not intending to send us
one by any other channel.'
Their life was of the simplest. Since his travels the baronet had taken
to sporting and farming; while Philippa was a pattern of domesticity.
Their pleasures were all local. They retired early to rest, and rose
with the cart-horses and whistling waggoners. They knew the names of
every bird and tree not exceptionally uncommon, and could foretell the
weather almost as well as anxious farmers and old people with corns.
One day Sir Ashley Mottisfont received a letter, which he read, and
musingly laid down on the table without remark.
'What is it, dearest?' asked his wife, glancing at the sheet.
'Oh, it is from an old lawyer at Bath whom I used to know. He reminds me
of something I said to him four or five years ago-some little time
before we were married-about Dorothy.'
'What about her?'
'It was a casual remark I made to him, when I thought you might not take
kindly to her, that if he knew a lady who was anxious to adopt a child,
and could insure a good home to Dorothy, he was to let me know.'
'But that was when you had nobody to take care of her,' she said
quickly. 'How absurd of him to write now! Does he know you are married?
He must, surely.'
'Oh yes!'
He handed her the letter. The solicitor stated that a widow-lady of
position, who did not at present wish her name to be disclosed, had
lately become a client of his while taking the waters, and had mentioned
to him that she would like a little girl to bring up as her own, if she
could be certain of finding one of good and pleasing disposition; and,
the better to insure this, she would not wish the child to be too young
for judging her qualities. He had remembered Sir Ashley's observation to
him a long while ago, and therefore brought the matter before him. It
would be an excellent home for the little girl-of that he was positive-
if she had not already found such a home.
'But it is absurd of the man to write so long after!' said Lady
Mottisfont, with a lumpiness about the back of her throat as she thought
how much Dorothy had become to her. 'I suppose it was when you first-
found her-that you told him this?'
'Exactly-it was then.'
He fell into thought, and neither Sir Ashley nor Lady Mottisfont took
the trouble to answer the lawyer's letter; and so the matter ended for
the time.
One day at dinner, on their return from a short absence in town, whither
they had gone to see what the world was doing, hear what it was saying,
and to make themselves generally fashionable after rusticating for so
long-on this occasion, I say, they learnt from some friend who had
joined them at dinner that Fernell Hall-the manorial house of the estate
next their own, which had been offered on lease by reason of the
impecuniosity of its owner-had been taken for a term by a widow lady, an
Italian Contessa, whose name I will not mention for certain reasons
which may by and by appear. Lady Mottisfont expressed her surprise and
interest at the probability of having such a neighbour. 'Though, if I
had been born in Italy, I think I should have liked to remain there,'
she said.
'She is not Italian, though her husband was,' said Sir Ashley.
'Oh, you have heard about her before now?'
'Yes; they were talking of her at Grey's the other evening. She is
English.' And then, as her husband said no more about the lady, the
friend who was dining with them told Lady Mottisfont that the Countess's
father had speculated largely in East-India Stock, in which immense
fortunes were being made at that time; through this his daughter had
found herself enormously wealthy at his death, which had occurred only a
few weeks after the death of her husband. It was supposed that the
marriage of an enterprising English speculator's daughter to a poor
foreign nobleman had been matter of arrangement merely. As soon as the
Countess's widowhood was a little further advanced she would, no doubt,
be the mark of all the schemers who came near her, for she was still
quite young. But at present she seemed to desire quiet, and avoided
society and town.
Some weeks after this time Sir Ashley Mottisfont sat looking fixedly at
his lady for many moments. He said:
'It might have been better for Dorothy if the Countess had taken her.
She is so wealthy in comparison with ourselves, and could have ushered
the girl into the great world more effectually than we ever shall be
able to do.'
'The Contessa take Dorothy?' said Lady Mottisfont with a start. 'What-
was she the lady who wished to adopt her?'
'Yes; she was staying at Bath when Lawyer Gayton wrote to me.'
'But how do you know all this, Ashley?'
He showed a little hesitation. 'Oh, I've seen her,' he says. 'You know,
she drives to the meet sometimes, though she does not ride; and she has
informed me that she was the lady who inquired of Gayton.'
'You have talked to her as well as seen her, then?'
'Oh yes, several times; everybody has.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' says his lady. 'I had quite forgotten to call
upon her. I'll go to-morrow, or soon . . . But I can't think, Ashley,
how you can say that it might have been better for Dorothy to have gone
to her; she is so much our own now that I cannot admit any such
conjectures as those, even in jest.' Her eyes reproached him so
eloquently that Sir Ashley Mottisfont did not answer.
Lady Mottisfont did not hunt any more than the Anglo-Italian Countess
did; indeed, she had become so absorbed in household matters and in
Dorothy's wellbeing that she had no mind to waste a minute on mere
enjoyments. As she had said, to talk coolly of what might have been the
best destination in days past for a child to whom they had become so
attached seemed quite barbarous, and she could not understand how her
husband should consider the point so abstractedly; for, as will probably
have been guessed, Lady Mottisfont long before this time, if she had not
done so at the very beginning, divined Sir Ashley's true relation to
Dorothy. But the baronet's wife was so discreetly meek and mild that she
never told him of her surmise, and took what Heaven had sent her without
cavil, her generosity in this respect having been bountifully rewarded
by the new life she found in her love for the little girl.
Her husband recurred to the same uncomfortable subject when, a few days
later, they were speaking of travelling abroad. He said that it was
almost a pity, if they thought of going, that they had not fallen in
with the Countess's wish. That lady had told him that she had met
Dorothy walking with her nurse, and that she had never seen a child she
liked so well.
'What-she covets her still? How impertinent of the woman!' said Lady
Mottisfont.
'She seems to do so . . . You see, dearest Philippa, the advantage to
Dorothy would have been that the Countess would have adopted her
legally, and have made her as her own daughter; while we have not done
that-we are only bringing up and educating a poor child in charity.'
'But I'll adopt her fully-make her mine legally!' cried his wife in an
anxious voice. 'How is it to be done?'
'H'm.' He did not inform her, but fell into thought; and, for reasons of
her own, his lady was restless and uneasy.
The very next day Lady Mottisfont drove to Fernell Hall to pay the
neglected call upon her neighbour. The Countess was at home, and
received her graciously. But poor Lady Mottisfont's heart died within
her as soon as she set eyes on her new acquaintance. Such wonderful
beauty, of the fully-developed kind, had never confronted her before
inside the lines of a human face. She seemed to shine with every light
and grace that woman can possess. Her finished Continental manners, her
expanded mind, her ready wit, composed a study that made the other poor
lady sick; for she, and latterly Sir Ashley himself, were rather rural
in manners, and she felt abashed by new sounds and ideas from without.
She hardly knew three words in any language but her own, while this
divine creature, though truly English, had, apparently, whatever she
wanted in the Italian and French tongues to suit every impression; which
was considered a great improvement to speech in those days, and, indeed,
is by many considered as such in these.
'How very strange it was about the little girl!' the Contessa said to
Lady Mottisfont, in her gay tones. 'I mean, that the child the lawyer
recommended should, just before then, have been adopted by you, who are
now my neighbour. How is she getting on? I must come and see her.'
'Do you still want her?' asks Lady Mottisfont suspiciously.
'Oh, I should like to have her!'
'But you can't! She's mine!' said the other greedily.
A drooping manner appeared in the Countess from that moment.
Lady Mottisfont, too, was in a wretched mood all the way home that day.
The Countess was so charming in every way that she had charmed her
gentle ladyship; how should it be possible that she had failed to charm
Sir Ashley? Moreover, she had awakened a strange thought in Philippa's
mind. As soon as she reached home she rushed to the nursery, and there,
seizing Dorothy, frantically kissed her; then, holding her at arm's
length, she gazed with a piercing inquisitiveness into the girl's
lineaments. She sighed deeply, abandoned the wondering Dorothy, and
hastened away.
She had seen there not only her husband's traits, which she had often
beheld before, but others, of the shade, shape, and expression which
characterized those of her new neighbour.
Then this poor lady perceived the whole perturbing sequence of things,
and asked herself how she could have been such a walking piece of
simplicity as not to have thought of this before. But she did not stay
long upbraiding herself for her shortsightedness, so overwhelmed was she
with misery at the spectacle of herself as an intruder between these. To
be sure she could not have foreseen such a conjuncture; but that did not
lessen her grief. The woman who had been both her husband's bliss and
his backsliding had reappeared free when he was no longer so, and she
evidently was dying to claim her own in the person of Dorothy, who had
meanwhile grown to be, to Lady Mottisfont, almost the only source of
each day's happiness, supplying her with something to watch over,
inspiring her with the sense of maternity, and so largely reflecting her
husband's nature as almost to deceive her into the pleasant belief that
she reflected her own also.
If there was a single direction in which this devoted and virtuous lady
erred, it was in the direction of over-submissiveness. When all is said
and done, and the truth told, men seldom show much self-sacrifice in
their conduct as lords and masters to helpless women bound to them for
life, and perhaps (though I say it with all uncertainty) if she had
blazed up in his face like a furze-faggot, directly he came home, she
might have helped herself a little. But God knows whether this is a true
supposition; at any rate she did no such thing; and waited and prayed
that she might never do despite to him who, she was bound to admit, had
always been tender and courteous towards her; and hoped that little
Dorothy might never be taken away.
By degrees the two households became friendly, and very seldom did a
week pass without their seeing something of each other. Try as she
might, and dangerous as she assumed the acquaintanceship to be, Lady
Mottisfont could detect no fault or flaw in her new friend. It was
obvious that Dorothy had been the magnet which had drawn the Contessa
hither, and not Sir Ashley.
Such beauty, united with such understanding and brightness, Philippa had
never before known in one of her own sex, and she tried to think
(whether she succeeded I do not know) that she did not mind the
propinquity; since a woman so rich, so fair, and with such a command of
suitors, could not desire to wreck the happiness of so inoffensive a
person as herself.
The season drew on when it was the custom for families of distinction to
go off to The Bath, and Sir Ashley Mottisfont persuaded his wife to
accompany him thither with Dorothy. Everybody of any note was there this
year. From their own part of England came many that they knew; among the
rest, Lord and Lady Purbeck, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Sir John
Grebe, the Drenkhards, Lady Stourvale, the old Duke of Hamptonshire, the
Bishop of Melchester, the Dean of Exonbury, and other lesser lights of
Court, pulpit, and field. Thither also came the fair Contessa, whom, as
soon as Philippa saw how much she was sought after by younger men, she
could not conscientiously suspect of renewed designs upon Sir Ashley.
But the Countess had finer opportunities than ever with Dorothy; for
Lady Mottisfont was often indisposed, and even at other times could not
honestly hinder an intercourse which gave bright ideas to the child.
Dorothy welcomed her new acquaintance with a strange and instinctive
readiness that intimated the wonderful subtlety of the threads which
bind flesh and flesh together.
At last the crisis came: it was precipitated by an accident. Dorothy and
her nurse had gone out one day for an airing, leaving Lady Mottisfont
alone indoors. While she sat gloomily thinking that in all likelihood
the Countess would contrive to meet the child somewhere, and exchange a
few tender words with her, Sir Ashley Mottisfont rushed in and informed
her that Dorothy had just had the narrowest possible escape from death.
Some workmen were undermining a house to pull it down for rebuilding,
when, without warning, the front wall inclined slowly outwards for its
fall, the nurse and child passing beneath it at the same moment. The
fall was temporarily arrested by the scaffolding, while in the meantime
the Countess had witnessed their imminent danger from the other side of
the street. Springing across, she snatched Dorothy from under the wall,
and pulled the nurse after her, the middle of the way being barely
reached before they were enveloped in the dense dust of the descending
mass, though not a stone touched them.
'Where is Dorothy?' says the excited Lady Mottisfont.
'She has her-she won't let her go for a time-'
'Has her? But she's mine-she's mine!' cries Lady Mottisfont.
Then her quick and tender eyes perceived that her husband had almost
forgotten her intrusive existence in contemplating the oneness of
Dorothy's, the Countess's, and his own: he was in a dream of exaltation
which recognized nothing necessary to his well-being outside that welded
circle of three lives.
Dorothy was at length brought home; she was much fascinated by the
Countess, and saw nothing tragic, but rather all that was truly
delightful, in what had happened. In the evening, when the excitement
was over, and Dorothy was put to bed, Sir Ashley said, 'She has saved
Dorothy; and I have been asking myself what I can do for her as a slight
acknowledgment of her heroism. Surely we ought to let her have Dorothy
to bring up, since she still desires to do it? It would be so much to
Dorothy's advantage. We ought to look at it in that light, and not
selfishly.'
Philippa seized his hand. 'Ashley, Ashley! You don't mean it-that I must
lose my pretty darling-the only one I have?' She met his gaze with her
piteous mouth and wet eyes so painfully strained, that he turned away
his face.
The next morning, before Dorothy was awake, Lady Mottisfont stole to the
girl's bedside, and sat regarding her. When Dorothy opened her eyes, she
fixed them for a long time upon Philippa's features.
'Mamma-you are not so pretty as the Contessa, are you?' she said at
length.
'I am not, Dorothy.'
'Why are you not, mamma?'
'Dorothy-where would you rather live, always; with me, or with her?'
The little girl looked troubled. 'I am sorry, mamma; I don't mean to be
unkind; but I would rather live with her; I mean, if I might without
trouble, and you did not mind, and it could be just the same to us all,
you know.'
'Has she ever asked you the same question?'
'Never, mamma.'
There lay the sting of it: the Countess seemed the soul of honour and
fairness in this matter, test her as she might. That afternoon Lady
Mottisfont went to her husband with singular firmness upon her gentle
face.
'Ashley, we have been married nearly five years, and I have never
challenged you with what I know perfectly well-the parentage of
Dorothy.'
'Never have you, Philippa dear. Though I have seen that you knew from
the first.'
'From the first as to her father, not as to her mother. Her I did not
know for some time; but I know now.'
'Ah! you have discovered that too?' says he, without much surprise.
'Could I help it? Very well, that being so, I have thought it over; and
I have spoken to Dorothy. I agree to her going. I can do no less than
grant to the Countess her wish, after her kindness to my-your-her-
child.'
Then this self-sacrificing woman went hastily away that he might not see
that her heart was bursting; and thereupon, before they left the city,
Dorothy changed her mother and her home. After this, the Countess went
away to London for a while, taking Dorothy with her; and the baronet and
his wife returned to their lonely place at Deansleigh Park without her.
To renounce Dorothy in the bustle of Bath was a different thing from
living without her in this quiet home. One evening Sir Ashley missed his
wife from the supper-table; her manner had been so pensive and woeful of
late that he immediately became alarmed. He said nothing, but looked
about outside the house narrowly, and discerned her form in the park,
where recently she had been accustomed to walk alone. In its lower
levels there was a pool fed by a trickling brook, and he reached this
spot in time to hear a splash. Running forward, he dimly perceived her
light gown floating in the water. To pull her out was the work of a few
instants, and bearing her indoors to her room, he undressed her, nobody
in the house knowing of the incident but himself. She had not been
immersed long enough to lose her senses, and soon recovered. She owned
that she had done it because the Contessa had taken away her child, as
she persisted in calling Dorothy. Her husband spoke sternly to her, and
impressed upon her the weakness of giving way thus, when all that had
happened was for the best. She took his reproof meekly, and admitted her
fault.
After that she became more resigned, but he often caught her in tears
over some doll, shoe, or ribbon of Dorothy's, and decided to take her to
the North of England for change of air and scene. This was not without
its beneficial effect, corporeally no less than mentally, as later
events showed, but she still evinced a preternatural sharpness of ear at
the most casual mention of the child. When they reached home, the
Countess and Dorothy were still absent from the neighbouring Fernell
Hall, but in a month or two they returned, and a little later Sir Ashley
Mottisfont came into his wife's room full of news.
'Well-would you think it, Philippa! After being so desperate, too, about
getting Dorothy to be with her!'
'Ah-what?'
'Our neighbour, the Countess, is going to be married again! It is to
somebody she has met in London.'
Lady Mottisfont was much surprised; she had never dreamt of such an
event. The conflict for the possession of Dorothy's person had obscured
the possibility of it; yet what more likely, the Countess being still
under thirty, and so good-looking?
'What is of still more interest to us, or to you,' continued her
husband, 'is a kind offer she has made. She is willing that you should
have Dorothy back again. Seeing what a grief the loss of her has been to
you, she will try to do without her.'
'It is not for that; it is not to oblige me,' said Lady Mottisfont
quickly. 'One can see well enough what it is for!'
'Well, never mind; beggars mustn't be choosers. The reason or motive is
nothing to us, so that you obtain your desire.'
'I am not a beggar any longer,' said Lady Mottisfont, with proud
mystery.
'What do you mean by that?'
Lady Mottisfont hesitated. However, it was only too plain that she did
not now jump at a restitution of one for whom some months before she had
been breaking her heart.
The explanation of this change of mood became apparent some little time
farther on. Lady Mottisfont, after five years of wedded life, was
expecting to become a mother, and the aspect of many things was greatly
altered in her view. Among the more important changes was that of no
longer feeling Dorothy to be absolutely indispensable to her existence.
Meanwhile, in view of her coming marriage, the Countess decided to
abandon the remainder of her term at Fernell Hall, and return to her
pretty little house in town. But she could not do this quite so quickly
as she had expected, and half a year or more elapsed before she finally
quitted the neighbourhood, the interval being passed in alternations
between the country and London. Prior to her last departure she had an
interview with Sir Ashley Mottisfont, and it occurred three days after
his wife had presented him with a son and heir.
'I wanted to speak to you,' said the Countess, looking him luminously in
the face, 'about the dear foundling I have adopted temporarily, and
thought to have adopted permanently. But my marriage makes it too
risky!'
'I thought it might be that,' he answered, regarding her steadfastly
back again, and observing two tears come slowly into her eyes as she
heard her own voice describe Dorothy in those words.
'Don't criticize me,' she said hastily; and recovering herself, went on.
'If Lady Mottisfont could take her back again, as I suggested, it would
be better for me, and certainly no worse for Dorothy. To every one but
ourselves she is but a child I have taken a fancy to, and Lady
Mottisfont coveted her so much, and was very reluctant to let her go . .
. I am sure she will adopt her again?' she added anxiously.
'I will sound her afresh,' said the baronet. 'You leave Dorothy behind
for the present?'
'Yes; although I go away, I do not give up the house for another month.'
He did not speak to his wife about the proposal till some few days
after, when Lady Mottisfont had nearly recovered, and news of the
Countess's marriage in London had just reached them. He had no sooner
mentioned Dorothy's name than Lady Mottisfont showed symptoms of
disquietude.
'I have not acquired any dislike of Dorothy,' she said, 'but I feel that
there is one nearer to me now. Dorothy chose the alternative of going to
the Countess, you must remember, when I put it to her as between the
Countess and myself.'
'But, my dear Philippa, how can you argue thus about a child, and that
child our Dorothy?'
'Not ours,' said his wife, pointing to the cot. 'Ours is here.'
'What, then, Philippa,' he said, surprised, 'you won't have her back,
after nearly dying of grief at the loss of her?'
'I cannot argue, dear Ashley. I should prefer not to have the
responsibility of Dorothy again. Her place is filled now.'
Her husband sighed, and went out of the chamber. There had been a
previous arrangement that Dorothy should be brought to the house on a
visit that day, but instead of taking her up to his wife, he did not
inform Lady Mottisfont of the child's presence. He entertained her
himself as well as he could, and accompanied her into the park, where
they had a ramble together. Presently he sat down on the root of an elm
and took her upon his knee.
'Between this husband and this baby, little Dorothy, you who had two
homes are left out in the cold,' he said.
'Can't I go to London with my pretty mamma?' said Dorothy, perceiving
from his manner that there was a hitch somewhere.
'I am afraid not, my child. She only took you to live with her because
she was lonely, you know.'
'Then can't I stay at Deansleigh Park with my other mamma and you?'
'I am afraid that cannot be done either,' said he sadly. 'We have a baby
in the house now.' He closed the reply by stooping down and kissing her,
there being a tear in his eye.
'Then nobody wants me!' said Dorothy pathetically.
'Oh yes, somebody wants you,' he assured her. 'Where would you like to
live besides?'
Dorothy's experiences being rather limited, she mentioned the only other
place in the world that she was acquainted with, the cottage of the
villager who had taken care of her before Lady Mottisfont had removed
her to the Manor House.
'Yes; that's where you'll be best off and most independent,' he
answered. 'And I'll come to see you, my dear girl, and bring you pretty
things; and perhaps you'll be just as happy there.'
Nevertheless, when the change came, and Dorothy was handed over to the
kind cottage-woman, the poor child missed the luxurious roominess of
Fernell Hall and Deansleigh; and for a long time her little feet, which
had been accustomed to carpets and oak floors, suffered from the cold of
the stone flags on which it was now her lot to live and to play; while
chilblains came upon her fingers with washing at the pump. But thicker
shoes with nails in them somewhat remedied the cold feet, and her
complaints and tears on this and other scores diminished to silence as
she became inured anew to the hardships of the farm-cottage, and she
grew up robust if not handsome. She was never altogether lost sight of
by Sir Ashley, though she was deprived of the systematic education which
had been devised and begun for her by Lady Mottisfont, as well as by her
other mamma, the enthusiastic Countess. The latter soon had other
Dorothys to think of, who occupied her time and affection as fully as
Lady Mottisfont's were occupied by her precious boy. In the course of
time the doubly-desired and doubly-rejected Dorothy married, I believe,
a respectable road-contractor-the same, if I mistake not, who repaired
and improved the old highway running from Wintoncester south-westerly
through the New Forest-and in the heart of this worthy man of business
the poor girl found the nest which had been denied her by her own flesh
and blood of higher degree.
Several of the listeners wished to hear another story from the
sentimental member after this, but he said that he could recall nothing
else at the moment, and that it seemed to him as if his friend on the
other side of the fireplace had something to say from the look of his
face.
The member alluded to was a respectable churchwarden, with a sly chink
to one eyelid-possibly the result of an accident-and a regular attendant
at the Club meetings. He replied that his looks had been mainly caused
by his interest in the two ladies of the last story, apparently women of
strong motherly instincts, even though they were not genuinely staunch
in their tenderness. The tale had brought to his mind an instance of a
firmer affection of that sort on the paternal side, in a nature
otherwise culpable. As for telling the story, his manner was much
against him, he feared; but he would do his best, if they wished.
Here the President interposed with a suggestion that as it was getting
late in the afternoon it would be as well to adjourn to their respective
inns and lodgings for dinner, after which those who cared to do so could
return and resume these curious domestic traditions for the remainder of
the evening, which might otherwise prove irksome enough. The curator had
told him that the room was at their service. The churchwarden, who was
beginning to feel hungry himself, readily acquiesced, and the Club
separated for an hour and a half. Then the faithful ones began to drop
in again-among whom were not the President; neither came the rural dean,
nor the two curates, though the Colonel, and the man of family, cigars
in mouth, were good enough to return, having found their hotel dreary.
The museum had no regular means of illumination, and a solitary candle,
less powerful than the rays of the fire, was placed on the table; also
bottles and glasses, provided by some thoughtful member. The chink-eyed
churchwarden, now thoroughly primed, proceeded to relate in his own
terms what was in substance as follows, while many of his listeners
smoked.
DAME THE FIFTH-THE LADY ICENWAY By the Churchwarden
In the reign of His Most Excellent Majesty King George the Third,
Defender of the Faith and of the American Colonies, there lived in 'a
faire maner-place' (so Leland called it in his day, as I have been
told), in one o' the greenest bits of woodland between Bristol and the
city of Exonbury, a young lady who resembled some aforesaid ones in
having many talents and exceeding great beauty. With these gifts she
combined a somewhat imperious temper and arbitrary mind, though her
experience of the world was not actually so large as her conclusive
manner would have led the stranger to suppose. Being an orphan, she
resided with her uncle, who, though he was fairly considerate as to her
welfare, left her pretty much to herself.
Now it chanced that when this lovely young lady was about nineteen, she
(being a fearless horsewoman) was riding, with only a young lad as an
attendant, in one o' the woods near her uncle's house, and, in trotting
along, her horse stumbled over the root of a felled tree. She slipped to
the ground, not seriously hurt, and was assisted home by a gentleman who
came in view at the moment of her mishap. It turned out that this
gentleman, a total stranger to her, was on a visit at the house of a
neighbouring landowner. He was of Dutch extraction, and occasionally
came to England on business or pleasure from his plantations in Guiana,
on the north coast of South America, where he usually resided.
On this account he was naturally but little known in Wessex, and was but
a slight acquaintance of the gentleman at whose mansion he was a guest.
However, the friendship between him and the Heymeres-as the uncle and
niece were named-warmed and warmed by degrees, there being but few folk
o' note in the vicinity at that time, which made a newcomer, if he were
at all sociable and of good credit, always sure of a welcome. A tender
feeling (as it is called by the romantic) sprang up between the two
young people, which ripened into intimacy. Anderling, the foreign
gentleman, was of an amorous temperament; and, though he endeavoured to
conceal his feeling, it could be seen that Miss Maria Heymere had
impressed him rather more deeply than would be represented by a scratch
upon a stone. He seemed absolutely unable to free himself from her
fascination; and his inability to do so, much as he tried-evidently
thinking he had not the ghost of a chance with her-gave her the pleasure
of power; though she more than sympathized when she overheard him
heaving his deep drawn sighs-privately to himself, as he supposed.
After prolonging his visit by every conceivable excuse in his power, he
summoned courage, and offered her his hand and his heart. Being in no
way disinclined to him, though not so fervid as he, and her uncle making
no objection to the match, she consented to share his fate, for better
or otherwise, in the distant colony where, as he assured her, his rice,
and coffee, and maize, and timber, produced him ample means-a statement
which was borne out by his friend, her uncle's neighbour. In short, a
day for their marriage was fixed, earlier in the engagement than is
usual or desirable between comparative strangers, by reason of the
necessity he was under of returning to look after his properties.
The wedding took place, and Maria left her uncle's mansion with her
husband, going in the first place to London, and about a fortnight after
sailing with him across the great ocean for their distant home-which,
however, he assured her, should not be her home for long, it being his
intention to dispose of his interests in this part of the world as soon
as the war was over, and he could do so advantageously; when they could
come to Europe, and reside in some favourite capital.
As they advanced on the voyage she observed that he grew more and more
constrained; and, by the time they had crossed the Line, he was quite
depressed, just as he had been before proposing to her. A day or two
before landing at Paramaribo, he embraced her in a very tearful and
passionate manner, and said he wished to make a confession. It had been
his misfortune, he said, to marry at Quebec in early life a woman whose
reputation proved to be in every way bad and scandalous. The discovery
had nearly killed him; but he had ultimately separated from her, and had
never seen her since. He had hoped and prayed she might be dead; but
recently in London, when they were starting on this journey, he had
discovered that she was still alive. At first he had decided to keep
this dark intelligence from her beloved ears; but he had felt that he
could not do it. All he hoped was that such a condition of things would
make no difference in her feelings for him, as it need make no
difference in the course of their lives.
Thereupon the spirit of this proud and masterful lady showed itself in
violent turmoil, like the raging of a nor'-west thunderstorm-as well it
might, God knows. But she was of too stout a nature to be broken down by
his revelation, as many ladies of my acquaintance would have been-so far
from home, and right under the Line in the blaze o' the sun. Of the two,
indeed, he was the more wretched and shattered in spirit, for he loved
her deeply, and (there being a foreign twist in his make) had been
tempted to this crime by her exceeding beauty, against which he had
struggled day and night, till he had no further resistance left in him.
It was she who came first to a decision as to what should be done-
whether a wise one I do not attempt to judge.
'I put it to you,' says she, when many useless self-reproaches and
protestations on his part had been uttered-'I put it to you whether, if
any manliness is left in you, you ought not to do exactly what I
consider the best thing for me in this strait to which you have reduced
me?'
He promised to do anything in the whole world. She then requested him to
allow her to return, and announce him as having died of malignant ague
immediately on their arrival at Paramaribo; that she should consequently
appear in weeds as his widow in her native place; and that he would
never molest her, or come again to that part of the world during the
whole course of his life-a good reason for which would be that the legal
consequences might be serious.
He readily acquiesced in this, as he would have acquiesced in anything
for the restitution of one he adored so deeply-even to the yielding of
life itself. To put her in an immediate state of independence he gave
her, in bonds and jewels, a considerable sum (for his worldly means had
been in no way exaggerated); and by the next ship she sailed again for
England, having travelled no farther than to Paramaribo. At parting he
declared it to be his intention to turn all his landed possessions into
personal property, and to be a wanderer on the face of the earth in
remorse for his conduct towards her.
Maria duly arrived in England, and immediately on landing apprised her
uncle of her return, duly appearing at his house in the garb of a widow.
She was commiserated by all the neighbours as soon as her story was
told; but only to her uncle did she reveal the real state of affairs,
and her reason for concealing it. For, though she had been innocent of
wrong, Maria's pride was of that grain which could not brook the least
appearance of having been fooled, or deluded, or nonplussed in her
worldly aims.
For some time she led a quiet life with her relative, and in due course
a son was born to her. She was much respected for her dignity and
reserve, and the portable wealth which her temporary husband had made
over to her enabled her to live in comfort in a wing of the mansion,
without assistance from her uncle at all. But, knowing that she was not
what she seemed to be, her life was an uneasy one, and she often said to
herself: 'Suppose his continued existence should become known here, and
people should discern the pride of my motive in hiding my humiliation?
It would be worse than if I had been frank at first, which I should have
been but for the credit of this child.'
Such grave reflections as these occupied her with increasing force; and
during their continuance she encountered a worthy man of noble birth and
title-Lord Icenway his name-whose seat was beyond Wintoncester, quite at
t'other end of Wessex. He being anxious to pay his addresses to her,
Maria willingly accepted them, though he was a plain man, older than
herself; for she discerned in a re-marriage a method of fortifying her
position against mortifying discoveries. In a few months their union
took place, and Maria lifted her head as Lady Icenway, and left with her
husband and child for his home as aforesaid, where she was quite
unknown.
A justification, or a condemnation, of her step (according as you view
it) was seen when, not long after, she received a note from her former
husband Anderling. It was a hasty and tender epistle, and perhaps it was
fortunate that it arrived during the temporary absence of Lord Icenway.
His worthless wife, said Anderling, had just died in Quebec; he had gone
there to ascertain particulars, and had seen the unfortunate woman
buried. He now was hastening to England to repair the wrong he had done
his Maria. He asked her to meet him at Southampton, his port of arrival;
which she need be in no fear of doing, as he had changed his name, and
was almost absolutely unknown in Europe. He would remarry her
immediately, and live with her in any part of the Continent, as they had
originally intended, where, for the great love he still bore her, he
would devote himself to her service for the rest of his days.
Lady Icenway, self-possessed as it was her nature to be, was yet much
disturbed at this news, and set off to meet him, unattended, as soon as
she heard that the ship was in sight. As soon as they stood face to face
she found that she still possessed all her old influence over him,
though his power to fascinate her had quite departed. In his sorrow for
his offence against her, he had become a man of strict religious habits,
self-denying as a lenten saint, though formerly he had been a free and
joyous liver. Having first got him to swear to make her any amends she
should choose (which he was imagining must be by a true marriage), she
informed him that she had already wedded another husband, an excellent
man of ancient family and possessions, who had given her a title, in
which she much rejoiced.
At this the countenance of the poor foreign gentleman became cold as
clay, and his heart withered within him; for as it had been her beauty
and bearing which had led him to sin to obtain her, so, now that her
beauty was in fuller bloom, and her manner more haughty by her success,
did he feel her fascination to be almost more than he could bear.
Nevertheless, having sworn his word, he undertook to obey her commands,
which were simply a renewal of her old request-that he would depart for
some foreign country, and never reveal his existence to her friends, or
husband, or any person in England; never trouble her more, seeing how
great a harm it would do her in the high position which she at present
occupied.
He bowed his head. 'And the child-our child?' he said.
'He is well,' says she. 'Quite well.'
With this the unhappy gentleman departed, much sadder in his heart than
on his voyage to England; for it had never occurred to him that a woman
who rated her honour so highly as Maria had done, and who was the mother
of a child of his, would have adopted such means as this for the
restoration of that honour, and at so surprisingly early a date. He had
fully calculated on making her his wife in law and truth, and of living
in cheerful unity with her and his offspring, for whom he felt a deep
and growing tenderness, though he had never once seen the child.
The lady returned to her mansion beyond Wintoncester, and told nothing
of the interview to her noble husband, who had fortunately gone that day
to do a little cocking and ratting out by Weydon Priors, and knew
nothing of her movements. She had dismissed her poor Anderling
peremptorily enough; yet she would often after this look in the face of
the child of her so-called widowhood, to discover what and how many
traits of his father were to be seen in his lineaments. For this she had
ample opportunity during the following autumn and winter months, her
husband being a matter-of-fact nobleman, who spent the greater part of
his time in field-sports and agriculture.
One winter day, when he had started for a meet of the hounds a long way
from the house-it being his custom to hunt three or four times a week at
this season of the year-she had walked into the sunshine upon the
terrace before the windows, where there fell at her feet some little
white object that had come over a boundary wall hard by. It proved to be
a tiny note wrapped round a stone. Lady Icenway opened it and read it,
and immediately (no doubt, with a stern fixture of her queenly
countenance) walked hastily along the terrace, and through the door into
the shrubbery, whence the note had come. The man who had first married
her stood under the bushes before her. It was plain from his appearance
that something had gone wrong with him.
'You notice a change in me, my best-beloved,' he said. 'Yes, Maria-I
have lost all the wealth I once possessed-mainly by reckless gambling in
the Continental hells to which you banished me. But one thing in the
world remains to me-the child-and it is for him that I have intruded
here. Don't fear me, darling! I shall not inconvenience you long; I love
you too well! But I think of the boy day and night-I cannot help it-I
cannot keep my feeling for him down; and I long to see him, and speak a
word to him once in my lifetime!'
'But your oath?' says she. 'You promised never to reveal by word or
sign-'
'I will reveal nothing. Only let me see the child. I know what I have
sworn to you, cruel mistress, and I respect my oath. Otherwise I might
have seen him by some subterfuge. But I preferred the frank course of
asking your permission.'
She demurred, with the haughty severity which had grown part of her
character, and which her elevation to the rank of a peeress had rather
intensified than diminished. She said that she would consider, and would
give him an answer the day after the next, at the same hour and place,
when her husband would again be absent with his pack of hounds.
The gentleman waited patiently. Lady Icenway, who had now no conscious
love left for him, well considered the matter, and felt that it would be
advisable not to push to extremes a man of so passionate a heart. On the
day and hour she met him as she had promised to do.
'You shall see him,' she said, 'of course on the strict condition that
you do not reveal yourself, and hence, though you see him, he must not
see you, or your manner might betray you and me. I will lull him into a
nap in the afternoon, and then I will come to you here, and fetch you
indoors by a private way.'
The unfortunate father, whose misdemeanour had recoiled upon his own
head in a way he could not have foreseen, promised to adhere to her
instructions, and waited in the shrubberies till the moment when she
should call him. This she duly did about three o'clock that day, leading
him in by a garden door, and upstairs to the nursery where the child
lay. He was in his little cot, breathing calmly, his arm thrown over his
head, and his silken curls crushed into the pillow. His father, now
almost to be pitied, bent over him, and a tear from his eye wetted the
coverlet.
She held up a warning finger as he lowered his mouth to the lips of the
boy.
'But oh, why not?' implored he.
'Very well, then,' said she, relenting. 'But as gently as possible.'
He kissed the child without waking him, turned, gave him a last look,
and followed her out of the chamber, when she conducted him off the
premises by the way he had come.
But this remedy for his sadness of heart at being a stranger to his own
son, had the effect of intensifying the malady; for while originally,
not knowing or having ever seen the boy, he had loved him vaguely and
imaginatively only, he now became attached to him in flesh and bone, as
any parent might; and the feeling that he could at best only see his
child at the rarest and most cursory moments, if at all, drove him into
a state of distraction which threatened to overthrow his promise to the
boy's mother to keep out of his sight.
But such was his chivalrous respect for Lady Icenway, and his regret at
having ever deceived her, that he schooled his poor heart into
submission. Owing to his loneliness, all the fervour of which he was
capable-and that was much-flowed now in the channel of parental and
marital love-for a child who did not know him, and a woman who had
ceased to love him.
At length this singular punishment became such a torture to the poor
foreigner that he resolved to lessen it at all hazards, compatible with
punctilious care for the name of the lady his former wife, to whom his
attachment seemed to increase in proportion to her punitive treatment of
him. At one time of his life he had taken great interest in tulip-
culture, as well as gardening in general; and since the ruin of his
fortunes, and his arrival in England, he had made of his knowledge a
precarious income in the hot-houses of nurserymen and others. With the
new idea in his head he applied himself zealously to the business, till
he acquired in a few months great skill in horticulture. Waiting till
the noble lord, his lady's husband, had room for an under-gardener of a
general sort, he offered himself for the place, and was engaged
immediately by reason of his civility and intelligence, before Lady
Icenway knew anything of the matter. Much therefore did he surprise her
when she found him in the conservatories of her mansion a week or two
after his arrival. The punishment of instant dismissal, with which at
first she haughtily threatened him, my lady thought fit, on reflection,
not to enforce. While he served her thus she knew he would not harm her
by a word, while, if he were expelled, chagrin might induce him to
reveal in a moment of exasperation what kind treatment would assist him
to conceal.
So he was allowed to remain on the premises, and had for his residence a
little cottage by the garden-wall which had been the domicile of some of
his predecessors in the same occupation. Here he lived absolutely alone,
and spent much of his leisure in reading, but the greater part in
watching the windows and lawns of his lady's house for glimpses of the
form of the child. It was for that child's sake that he abandoned the
tenets of the Roman Catholic Church in which he had been reared, and
became the most regular attendant at the services in the parish place of
worship hard by, where, sitting behind the pew of my lady, my lord, and
his stepson, the gardener could pensively study the traits and movements
of the youngster at only a few feet distance, without suspicion or
hindrance.
He filled his post for more than two years with a pleasure to himself
which, though mournful, was soothing, his lady never forgiving him, or
allowing him to be anything more than 'the gardener' to her child,
though once or twice the boy said, 'That gardener's eyes are so sad! Why
does he look so sadly at me?' He sunned himself in her scornfulness as
if it were love, and his ears drank in her curt monosyllables as though
they were rhapsodies of endearment. Strangely enough, the coldness with
which she treated her foreigner began to be the conduct of Lord Icenway
towards herself. It was a matter of great anxiety to him that there
should be a lineal successor to the title, yet no sign of that successor
appeared. One day he complained to her quite roughly of his fate. 'All
will go to that dolt of a cousin!' he cried. 'I'd sooner see my name and
place at the bottom of the sea!'
The lady soothed him and fell into thought, and did not recriminate. But
one day, soon after, she went down to the cottage of the gardener to
inquire how he was getting on, for he had been ailing of late, though,
as was supposed, not seriously. Though she often visited the poor, she
had never entered her under-gardener's home before, and was much
surprised-even grieved and dismayed-to find that he was too ill to rise
from his bed. She went back to her mansion and returned with some
delicate soup, that she might have a reason for seeing him.
His condition was so feeble and alarming, and his face so thin, that it
quite shocked her softening heart, and gazing upon him she said, 'You
must get well-you must! I have been hard with you-I know it. I will not
be so again.'
The sick and dying man-for he was dying indeed-took her hand and pressed
it to his lips. 'Too late, my darling, too late!' he murmured.
'But you must not die! Oh, you must not!' she said. And on an impulse
she bent down and whispered some words to him, blushing as she had
blushed in her maiden days.
He replied by a faint wan smile. 'Time was! . . . but that's past!' he
said, 'I must die!'
And die he did, a few days later, as the sun was going down behind the
garden-wall. Her harshness seemed to come trebly home to her then, and
she remorsefully exclaimed against herself in secret and alone. Her one
desire now was to erect some tribute to his memory, without its being
recognized as her handiwork. In the completion of this scheme there
arrived a few months later a handsome stained-glass window for the
church; and when it was unpacked and in course of erection Lord Icenway
strolled into the building with his wife.
'"Erected to his memory by his grieving widow,"' he said, reading the
legend on the glass. 'I didn't know that he had a wife; I've never seen
her.'
'Oh yes, you must have, Icenway; only you forget,' replied his lady
blandly. 'But she didn't live with him, and was seldom seen visiting
him, because there were differences between them; which, as is usually
the case, makes her all the more sorry now.'
'And go ruining herself by this expensive ruby-and-azure glass-design.'
'She is not poor, they say.'
As Lord Icenway grew older he became crustier and crustier, and whenever
he set eyes on his wife's boy by her other husband he would burst out
morosely, saying,
''Tis a very odd thing, my lady, that you could oblige your first
husband, and couldn't oblige me.'
'Ah! if I had only thought of it sooner!' she murmured.
'What?' said he.
'Nothing, dearest,' replied Lady Icenway.
The Colonel was the first to comment upon the Churchwarden's tale, by
saying that the fate of the poor fellow was rather a hard one.
The gentleman-tradesman could not see that his fate was at all too hard
for him. He was legally nothing to her, and he had served her
shamefully. If he had been really her husband it would have stood
differently.
The Bookworm remarked that Lord Icenway seemed to have been a very
unsuspicious man, with which view a fat member with a crimson face
agreed. It was true his wife was a very close-mouthed personage, which
made a difference. If she had spoken out recklessly her lord might have
been suspicious enough, as in the case of that lady who lived at
Stapleford Park in their great-grandfathers' time. Though there, to be
sure, considerations arose which made her husband view matters with much
philosophy.
A few of the members doubted the possibility of this.
The crimson man, who was a retired maltster of comfortable means,
ventru, and short in stature, cleared his throat, blew off his
superfluous breath, and proceeded to give the instance before alluded to
of such possibility, first apologizing for his heroine's lack of a
title, it never having been his good fortune to know many of the
nobility. To his style of narrative the following is only an
approximation.
DAME THE SIXTH-SQUIRE PETRICK'S LADY By the Crimson Maltster
Folk who are at all acquainted with the traditions of Stapleford Park
will not need to be told that in the middle of the last century it was
owned by that trump of mortgagees, Timothy Petrick, whose skill in
gaining possession of fair estates by granting sums of money on their
title-deeds has seldom if ever been equalled in our part of England.
Timothy was a lawyer by profession, and agent to several noblemen, by
which means his special line of business became opened to him by a sort
of revelation. It is said that a relative of his, a very deep thinker,
who afterwards had the misfortune to be transported for life for
mistaken notions on the signing of a will, taught him considerable legal
lore, which he creditably resolved never to throw away for the benefit
of other people, but to reserve it entirely for his own.
However, I have nothing in particular to say about his early and active
days, but rather of the time when, an old man, he had become the owner
of vast estates by the means I have signified-among them the great manor
of Stapleford, on which he lived, in the splendid old mansion now pulled
down; likewise estates at Marlott, estates near Sherton Abbas, nearly
all the borough of Millpool, and many properties near Ivell. Indeed, I
can't call to mind half his landed possessions, and I don't know that it
matters much at this time of day, seeing that he's been dead and gone
many years. It is said that when he bought an estate he would not decide
to pay the price till he had walked over every single acre with his own
two feet, and prodded the soil at every point with his own spud, to test
its quality, which, if we regard the extent of his properties, must have
been a stiff business for him.
At the time I am speaking of he was a man over eighty, and his son was
dead; but he had two grandsons, the eldest of whom, his namesake, was
married, and was shortly expecting issue. Just then the grandfather was
taken ill, for death, as it seemed, considering his age. By his will the
old man had created an entail (as I believe the lawyers call it),
devising the whole of the estates to his elder grandson and his issue
male, failing which, to his younger grandson and his issue male, failing
which, to remoter relatives, who need not be mentioned now.
While old Timothy Petrick was lying ill, his elder grandson's wife,
Annetta, gave birth to her expected child, who, as fortune would have
it, was a son. Timothy, her husband, through sprung of a scheming
family, was no great schemer himself; he was the single one of the
Petricks then living whose heart had ever been greatly moved by
sentiments which did not run in the groove of ambition; and on this
account he had not married well, as the saying is; his wife having been
the daughter of a family of no better beginnings than his own; that is
to say, her father was a country townsman of the professional class. But
she was a very pretty woman, by all accounts, and her husband had seen,
courted, and married her in a high tide of infatuation, after a very
short acquaintance, and with very little knowledge of her heart's
history. He had never found reason to regret his choice as yet, and his
anxiety for her recovery was great.
She was supposed to be out of danger, and herself and the child
progressing well, when there was a change for the worse, and she sank so
rapidly that she was soon given over. When she felt that she was about
to leave him, Annetta sent for her husband, and, on his speedy entry and
assurance that they were alone, she made him solemnly vow to give the
child every care in any circumstances that might arise, if it should
please Heaven to take her. This, of course, he readily promised. Then,
after some hesitation, she told him that she could not die with a
falsehood upon her soul, and dire deceit in her life; she must make a
terrible confession to him before her lips were sealed for ever. She
thereupon related an incident concerning the baby's parentage, which was
not as he supposed.
Timothy Petrick, though a quick-feeling man, was not of a sort to show
nerves outwardly; and he bore himself as heroically as he possibly could
do in this trying moment of his life. That same night his wife died; and
while she lay dead, and before her funeral, he hastened to the bedside
of his sick grandfather, and revealed to him all that had happened: the
baby's birth, his wife's confession, and her death, beseeching the aged
man, as he loved him, to bestir himself now, at the eleventh hour, and
alter his will so as to dish the intruder. Old Timothy, seeing matters
in the same light as his grandson, required no urging against allowing
anything to stand in the way of legitimate inheritance; he executed
another will, limiting the entail to Timothy his grandson, for life, and
his male heirs thereafter to be born; after them to his other grandson
Edward, and Edward's heirs. Thus the newly- born infant, who had been
the centre of so many hopes, was cut off and scorned as none of the
elect.
The old mortgagee lived but a short time after this, the excitement of
the discovery having told upon him considerably, and he was gathered to
his fathers like the most charitable man in his neighbourhood. Both wife
and grandparent being buried, Timothy settled down to his usual life as
well as he was able, mentally satisfied that he had by prompt action
defeated the consequences of such dire domestic treachery as had been
shown towards him, and resolving to marry a second time as soon as he
could satisfy himself in the choice of a wife.
But men do not always know themselves. The embittered state of Timothy
Petrick's mind bred in him by degrees such a hatred and mistrust of
womankind that, though several specimens of high attractiveness came
under his eyes, he could not bring himself to the point of proposing
marriage. He dreaded to take up the position of husband a second time,
discerning a trap in every petticoat, and a Slough of Despond in
possible heirs. 'What has happened once, when all seemed so fair, may
happen again,' he said to himself. 'I'll risk my name no more.' So he
abstained from marriage, and overcame his wish for a lineal descendant
to follow him in the ownership of Stapleford.
Timothy had scarcely noticed the unfortunate child that his wife had
borne, after arranging for a meagre fulfilment of his promise to her to
take care of the boy, by having him brought up in his house.
Occasionally, remembering this promise, he went and glanced at the
child, saw that he was doing well, gave a few special directions, and
again went his solitary way. Thus he and the child lived on in the
Stapleford mansion-house till two or three years had passed by. One day
he was walking in the garden, and by some accident left his snuff-box on
a bench. When he came back to find it he saw the little boy standing
there; he had escaped his nurse, and was making a plaything of the box,
in spite of the convulsive sneezings which the game brought in its
train. Then the man with the encrusted heart became interested in the
little fellow's persistence in his play under such discomforts; he
looked in the child's face, saw there his wife's countenance, though he
did not see his own, and fell into thought on the piteousness of
childhood-particularly of despised and rejected childhood, like this
before him.
From that hour, try as he would to counteract the feeling, the human
necessity to love something or other got the better of what he had
called his wisdom, and shaped itself in a tender anxiety for the
youngster Rupert. This name had been given him by his dying mother when,
at her request, the child was baptized in her chamber, lest he should
not survive for public baptism; and her husband had never thought of it
as a name of any significance till, about this time, he learnt by
accident that it was the name of the young Marquis of Christminster, son
of the Duke of Southwesterland, for whom Annetta had cherished warm
feelings before her marriage. Recollecting some wandering phrases in his
wife's last words, which he had not understood at the time, he perceived
at last that this was the person to whom she had alluded when affording
him a clue to little Rupert's history.
He would sit in silence for hours with the child, being no great speaker
at the best of times; but the boy, on his part, was too ready with his
tongue for any break in discourse to arise because Timothy Petrick had
nothing to say. After idling away his mornings in this manner, Petrick
would go to his own room and swear in long loud whispers, and walk up
and down, calling himself the most ridiculous dolt that ever lived, and
declaring that he would never go near the little fellow again; to which
resolve he would adhere for the space perhaps of a day. Such cases are
happily not new to human nature, but there never was a case in which a
man more completely befocled his former self than in this.
As the child grew up, Timothy's attachment to him grew deeper, till
Rupert became almost the sole object for which he lived. There had been
enough of the family ambition latent in him for Timothy Petrick to feel
a little envy when, some time before this date, his brother Edward had
been accepted by the Honourable Harriet Mountclere, daughter of the
second Viscount of that name and title; but having discovered, as I have
before stated, the paternity of his boy Rupert to lurk in even a higher
stratum of society, those envious feelings speedily dispersed. Indeed,
the more he reflected thereon, after his brother's aristocratic
marriage, the more content did he become. His late wife took softer
outline in his memory, as he thought of the lofty taste she had
displayed, though only a plain burgher's daughter, and the justification
for his weakness in loving the child-the justification that he had
longed for-was afforded now in the knowledge that the boy was by nature,
if not by name, a representative of one of the noblest houses in
England.
'She was a woman of grand instincts, after all,' he said to himself
proudly. 'To fix her choice upon the immediate successor in that ducal
line-it was finely conceived! Had he been of low blood like myself or my
relations she would scarce have deserved the harsh measure that I have
dealt out to her and her offspring. How much less, then, when such
grovelling tastes were farthest from her soul! The man Annetta loved was
noble, and my boy is noble in spite of me.'
The afterclap was inevitable, and it soon came. 'So far,' he reasoned,
'from cutting off this child from inheritance of my estates, as I have
done, I should have rejoiced in the possession of him! He is of pure
stock on one side at least, whilst in the ordinary run of affairs he
would have been a commoner to the bone.'
Being a man, whatever his faults, of good old beliefs in the divinity of
kings and those about 'em, the more he overhauled the case in this
light, the more strongly did his poor wife's conduct in improving the
blood and breed of the Petrick family win his heart. He considered what
ugly, idle, hard-drinking scamps many of his own relations had been; the
miserable scriveners, usurers, and pawnbrokers that he had numbered
among his forefathers, and the probability that some of their bad
qualities would have come out in a merely corporeal child, to give him
sorrow in his old age, turn his black hairs gray, his gray hairs white,
cut down every stick of timber, and Heaven knows what all, had he not,
like a skilful gardener, minded his grafting and changed the sort; till
at length this right-minded man fell down on his knees every night and
morning and thanked God that he was not as other meanly descended
fathers in such matters.
It was in the peculiar disposition of the Petrick family that the
satisfaction which ultimately settled in Timothy's breast found
nourishment. The Petricks had adored the nobility, and plucked them at
the same time. That excellent man Izaak Walton's feelings about fish
were much akin to those of old Timothy Petrick, and of his descendants
in a lesser degree, concerning the landed aristocracy. To torture and to
love simultaneously is a proceeding strange to reason, but possible to
practice, as these instances show.
Hence, when Timothy's brother Edward said slightingly one day that
Timothy's son was well enough, but that he had nothing but shops and
offices in his backward perspective, while his own children, should he
have any, would be far different, in possessing such a mother as the
Honourable Harriet, Timothy felt a bound of triumph within him at the
power he possessed of contradicting that statement if he chose.
So much was he interested in his boy in this new aspect that he now
began to read up chronicles of the illustrious house ennobled as the
Dukes of Southwesterland, from their very beginning in the glories of
the Restoration of the blessed Charles till the year of his own time. He
mentally noted their gifts from royalty, grants of lands, purchases,
intermarriages, plantings and buildings; more particularly their
political and military achievements, which had been great, and their
performances in art and letters, which had been by no means
contemptible. He studied prints of the portraits of that family, and
then, like a chemist watching a crystallization, began to examine young
Rupert's face for the unfolding of those historic curves and shades that
the painters Vandyke and Lely had perpetuated on canvas.
When the boy reached the most fascinating age of childhood, and his
shouts of laughter ran through Stapleford House from end to end, the
remorse that oppressed Timothy Petrick knew no bounds. Of all people in
the world this Rupert was the one on whom he could have wished the
estates to devolve; yet Rupert, by Timothy's own desperate strategy at
the time of his birth, had been ousted from all inheritance of them;
and, since he did not mean to remarry, the manors would pass to his
brother and his brother's children, who would be nothing to him, whose
boasted pedigree on one side would be nothing to his Rupert's.
Had he only left the first will of his grandfather alone!
His mind ran on the wills continually, both of which were in existence,
and the first, the cancelled one, in his own possession. Night after
night, when the servants were all abed, and the click of safety locks
sounded as loud as a crash, he looked at that first will, and wished it
had been the second and not the first.
The crisis came at last. One night, after having enjoyed the boy's
company for hours, he could no longer bear that his beloved Rupert
should be dispossessed, and he committed the felonious deed of altering
the date of the earlier will to a fortnight later, which made its
execution appear subsequent to the date of the second will already
proved. He then boldly propounded the first will as the second.
His brother Edward submitted to what appeared to be not only
incontestible fact, but a far more likely disposition of old Timothy's
property; for, like many others, he had been much surprised at the
limitations defined in the other will, having no clue to their cause. He
joined his brother Timothy in setting aside the hitherto accepted
document, and matters went on in their usual course, there being no
dispositions in the substituted will differing from those in the other,
except such as related to a future which had not yet arrived.
The years moved on. Rupert had not yet revealed the anxiously expected
historic lineaments which should foreshadow the political abilities of
the ducal family aforesaid when it happened on a certain day that
Timothy Petrick made the acquaintance of a well-known physician of
Budmouth, who had been the medical adviser and friend of the late Mrs.
Petrick's family for many years; though after Annetta's marriage, and
consequent removal to Stapleford, he had seen no more of her, the
neighbouring practitioner who attended the Petricks having then become
her doctor as a matter of course. Timothy was impressed by the insight
and knowledge disclosed in the conversation of the Budmouth physician,
and the acquaintance ripening to intimacy, the physician alluded to a
form of hallucination to which Annetta's mother and grandmother had been
subject-that of believing in certain dreams as realities. He delicately
inquired if Timothy had ever noticed anything of the sort in his wife
during her lifetime; he, the physician, had fancied that he discerned
germs of the same peculiarity in Annetta when he attended her in her
girlhood. One explanation begat another, till the dumbfoundered Timothy
Petrick was persuaded in his own mind that Annetta's confession to him
had been based on a delusion.
'You look down in the mouth?' said the doctor, pausing.
'A bit unmanned. 'Tis unexpected-like,' sighed Timothy.
But he could hardly believe it possible; and, thinking it best to be
frank with the doctor, told him the whole story which, till now, he had
never related to living man, save his dying grandfather. To his
surprise, the physician informed him that such a form of delusion was
precisely what he would have expected from Annetta's antecedents at such
a physical crisis in her life.
Petrick prosecuted his inquiries elsewhere; and the upshot of his
labours was, briefly, that a comparison of dates and places showed
irrefutably that his poor wife's assertion could not possibly have
foundation in fact. The young Marquis of her tender passion-a highly
moral and bright-minded nobleman-had gone abroad the year before
Annetta's marriage, and had not returned till after her death. The young
girl's love for him had been a delicate ideal dream-no more.
Timothy went home, and the boy ran out to meet him; whereupon a
strangely dismal feeling of discontent took possession of his soul.
After all, then, there was nothing but plebeian blood in the veins of
the heir to his name and estates; he was not to be succeeded by a noble-
natured line. To be sure, Rupert was his son; but that glory and halo he
believed him to have inherited from the ages, outshining that of his
brother's children, had departed from Rupert's brow for ever; he could
no longer read history in the boy's face, and centuries of domination in
his eyes.
His manner towards his son grew colder and colder from that day forward;
and it was with bitterness of heart that he discerned the characteristic
features of the Petricks unfolding themselves by degrees. Instead of the
elegant knife-edged nose, so typical of the Dukes of Southwesterland,
there began to appear on his face the broad nostril and hollow bridge of
his grandfather Timothy. No illustrious line of politicians was promised
a continuator in that graying blue eye, for it was acquiring the
expression of the orb of a particularly objectionable cousin of his own;
and, instead of the mouth-curves which had thrilled Parliamentary
audiences in speeches now bound in calf in every well- ordered library,
there was the bull-lip of that very uncle of his who had had the
misfortune with the signature of a gentleman's will, and had been
transported for life in consequence.
To think how he himself, too, had sinned in this same matter of a will
for this mere fleshly reproduction of a wretched old uncle whose very
name he wished to forget! The boy's Christian name, even, was an
imposture and an irony, for it implied hereditary force and brilliancy
to which he plainly would never attain. The consolation of real sonship
was always left him certainly; but he could not help groaning to
himself, 'Why cannot a son be one's own and somebody else's likewise!'
The Marquis was shortly afterwards in the neighbourhood of Stapleford,
and Timothy Petrick met him, and eyed his noble countenance admiringly.
The next day, when Petrick was in his study, somebody knocked at the
door.
'Who's there?'
'Rupert.'
'I'll Rupert thee, you young impostor! Say, only a poor commonplace
Petrick!' his father grunted. 'Why didn't you have a voice like the
Marquis's I saw yesterday?' he continued, as the lad came in. 'Why
haven't you his looks, and a way of commanding, as if you'd done it for
centuries-hey?'
'Why? How can you expect it, father, when I'm not related to him?'
'Ugh! Then you ought to be!' growled his father.
As the narrator paused, the surgeon, the Colonel, the historian, the
Spark, and others exclaimed that such subtle and instructive
psychological studies as this (now that psychology was so much in
demand) were precisely the tales they desired, as members of a
scientific club, and begged the master-maltster to tell another curious
mental delusion.
The maltster shook his head, and feared he was not genteel enough to
tell another story with a sufficiently moral tone in it to suit the
club; he would prefer to leave the next to a better man.
The Colonel had fallen into reflection. True it was, he observed, that
the more dreamy and impulsive nature of woman engendered within her
erratic fancies, which often started her on strange tracks, only to
abandon them in sharp revulsion at the dictates of her common sense-
sometimes with ludicrous effect. Events which had caused a lady's action
to set in a particular direction might continue to enforce the same line
of conduct, while she, like a mangle, would start on a sudden in a
contrary course, and end where she began.
The Vice-President laughed, and applauded the Colonel, adding that there
surely lurked a story somewhere behind that sentiment, if he were not
much mistaken.
The Colonel fixed his face to a good narrative pose, and went on without
further preamble.
DAME THE SEVENTH-ANNA, LADY BAXBY By the Colonel
It was in the time of the great Civil War-if I should not rather, as a
loyal subject, call it, with Clarendon, the Great Rebellion. It was, I
say, at that unhappy period of our history, that towards the autumn of a
particular year, the Parliament forces sat down before Sherton Castle
with over seven thousand foot and four pieces of cannon. The Castle, as
we all know, was in that century owned and occupied by one of the Earls
of Severn, and garrisoned for his assistance by a certain noble Marquis
who commanded the King's troops in these parts. The said Earl, as well
as the young Lord Baxby, his eldest son, were away from home just now,
raising forces for the King elsewhere. But there were present in the
Castle, when the besiegers arrived before it, the son's fair wife Lady
Baxby, and her servants, together with some friends and near relatives
of her husband; and the defence was so good and well-considered that
they anticipated no great danger.
The Parliamentary forces were also commanded by a noble lord-for the
nobility were by no means, at this stage of the war, all on the King's
side-and it had been observed during his approach in the night-time, and
in the morning when the reconnoitring took place, that he appeared sad
and much depressed. The truth was that, by a strange freak of destiny,
it had come to pass that the stronghold he was set to reduce was the
home of his own sister, whom he had tenderly loved during her
maidenhood, and whom he loved now, in spite of the estrangement which
had resulted from hostilities with her husband's family. He believed,
too, that, notwithstanding this cruel division, she still was sincerely
attached to him.
His hesitation to point his ordnance at the walls was inexplicable to
those who were strangers to his family history. He remained in the field
on the north side of the Castle (called by his name to this day because
of his encampment there) till it occurred to him to send a messenger to
his sister Anna with a letter, in which he earnestly requested her, as
she valued her life, to steal out of the place by the little gate to the
south, and make away in that direction to the residence of some friends.
Shortly after he saw, to his great surprise, coming from the front of
the Castle walls a lady on horseback, with a single attendant. She rode
straight forward into the field, and up the slope to where his army and
tents were spread. It was not till she got quite near that he discerned
her to be his sister Anna; and much was he alarmed that she should have
run such risk as to sally out in the face of his forces without
knowledge of their proceedings, when at any moment their first discharge
might have burst forth, to her own destruction in such exposure. She
dismounted before she was quite close to him, and he saw that her
familiar face, though pale, was not at all tearful, as it would have
been in their younger days. Indeed, if the particulars as handed down
are to be believed, he was in a more tearful state than she, in his
anxiety about her. He called her into his tent, out of the gaze of those
around; for though many of the soldiers were honest and serious- minded
men, he could not bear that she who had been his dear companion in
childhood should be exposed to curious observation in this her great
grief.
When they were alone in the tent he clasped her in his arms, for he had
not seen her since those happier days when, at the commencement of the
war, her husband and himself had been of the same mind about the
arbitrary conduct of the King, and had little dreamt that they would not
go to extremes together. She was the calmest of the two, it is said, and
was the first to speak connectedly.
'William, I have come to you,' said she, 'but not to save myself as you
suppose. Why, oh, why do you persist in supporting this disloyal cause,
and grieving us so?'
'Say not that,' he replied hastily. 'If truth hides at the bottom of a
well, why should you suppose justice to be in high places? I am for the
right at any price. Anna, leave the Castle; you are my sister; come
away, my dear, and save thy life!'
'Never!' says she. 'Do you plan to carry out this attack, and level the
Castle indeed?'
'Most certainly I do,' says he. 'What meaneth this army around us if not
so?'
'Then you will find the bones of your sister buried in the ruins you
cause!' said she. And without another word she turned and left him.
'Anna-abide with me!' he entreated. 'Blood is thicker than water, and
what is there in common between you and your husband now?'
But she shook her head and would not hear him and hastening out, mounted
her horse, and returned towards the Castle as she had come. Ay, many's
the time when I have been riding to hounds across that field that I have
thought of that scene!
When she had quite gone down the field, and over the intervening ground,
and round the bastion, so that he could no longer even see the tip of
her mare's white tail, he was much more deeply moved by emotions
concerning her and her welfare than he had been while she was before
him. He wildly reproached himself that he had not detained her by force
for her own good, so that, come what might, she would be under his
protection and not under that of her husband, whose impulsive nature
rendered him too open to instantaneous impressions and sudden changes of
plan; he was now acting in this cause and now in that, and lacked the
cool judgment necessary for the protection of a woman in these troubled
times. Her brother thought of her words again and again, and sighed, and
even considered if a sister were not of more value than a principle, and
if he would not have acted more naturally in throwing in his lot with
hers.
The delay of the besiegers in attacking the Castle was said to be
entirely owing to this distraction on the part of their leader, who
remained on the spot attempting some indecisive operations, and
parleying with the Marquis, then in command, with far inferior forces,
within the Castle. It never occurred to him that in the meantime the
young Lady Baxby, his sister, was in much the same mood as himself. Her
brother's familiar voice and eyes, much worn and fatigued by keeping the
field, and by family distractions on account of this unhappy feud, rose
upon her vision all the afternoon, and as day waned she grew more and
more Parliamentarian in her principles, though the only arguments which
had addressed themselves to her were those of family ties.
Her husband, General Lord Baxby, had been expected to return all the day
from his excursion into the east of the county, a message having been
sent to him informing him of what had happened at home; and in the
evening he arrived with reinforcements in unexpected numbers. Her
brother retreated before these to a hill near Ivell, four or five miles
off, to afford the men and himself some repose. Lord Baxby duly placed
his forces, and there was no longer any immediate danger. By this time
Lady Baxby's feelings were more Parliamentarian than ever, and in her
fancy the fagged countenance of her brother, beaten back by her husband,
seemed to reproach her for heartlessness. When her husband entered her
apartment, ruddy and boisterous, and full of hope, she received him but
sadly; and upon his casually uttering some slighting words about her
brother's withdrawal, which seemed to convey an imputation upon his
courage, she resented them, and retorted that he, Lord Baxby himself,
had been against the Court-party at first, where it would be much more
to his credit if he were at present, and showing her brother's
consistency of opinion, instead of supporting the lying policy of the
King (as she called it) for the sake of a barren principle of loyalty,
which was but an empty expression when a King was not at one with his
people. The dissension grew bitter between them, reaching to little less
than a hot quarrel, both being quick-tempered souls.
Lord Baxby was weary with his long day's march and other excitements,
and soon retired to bed. His lady followed some time after. Her husband
slept profoundly, but not so she; she sat brooding by the window-slit,
and lifting the curtain looked forth upon the hills without.
In the silence between the footfalls of the sentinels she could hear
faint sounds of her brother's camp on the distant hills, where the
soldiery had hardly settled as yet into their bivouac since their
evening's retreat. The first frosts of autumn had touched the grass, and
shrivelled the more delicate leaves of the creepers; and she thought of
William sleeping on the chilly ground, under the strain of these
hardships. Tears flooded her eyes as she returned to her husband's
imputations upon his courage, as if there could be any doubt of Lord
William's courage after what he had done in the past days.
Lord Baxby's long and reposeful breathings in his comfortable bed vexed
her now, and she came to a determination on an impulse. Hastily lighting
a taper, she wrote on a scrap of paper:
'Blood is thicker than water, dear William-I will come;' and with this
in her hand, she went to the door of the room, and out upon the stairs;
on second thoughts turning back for a moment, to put on her husband's
hat and cloak-not the one he was daily wearing-that if seen in the
twilight she might at a casual glance appear as some lad or hanger-on of
one of the household women; thus accoutred she descended a flight of
circular stairs, at the bottom of which was a door opening upon the
terrace towards the west, in the direction of her brother's position.
Her object was to slip out without the sentry seeing her, get to the
stables, arouse one of the varlets, and send him ahead of her along the
highway with the note to warn her brother of her approach, to throw in
her lot with his.
She was still in the shadow of the wall on the west terrace, waiting for
the sentinel to be quite out of the way, when her ears were greeted by a
voice, saying, from the adjoining shade-
'Here I be!'
The tones were the tones of a woman. Lady Baxby made no reply, and stood
close to the wall.
'My Lord Baxby,' the voice continued; and she could recognize in it the
local accent of some girl from the little town of Sherton, close at
hand. 'I be tired of waiting, my dear Lord Baxby! I was afeard you would
never come!'
Lady Baxby flushed hot to her toes.
'How the wench loves him!' she said to herself, reasoning from the tones
of the voice, which were plaintive and sweet and tender as a bird's. She
changed from the home-hating truant to the strategic wife in one moment.
'Hist!' she said.
'My lord, you told me ten o'clock, and 'tis near twelve now,' continues
the other. 'How could ye keep me waiting so if you love me as you said?
I should have stuck to my lover in the Parliament troops if it had not
been for thee, my dear lord!'
There was not the least doubt that Lady Baxby had been mistaken for her
husband by this intriguing damsel. Here was a pretty underhand business!
Here were sly manoeuvrings! Here was faithlessness! Here was a precious
assignation surprised in the midst! Her wicked husband, whom till this
very moment she had ever deemed the soul of good faith-how could he!
Lady Baxby precipitately retreated to the door in the turret, closed it,
locked it, and ascended one round of the staircase, where there was a
loophole. 'I am not coming! I, Lord Baxby, despise ye and all your
wanton tribe!' she hissed through the opening; and then crept upstairs,
as firmly rooted in Royalist principles as any man in the Castle.
Her husband still slept the sleep of the weary, well-fed, and well-
drunken, if not of the just; and Lady Baxby quickly disrobed herself
without assistance-being, indeed, supposed by her woman to have retired
to rest long ago. Before lying down, she noiselessly locked the door and
placed the key under her pillow. More than that, she got a staylace,
and, creeping up to her lord, in great stealth tied the lace in a tight
knot to one of his long locks of hair, attaching the other end of the
lace to the bedpost; for, being tired herself now, she feared she might
sleep heavily; and, if her husband should wake, this would be a delicate
hint that she had discovered all.
It is added that, to make assurance trebly sure, her gentle ladyship,
when she had lain down to rest, held her lord's hand in her own during
the whole of the night. But this is old-wives' gossip, and not
corroborated. What Lord Baxby thought and said when he awoke the next
morning, and found himself so strangely tethered, is likewise only
matter of conjecture; though there is no reason to suppose that his rage
was great. The extent of his culpability as regards the intrigue was
this much; that, while halting at a cross-road near Sherton that day, he
had flirted with a pretty young woman, who seemed nothing loth, and had
invited her to the Castle terrace after dark-an invitation which he
quite forgot on his arrival home.
The subsequent relations of Lord and Lady Baxby were not again greatly
embittered by quarrels, so far as is known; though the husband's conduct
in later life was occasionally eccentric, and the vicissitudes of his
public career culminated in long exile. The siege of the Castle was not
regularly undertaken till two or three years later than the time I have
been describing, when Lady Baxby and all the women therein, except the
wife of the then Governor, had been removed to safe distance. That
memorable siege of fifteen days by Fairfax, and the surrender of the old
place on an August evening, is matter of history, and need not be told
by me.
The Man of Family spoke approvingly across to the Colonel when the Club
had done smiling, declaring that the story was an absolutely faithful
page of history, as he had good reason to know, his own people having
been engaged in that well-known scrimmage. He asked if the Colonel had
ever heard the equally well-authenticated, though less martial tale of a
certain Lady Penelope, who lived in the same century, and not a score of
miles from the same place?
The Colonel had not heard it, nor had anybody except the local
historian; and the inquirer was induced to proceed forthwith.
DAME THE EIGHTH-THE LADY PENELOPE By the Man of Family
In going out of Casterbridge by the low-lying road which eventually
conducts to the town of Ivell, you see on the right hand an ivied manor-
house, flanked by battlemented towers, and more than usually
distinguished by the size of its many mullioned windows. Though still of
good capacity, the building is much reduced from its original grand
proportions; it has, moreover, been shorn of the fair estate which once
appertained to its lord, with the exception of a few acres of park-land
immediately around the mansion. This was formerly the seat of the
ancient and knightly family of the Drenghards, or Drenkhards, now
extinct in the male line, whose name, according to the local chronicles,
was interpreted to mean Strenuus Miles, vel Potator, though certain
members of the family were averse to the latter signification, and a
duel was fought by one of them on that account, as is well known. With
this, however, we are not now concerned.
In the early part of the reign of the first King James, there was
visiting near this place of the Drenghards a lady of noble family and
extraordinary beauty. She was of the purest descent; ah, there's seldom
such blood nowadays as hers! She possessed no great wealth, it was said,
but was sufficiently endowed. Her beauty was so perfect, and her manner
so entrancing, that suitors seemed to spring out of the ground wherever
she went, a sufficient cause of anxiety to the Countess her mother, her
only living parent. Of these there were three in particular, whom
neither her mother's complaints of prematurity, nor the ready raillery
of the maiden herself, could effectually put off. The said gallants were
a certain Sir John Gale, a Sir William Hervy, and the well-known Sir
George Drenghard, one of the Drenghard family before- mentioned. They
had, curiously enough, all been equally honoured with the distinction of
knighthood, and their schemes for seeing her were manifold, each fearing
that one of the others would steal a march over himself. Not content
with calling, on every imaginable excuse, at the house of the relative
with whom she sojourned, they intercepted her in rides and in walks; and
if any one of them chanced to surprise another in the act of paying her
marked attentions, the encounter often ended in an altercation of great
violence. So heated and impassioned, indeed, would they become, that the
lady hardly felt herself safe in their company at such times,
notwithstanding that she was a brave and buxom damsel, not easily put
out, and with a daring spirit of humour in her composition, if not of
coquetry.
At one of these altercations, which had place in her relative's grounds,
and was unusually bitter, threatening to result in a duel, she found it
necessary to assert herself. Turning haughtily upon the pair of
disputants, she declared that whichever should be the first to break the
peace between them, no matter what the provocation, that man should
never be admitted to her presence again; and thus would she effectually
stultify the aggressor by making the promotion of a quarrel a distinct
bar to its object.
While the two knights were wearing rather a crest-fallen appearance at
her reprimand, the third, never far off, came upon the scene, and she
repeated her caveat to him also. Seeing, then, how great was the concern
of all at her peremptory mood, the lady's manner softened, and she said
with a roguish smile-
'Have patience, have patience, you foolish men! Only bide your time
quietly, and, in faith, I will marry you all in turn!'
They laughed heartily at this sally, all three together, as though they
were the best of friends; at which she blushed, and showed some
embarrassment, not having realized that her arch jest would have sounded
so strange when uttered. The meeting which resulted thus, however, had
its good effect in checking the bitterness of their rivalry; and they
repeated her speech to their relatives and acquaintance with a hilarious
frequency and publicity that the lady little divined, or she might have
blushed and felt more embarrassment still.
In the course of time the position resolved itself, and the beauteous
Lady Penelope (as she was called) made up her mind; her choice being the
eldest of the three knights, Sir George Drenghard, owner of the mansion
aforesaid, which thereupon became her home; and her husband being a
pleasant man, and his family, though not so noble, of as good repute as
her own, all things seemed to show that she had reckoned wisely in
honouring him with her preference.
But what may lie behind the still and silent veil of the future none can
foretell. In the course of a few months the husband of her choice died
of his convivialities (as if, indeed, to bear out his name), and the
Lady Penelope was left alone as mistress of his house. By this time she
had apparently quite forgotten her careless declaration to her lovers
collectively; but the lovers themselves had not forgotten it; and, as
she would now be free to take a second one of them, Sir John Gale
appeared at her door as early in her widowhood as it was proper and
seemly to do so.
She gave him little encouragement; for, of the two remaining, her best
beloved was Sir William, of whom, if the truth must be told, she had
often thought during her short married life. But he had not yet
reappeared. Her heart began to be so much with him now that she
contrived to convey to him, by indirect hints through his friends, that
she would not be displeased by a renewal of his former attentions. Sir
William, however, misapprehended her gentle signalling, and from
excellent, though mistaken motives of delicacy, delayed to intrude
himself upon her for a long time. Meanwhile Sir John, now created a
baronet, was unremitting, and she began to grow somewhat piqued at the
backwardness of him she secretly desired to be forward.
'Never mind,' her friends said jestingly to her (knowing of her humorous
remark, as everybody did, that she would marry them all three if they
would have patience)-'never mind; why hesitate upon the order of them?
Take 'em as they come.'
This vexed her still more, and regretting deeply, as she had often done,
that such a careless speech should ever have passed her lips, she fairly
broke down under Sir John's importunity, and accepted his hand. They
were married on a fine spring morning, about the very time at which the
unfortunate Sir William discovered her preference for him, and was
beginning to hasten home from a foreign court to declare his unaltered
devotion to her. On his arrival in England he learnt the sad truth.
If Sir William suffered at her precipitancy under what she had deemed
his neglect, the Lady Penelope herself suffered more. She had not long
been the wife of Sir John Gale before he showed a disposition to
retaliate upon her for the trouble and delay she had put him to in
winning her. With increasing frequency he would tell her that, as far as
he could perceive, she was an article not worth such labour as he had
bestowed in obtaining it, and such snubbings as he had taken from his
rivals on the same account. These and other cruel things he repeated
till he made the lady weep sorely, and wellnigh broke her spirit, though
she had formerly been such a mettlesome dame. By degrees it became
perceptible to all her friends that her life was a very unhappy one; and
the fate of the fair woman seemed yet the harder in that it was her own
stately mansion, left to her sole use by her first husband, which her
second had entered into and was enjoying, his being but a mean and
meagre erection.
But such is the flippancy of friends that when she met them, and
secretly confided her grief to their ears, they would say cheerily,
'Lord, never mind, my dear; there's a third to come yet!'-at which
maladroit remark she would show much indignation, and tell them they
should know better than to trifle on so solemn a theme. Yet that the
poor lady would have been only too happy to be the wife of the third,
instead of Sir John whom she had taken, was painfully obvious, and much
she was blamed for her foolish choice by some people. Sir William,
however, had returned to foreign cities on learning the news of her
marriage, and had never been heard of since.
Two or three years of suffering were passed by Lady Penelope as the
despised and chidden wife of this man Sir John, amid regrets that she
had so greatly mistaken him, and sighs for one whom she thought never to
see again, till it chanced that her husband fell sick of some slight
ailment. One day after this, when she was sitting in his room, looking
from the window upon the expanse in front, she beheld, approaching the
house on foot, a form she seemed to know well. Lady Penelope withdrew
silently from the sickroom, and descended to the hall, whence, through
the doorway, she saw entering between the two round towers, which at
that time flanked the gateway, Sir William Hervy, as she had surmised,
but looking thin and travel-worn. She advanced into the courtyard to
meet him.
'I was passing through Casterbridge,' he said, with faltering deference,
'and I walked out to ask after your ladyship's health. I felt that I
could do no less; and, of course, to pay my respects to your good
husband, my heretofore acquaintance . . . But oh, Penelope, th'st look
sick and sorry!'
'I am heartsick, that's all,' said she.
They could see in each other an emotion which neither wished to express,
and they stood thus a long time with tears in their eyes.
'He does not treat 'ee well, I hear,' said Sir William in a low voice.
'May God in Heaven forgive him; but it is asking a great deal!'
'Hush, hush!' said she hastily.
'Nay, but I will speak what I may honestly say,' he answered. 'I am not
under your roof, and my tongue is free. Why didst not wait for me,
Penelope, or send to me a more overt letter? I would have travelled
night and day to come!'
'Too late, William; you must not ask it,' said she, endeavouring to
quiet him as in old times. 'My husband just now is unwell. He will grow
better in a day or two, maybe. You must call again and see him before
you leave Casterbridge.'
As she said this their eyes met. Each was thinking of her lightsome
words about taking the three men in turn; each thought that two-thirds
of that promise had been fulfilled. But, as if it were unpleasant to her
that this recollection should have arisen, she spoke again quickly:
'Come again in a day or two, when my husband will be well enough to see
you.'
Sir William departed without entering the house, and she returned to Sir
John's chamber. He, rising from his pillow, said, 'To whom hast been
talking, wife, in the courtyard? I heard voices there.'
She hesitated, and he repeated the question more impatiently.
'I do not wish to tell you now,' said she.
'But I wooll know!' said he.
Then she answered, 'Sir William Hervy.'
'By G\x97- I thought as much!' cried Sir John, drops of perspiration
standing on his white face. 'A skulking villain! A sick man's ears are
keen, my lady. I heard that they were lover-like tones, and he called
'ee by your Christian name. These be your intrigues, my lady, when I am
off my legs awhile!'
'On my honour,' cried she, 'you do me a wrong. I swear I did not know of
his coming!'
'Swear as you will,' said Sir John, 'I don't believe 'ee.' And with this
he taunted her, and worked himself into a greater passion, which much
increased his illness. His lady sat still, brooding. There was that upon
her face which had seldom been there since her marriage; and she seemed
to think anew of what she had so lightly said in the days of her
freedom, when her three lovers were one and all coveting her hand. 'I
began at the wrong end of them,' she murmured. 'My God-that did I!'
'What?' said he.
'A trifle,' said she. 'I spoke to myself only.'
It was somewhat strange that after this day, while she went about the
house with even a sadder face than usual, her churlish husband grew
worse; and what was more, to the surprise of all, though to the regret
of few, he died a fortnight later. Sir William had not called upon him
as he had promised, having received a private communication from Lady
Penelope, frankly informing him that to do so would be inadvisable, by
reason of her husband's temper.
Now when Sir John was gone, and his remains carried to his family
burying-place in another part of England, the lady began in due time to
wonder whither Sir William had betaken himself. But she had been cured
of precipitancy (if ever woman were), and was prepared to wait her whole
lifetime a widow if the said Sir William should not reappear. Her life
was now passed mostly within the walls, or in promenading between the
pleasaunce and the bowling-green; and she very seldom went even so far
as the high road which then skirted the grounds on the north, though it
has now, and for many years, been diverted to the south side. Her
patience was rewarded (if love be in any case a reward); for one day,
many months after her second husband's death, a messenger arrived at her
gate with the intelligence that Sir William Hervy was again in
Casterbridge, and would be glad to know if it were her pleasure that he
should wait upon her.
It need hardly be said that permission was joyfully granted, and within
two hours her lover stood before her, a more thoughtful man than
formerly, but in all essential respects the same man, generous, modest
to diffidence, and sincere. The reserve which womanly decorum threw over
her manner was but too obviously artificial, and when he said 'the ways
of Providence are strange,' and added after a moment, 'and merciful
likewise,' she could not conceal her agitation, and burst into tears
upon his neck.
'But this is too soon,' she said, starting back.
'But no,' said he. 'You are eleven months gone in widowhood, and it is
not as if Sir John had been a good husband to you.'
His visits grew pretty frequent now, as may well be guessed, and in a
month or two he began to urge her to an early union. But she counselled
a little longer delay.
'Why?' said he. 'Surely I have waited long! Life is short; we are
getting older every day, and I am the last of the three.'
'Yes,' said the lady frankly. 'And that is why I would not have you
hasten. Our marriage may seem so strange to everybody, after my unlucky
remark on that occasion we know so well, and which so many others know
likewise, thanks to talebearers.'
On this representation he conceded a little space, for the sake of her
good name. But the destined day of their marriage at last arrived, and
it was a gay time for the villagers and all concerned, and the bells in
the parish church rang from noon till night. Thus at last she was united
to the man who had loved her the most tenderly of them all, who but for
his reticence might perhaps have been the first to win her. Often did he
say to himself; 'How wondrous that her words should have been fulfilled!
Many a truth hath been spoken in jest, but never a more remarkable one!'
The noble lady herself preferred not to dwell on the coincidence, a
certain shyness, if not shame, crossing her fair face at any allusion
thereto.
But people will have their say, sensitive souls or none, and their
sayings on this third occasion took a singular shape. 'Surely,' they
whispered, 'there is something more than chance in this . . . The death
of the first was possibly natural; but what of the death of the second,
who ill-used her, and whom, loving the third so desperately, she must
have wished out of the way?'
Then they pieced together sundry trivial incidents of Sir John's
illness, and dwelt upon the indubitable truth that he had grown worse
after her lover's unexpected visit; till a very sinister theory was
built up as to the hand she may have had in Sir John's premature demise.
But nothing of this suspicion was said openly, for she was a lady of
noble birth-nobler, indeed, than either of her husbands-and what people
suspected they feared to express in formal accusation.
The mansion that she occupied had been left to her for so long a time as
she should choose to reside in it, and, having a regard for the spot,
she had coaxed Sir William to remain there. But in the end it was
unfortunate; for one day, when in the full tide of his happiness, he was
walking among the willows near the gardens, where he overheard a
conversation between some basket-makers who were cutting the osiers for
their use. In this fatal dialogue the suspicions of the neighbouring
townsfolk were revealed to him for the first time.
'A cupboard close to his bed, and the key in her pocket. Ah!' said one.
'And a blue phial therein-h'm!' said another.
'And spurge-laurel leaves among the hearth-ashes. Oh-oh!' said a third.
On his return home Sir William seemed to have aged years. But he said
nothing; indeed, it was a thing impossible. And from that hour a ghastly
estrangement began. She could not understand it, and simply waited. One
day he said, however, 'I must go abroad.'
'Why?' said she. 'William, have I offended you?'
'No,' said he; 'but I must go.'
She could coax little more out of him, and in itself there was nothing
unnatural in his departure, for he had been a wanderer from his youth.
In a few days he started off, apparently quite another man than he who
had rushed to her side so devotedly a few months before.
It is not known when, or how, the rumours, which were so thick in the
atmosphere around her, actually reached the Lady Penelope's ears, but
that they did reach her there is no doubt. It was impossible that they
should not; the district teemed with them; they rustled in the air like
night-birds of evil omen. Then a reason for her husband's departure
occurred to her appalled mind, and a loss of health became quickly
apparent. She dwindled thin in the face, and the veins in her temples
could all be distinctly traced. An inner fire seemed to be withering her
away. Her rings fell off her fingers, and her arms hung like the flails
of the threshers, though they had till lately been so round and so
elastic. She wrote to her husband repeatedly, begging him to return to
her; but he, being in extreme and wretched doubt, moreover, knowing
nothing of her ill-health, and never suspecting that the rumours had
reached her also, deemed absence best, and postponed his return awhile,
giving various good reasons for his delay.
At length, however, when the Lady Penelope had given birth to a still-
born child, her mother, the Countess, addressed a letter to Sir William,
requesting him to come back to her if he wished to see her alive; since
she was wasting away of some mysterious disease, which seemed to be
rather mental than physical. It was evident that his mother-in-law knew
nothing of the secret, for she lived at a distance; but Sir William
promptly hastened home, and stood beside the bed of his now dying wife.
'Believe me, William,' she said when they were alone, 'I am innocent-
innocent!'
'Of what?' said he. 'Heaven forbid that I should accuse you of
anything!'
'But you do accuse me-silently!' she gasped. 'I could not write thereon-
and ask you to hear me. It was too much, too degrading. But would that I
had been less proud! They suspect me of poisoning him, William! But, oh
my dear husband, I am innocent of that wicked crime! He died naturally.
I loved you-too soon; but that was all!'
Nothing availed to save her. The worm had gnawed too far into her heart
before Sir William's return for anything to be remedial now; and in a
few weeks she breathed her last. After her death the people spoke
louder, and her conduct became a subject of public discussion. A little
later on, the physician, who had attended the late Sir John, heard the
rumour, and came down from the place near London to which he latterly
had retired, with the express purpose of calling upon Sir William Hervy,
now staying in Casterbridge.
He stated that, at the request of a relative of Sir John's, who wished
to be assured on the matter by reason of its suddenness, he had, with
the assistance of a surgeon, made a private examination of Sir John's
body immediately after his decease, and found that it had resulted from
purely natural causes. Nobody at this time had breathed a suspicion of
foul play, and therefore nothing was said which might afterwards have
established her innocence.
It being thus placed beyond doubt that this beautiful and noble lady had
been done to death by a vile scandal that was wholly unfounded, her
husband was stung with a dreadful remorse at the share he had taken in
her misfortunes, and left the country anew, this time never to return
alive. He survived her but a few years, and his body was brought home
and buried beside his wife's under the tomb which is still visible in
the parish church. Until lately there was a good portrait of her, in
weeds for her first husband, with a cross in her hand, at the ancestral
seat of her family, where she was much pitied, as she deserved to be.
Yet there were some severe enough to say-and these not unjust persons in
other respects-that though unquestionably innocent of the crime imputed
to her, she had shown an unseemly wantonness in contracting three
marriages in such rapid succession; that the untrue suspicion might have
been ordered by Providence (who often works indirectly) as a punishment
for her self-indulgence. Upon that point I have no opinion to offer.
The reverend the Vice-President, however, the tale being ended, offered
as his opinion that her fate ought to be quite clearly recognized as a
punishment. So thought the Churchwarden, and also the quiet gentleman
sitting near. The latter knew many other instances in point, one of
which could be narrated in a few words.
DAME THE NINTH-THE DUCHESS OF HAMPTONSHIRE By the Quiet Gentleman
Some fifty years ago, the then Duke of Hamptonshire, fifth of that
title, was incontestibly the head man in his county, and particularly in
the neighbourhood of Batton. He came of the ancient and loyal family of
Saxelbye, which, before its ennoblement, had numbered many knightly and
ecclesiastical celebrities in its male line. It would have occupied a
painstaking county historian a whole afternoon to take rubbings of the
numerous effigies and heraldic devices graven to their memory on the
brasses, tablets, and altar-tombs in the aisle of the parish-church. The
Duke himself, however, was a man little attracted by ancient chronicles
in stone and metal, even when they concerned his own beginnings. He
allowed his mind to linger by preference on the many graceless and
unedifying pleasures which his position placed at his command. He could
on occasion close the mouths of his dependents by a good bomb-like oath,
and he argued doggedly with the parson on the virtues of cock-fighting
and baiting the bull.
This nobleman's personal appearance was somewhat impressive. His
complexion was that of the copper-beech tree. His frame was stalwart,
though slightly stooping. His mouth was large, and he carried an
unpolished sapling as his walking-stick, except when he carried a spud
for cutting up any thistle he encountered on his walks. His castle stood
in the midst of a park, surrounded by dusky elms, except to the
southward; and when the moon shone out, the gleaming stone facade,
backed by heavy boughs, was visible from the distant high road as a
white spot on the surface of darkness. Though called a castle, the
building was little fortified, and had been erected with greater eye to
internal convenience than those crannied places of defence to which the
name strictly appertains. It was a castellated mansion as regular as a
chessboard on its ground-plan, ornamented with make-believe bastions and
machicolations, behind which were stacks of battlemented chimneys. On
still mornings, at the fire-lighting hour, when ghostly house-maids
stalk the corridors, and thin streaks of light through the shutter-
chinks lend startling winks and smiles to ancestors on canvas, twelve or
fifteen thin stems of blue smoke sprouted upwards from these chimney-
tops, and spread into a flat canopy on high. Around the site stretched
ten thousand acres of good, fat, unimpeachable soil, plentiful in glades
and lawns wherever visible from the castle-windows, and merging in
homely arable where screened from the too curious eye by ingeniously-
contrived plantations.
Some way behind the owner of all this came the second man in the parish,
the rector, the Honourable and Reverend Mr. Oldbourne, a widower, over
stiff and stern for a clergyman, whose severe white neckcloth, well-kept
gray hair, and right-lined face betokened none of those sympathetic
traits whereon depends so much of a parson's power to do good among his
fellow-creatures. The last, far-removed man of the series-altogether the
Neptune of these local primaries-was the curate, Mr. Alwyn Hill. He was
a handsome young deacon with curly hair, dreamy eyes-so dreamy that to
look long into them was like ascending and floating among summer clouds-
a complexion as fresh as a flower, and a chin absolutely beardless.
Though his age was about twenty-five, he looked not much over nineteen.
The rector had a daughter called Emmeline, of so sweet and simple a
nature that her beauty was discovered, measured, and inventoried by
almost everybody in that part of the country before it was suspected by
herself to exist. She had been bred in comparative solitude; a
rencounter with men troubled and confused her. Whenever a strange
visitor came to her father's house she slipped into the orchard and
remained till he was gone, ridiculing her weakness in apostrophes, but
unable to overcome it. Her virtues lay in no resistant force of
character, but in a natural inappetency for evil things, which to her
were as unmeaning as joints of flesh to a herbivorous creature. Her
charms of person, manner, and mind, had been clear for some time to the
Antinous in orders, and no less so to the Duke, who, though scandalously
ignorant of dainty phrases, ever showing a clumsy manner towards the
gentler sex, and, in short, not at all a lady's man, took fire to a
degree that was wellnigh terrible at sudden sight of Emmeline, a short
time after she was turned seventeen.
It occurred one afternoon at the corner of a shrubbery between the
castle and the rectory, where the Duke was standing to watch the heaving
of a mole, when the fair girl brushed past at a distance of a few yards,
in the full light of the sun, and without hat or bonnet. The Duke went
home like a man who had seen a spirit. He ascended to the picture-
gallery of his castle, and there passed some time in staring at the
bygone beauties of his line as if he had never before considered what an
important part those specimens of womankind had played in the evolution
of the Saxelbye race. He dined alone, drank rather freely, and declared
to himself that Emmeline Oldbourne must be his.
Meanwhile there had unfortunately arisen between the curate and this
girl some sweet and secret understanding. Particulars of the attachment
remained unknown then and always, but it was plainly not approved of by
her father. His procedure was cold, hard, and inexorable. Soon the
curate disappeared from the parish, almost suddenly, after bitter and
hard words had been heard to pass between him and the rector one evening
in the garden, intermingled with which, like the cries of the dying in
the din of battle, were the beseeching sobs of a woman. Not long after
this it was announced that a marriage between the Duke and Miss
Oldbourne was to be solemnized at a surprisingly early date.
The wedding-day came and passed; and she was a Duchess. Nobody seemed to
think of the ousted man during the day, or else those who thought of him
concealed their meditations. Some of the less subservient ones were
disposed to speak in a jocular manner of the august husband and wife,
others to make correct and pretty speeches about them, according as
their sex and nature dictated. But in the evening, the ringers in the
belfry, with whom Alwyn had been a favourite, eased their minds a little
concerning the gentle young man, and the possible regrets of the woman
he had loved.
'Don't you see something wrong in it all?' said the third bell as he
wiped his face. 'I know well enough where she would have liked to stable
her horses to-night, when they have done their journey.'
'That is, you would know if you could tell where young Mr. Hill is
living, which is known to none in the parish.'
'Except to the lady that this ring o' grandsire triples is in honour
of.'
Yet these friendly cottagers were at this time far from suspecting the
real dimensions of Emmeline's misery, nor was it clear even to those who
came into much closer communion with her than they, so well had she
concealed her heart-sickness. But bride and bridegroom had not long been
home at the castle when the young wife's unhappiness became plainly
enough perceptible. Her maids and men said that she was in the habit of
turning to the wainscot and shedding stupid scalding tears at a time
when a right-minded lady would have been overhauling her wardrobe. She
prayed earnestly in the great church-pew, where she sat lonely and
insignificant as a mouse in a cell, instead of counting her rings,
falling asleep, or amusing herself in silent laughter at the queer old
people in the congregation, as previous beauties of the family had done
in their time. She seemed to care no more for eating and drinking out of
crystal and silver than from a service of earthen vessels. Her head was,
in truth, full of something else; and that such was the case was only
too obvious to the Duke, her husband. At first he would only taunt her
for her folly in thinking of that milk-and-water parson; but as time
went on his charges took a more positive shape. He would not believe her
assurance that she had in no way communicated with her former lover, nor
he with her, since their parting in the presence of her father. This led
to some strange scenes between them which need not be detailed; their
result was soon to take a catastrophic shape.
One dark quiet evening, about two months after the marriage, a man
entered the gate admitting from the highway to the park and avenue which
ran up to the house. He arrived within two hundred yards of the walls,
when he left the gravelled drive and drew near to the castle by a
roundabout path leading into a shrubbery. Here he stood still. In a few
minutes the strokes of the castle-clock resounded, and then a female
figure entered the same secluded nook from an opposite direction. There
the two indistinct persons leapt together like a pair of dewdrops on a
leaf; and then they stood apart, facing each other, the woman looking
down.
'Emmeline, you begged me to come, and here I am, Heaven forgive me!'
said the man hoarsely.
'You are going to emigrate, Alwyn,' she said in broken accents. 'I have
heard of it; you sail from Plymouth in three days in the Western Glory?'
'Yes. I can live in England no longer. Life is as death to me here,'
says he.
'My life is even worse-worse than death. Death would not have driven me
to this extremity. Listen, Alwyn-I have sent for you to beg to go with
you, or at least to be near you-to do anything so that it be not to stay
here.'
'To go away with me?' he said in a startled tone.
'Yes, yes-or under your direction, or by your help in some way! Don't be
horrified at me-you must bear with me whilst I implore it. Nothing short
of cruelty would have driven me to this. I could have borne my doom in
silence had I been left unmolested; but he tortures me, and I shall soon
be in the grave if I cannot escape.'
To his shocked inquiry how her husband tortured her, the Duchess said
that it was by jealousy. 'He tries to wring admissions from me
concerning you,' she said, 'and will not believe that I have not
communicated with you since my engagement to him was settled by my
father, and I was forced to agree to it.'
The poor curate said that this was the heaviest news of all. 'He has not
personally ill-used you?' he asked.
'Yes,' she whispered.
'What has he done?'
She looked fearfully around, and said, sobbing: 'In trying to make me
confess to what I have never done, he adopts plans I dare not describe
for terrifying me into a weak state, so that I may own to anything! I
resolved to write to you, as I had no other friend.' She added, with
dreary irony, 'I thought I would give him some ground for his suspicion,
so as not to disgrace his judgment.'
'Do you really mean, Emmeline,' he tremblingly inquired, 'that you-that
you want to fly with me?'
'Can you think that I would act otherwise than in earnest at such a time
as this?'
He was silent for a minute or more. 'You must not go with me,' he said.
'Why?'
'It would be sin.'
'It cannot be sin, for I have never wanted to commit sin in my life; and
it isn't likely I would begin now, when I pray every day to die and be
sent to Heaven out of my misery!'
'But it is wrong, Emmeline, all the same.'
'Is it wrong to run away from the fire that scorches you?'
'It would look wrong, at any rate, in this case.'
'Alwyn, Alwyn, take me, I beseech you!' she burst out. 'It is not right
in general, I know, but it is such an exceptional instance, this. Why
has such a severe strain been put upon me? I was doing no harm, injuring
no one, helping many people, and expecting happiness; yet trouble came.
Can it be that God holds me in derision? I had no supporter-I gave way;
and now my life is a burden and a shame to me . . . Oh, if you only knew
how much to me this request to you is-how my life is wrapped up in it,
you could not deny me!'
'This is almost beyond endurance-Heaven support us,' he groaned. 'Emmy,
you are the Duchess of Hamptonshire, the Duke of Hamptonshire's wife;
you must not go with me!'
'And am I then refused?-Oh, am I refused?' she cried frantically.
'Alwyn, Alwyn, do you say it indeed to me?'
'Yes, I do, dear, tender heart! I do most sadly say it. You must not go.
Forgive me, for there is no alternative but refusal. Though I die,
though you die, we must not fly together. It is forbidden in God's law.
Good-bye, for always and ever!'
He tore himself away, hastened from the shrubbery, and vanished among
the trees.
Three days after this meeting and farewell, Alwyn, his soft, handsome
features stamped with a haggard hardness that ten years of ordinary wear
and tear in the world could scarcely have produced, sailed from Plymouth
on a drizzling morning, in the passenger-ship Western Glory. When the
land had faded behind him he mechanically endeavoured to school himself
into a stoical frame of mind. His attempt, backed up by the strong moral
staying power that had enabled him to resist the passionate temptation
to which Emmeline, in her reckless trustfulness, had exposed him, was
rewarded by a certain kind of success, though the murmuring stretch of
waters whereon he gazed day after day too often seemed to be
articulating to him in tones of her well-remembered voice.
He framed on his journey rules of conduct for reducing to mild
proportions the feverish regrets which would occasionally arise and
agitate him, when he indulged in visions of what might have been had he
not hearkened to the whispers of conscience. He fixed his thoughts for
so many hours a day on philosophical passages in the volumes he had
brought with him, allowing himself now and then a few minutes' thought
of Emmeline, with the strict yet reluctant niggardliness of an ailing
epicure proportioning the rank drinks that cause his malady. The voyage
was marked by the usual incidents of a sailing-passage in those days-a
storm, a calm, a man overboard, a birth, and a funeral-the latter sad
event being one in which he, as the only clergyman on board, officiated,
reading the service ordained for the purpose. The ship duly arrived at
Boston early in the month following, and thence he proceeded to
Providence to seek out a distant relative.
After a short stay at Providence he returned again to Boston, and by
applying himself to a serious occupation made good progress in shaking
off the dreary melancholy which enveloped him even now. Distracted and
weakened in his beliefs by his recent experiences, he decided that he
could not for a time worthily fill the office of a minister of religion,
and applied for the mastership of a school. Some introductions, given
him before starting, were useful now, and he soon became known as a
respectable scholar and gentleman to the trustees of one of the
colleges. This ultimately led to his retirement from the school and
installation in the college as Professor of rhetoric and oratory.
Here and thus he lived on, exerting himself solely because of a
conscientious determination to do his duty. He passed his winter
evenings in turning sonnets and elegies, often giving his thoughts voice
in 'Lines to an Unfortunate Lady,' while his summer leisure at the same
hour would be spent in watching the lengthening shadows from his window,
and fancifully comparing them with the shades of his own life. If he
walked, he mentally inquired which was the eastern quarter of the
landscape, and thought of two thousand miles of water that way, and of
what was beyond it. In a word he was at all spare times dreaming of her
who was only a memory to him, and would probably never be more.
Nine years passed by, and under their wear and tear Alwyn Hill's face
lost a great many of the attractive characteristics which had formerly
distinguished it. He was kind to his pupils and affable to all who came
in contact with him; but the kernel of his life, his secret, was kept as
snugly shut up as though he had been dumb. In talking to his
acquaintances of England and his life there, he omitted the episode of
Batton Castle and Emmeline as if it had no existence in his calendar at
all. Though of towering importance to himself, it had filled but a short
and small fragment of time, an ephemeral season which would have been
wellnigh imperceptible, even to him, at this distance, but for the
incident it enshrined.
One day, at this date, when cursorily glancing over an old English
newspaper, he observed a paragraph which, short as it was, contained for
him whole tomes of thrilling information-rung with more passion-stirring
rhythm than the collected cantos of all the poets. It was an
announcement of the death of the Duke of Hamptonshire, leaving behind
him a widow, but no children.
The current of Alwyn's thoughts now completely changed. On looking again
at the newspaper he found it to be one that was sent him long ago, and
had been carelessly thrown aside. But for an accidental overhauling of
the waste journals in his study he might not have known of the event for
years. At this moment of reading the Duke had already been dead seven
months. Alwyn could now no longer bind himself down to machine- made
synecdoche, antithesis, and climax, being full of spontaneous specimens
of all these rhetorical forms, which he dared not utter. Who shall
wonder that his mind luxuriated in dreams of a sweet possibility now
laid open for the first time these many years? for Emmeline was to him
now as ever the one dear thing in all the world. The issue of his silent
romancing was that he resolved to return to her at the very earliest
moment.
But he could not abandon his professional work on the instant. He did
not get really quite free from engagements till four months later; but,
though suffering throes of impatience continually, he said to himself
every day: 'If she has continued to love me nine years she will love me
ten; she will think the more tenderly of me when her present hours of
solitude shall have done their proper work; old times will revive with
the cessation of her recent experience, and every day will favour my
return.'
The enforced interval soon passed, and he duly arrived in England,
reaching the village of Batton on a certain winter day between twelve
and thirteen months subsequent to the time of the Duke's death.
It was evening; yet such was Alwyn's impatience that he could not
forbear taking, this very night, one look at the castle which Emmeline
had entered as unhappy mistress ten years before. He threaded the park
trees, gazed in passing at well-known outlines which rose against the
dim sky, and was soon interested in observing that lively country-
people, in parties of two and three, were walking before and behind him
up the interlaced avenue to the castle gateway. Knowing himself to be
safe from recognition, Alwyn inquired of one of these pedestrians what
was going on.
'Her Grace gives her tenantry a ball to-night, to keep up the old custom
of the Duke and his father before him, which she does not wish to
change.'
'Indeed. Has she lived here entirely alone since the Duke's death?'
'Quite alone. But though she doesn't receive company herself, she likes
the village people to enjoy themselves, and often has 'em here.'
'Kind-hearted, as always!' thought Alwyn.
On reaching the castle he found that the great gates at the tradesmen's
entrance were thrown back against the wall as if they were never to be
closed again; that the passages and rooms in that wing were brilliantly
lighted up, some of the numerous candles guttering down over the green
leaves which decorated them, and upon the silk dresses of the happy
farmers' wives as they passed beneath, each on her husband's arm. Alwyn
found no difficulty in marching in along with the rest, the castle being
Liberty Hall to-night. He stood unobserved in a corner of the large
apartment where dancing was about to begin.
'Her Grace, though hardly out of mourning, will be sure to come down and
lead off the dance with neighbour Bates,' said one.
'Who is neighbour Bates?' asked Alwyn.
'An old man she respects much-the oldest of her tenant-farmers. He was
seventy-eight his last birthday.'
'Ah, to be sure!' said Alwyn, at his ease. 'I remember.'
The dancers formed in line, and waited. A door opened at the farther end
of the hall, and a lady in black silk came forth. She bowed, smiled, and
proceeded to the top of the dance.
'Who is that lady?' said Alwyn, in a puzzled tone. 'I thought you told
me that the Duchess of Hamptonshire-'
'That is the Duchess,' said his informant.
'But there is another?'
'No; there is no other.'
'But she is not the Duchess of Hamptonshire-who used to-' Alwyn's tongue
stuck to his mouth, he could get no farther.
'What's the matter?' said his acquaintance. Alwyn had retired, and was
supporting himself against the wall.
The wretched Alwyn murmured something about a stitch in his side from
walking. Then the music struck up, the dance went on, and his neighbour
became so interested in watching the movements of this strange Duchess
through its mazes as to forget Alwyn for a while.
It gave him an opportunity to brace himself up. He was a man who had
suffered, and he could suffer again. 'How came that person to be your
Duchess?' he asked in a firm, distinct voice, when he had attained
complete self-command. 'Where is her other Grace of Hamptonshire? There
certainly was another. I know it.'
'Oh, the previous one! Yes, yes. She ran away years and years ago with
the young curate. Mr. Hill was the young man's name, if I recollect.'
'No! She never did. What do you mean by that?' he said.
'Yes, she certainly ran away. She met the curate in the shrubbery about
a couple of months after her marriage with the Duke. There were folks
who saw the meeting and heard some words of their talk. They arranged to
go, and she sailed from Plymouth with him a day or two afterward.'
'That's not true.'
'Then 'tis the queerest lie ever told by man. Her father believed and
knew to his dying day that she went with him; and so did the Duke, and
everybody about here. Ay, there was a fine upset about it at the time.
The Duke traced her to Plymouth.'
'Traced her to Plymouth?'
'He traced her to Plymouth, and set on his spies; and they found that
she went to the shipping-office, and inquired if Mr. Alwyn Hill had
entered his name as passenger by the Western Glory; and when she found
that he had, she booked herself for the same ship, but not in her real
name. When the vessel had sailed a letter reached the Duke from her,
telling him what she had done. She never came back here again. His Grace
lived by himself a number of years, and married this lady only twelve
months before he died.'
Alwyn was in a state of indescribable bewilderment. But, unmanned as he
was, he called the next day on the, to him, spurious Duchess of
Hamptonshire. At first she was alarmed at his statement, then cold, then
she was won over by his condition to give confidence for confidence. She
showed him a letter which had been found among the papers of the late
Duke, corroborating what Alwyn's informant had detailed. It was from
Emmeline, bearing the postmarked date at which the Western Glory sailed,
and briefly stated that she had emigrated by that ship to America.
Alwyn applied himself body and mind to unravel the remainder of the
mystery. The story repeated to him was always the same: 'She ran away
with the curate.' A strangely circumstantial piece of intelligence was
added to this when he had pushed his inquiries a little further. There
was given him the name of a waterman at Plymouth, who had come forward
at the time that she was missed and sought for by her husband, and had
stated that he put her on board the Western Glory at dusk one evening
before that vessel sailed.
After several days of search about the alleys and quays of Plymouth
Barbican, during which these impossible words, 'She ran off with the
curate,' became branded on his brain, Alwyn found this important
waterman. He was positive as to the truth of his story, still
remembering the incident well, and he described in detail the lady's
dress, as he had long ago described it to her husband, which description
corresponded in every particular with the dress worn by Emmeline on the
evening of their parting.
Before proceeding to the other side of the Atlantic to continue his
inquiries there, the puzzled and distracted Alwyn set himself to
ascertain the address of Captain Wheeler, who had commanded the Western
Glory in the year of Alwyn's voyage out, and immediately wrote a letter
to him on the subject.
The only circumstances which the sailor could recollect or discover from
his papers in connection with such a story were, that a woman bearing
the name which Alwyn had mentioned as fictitious certainly did come
aboard for a voyage he made about that time; that she took a common
berth among the poorest emigrants; that she died on the voyage out, at
about five days' sail from Plymouth; that she seemed a lady in manners
and education. Why she had not applied for a first-class passage, why
she had no trunks, they could not guess, for though she had little money
in her pocket she had that about her which would have fetched it. 'We
buried her at sea,' continued the captain. 'A young parson, one of the
cabin-passengers, read the burial-service over her, I remember well.'
The whole scene and proceedings darted upon Alwyn's recollection in a
moment. It was a fine breezy morning on that long-past voyage out, and
he had been told that they were running at the rate of a hundred and odd
miles a day. The news went round that one of the poor young women in the
other part of the vessel was ill of fever, and delirious. The tidings
caused no little alarm among all the passengers, for the sanitary
conditions of the ship were anything but satisfactory. Shortly after
this the doctor announced that she had died. Then Alwyn had learnt that
she was laid out for burial in great haste, because of the danger that
would have been incurred by delay. And next the funeral scene rose
before him, and the prominent part that he had taken in that solemn
ceremony. The captain had come to him, requesting him to officiate, as
there was no chaplain on board. This he had agreed to do; and as the sun
went down with a blaze in his face he read amidst them all assembled:
'We therefore commit her body to the deep, to be turned into corruption,
looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her
dead.'
The captain also forwarded the addresses of the ship's matron and of
other persons who had been engaged on board at the date. To these Alwyn
went in the course of time. A categorical description of the clothes of
the dead truant, the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished
for ever all hope of a mistake in identity.
At last, then, the course of events had become clear. On that unhappy
evening when he left Emmeline in the shrubbery, forbidding her to follow
him because it would be a sin, she must have disobeyed. She must have
followed at his heels silently through the darkness, like a poor pet
animal that will not be driven back. She could have accumulated nothing
for the journey more than she might have carried in her hand; and thus
poorly provided she must have embarked. Her intention had doubtless been
to make her presence on board known to him as soon as she could muster
courage to do so.
Thus the ten years' chapter of Alwyn Hill's romance wound itself up
under his eyes. That the poor young woman in the steerage had been the
young Duchess of Hamptonshire was never publicly disclosed. Hill had no
longer any reason for remaining in England, and soon after left its
shores with no intention to return. Previous to his departure he
confided his story to an old friend from his native town-grandfather of
the person who now relates it to you.
A few members, including the Bookworm, seemed to be impressed by the
quiet gentleman's tale; but the member we have called the Spark-who, by
the way, was getting somewhat tinged with the light of other days, and
owned to eight-and-thirty-walked daintily about the room instead of
sitting down by the fire with the majority and said that for his part he
preferred something more lively than the last story-something in which
such long-separated lovers were ultimately united. He also liked stories
that were more modern in their date of action than those he had heard
to-day.
Members immediately requested him to give them a specimen, to which the
Spark replied that he didn't mind, as far as that went. And though the
Vice-President, the Man of Family, the Colonel, and others, looked at
their watches, and said they must soon retire to their respective
quarters in the hotel adjoining, they all decided to sit out the Spark's
story.
DAME THE TENTH-THE HONOURABLE LAURA By the Spark
It was a cold and gloomy Christmas Eve. The mass of cloud overhead was
almost impervious to such daylight as still lingered on; the snow lay
several inches deep upon the ground, and the slanting downfall which
still went on threatened to considerably increase its thickness before
the morning. The Prospect Hotel, a building standing near the wild north
coast of Lower Wessex, looked so lonely and so useless at such a time as
this that a passing wayfarer would have been led to forget summer
possibilities, and to wonder at the commercial courage which could
invest capital, on the basis of the popular taste for the picturesque,
in a country subject to such dreary phases. That the district was alive
with visitors in August seemed but a dim tradition in weather so totally
opposed to all that tempts mankind from home. However, there the hotel
stood immovable; and the cliffs, creeks, and headlands which were the
primary attractions of the spot, rising in full view on the opposite
side of the valley, were now but stern angular outlines, while the
townlet in front was tinged over with a grimy dirtiness rather than the
pearly gray that in summer lent such beauty to its appearance.
Within the hotel commanding this outlook the landlord walked idly about
with his hands in his pockets, not in the least expectant of a visitor,
and yet unable to settle down to any occupation which should compensate
in some degree for the losses that winter idleness entailed on his
regular profession. So little, indeed, was anybody expected, that the
coffee-room waiter-a genteel boy, whose plated buttons in summer were as
close together upon the front of his short jacket as peas in a pod-now
appeared in the back yard, metamorphosed into the unrecognizable shape
of a rough country lad in corduroys and hobnailed boots, sweeping the
snow away, and talking the local dialect in all its purity, quite
oblivious of the new polite accent he had learned in the hot weather
from the well-behaved visitors. The front door was closed, and, as if to
express still more fully the sealed and chrysalis state of the
establishment, a sand-bag was placed at the bottom to keep out the
insidious snowdrift, the wind setting in directly from that quarter.
The landlord, entering his own parlour, walked to the large fire which
it was absolutely necessary to keep up for his comfort, no such blaze
burning in the coffee-room or elsewhere, and after giving it a stir
returned to a table in the lobby, whereon lay the visitors' book-now
closed and pushed back against the wall. He carelessly opened it; not a
name had been entered there since the 19th of the previous November, and
that was only the name of a man who had arrived on a tricycle, who,
indeed, had not been asked to enter at all.
While he was engaged thus the evening grew darker; but before it was as
yet too dark to distinguish objects upon the road winding round the back
of the cliffs, the landlord perceived a black spot on the distant white,
which speedily enlarged itself and drew near. The probabilities were
that this vehicle-for a vehicle of some sort it seemed to be-would pass
by and pursue its way to the nearest railway-town as others had done.
But, contrary to the landlord's expectation, as he stood conning it
through the yet unshuttered windows, the solitary object, on reaching
the corner, turned into the hotel-front, and drove up to the door.
It was a conveyance particularly unsuited to such a season and weather,
being nothing more substantial than an open basket-carriage drawn by a
single horse. Within sat two persons, of different sexes, as could soon
be discerned, in spite of their muffled attire. The man held the reins,
and the lady had got some shelter from the storm by clinging close to
his side. The landlord rang the hostler's bell to attract the attention
of the stable-man, for the approach of the visitors had been deadened to
noiselessness by the snow, and when the hostler had come to the horse's
head the gentleman and lady alighted, the landlord meeting them in the
hall.
The male stranger was a foreign-looking individual of about eight-and-
twenty. He was close-shaven, excepting a moustache, his features being
good, and even handsome. The lady, who stood timidly behind him, seemed
to be much younger-possibly not more than eighteen, though it was
difficult to judge either of her age or appearance in her present
wrappings.
The gentleman expressed his wish to stay till the morning, explaining
somewhat unnecessarily, considering that the house was an inn, that they
had been unexpectedly benighted on their drive. Such a welcome being
given them as landlords can give in dull times, the latter ordered fires
in the drawing and coffee-rooms, and went to the boy in the yard, who
soon scrubbed himself up, dragged his disused jacket from its box,
polished the buttons with his sleeve, and appeared civilized in the
hall. The lady was shown into a room where she could take off her snow-
damped garments, which she sent down to be dried, her companion,
meanwhile, putting a couple of sovereigns on the table, as if anxious to
make everything smooth and comfortable at starting, and requesting that
a private sitting-room might be got ready. The landlord assured him that
the best upstairs parlour-usually public-should be kept private this
evening, and sent the maid to light the candles. Dinner was prepared for
them, and, at the gentleman's desire, served in the same apartment;
where, the young lady having joined him, they were left to the rest and
refreshment they seemed to need.
That something was peculiar in the relations of the pair had more than
once struck the landlord, though wherein that peculiarity lay it was
hard to decide. But that his guest was one who paid his way readily had
been proved by his conduct, and dismissing conjectures, he turned to
practical affairs.
About nine o'clock he re-entered the hall, and, everything being done
for the day, again walked up and down, occasionally gazing through the
glass door at the prospect without, to ascertain how the weather was
progressing. Contrary to prognostication, snow had ceased falling, and,
with the rising of the moon, the sky had partially cleared, light
fleeces of cloud drifting across the silvery disk. There was every sign
that a frost was going to set in later on. For these reasons the distant
rising road was even more distinct now between its high banks than it
had been in the declining daylight. Not a track or rut broke the virgin
surface of the white mantle that lay along it, all marks left by the
lately arrived travellers having been speedily obliterated by the flakes
falling at the time.
And now the landlord beheld by the light of the moon a sight very
similar to that he had seen by the light of day. Again a black spot was
advancing down the road that margined the coast. He was in a moment or
two enabled to perceive that the present vehicle moved onward at a more
headlong pace than the little carriage which had preceded it; next, that
it was a brougham drawn by two powerful horses; next, that this
carriage, like the former one, was bound for the hotel-door. This
desirable feature of resemblance caused the landlord to once more
withdraw the sand-bag and advance into the porch.
An old gentleman was the first to alight. He was followed by a young
one, and both unhesitatingly came forward.
'Has a young lady, less than nineteen years of age, recently arrived
here in the company of a man some years her senior?' asked the old
gentleman, in haste. 'A man cleanly shaven for the most part, having the
appearance of an opera-singer, and calling himself Signor Smithozzi?'
'We have had arrivals lately,' said the landlord, in the tone of having
had twenty at least-not caring to acknowledge the attenuated state of
business that afflicted Prospect Hotel in winter.
'And among them can your memory recall two persons such as those I
describe?-the man a sort of baritone?'
'There certainly is or was a young couple staying in the hotel; but I
could not pronounce on the compass of the gentleman's voice.'
'No, no; of course not. I am quite bewildered. They arrived in a basket-
carriage, altogether badly provided?'
'They came in a carriage, I believe, as most of our visitors do.'
'Yes, yes. I must see them at once. Pardon my want of ceremony, and show
us in to where they are.'
'But, sir, you forget. Suppose the lady and gentleman I mean are not the
lady and gentleman you mean? It would be awkward to allow you to rush in
upon them just now while they are at dinner, and might cause me to lose
their future patronage.'
'True, true. They may not be the same persons. My anxiety, I perceive,
makes me rash in my assumptions!'
'Upon the whole, I think they must be the same, Uncle Quantock,' said
the young man, who had not till now spoken. And turning to the landlord:
'You possibly have not such a large assemblage of visitors here, on this
somewhat forbidding evening, that you quite forget how this couple
arrived, and what the lady wore?' His tone of addressing the landlord
had in it a quiet frigidity that was not without irony.
'Ah! what she wore; that's it, James. What did she wear?'
'I don't usually take stock of my guests' clothing,' replied the
landlord drily, for the ready money of the first arrival had decidedly
biassed him in favour of that gentleman's cause. 'You can certainly see
some of it if you want to,' he added carelessly, 'for it is drying by
the kitchen fire.'
Before the words were half out of his mouth the old gentleman had
exclaimed, 'Ah!' and precipitated himself along what seemed to be the
passage to the kitchen; but as this turned out to be only the entrance
to a dark china-closet, he hastily emerged again, after a collision with
the inn-crockery had told him of his mistake.
'I beg your pardon, I'm sure; but if you only knew my feelings (which I
cannot at present explain), you would make allowances. Anything I have
broken I will willingly pay for.'
'Don't mention it, sir,' said the landlord. And showing the way, they
adjourned to the kitchen without further parley. The eldest of the party
instantly seized the lady's cloak, that hung upon a clothes-horse,
exclaiming: 'Ah! yes, James, it is hers. I knew we were on their track.'
'Yes, it is hers,' answered the nephew quietly, for he was much less
excited than his companion.
'Show us their room at once,' said the old man.
'William, have the lady and gentleman in the front sitting-room finished
dining?'
'Yes, sir, long ago,' said the hundred plated buttons.
'Then show up these gentlemen to them at once. You stay here to-night,
gentlemen, I presume? Shall the horses be taken out?'
'Feed the horses and wash their mouths. Whether we stay or not depends
upon circumstances,' said the placid younger man, as he followed his
uncle and the waiter to the staircase.
'I think, Nephew James,' said the former, as he paused with his foot on
the first step-'I think we had better not be announced, but take them by
surprise. She may go throwing herself out of the window, or do some
equally desperate thing!'
'Yes, certainly, we'll enter unannounced.' And he called back the lad
who preceded them.
'I cannot sufficiently thank you, James, for so effectually aiding me in
this pursuit!' exclaimed the old gentleman, taking the other by the
hand. 'My increasing infirmities would have hindered my overtaking her
to-night, had it not been for your timely aid.'
'I am only too happy, uncle, to have been of service to you in this or
any other matter. I only wish I could have accompanied you on a
pleasanter journey. However, it is advisable to go up to them at once,
or they may hear us.' And they softly ascended the stairs.
On the door being opened, a room too large to be comfortable, lit by the
best branch-candlesticks of the hotel, was disclosed, before the fire of
which apartment the truant couple were sitting, very innocently looking
over the hotel scrap-book and the album containing views of the
neighbourhood. No sooner had the old man entered than the young lady-who
now showed herself to be quite as young as described, and remarkably
prepossessing as to features-perceptibly turned pale. When the nephew
entered, she turned still paler, as if she were going to faint. The
young man described as an opera-singer rose with grim civility, and
placed chairs for his visitors.
'Caught you, thank God!' said the old gentleman breathlessly.
'Yes, worse luck, my lord!' murmured Signor Smithozzi, in native London-
English, that distinguished alien having, in fact, first seen the light
in the vicinity of the City Road. 'She would have been mine to-morrow.
And I think that under the peculiar circumstances it would be wiser-
considering how soon the breath of scandal will tarnish a lady's fame-to
let her be mine to-morrow, just the same.'
'Never!' said the old man. 'Here is a lady under age, without
experience-child-like in her maiden innocence and virtue-whom you have
plied by your vile arts, till this morning at dawn-'
'Lord Quantock, were I not bound to respect your gray hairs-'
'Till this morning at dawn you tempted her away from her father's roof.
What blame can attach to her conduct that will not, on a full
explanation of the matter, be readily passed over in her and thrown
entirely on you? Laura, you return at once with me. I should not have
arrived, after all, early enough to deliver you, if it had not been for
the disinterestedness of your cousin, Captain Northbrook, who, on my
discovering your flight this morning, offered with a promptitude for
which I can never sufficiently thank him, to accompany me on my journey,
as the only male relative I have near me. Come, do you hear? Put on your
things; we are off at once.'
'I don't want to go!' pouted the young lady.
'I daresay you don't,' replied her father drily. 'But children never
know what's best for them. So come along, and trust to my opinion.'
Laura was silent, and did not move, the opera gentleman looking
helplessly into the fire, and the lady's cousin sitting meditatively
calm, as the single one of the four whose position enabled him to survey
the whole escapade with the cool criticism of a comparative outsider.
'I say to you, Laura, as the father of a daughter under age, that you
instantly come with me. What? Would you compel me to use physical force
to reclaim you?'
'I don't want to return!' again declared Laura.
'It is your duty to return nevertheless, and at once, I inform you.'
'I don't want to!'
'Now, dear Laura, this is what I say: return with me and your cousin
James quietly, like a good and repentant girl, and nothing will be said.
Nobody knows what has happened as yet, and if we start at once, we shall
be home before it is light to-morrow morning. Come.'
'I am not obliged to come at your bidding, father, and I would rather
not!'
Now James, the cousin, during this dialogue might have been observed to
grow somewhat restless, and even impatient. More than once he had parted
his lips to speak, but second thoughts each time held him back. The
moment had come, however, when he could keep silence no longer.
'Come, madam!' he spoke out, 'this farce with your father has, in my
opinion, gone on long enough. Just make no more ado, and step downstairs
with us.'
She gave herself an intractable little twist, and did not reply.
'By the Lord Harry, Laura, I won't stand this!' he said angrily. 'Come,
get on your things before I come and compel you. There is a kind of
compulsion to which this talk is child's play. Come, madam-instantly, I
say!'
The old nobleman turned to his nephew and said mildly: 'Leave me to
insist, James. It doesn't become you. I can speak to her sharply enough,
if I choose.'
James, however, did not heed his uncle, and went on to the troublesome
young woman: 'You say you don't want to come, indeed! A pretty story to
tell me, that! Come, march out of the room at once, and leave that
hulking fellow for me to deal with afterward. Get on quickly-come!' and
he advanced toward her as if to pull her by the hand.
'Nay, nay,' expostulated Laura's father, much surprised at his nephew's
sudden demeanour. 'You take too much upon yourself. Leave her to me.'
'I won't leave her to you any longer!'
'You have no right, James, to address either me or her in this way; so
just hold your tongue. Come, my dear.'
'I have every right!' insisted James.
'How do you make that out?'
'I have the right of a husband.'
'Whose husband?'
'Hers.'
'What?'
'She's my wife.'
'James!'
'Well, to cut a long story short, I may say that she secretly married
me, in spite of your lordship's prohibition, about three months ago. And
I must add that, though she cooled down rather quickly, everything went
on smoothly enough between us for some time; in spite of the awkwardness
of meeting only by stealth. We were only waiting for a convenient moment
to break the news to you when this idle Adonis turned up, and after
poisoning her mind against me, brought her into this disgrace.'
Here the operatic luminary, who had sat in rather an abstracted and
nerveless attitude till the cousin made his declaration, fired up and
cried: 'I declare before Heaven that till this moment I never knew she
was a wife! I found her in her father's house an unhappy girl-unhappy,
as I believe, because of the loneliness and dreariness of that
establishment, and the want of society, and for nothing else whatever.
What this statement about her being your wife means I am quite at a loss
to understand. Are you indeed married to him, Laura?'
Laura nodded from within her tearful handkerchief. 'It was because of my
anomalous position in being privately married to him,' she sobbed, 'that
I was unhappy at home-and-and I didn't like him so well as I did at
first-and I wished I could get out of the mess I was in! And then I saw
you a few times, and when you said, "We'll run off," I thought I saw a
way out of it all, and then I agreed to come with you-oo-oo!'
'Well! well! well! And is this true?' murmured the bewildered old
nobleman, staring from James to Laura, and from Laura to James, as if he
fancied they might be figments of the imagination. 'Is this, then,
James, the secret of your kindness to your old uncle in helping him to
find his daughter? Good Heavens! What further depths of duplicity are
there left for a man to learn!'
'I have married her, Uncle Quantock, as I said,' answered James coolly.
'The deed is done, and can't be undone by talking here.'
'Where were you married?'
'At St. Mary's, Toneborough.'
'When?'
'On the 29th of September, during the time she was visiting there.'
'Who married you?'
'I don't know. One of the curates-we were quite strangers to the place.
So, instead of my assisting you to recover her, you may as well assist
me.'
'Never! never!' said Lord Quantock. 'Madam, and sir, I beg to tell you
that I wash my hands of the whole affair! If you are man and wife, as it
seems you are, get reconciled as best you may. I have no more to say or
do with either of you. I leave you, Laura, in the hands of your husband,
and much joy may you bring him; though the situation, I own, is not
encouraging.'
Saying this, the indignant speaker pushed back his chair against the
table with such force that the candlesticks rocked on their bases, and
left the room.
Laura's wet eyes roved from one of the young men to the other, who now
stood glaring face to face, and, being much frightened at their aspect,
slipped out of the room after her father. Him, however, she could hear
going out of the front door, and, not knowing where to take shelter, she
crept into the darkness of an adjoining bedroom, and there awaited
events with a palpitating heart.
Meanwhile the two men remaining in the sitting-room drew nearer to each
other, and the opera-singer broke the silence by saying, 'How could you
insult me in the way you did, calling me a fellow, and accusing me of
poisoning her mind toward you, when you knew very well I was as ignorant
of your relation to her as an unborn babe?'
'Oh yes, you were quite ignorant; I can believe that readily,' sneered
Laura's husband.
'I here call Heaven to witness that I never knew!'
'Recitativo-the rhythm excellent, and the tone well sustained. Is it
likely that any man could win the confidence of a young fool her age,
and not get that out of her? Preposterous! Tell it to the most improved
new pit-stalls.'
'Captain Northbrook, your insinuations are as despicable as your
wretched person!' cried the baritone, losing all patience. And springing
forward he slapped the captain in the face with the palm of his hand.
Northbrook flinched but slightly, and calmly using his handkerchief to
learn if his nose was bleeding, said, 'I quite expected this insult, so
I came prepared.' And he drew forth from a black valise which he carried
in his hand a small case of pistols.
The baritone started at the unexpected sight, but recovering from his
surprise said, 'Very well, as you will,' though perhaps his tone showed
a slight want of confidence.
'Now,' continued the husband, quite confidingly, 'we want no parade, no
nonsense, you know. Therefore we'll dispense with seconds?'
The signor slightly nodded.
'Do you know this part of the country well?' Cousin James went on, in
the same cool and still manner. 'If you don't, I do. Quite at the bottom
of the rocks out there, just beyond the stream which falls over them to
the shore, is a smooth sandy space, not so much shut in as to be out of
the moonlight; and the way down to it from this side is over steps cut
in the cliff; and we can find our way down without trouble. We-we two-
will find our way down; but only one of us will find his way up, you
understand?'
'Quite.'
'Then suppose we start; the sooner it is over the better. We can order
supper before we go out-supper for two; for though we are three at
present-'
'Three?'
'Yes; you and I and she-'
'Oh yes.'
'-We shall be only two by and by; so that, as I say, we will order
supper for two; for the lady and a gentleman. Whichever comes back alive
will tap at her door, and call her in to share the repast with him-she's
not off the premises. But we must not alarm her now; and above all
things we must not let the inn-people see us go out; it would look so
odd for two to go out, and only one come in. Ha! ha!'
'Ha! ha! exactly.'
'Are you ready?'
'Oh-quite.'
'Then I'll lead the way.'
He went softly to the door and downstairs, ordering supper to be ready
in an hour, as he had said; then making a feint of returning to the room
again, he beckoned to the singer, and together they slipped out of the
house by a side door.
The sky was now quite clear, and the wheelmarks of the brougham which
had borne away Laura's father, Lord Quantock, remained distinctly
visible. Soon the verge of the down was reached, the captain leading the
way, and the baritone following silently, casting furtive glances at his
companion, and beyond him at the scene ahead. In due course they arrived
at the chasm in the cliff which formed the waterfall. The outlook here
was wild and picturesque in the extreme, and fully justified the many
praises, paintings, and photographic views to which the spot had given
birth. What in summer was charmingly green and gray, was now rendered
weird and fantastic by the snow.
From their feet the cascade plunged downward almost vertically to a
depth of eighty or a hundred feet before finally losing itself in the
sand, and though the stream was but small, its impact upon jutting rocks
in its descent divided it into a hundred spirts and splashes that sent
up a mist into the upper air. A few marginal drippings had been frozen
into icicles, but the centre flowed on unimpeded.
The operatic artist looked down as he halted, but his thoughts were
plainly not of the beauty of the scene. His companion with the pistols
was immediately in front of him, and there was no handrail on the side
of the path toward the chasm. Obeying a quick impulse, he stretched out
his arm, and with a superhuman thrust sent Laura's husband reeling over.
A whirling human shape, diminishing downward in the moon's rays farther
and farther toward invisibility, a smack-smack upon the projecting
ledges of rock-at first louder and heavier than that of the brook, and
then scarcely to be distinguished from it-then a cessation, then the
splashing of the stream as before, and the accompanying murmur of the
sea, were all the incidents that disturbed the customary flow of the
little waterfall.
The singer waited in a fixed attitude for a few minutes, then turning,
he rapidly retraced his steps over the intervening upland toward the
road, and in less than a quarter of an hour was at the door of the
hotel. Slipping quietly in as the clock struck ten, he said to the
landlord, over the bar hatchway-
'The bill as soon as you can let me have it, including charges for the
supper that was ordered, though we cannot stay to eat it, I am sorry to
say.' He added with forced gaiety, 'The lady's father and cousin have
thought better of intercepting the marriage, and after quarrelling with
each other have gone home independently.'
'Well done, sir!' said the landlord, who still sided with this customer
in preference to those who had given trouble and barely paid for baiting
the horses. '"Love will find out the way!" as the saying is. Wish you
joy, sir!'
Signor Smithozzi went upstairs, and on entering the sitting-room found
that Laura had crept out from the dark adjoining chamber in his absence.
She looked up at him with eyes red from weeping, and with symptoms of
alarm.
'What is it?-where is he?' she said apprehensively.
'Captain Northbrook has gone back. He says he will have no more to do
with you.'
'And I am quite abandoned by them!-and they'll forget me, and nobody
care about me any more!' She began to cry afresh.
'But it is the luckiest thing that could have happened. All is just as
it was before they came disturbing us. But, Laura, you ought to have
told me about that private marriage, though it is all the same now; it
will be dissolved, of course. You are a wid-virtually a widow.'
'It is no use to reproach me for what is past. What am I to do now?'
'We go at once to Cliff-Martin. The horse has rested thoroughly these
last three hours, and he will have no difficulty in doing an additional
half-dozen miles. We shall be there before twelve, and there are late
taverns in the place, no doubt. There we'll sell both horse and carriage
to-morrow morning; and go by the coach to Downstaple. Once in the train
we are safe.'
'I agree to anything,' she said listlessly.
In about ten minutes the horse was put in, the bill paid, the lady's
dried wraps put round her, and the journey resumed.
When about a mile on their way, they saw a glimmering light in advance
of them. 'I wonder what that is?' said the baritone, whose manner had
latterly become nervous, every sound and sight causing him to turn his
head.
'It is only a turnpike,' said she. 'That light is the lamp kept burning
over the door.'
'Of course, of course, dearest. How stupid I am!'
On reaching the gate they perceived that a man on foot had approached
it, apparently by some more direct path than the roadway they pursued,
and was, at the moment they drew up, standing in conversation with the
gatekeeper.
'It is quite impossible that he could fall over the cliff by accident or
the will of God on such a light night as this,' the pedestrian was
saying. 'These two children I tell you of saw two men go along the path
toward the waterfall, and ten minutes later only one of 'em came back,
walking fast, like a man who wanted to get out of the way because he had
done something queer. There is no manner of doubt that he pushed the
other man over, and, mark me, it will soon cause a hue and cry for that
man.'
The candle shone in the face of the Signor and showed that there had
arisen upon it a film of ghastliness. Laura, glancing toward him for a
few moments observed it, till, the gatekeeper having mechanically swung
open the gate, her companion drove through, and they were soon again
enveloped in the white silence.
Her conductor had said to Laura, just before, that he meant to inquire
the way at this turnpike; but he had certainly not done so.
As soon as they had gone a little farther the omission, intentional or
not, began to cause them some trouble. Beyond the secluded district
which they now traversed ran the more frequented road, where progress
would be easy, the snow being probably already beaten there to some
extent by traffic; but they had not yet reached it, and having no one to
guide them their journey began to appear less feasible than it had done
before starting. When the little lane which they had entered ascended
another hill, and seemed to wind round in a direction contrary to the
expected route to Cliff-Martin, the question grew serious. Ever since
overhearing the conversation at the turnpike, Laura had maintained a
perfect silence, and had even shrunk somewhat away from the side of her
lover.
'Why don't you talk, Laura,' he said with forced buoyancy, 'and suggest
the way we should go?'
'Oh yes, I will,' she responded, a curious fearfulness being audible in
her voice.
After this she uttered a few occasional sentences which seemed to
persuade him that she suspected nothing. At last he drew rein, and the
weary horse stood still.
'We are in a fix,' he said.
She answered eagerly: 'I'll hold the reins while you run forward to the
top of the ridge, and see if the road takes a favourable turn beyond. It
would give the horse a few minutes' rest, and if you find out no change
in the direction, we will retrace this lane, and take the other
turning.'
The expedient seemed a good one in the circumstances, especially when
recommended by the singular eagerness of her voice; and placing the
reins in her hands-a quite unnecessary precaution, considering the state
of their hack-he stepped out and went forward through the snow till she
could see no more of him.
No sooner was he gone than Laura, with a rapidity which contrasted
strangely with her previous stillness, made fast the reins to the corner
of the phaeton, and slipping out on the opposite side, ran back with all
her might down the hill, till, coming to an opening in the fence, she
scrambled through it, and plunged into the copse which bordered this
portion of the lane. Here she stood in hiding under one of the large
bushes, clinging so closely to its umbrage as to seem but a portion of
its mass, and listening intently for the faintest sound of pursuit. But
nothing disturbed the stillness save the occasional slipping of gathered
snow from the boughs, or the rustle of some wild animal over the crisp
flake-bespattered herbage. At length, apparently convinced that her
former companion was either unable to find her, or not anxious to do so,
in the present strange state of affairs, she crept out from the bushes,
and in less than an hour found herself again approaching the door of the
Prospect Hotel.
As she drew near, Laura could see that, far from being wrapped in
darkness, as she might have expected, there were ample signs that all
the tenants were on the alert, lights moving about the open space in
front. Satisfaction was expressed in her face when she discerned that no
reappearance of her baritone and his pony-carriage was causing this
sensation; but it speedily gave way to grief and dismay when she saw by
the lights the form of a man borne on a stretcher by two others into the
porch of the hotel.
'I have caused all this,' she murmured between her quivering lips. 'He
has murdered him!' Running forward to the door, she hastily asked of the
first person she met if the man on the stretcher was dead.
'No, miss,' said the labourer addressed, eyeing her up and down as an
unexpected apparition. 'He is still alive, they say, but not sensible.
He either fell or was pushed over the waterfall; 'tis thoughted he was
pushed. He is the gentleman who came here just now with the old lord,
and went out afterward (as is thoughted) with a stranger who had come a
little earlier. Anyhow, that's as I had it.'
Laura entered the house, and acknowledging without the least reserve
that she was the injured man's wife, had soon installed herself as head
nurse by the bed on which he lay. When the two surgeons who had been
sent for arrived, she learned from them that his wounds were so severe
as to leave but a slender hope of recovery, it being little short of
miraculous that he was not killed on the spot, which his enemy had
evidently reckoned to be the case. She knew who that enemy was, and
shuddered.
Laura watched all night, but her husband knew nothing of her presence.
During the next day he slightly recognized her, and in the evening was
able to speak. He informed the surgeons that, as was surmised, he had
been pushed over the cascade by Signor Smithozzi; but he communicated
nothing to her who nursed him, not even replying to her remarks; he
nodded courteously at any act of attention she rendered, and that was
all.
In a day or two it was declared that everything favoured his recovery,
notwithstanding the severity of his injuries. Full search was made for
Smithozzi, but as yet there was no intelligence of his whereabouts,
though the repentant Laura communicated all she knew. As far as could be
judged, he had come back to the carriage after searching out the way,
and finding the young lady missing, had looked about for her till he was
tired; then had driven on to Cliff-Martin, sold the horse and carriage
next morning, and disappeared, probably by one of the departing coaches
which ran thence to the nearest station, the only difference from his
original programme being that he had gone alone.
During the days and weeks of that long and tedious recovery, Laura
watched by her husband's bedside with a zeal and assiduity which would
have considerably extenuated any fault save one of such magnitude as
hers. That her husband did not forgive her was soon obvious. Nothing
that she could do in the way of smoothing pillows, easing his position,
shifting bandages, or administering draughts, could win from him more
than a few measured words of thankfulness, such as he would probably
have uttered to any other woman on earth who had performed these
particular services for him.
'Dear, dear James,' she said one day, bending her face upon the bed in
an excess of emotion. 'How you have suffered! It has been too cruel. I
am more glad you are getting better than I can say. I have prayed for
it-and I am sorry for what I have done; I am innocent of the worst, and-
I hope you will not think me so very bad, James!'
'Oh no. On the contrary, I shall think you very good-as a nurse,' he
answered, the caustic severity of his tone being apparent through its
weakness.
Laura let fall two or three silent tears, and said no more that day.
Somehow or other Signor Smithozzi seemed to be making good his escape.
It transpired that he had not taken a passage in either of the suspected
coaches, though he had certainly got out of the county; altogether, the
chance of finding him was problematical.
Not only did Captain Northbrook survive his injuries, but it soon
appeared that in the course of a few weeks he would find himself little
if any the worse for the catastrophe. It could also be seen that Laura,
while secretly hoping for her husband's forgiveness for a piece of folly
of which she saw the enormity more clearly every day, was in great doubt
as to what her future relations with him would be. Moreover, to add to
the complication, whilst she, as a runaway wife, was unforgiven by her
husband, she and her husband, as a runaway couple, were unforgiven by
her father, who had never once communicated with either of them since
his departure from the inn. But her immediate anxiety was to win the
pardon of her husband, who possibly might be bearing in mind, as he lay
upon his couch, the familiar words of Brabantio, 'She has deceived her
father, and may thee.'
Matters went on thus till Captain Northbrook was able to walk about. He
then removed with his wife to quiet apartments on the south coast, and
here his recovery was rapid. Walking up the cliffs one day, supporting
him by her arm as usual, she said to him, simply, 'James, if I go on as
I am going now, and always attend to your smallest want, and never think
of anything but devotion to you, will you-try to like me a little?'
'It is a thing I must carefully consider,' he said, with the same gloomy
dryness which characterized all his words to her now. 'When I have
considered, I will tell you.'
He did not tell her that evening, though she lingered long at her
routine work of making his bedroom comfortable, putting the light so
that it would not shine into his eyes, seeing him fall asleep, and then
retiring noiselessly to her own chamber. When they met in the morning at
breakfast, and she had asked him as usual how he had passed the night,
she added timidly, in the silence which followed his reply, 'Have you
considered?'
'No, I have not considered sufficiently to give you an answer.'
Laura sighed, but to no purpose; and the day wore on with intense
heaviness to her, and the customary modicum of strength gained to him.
The next morning she put the same question, and looked up despairingly
in his face, as though her whole life hung upon his reply.
'Yes, I have considered,' he said.
'Ah!'
'We must part.'
'O James!'
'I cannot forgive you; no man would. Enough is settled upon you to keep
you in comfort, whatever your father may do. I shall sell out, and
disappear from this hemisphere.'
'You have absolutely decided?' she asked miserably. 'I have nobody now
to c-c-care for-'
'I have absolutely decided,' he shortly returned. 'We had better part
here. You will go back to your father. There is no reason why I should
accompany you, since my presence would only stand in the way of the
forgiveness he will probably grant you if you appear before him alone.
We will say farewell to each other in three days from this time. I have
calculated on being ready to go on that day.'
Bowed down with trouble, she withdrew to her room, and the three days
were passed by her husband in writing letters and attending to other
business-matters, saying hardly a word to her the while. The morning of
departure came; but before the horses had been put in to take the
severed twain in different directions, out of sight of each other,
possibly for ever, the postman arrived with the morning letters.
There was one for the captain; none for her-there were never any for
her. However, on this occasion something was enclosed for her in his,
which he handed her. She read it and looked up helpless.
'My dear father-is dead!' she said. In a few moments she added, in a
whisper, 'I must go to the Manor to bury him . . . Will you go with me,
James?'
He musingly looked out of the window. 'I suppose it is an awkward and
melancholy undertaking for a woman alone,' he said coldly. 'Well, well-
my poor uncle!-Yes, I'll go with you, and see you through the business.'
So they went off together instead of asunder, as planned. It is
unnecessary to record the details of the journey, or of the sad week
which followed it at her father's house. Lord Quantock's seat was a fine
old mansion standing in its own park, and there were plenty of
opportunities for husband and wife either to avoid each other, or to get
reconciled if they were so minded, which one of them was at least.
Captain Northbrook was not present at the reading of the will. She came
to him afterward, and found him packing up his papers, intending to
start next morning, now that he had seen her through the turmoil
occasioned by her father's death.
'He has left me everything that he could!' she said to her husband.
'James, will you forgive me now, and stay?'
'I cannot stay.'
'Why not?'
'I cannot stay,' he repeated.
'But why?'
'I don't like you.'
He acted up to his word. When she came downstairs the next morning she
was told that he had gone.
Laura bore her double bereavement as best she could. The vast mansion in
which she had hitherto lived, with all its historic contents, had gone
to her father's successor in the title; but her own was no unhandsome
one. Around lay the undulating park, studded with trees a dozen times
her own age; beyond it, the wood; beyond the wood, the farms. All this
fair and quiet scene was hers. She nevertheless remained a lonely,
repentant, depressed being, who would have given the greater part of
everything she possessed to ensure the presence and affection of that
husband whose very austerity and phlegm-qualities that had formerly led
to the alienation between them-seemed now to be adorable features in his
character.
She hoped and hoped again, but all to no purpose. Captain Northbrook did
not alter his mind and return. He was quite a different sort of man from
one who altered his mind; that she was at last despairingly forced to
admit. And then she left off hoping, and settled down to a mechanical
routine of existence which in some measure dulled her grief; but at the
expense of all her natural animation and the sprightly wilfulness which
had once charmed those who knew her, though it was perhaps all the while
a factor in the production of her unhappiness.
To say that her beauty quite departed as the years rolled on would be to
overstate the truth. Time is not a merciful master, as we all know, and
he was not likely to act exceptionally in the case of a woman who had
mental troubles to bear in addition to the ordinary weight of years. Be
this as it may, eleven other winters came and went, and Laura Northbrook
remained the lonely mistress of house and lands without once hearing of
her husband. Every probability seemed to favour the assumption that he
had died in some foreign land; and offers for her hand were not few as
the probability verged on certainty with the long lapse of time. But the
idea of remarriage seemed never to have entered her head for a moment.
Whether she continued to hope even now for his return could not be
distinctly ascertained; at all events she lived a life unmodified in the
slightest degree from that of the first six months of his absence.
This twelfth year of Laura's loneliness, and the thirtieth of her life
drew on apace, and the season approached that had seen the unhappy
adventure for which she so long had suffered. Christmas promised to be
rather wet than cold, and the trees on the outskirts of Laura's estate
dripped monotonously from day to day upon the turnpike-road which
bordered them. On an afternoon in this week between three and four
o'clock a hired fly might have been seen driving along the highway at
this point, and on reaching the top of the hill it stopped. A gentleman
of middle age alighted from the vehicle.
'You need drive no farther,' he said to the coachman. 'The rain seems to
have nearly ceased. I'll stroll a little way, and return on foot to the
inn by dinner-time.'
The flyman touched his hat, turned the horse, and drove back as
directed. When he was out of sight, the gentleman walked on, but he had
not gone far before the rain again came down pitilessly, though of this
the pedestrian took little heed, going leisurely onward till he reached
Laura's park gate, which he passed through. The clouds were thick and
the days were short, so that by the time he stood in front of the
mansion it was dark. In addition to this his appearance, which on
alighting from the carriage had been untarnished, partook now of the
character of a drenched wayfarer not too well blessed with this world's
goods. He halted for no more than a moment at the front entrance, and
going round to the servants' quarter, as if he had a preconceived
purpose in so doing, there rang the bell. When a page came to him he
inquired if they would kindly allow him to dry himself by the kitchen
fire.
The page retired, and after a murmured colloquy returned with the cook,
who informed the wet and muddy man that though it was not her custom to
admit strangers, she should have no particular objection to his drying
himself; the night being so damp and gloomy. Therefore the wayfarer
entered and sat down by the fire.
'The owner of this house is a very rich gentleman, no doubt?' he asked,
as he watched the meat turning on the spit.
''Tis not a gentleman, but a lady,' said the cook.
'A widow, I presume?'
'A sort of widow. Poor soul, her husband is gone abroad, and has never
been heard of for many years.'
'She sees plenty of company, no doubt, to make up for his absence?'
'No, indeed-hardly a soul. Service here is as bad as being in a
nunnery.'
In short, the wayfarer, who had at first been so coldly received,
contrived by his frank and engaging manner to draw the ladies of the
kitchen into a most confidential conversation, in which Laura's history
was minutely detailed, from the day of her husband's departure to the
present. The salient feature in all their discourse was her unflagging
devotion to his memory.
Having apparently learned all that he wanted to know-among other things
that she was at this moment, as always, alone-the traveller said he was
quite dry; and thanking the servants for their kindness, departed as he
had come. On emerging into the darkness he did not, however, go down the
avenue by which he had arrived. He simply walked round to the front
door. There he rang, and the door was opened to him by a man-servant
whom he had not seen during his sojourn at the other end of the house.
In answer to the servant's inquiry for his name, he said ceremoniously,
'Will you tell The Honourable Mrs. Northbrook that the man she nursed
many years ago, after a frightful accident, has called to thank her?'
The footman retreated, and it was rather a long time before any further
signs of attention were apparent. Then he was shown into the drawing-
room, and the door closed behind him.
On the couch was Laura, trembling and pale. She parted her lips and held
out her hands to him, but could not speak. But he did not require
speech, and in a moment they were in each other's arms.
Strange news circulated through that mansion and the neighbouring town
on the next and following days. But the world has a way of getting used
to things, and the intelligence of the return of The Honourable Mrs.
Northbrook's long-absent husband was soon received with comparative
calm.
A few days more brought Christmas, and the forlorn home of Laura
Northbrook blazed from basement to attic with light and cheerfulness.
Not that the house was overcrowded with visitors, but many were present,
and the apathy of a dozen years came at length to an end. The animation
which set in thus at the close of the old year did not diminish on the
arrival of the new; and by the time its twelve months had likewise run
the course of its predecessors, a son had been added to the dwindled
line of the Northbrook family.
At the conclusion of this narrative the Spark was thanked, with a manner
of some surprise, for nobody had credited him with a taste for tale-
telling. Though it had been resolved that this story should be the last,
a few of the weather-bound listeners were for sitting on into the small
hours over their pipes and glasses, and raking up yet more episodes of
family history. But the majority murmured reasons for soon getting to
their lodgings.
It was quite dark without, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the
feeble street-lamps, and before a few shop-windows which had been
hardily kept open in spite of the obvious unlikelihood of any chance
customer traversing the muddy thoroughfares at that hour.
By one, by two, and by three the benighted members of the Field-Club
rose from their seats, shook hands, made appointments, and dropped away
to their respective quarters, free or hired, hoping for a fair morrow.
It would probably be not until the next summer meeting, months away in
the future, that the easy intercourse which now existed between them all
would repeat itself. The crimson maltster, for instance, knew that on
the following market-day his friends the President, the Rural Dean, and
the bookworm would pass him in the street, if they met him, with the
barest nod of civility, the President and the Colonel for social
reasons, the bookworm for intellectual reasons, and the Rural Dean for
moral ones, the latter being a staunch teetotaller, dead against John
Barleycorn. The sentimental member knew that when, on his rambles, he
met his friend the bookworm with a pocket-copy of something or other
under his nose, the latter would not love his companionship as he had
done to-day; and the President, the aristocrat, and the farmer knew that
affairs political, sporting, domestic, or agricultural would exclude for
a long time all rumination on the characters of dames gone to dust for
scores of years, however beautiful and noble they may have been in their
day.
The last member at length departed, the attendant at the museum lowered
the fire, the curator locked up the rooms, and soon there was only a
single pirouetting flame on the top of a single coal to make the bones
of the ichthyosaurus seem to leap, the stuffed birds to wink, and to
draw a smile from the varnished skulls of Vespasian's soldiery. draw a
smile from the varnished skulls of Vespasian's soldiery.
WESSEX TALES
By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
AN IMAGINATIVE WOMAN
THE THREE STRANGERS
THE WITHERED ARM
CHAPTER I-A LORN MILKMAID
CHAPTER II-THE YOUNG WIFE
CHAPTER III-A VISION
CHAPTER IV-A SUGGESTION
CHAPTER V-CONJUROR TRENDLE
CHAPTER VI-A SECOND ATTEMPT
CHAPTER VII-A RIDE
VIII-A WATER-SIDE HERMIT
IX-A RENCOUNTER
FELLOW-TOWNSMEN
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP
I
II
III
IV
V
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
I-HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED
II-HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN
III-THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT
IV-AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON
V-HOW THEY WENT TO LULSTEAD COVE
VI-THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON
VII-THE WALK TO WARM'ELL CROSS AND AFTERWARDS
PREFACE
An apology is perhaps needed for the neglect of contrast which is shown
by presenting two consecutive stories of hangmen in such a small
collection as the following. But in the neighbourhood of county-towns
tales of executions used to form a large proportion of the local
traditions; and though never personally acquainted with any chief
operator at such scenes, the writer of these pages had as a boy the
privilege of being on speaking terms with a man who applied for the
office, and who sank into an incurable melancholy because he failed to
get it, some slight mitigation of his grief being to dwell upon striking
episodes in the lives of those happier ones who had held it with success
and renown. His tale of disappointment used to cause some wonder why his
ambition should have taken such an unfortunate form, but its nobleness
was never questioned. In those days, too, there was still living an old
woman who, for the cure of some eating disease, had been taken in her
youth to have her 'blood turned' by a convict's corpse, in the manner
described in 'The Withered Arm.'
Since writing this story some years ago I have been reminded by an aged
friend who knew 'Rhoda Brook' that, in relating her dream, my
forgetfulness has weakened the facts our of which the tale grew. In
reality it was while lying down on a hot afternoon that the incubus
oppressed her and she flung it off, with the results upon the body of
the original as described. To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in
the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight
dream. Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which
affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize
the fresh originality of living fact-from whose shape they slowly
depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-
work of the mould.
Among the many devices for concealing smuggled goods in caves and pits
of the earth, that of planting an apple-tree in a tray or box which was
placed over the mouth of the pit is, I believe, unique, and it is
detailed in one of the tales precisely as described by an old carrier of
'tubs'-a man who was afterwards in my father's employ for over thirty
years. I never gathered from his reminiscences what means were adopted
for lifting the tree, which, with its roots, earth, and receptacle, must
have been of considerable weight. There is no doubt, however, that the
thing was done through many years. My informant often spoke, too, of the
horribly suffocating sensation produced by the pair of spirit-tubs slung
upon the chest and back, after stumbling with the burden of them for
several miles inland over a rough country and in darkness. He said that
though years of his youth and young manhood were spent in this irregular
business, his profits from the same, taken all together, did not average
the wages he might have earned in a steady employment, whilst the
fatigues and risks were excessive.
I may add that the first story in the series turns upon a physical
possibility that may attach to women of imaginative temperament, and
that is well supported by the experiences of medical men and other
observers of such manifestations.
T. H. April 1896.
AN IMAGINATIVE WOMAN
When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a
well-known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotel to
find his wife. She, with the children, had rambled along the shore, and
Marchmill followed in the direction indicated by the military-looking
hall-porter
'By Jove, how far you've gone! I am quite out of breath,' Marchmill
said, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who was reading
as she walked, the three children being considerably further ahead with
the nurse.
Mrs. Marchmill started out of the reverie into which the book had thrown
her. 'Yes,' she said, 'you've been such a long time. I was tired of
staying in that dreary hotel. But I am sorry if you have wanted me,
Will?'
'Well, I have had trouble to suit myself. When you see the airy and
comfortable rooms heard of, you find they are stuffy and uncomfortable.
Will you come and see if what I've fixed on will do? There is not much
room, I am afraid; hut I can light on nothing better. The town is rather
full.'
The pair left the children and nurse to continue their ramble, and went
back together.
In age well-balanced, in personal appearance fairly matched, and in
domestic requirements conformable, in temper this couple differed,
though even here they did not often clash, he being equable, if not
lymphatic, and she decidedly nervous and sanguine. It was to their
tastes and fancies, those smallest, greatest particulars, that no common
denominator could be applied. Marchmill considered his wife's likes and
inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The
husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards,
and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best
characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the
muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking
humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she
reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the
destruction of life. She could only recover her equanimity by assuring
herself that some, at least, of his weapons were sooner or later used
for the extermination of horrid vermin and animals almost as cruel to
their inferiors in species as human beings were to theirs.
She had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as any
objection to having him for a husband. Indeed, the necessity of getting
life-leased at all cost, a cardinal virtue which all good mothers teach,
kept her from thinking of it at all till she had closed with William,
had passed the honeymoon, and reached the reflecting stage. Then, like a
person who has stumbled upon some object in the dark, she wondered what
she had got; mentally walked round it, estimated it; whether it were
rare or common; contained gold, silver, or lead; were a clog or a
pedestal, everything to her or nothing.
She came to some vague conclusions, and since then had kept her heart
alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want of refinement,
pitying herself, and letting off her delicate and ethereal emotions in
imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-sighs, which perhaps
would not much have disturbed William if he had known of them.
Her figure was small, elegant, and slight in build, tripping, or rather
bounding, in movement. She was dark-eyed, and had that marvellously
bright and liquid sparkle in each pupil which characterizes persons of
Ella's cast of soul, and is too often a cause of heartache to the
possessor's male friends, ultimately sometimes to herself. Her husband
was a tall, long-featured man, with a brown beard; he had a pondering
regard; and was, it must be added, usually kind and tolerant to her. He
spoke in squarely shaped sentences, and was supremely satisfied with a
condition of sublunary things which made weapons a necessity.
Husband and wife walked till they had reached the house they were in
search of, which stood in a terrace facing the sea, and was fronted by a
small garden of wind-proof and salt-proof evergreens, stone steps
leading up to the porch. It had its number in the row, but, being rather
larger than the rest, was in addition sedulously distinguished as Coburg
House by its landlady, though everybody else called it 'Thirteen, New
Parade.' The spot was bright and lively now; but in winter it became
necessary to place sandbags against the door, and to stuff up the
keyhole against the wind and rain, which had worn the paint so thin that
the priming and knotting showed through.
The householder, who bad been watching for the gentleman's return, met
them in the passage, and showed the rooms. She informed them that she
was a professional man's widow, left in needy circumstances by the
rather sudden death of her husband, and she spoke anxiously of the
conveniences of the establishment.
Mrs. Marchmill said that she liked the situation and the house; but, it
being small, there would not be accommodation enough, unless she could
have all the rooms.
The landlady mused with an air of disappointment. She wanted the
visitors to be her tenants very badly, she said, with obvious honesty.
But unfortunately two of the rooms were occupied permanently by a
bachelor gentleman. He did not pay season prices, it was true; but as he
kept on his apartments all the year round, and was an extremely nice and
interesting young man, who gave no trouble, she did not like to turn him
out for a month's 'let,' even at a high figure. 'Perhaps, however,' she
added, 'he might offer to go for a time.'
They would not hear of this, and went back to the hotel, intending to
proceed to the agent's to inquire further. Hardly had they sat down to
tea when the landlady called. Her gentleman, she said, had been so
obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or four weeks rather
than drive the new-comers away.
'It is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' said the
Marchmills.
'O, it won't inconvenience him, I assure you!' said the landlady
eloquently. 'You see, he's a different sort of young man from most-
dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy-and he cares more to be here when
the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and the sea
washes over the Parade, and there's not a soul in the place, than he
does now in the season. He'd just as soon be where, in fact, he's going
temporarily, to a little cottage on the Island opposite, for a change.'
She hoped therefore that they would come.
The Marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house next day,
and it seemed to suit them very well. After luncheon Mr. Marchmill
strolled out towards the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, having despatched the
children to their outdoor amusements on the sands, settled herself in
more completely, examining this and that article, and testing the
reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobe door.
In the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's, she
found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest. Shabby
books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up in a queerly
reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupant had not
conceived the possibility that any incoming person of the season's
bringing could care to look inside them. The landlady hovered on the
threshold to rectify anything that Mrs. Marchmill might not find to her
satisfaction.
'I'll make this my own little room,' said the latter, 'because the books
are here. By the way, the person who has left seems to have a good many.
He won't mind my reading some of them, Mrs. Hooper, I hope?'
'O dear no, ma'am. Yes, he has a good many. You see, he is in the
literary line himself somewhat. He is a poet-yes, really a poet-and he
has a little income of his own, which is enough to write verses on, but
not enough for cutting a figure, even if he cared to.'
'A poet! O, I did not know that.'
Mrs. Marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner's name written
on the title-page. 'Dear me!' she continued; 'I know his name very well-
Robert Trewe-of course I do; and his writings! And it is his rooms we
have taken, and him we have turned out of his home?'
Ella Marchmill, sitting down alone a few minutes later, thought with
interested surprise of Robert Trewe. Her own latter history will best
explain that interest. Herself the only daughter of a struggling man of
letters, she had during the last year or two taken to writing poems, in
an endeavour to find a congenial channel in which to let flow her
painfully embayed emotions, whose former limpidity and sparkle seemed
departing in the stagnation caused by the routine of a practical
household and the gloom of bearing children to a commonplace father.
These poems, subscribed with a masculine pseudonym, had appeared in
various obscure magazines, and in two cases in rather prominent ones. In
the second of the latter the page which bore her effusion at the bottom,
in smallish print, bore at the top, in large print, a few verses on the
same subject by this very man, Robert Trewe. Both of them had, in fact,
been struck by a tragic incident reported in the daily papers, and had
used it simultaneously as an inspiration, the editor remarking in a note
upon the coincidence, and that the excellence of both poems prompted him
to give them together.
After that event Ella, otherwise 'John Ivy,' had watched with much
attention the appearance anywhere in print of verse bearing the
signature of Robert Trewe, who, with a man's unsusceptibility on the
question of sex, had never once thought of passing himself off as a
woman. To be sure, Mrs. Marchmill had satisfied herself with a sort of
reason for doing the contrary in her case; that nobody might believe in
her inspiration if they found that the sentiments came from a pushing
tradesman's wife, from the mother of three children by a matter-of-fact
small-arms manufacturer.
Trewe's verse contrasted with that of the rank and file of recent minor
poets in being impassioned rather than ingenious, luxuriant rather than
finished. Neither symboliste nor d\xE9cadent, he was a pessimist in so far
as that character applies to a man who looks at the worst contingencies
as well as the best in the human condition. Being little attracted by
excellences of form and rhythm apart from content, he sometimes, when
feeling outran his artistic speed, perpetrated sonnets in the loosely
rhymed Elizabethan fashion, which every right-minded reviewer said he
ought not to have done.
With sad and hopeless envy, Ella Marchmill had often and often scanned
the rival poet's work, so much stronger as it always was than her own
feeble lines. She had imitated him, and her inability to touch his level
would send her into fits of despondency. Months passed away thus, till
she observed from the publishers' list that Trewe had collected his
fugitive pieces into a volume, which was duly issued, and was much or
little praised according to chance, and had a sale quite sufficient to
pay for the printing.
This step onward had suggested to John Ivy the idea of collecting her
pieces also, or at any rate of making up a book of her rhymes by adding
many in manuscript to the few that had seen the light, for she had been
able to get no great number into print. A ruinous charge was made for
costs of publication; a few reviews noticed her poor little volume; but
nobody talked of it, nobody bought it, and it fell dead in a fortnight-
if it had ever been alive.
The author's thoughts were diverted to another groove just then by the
discovery that she was going to have a third child, and the collapse of
her poetical venture had perhaps less effect upon her mind than it might
have done if she had been domestically unoccupied. Her husband had paid
the publisher's bill with the doctor's, and there it all had ended for
the time. But, though less than a poet of her century, Ella was more
than a mere multiplier of her kind, and latterly she had begun to feel
the old afflatus once more. And now by an odd conjunction she found
herself in the rooms of Robert Trewe.
She thoughtfully rose from her chair and searched the apartment with the
interest of a fellow-tradesman. Yes, the volume of his own verse was
among the rest. Though quite familiar with its contents, she read it
here as if it spoke aloud to her, then called up Mrs. Hooper, the
landlady, for some trivial service, and inquired again about the young
man.
'Well, I'm sure you'd be interested in him, ma'am, if you could see him,
only he's so shy that I don't suppose you will.' Mrs. Hooper seemed
nothing loth to minister to her tenant's curiosity about her
predecessor. 'Lived here long? Yes, nearly two years. He keeps on his
rooms even when he's not here: the soft air of this place suits his
chest, and he likes to be able to come back at any time. He is mostly
writing or reading, and doesn't see many people, though, for the matter
of that, he is such a good, kind young fellow that folks would only be
too glad to be friendly with him if they knew him. You don't meet kind-
hearted people every day.'
'Ah, he's kind-hearted . . . and good.'
'Yes; he'll oblige me in anything if I ask him. "Mr. Trewe," I say to
him sometimes, "you are rather out of spirits." "Well, I am, Mrs.
Hooper," he'll say, "though I don't know how you should find it out."
"Why not take a little change?" I ask. Then in a day or two he'll say
that he will take a trip to Paris, or Norway, or somewhere; and I assure
you he comes back all the better for it.'
'Ah, indeed! His is a sensitive nature, no doubt.'
'Yes. Still he's odd in some things. Once when he had finished a poem of
his composition late at night he walked up and down the room rehearsing
it; and the floors being so thin-jerry-built houses, you know, though I
say it myself-he kept me awake up above him till I wished him further .
. . But we get on very well.'
This was but the beginning of a series of conversations about the rising
poet as the days went on. On one of these occasions Mrs. Hooper drew
Ella's attention to what she had not noticed before: minute scribblings
in pencil on the wall-paper behind the curtains at the head of the bed.
'O! let me look,' said Mrs. Marchmill, unable to conceal a rush of
tender curiosity as she bent her pretty face close to the wall.
'These,' said Mrs. Hooper, with the manner of a woman who knew things,
'are the very beginnings and first thoughts of his verses. He has tried
to rub most of them out, but you can read them still. My belief is that
he wakes up in the night, you know, with some rhyme in his head, and
jots it down there on the wall lest he should forget it by the morning.
Some of these very lines you see here I have seen afterwards in print in
the magazines. Some are newer; indeed, I have not seen that one before.
It must have been done only a few days ago.'
'O yes! . . . '
Ella Marchmill flushed without knowing why, and suddenly wished her
companion would go away, now that the information was imparted. An
indescribable consciousness of personal interest rather than literary
made her anxious to read the inscription alone; and she accordingly
waited till she could do so, with a sense that a great store of emotion
would be enjoyed in the act.
Perhaps because the sea was choppy outside the Island, Ella's husband
found it much pleasanter to go sailing and steaming about without his
wife, who was a bad sailor, than with her. He did not disdain to go thus
alone on board the steamboats of the cheap-trippers, where there was
dancing by moonlight, and where the couples would come suddenly down
with a lurch into each other's arms; for, as he blandly told her, the
company was too mixed for him to take her amid such scenes. Thus, while
this thriving manufacturer got a great deal of change and sea-air out of
his sojourn here, the life, external at least, of Ella was monotonous
enough, and mainly consisted in passing a certain number of hours each
day in bathing and walking up and down a stretch of shore. But the
poetic impulse having again waxed strong, she was possessed by an inner
flame which left her hardly conscious of what was proceeding around her.
She had read till she knew by heart Trewe's last little volume of
verses, and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rival
some of them, till, in her failure, she burst into tears. The personal
element in the magnetic attraction exercised by this circumambient,
unapproachable master of hers was so much stronger than the intellectual
and abstract that she could not understand it. To be sure, she was
surrounded noon and night by his customary environment, which literally
whispered of him to her at every moment; but he was a man she had never
seen, and that all that moved her was the instinct to specialize a
waiting emotion on the first fit thing that came to hand did not, of
course, suggest itself to Ella.
In the natural way of passion under the too practical conditions which
civilization has devised for its fruition, her husband's love for her
had not survived, except in the form of fitful friendship, any more
than, or even so much as, her own for him; and, being a woman of very
living ardours, that required sustenance of some sort, they were
beginning to feed on this chancing material, which was, indeed, of a
quality far better than chance usually offers.
One day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet, whence,
in their excitement, they pulled out some clothing. Mrs. Hooper
explained that it belonged to Mr. Trewe, and hung it up in the closet
again. Possessed of her fantasy, Ella went later in the afternoon, when
nobody was in that part of the house, opened the closet, unhitched one
of the articles, a mackintosh, and put it on, with the waterproof cap
belonging to it.
'The mantle of Elijah!' she said. 'Would it might inspire me to rival
him, glorious genius that he is!'
Her eyes always grew wet when she thought like that, and she turned to
look at herself in the glass. His heart had beat inside that coat, and
his brain had worked under that hat at levels of thought she would never
reach. The consciousness of her weakness beside him made her feel quite
sick. Before she had got the things off her the door opened, and her
husband entered the room.
'What the devil-'
She blushed, and removed them
'I found them in the closet here,' she said, 'and put them on in a
freak. What have I else to do? You are always away!'
'Always away? Well . . . '
That evening she had a further talk with the landlady, who might herself
have nourished a half-tender regard for the poet, so ready was she to
discourse ardently about him.
'You are interested in Mr. Trewe, I know, ma'am,' she said; 'and he has
just sent to say that he is going to call to-morrow afternoon to look up
some books of his that he wants, if I'll be in, and he may select them
from your room?'
'O yes!'
'You could very well meet Mr Trewe then, if you'd like to be in the
way!'
She promised with secret delight, and went to bed musing of him.
Next morning her husband observed: 'I've been thinking of what you said,
Ell: that I have gone about a good deal and left you without much to
amuse you. Perhaps it's true. To-day, as there's not much sea, I'll take
you with me on board the yacht.'
For the first time in her experience of such an offer Ella was not glad.
But she accepted it for the moment. The time for setting out drew near,
and she went to get ready. She stood reflecting. The longing to see the
poet she was now distinctly in love with overpowered all other
considerations.
'I don't want to go,' she said to herself. 'I can't bear to be away! And
I won't go.'
She told her husband that she had changed her mind about wishing to
sail. He was indifferent, and went his way.
For the rest of the day the house was quiet, the children having gone
out upon the sands. The blinds waved in the sunshine to the soft, steady
stroke of the sea beyond the wall; and the notes of the Green Silesian
band, a troop of foreign gentlemen hired for the season, had drawn
almost all the residents and promenaders away from the vicinity of
Coburg House. A knock was audible at the door.
Mrs. Marchmill did not hear any servant go to answer it, and she became
impatient. The books were in the room where she sat; but nobody came up.
She rang the bell.
'There is some person waiting at the door,' she said.
'O no, ma'am! He's gone long ago. I answered it.'
Mrs. Hooper came in herself.
'So disappointing!' she said. 'Mr. Trewe not coming after all!'
'But I heard him knock, I fancy!'
'No; that was somebody inquiring for lodgings who came to the wrong
house. I forgot to tell you that Mr. Trewe sent a note just before lunch
to say I needn't get any tea for him, as he should not require the
books, and wouldn't come to select them.'
Ella was miserable, and for a long time could not even re-read his
mournful ballad on 'Severed Lives,' so aching was her erratic little
heart, and so tearful her eyes. When the children came in with wet
stockings, and ran up to her to tell her of their adventures, she could
not feel that she cared about them half as much as usual.
'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of-the gentleman who lived here?'
She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.
'Why, yes. It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your own
bedroom, ma'am.'
'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'
'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them. He belongs rightly to that
frame, which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said: "Cover me
up from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake. I don't want
them staring at me, and I am sure they won't want me staring at them."
So I slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarily in front of him, as
they had no frame, and Royalties are more suitable for letting furnished
than a private young man. If you take 'em out you'll see him under.
Lord, ma'am, he wouldn't mind if he knew it! He didn't think the next
tenant would be such an attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have
thought of hiding himself; perhaps.'
'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.
'I call him so. Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'
'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.
'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking than
handsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very electric
flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd expect a
poet to be who doesn't get his living by it.'
'How old is he?'
'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two, I
think.'
Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but she
did not look nearly so much. Though so immature in nature, she was
entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to suspect
that last love may be stronger than first love; and she would soon,
alas, enter on the still more melancholy tract when at least the vainer
ones of her sex shrink from receiving a male visitor otherwise than with
their backs to the window or the blinds half down. She reflected on Mrs.
Hooper's remark, and said no more about age.
Just then a telegram was brought up. It came from her husband, who had
gone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in the yacht,
and would not be able to get back till next day.
After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the children till
dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room, with a
serene sense of something ecstatic to come. For, with the subtle
luxuriousness of fancy in which this young woman was an adept, on
learning that her husband was to be absent that night she had refrained
from incontinently rushing upstairs and opening the picture-frame,
preferring to reserve the inspection till she could be alone, and a more
romantic tinge be imparted to the occasion by silence, candles, solemn
sea and stars outside, than was afforded by the garish afternoon
sunlight.
The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it was
not yet ten o'clock. To gratify her passionate curiosity she now made
her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments and putting
on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of the table and
reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances. Then she fetched
the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back, took out the likeness,
and set it up before her.
It was a striking countenance to look upon. The poet wore a luxuriant
black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which shaded the
forehead. The large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed an
unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shaped
brows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of the
confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed at what the
spectacle portended.
Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone: 'And it's you
who've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'
As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her eyes
filled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips. Then she
laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.
She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and three
children, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionable
manner. No, he was not a stranger! She knew his thoughts and feelings as
well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-same thoughts and
feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly lacked; perhaps luckily
for himself; considering that he had to provide for family expenses.
'He's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me than Will
is, after all, even though I've never seen him,' she said.
She laid his book and picture on the table at the bedside, and when she
was reclining on the pillow she re-read those of Robert Trewe's verses
which she had marked from time to time as most touching and true.
Putting these aside, she set up the photograph on its edge upon the
coverlet, and contemplated it as she lay. Then she scanned again by the
light of the candle the half-obliterated pencillings on the wall-paper
beside her head. There they were-phrases, couplets, bouts-rim\xE9s,
beginnings and middles of lines, ideas in the rough, like Shelley's
scraps, and the least of them so intense, so sweet, so palpitating, that
it seemed as if his very breath, warm and loving, fanned her cheeks from
those walls, walls that had surrounded his head times and times as they
surrounded her own now. He must often have put up his hand so-with the
pencil in it. Yes, the writing was sideways, as it would be if executed
by one who extended his arm thus.
These inscribed shapes of the poet's world,
'Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality,'
were, no doubt, the thoughts and spirit-strivings which had come to him
in the dead of night, when he could let himself go and have no fear of
the frost of criticism. No doubt they had often been written up hastily
by the light of the moon, the rays of the lamp, in the blue-grey dawn,
in full daylight perhaps never. And now her hair was dragging where his
arm had lain when he secured the fugitive fancies; she was sleeping on a
poet's lips, immersed in the very essence of him, permeated by his
spirit as by an ether.
While she was dreaming the minutes away thus, a footstep came upon the
stairs, and in a moment she heard her husband's heavy step on the
landing immediately without.
'Ell, where are you?'
What possessed her she could not have described, but, with an
instinctive objection to let her husband know what she had been doing,
she slipped the photograph under the pillow just as he flung open the
door, with the air of a man who had dined not badly.
'O, I beg pardon,' said William Marchmill. 'Have you a headache? I am
afraid I have disturbed you.'
'No, I've not got a headache,' said she. 'How is it you've come?'
'Well, we found we could get back in very good time after all, and I
didn't want to make another day of it, because of going somewhere else
to-morrow.'
'Shall I come down again?'
'O no. I'm as tired as a dog. I've had a good feed, and I shall turn in
straight off. I want to get out at six o'clock to-morrow if I can . . .
I shan't disturb you by my getting up; it will be long before you are
awake.' And he came forward into the room.
While her eyes followed his movements, Ella softly pushed the photograph
further out of sight.
'Sure you're not ill?' he asked, bending over her.
'No, only wicked!'
'Never mind that.' And he stooped and kissed her.
Next morning Marchmill was called at six o'clock; and in waking and
yawning she heard him muttering to himself: 'What the deuce is this
that's been crackling under me so?' Imagining her asleep he searched
round him and withdrew something. Through her half-opened eyes she
perceived it to be Mr. Trewe.
'Well, I'm damned!' her husband exclaimed.
'What, dear?' said she.
'O, you are awake? Ha! ha!'
'What do you mean?'
'Some bloke's photograph-a friend of our landlady's, I suppose. I wonder
how it came here; whisked off the table by accident perhaps when they
were making the bed.'
'I was looking at it yesterday, and it must have dropped in then.'
'O, he's a friend of yours? Bless his picturesque heart!'
Ella's loyalty to the object of her admiration could not endure to hear
him ridiculed. 'He's a clever man!' she said, with a tremor in her
gentle voice which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for.
'He is a rising poet-the gentleman who occupied two of these rooms
before we came, though I've never seen him.'
'How do you know, if you've never seen him?'
'Mrs. Hooper told me when she showed me the photograph.'
'O; well, I must up and be off. I shall be home rather early. Sorry I
can't take you to-day, dear. Mind the children don't go getting
drowned.'
That day Mrs. Marchmill inquired if Mr. Trewe were likely to call at any
other time.
'Yes,' said Mrs. Hooper. 'He's coming this day week to stay with a
friend near here till you leave. He'll be sure to call.'
Marchmill did return quite early in the afternoon; and, opening some
letters which had arrived in his absence, declared suddenly that he and
his family would have to leave a week earlier than they had expected to
do-in short, in three days.
'Surely we can stay a week longer?' she pleaded. 'I like it here.'
'I don't. It is getting rather slow.'
'Then you might leave me and the children!'
'How perverse you are, Ell! What's the use? And have to come to fetch
you! No: we'll all return together; and we'll make out our time in North
Wales or Brighton a little later on. Besides, you've three days longer
yet.'
It seemed to be her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talent she
had a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was now absolutely
attached. Yet she determined to make a last effort; and having gathered
from her landlady that Trewe was living in a lonely spot not far from
the fashionable town on the Island opposite, she crossed over in the
packet from the neighbouring pier the following afternoon.
What a useless journey it was! Ella knew but vaguely where the house
stood, and when she fancied she had found it, and ventured to inquire of
a pedestrian if he lived there, the answer returned by the man was that
he did not know. And if he did live there, how could she call upon him?
Some women might have the assurance to do it, but she had not. How crazy
he would think her. She might have asked him to call upon her, perhaps;
but she had not the courage for that, either. She lingered mournfully
about the picturesque seaside eminence till it was time to return to the
town and enter the steamer for recrossing, reaching home for dinner
without having been greatly missed.
At the last moment, unexpectedly enough, her husband said that he should
have no objection to letting her and the children stay on till the end
of the week, since she wished to do so, if she felt herself able to get
home without him. She concealed the pleasure this extension of time gave
her; and Marchmill went off the next morning alone.
But the week passed, and Trewe did not call.
On Saturday morning the remaining members of the Marchmill family
departed from the place which had been productive of so much fervour in
her. The dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beams upon the
hot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows of wire-these
things were her accompaniment: while out of the window the deep blue
sea-levels disappeared from her gaze, and with them her poet's home.
Heavy-hearted, she tried to read, and wept instead.
Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his family
lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive grounds a
few miles outside the city wherein he carried on his trade. Ella's life
was lonely here, as the suburban life is apt to be, particularly at
certain seasons; and she had ample time to indulge her taste for lyric
and elegiac composition. She had hardly got back when she encountered a
piece by Robert Trewe in the new number of her favourite magazine, which
must have been written almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea,
for it contained the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the
wallpaper by the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent. Ella
could resist no longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a
brother-poet, using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her
letter on his triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that
moved his soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the same
pathetic trade.
To this address there came a response in a few days, little as she had
dared to hope for it-a civil and brief note, in which the young poet
stated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy's verse, he
recalled the name as being one he had seen attached to some very
promising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy's acquaintance by
letter, and should certainly look with much interest for his productions
in the future.
There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle, as
one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for Trewe
quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply. But what
did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with his own hand
from that very room she knew so well, for he was now back again in his
quarters.
The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more, Ella
Marchmill sending him from time to time some that she considered to be
the best of her pieces, which he very kindly accepted, though he did not
say he sedulously read them, nor did he send her any of his own in
return. Ella would have been more hurt at this than she was if she had
not known that Trewe laboured under the impression that she was one of
his own sex.
Yet the situation was unsatisfactory. A flattering little voice told her
that, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise. No doubt she
would have helped on this by making a frank confession of womanhood, to
begin with, if something had not happened, to her delight, to render it
unnecessary. A friend of her husband's, the editor of the most important
newspaper in the city and county, who was dining with them one day,
observed during their conversation about the poet that his (the
editor's) brother the landscape-painter was a friend of Mr. Trewe's, and
that the two men were at that very moment in Wales together.
Ella was slightly acquainted with the editor's brother. The next morning
down she sat and wrote, inviting him to stay at her house for a short
time on his way back, and requesting him to bring with him, if
practicable, his companion Mr. Trewe, whose acquaintance she was anxious
to make. The answer arrived after some few days. Her correspondent and
his friend Trewe would have much satisfaction in accepting her
invitation on their way southward, which would be on such and such a day
in the following week.
Ella was blithe and buoyant. Her scheme had succeeded; her beloved
though as yet unseen one was coming. "Behold, he standeth behind our
wall; he looked forth at the windows, showing himself through the
lattice," she thought ecstatically. "And, lo, the winter is past, the
rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the
singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land."
But it was necessary to consider the details of lodging and feeding him.
This she did most solicitously, and awaited the pregnant day and hour.
It was about five in the afternoon when she heard a ring at the door and
the editor's brother's voice in the hall. Poetess as she was, or as she
thought herself, she had not been too sublime that day to dress with
infinite trouble in a fashionable robe of rich material, having a faint
resemblance to the chiton of the Greeks, a style just then in vogue
among ladies of an artistic and romantic turn, which had been obtained
by Ella of her Bond Street dressmaker when she was last in London. Her
visitor entered the drawing-room. She looked towards his rear; nobody
else came through the door. Where, in the name of the God of Love, was
Robert Trewe?
'O, I'm sorry,' said the painter, after their introductory words had
been spoken. 'Trewe is a curious fellow, you know, Mrs. Marchmill. He
said he'd come; then he said he couldn't. He's rather dusty. We've been
doing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wanted to get on
home.'
'He-he's not coming?'
'He's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.'
'When did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip starting off
quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her speech.
She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her eyes out.
'Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.'
'What! he has actually gone past my gates?'
'Yes. When we got to them-handsome gates they are, too, the finest bit
of modern wrought-iron work I have seen-when we came to them we stopped,
talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-bye and went
on. The truth is, he's a little bit depressed just now, and doesn't want
to see anybody. He's a very good fellow, and a warm friend, but a little
uncertain and gloomy sometimes; he thinks too much of things. His poetry
is rather too erotic and passionate, you know, for some tastes; and he
has just come in for a terrible slating from the \x97- Review that was
published yesterday; he saw a copy of it at the station by accident.
Perhaps you've read it?'
'No.'
'So much the better. O, it is not worth thinking of; just one of those
articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of
subscribers upon whom the circulation depends. But he's upset by it. He
says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can
stand a fair attack, he can't stand lies that he's powerless to refute
and stop from spreading. That's just Trewe's weak point. He lives so
much by himself that these things affect him much more than they would
if he were in the bustle of fashionable or commercial life. So he
wouldn't come here, making the excuse that it all looked so new and
monied-if you'll pardon-'
'But-he must have known-there was sympathy here! Has he never said
anything about getting letters from this address?'
'Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy-perhaps a relative of yours, he
thought, visiting here at the time?'
'Did he-like Ivy, did he say?'
'Well, I don't know that he took any great interest in Ivy.'
'Or in his poems?'
'Or in his poems-so far as I know, that is.'
Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in their
writer. As soon as she could get away she went into the nursery and
tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing the children, till
she had a sudden sense of disgust at being reminded how plain-looking
they were, like their father.
The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived from
her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not himself. He
made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the society of Ella's
husband, who also took a great fancy to him, and showed him everywhere
about the neighbourhood, neither of them noticing Ella's mood.
The painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sitting upstairs
alone one morning, she glanced over the London paper just arrived, and
read the following paragraph:-'SUICIDE OF A POET
'Mr. Robert Trewe, who has been favourably known for some years as one
of our rising lyrists, committed suicide at his lodgings at Solentsea on
Saturday evening last by shooting himself in the right temple with a
revolver. Readers hardly need to be reminded that Mr. Trewe has recently
attracted the attention of a much wider public than had hitherto known
him, by his new volume of verse, mostly of an impassioned kind, entitled
"Lyrics to a Woman Unknown," which has been already favourably noticed
in these pages for the extraordinary gamut of feeling it traverses, and
which has been made the subject of a severe, if not ferocious, criticism
in the \x97- Review. It is supposed, though not certainly known, that the
article may have partially conduced to the sad act, as a copy of the
review in question was found on his writing-table; and he has been
observed to be in a somewhat depressed state of mind since the critique
appeared.'
Then came the report of the inquest, at which the following letter was
read, it having been addressed to a friend at a distance:-
'DEAR -,-Before these lines reach your hands I shall be delivered from
the inconveniences of seeing, hearing, and knowing more of the things
around me. I will not trouble you by giving my reasons for the step I
have taken, though I can assure you they were sound and logical. Perhaps
had I been blessed with a mother, or a sister, or a female friend of
another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might have thought it worth while
to continue my present existence. I have long dreamt of such an
unattainable creature, as you know, and she, this undiscoverable,
elusive one, inspired my last volume; the imaginary woman alone, for, in
spite of what has been said in some quarters, there is no real woman
behind the title. She has continued to the last unrevealed, unmet,
unwon. I think it desirable to mention this in order that no blame may
attach to any real woman as having been the cause of my decease by cruel
or cavalier treatment of me. Tell my landlady that I am sorry to have
caused her this unpleasantness; but my occupancy of the rooms will soon
be forgotten. There are ample funds in my name at the bank to pay all
expenses. R. TREWE.'
Ella sat for a while as if stunned, then rushed into the adjoining
chamber and flung herself upon her face on the bed.
Her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in this
frenzy of sorrow for more than an hour. Broken words came every now and
then from her quivering lips: 'O, if he had only known of me-known of
me-me! . . . O, if I had only once met him-only once; and put my hand
upon his hot forehead-kissed him-let him know how I loved him-that I
would have suffered shame and scorn, would have lived and died, for him!
Perhaps it would have saved his dear life! . . . But no-it was not
allowed! God is a jealous God; and that happiness was not for him and
me!'
All possibilities were over; the meeting was stultified. Yet it was
almost visible to her in her fantasy even now, though it could never be
substantiated -
'The hour which might have been, yet might not be, Which man's and
woman's heart conceived and bore, Yet whereof life was barren.'
She wrote to the landlady at Solentsea in the third person, in as
subdued a style as she could command, enclosing a postal order for a
sovereign, and informing Mrs. Hooper that Mrs. Marchmill had seen in the
papers the sad account of the poet's death, and having been, as Mrs.
Hooper was aware, much interested in Mr. Trewe during her stay at Coburg
House, she would be obliged if Mrs. Hooper could obtain a small portion
of his hair before his coffin was closed down, and send it her as a
memorial of him, as also the photograph that was in the frame.
By the return-post a letter arrived containing what had been requested.
Ella wept over the portrait and secured it in her private drawer; the
lock of hair she tied with white ribbon and put in her bosom, whence she
drew it and kissed it every now and then in some unobserved nook.
'What's the matter?' said her husband, looking up from his newspaper on
one of these occasions. 'Crying over something? A lock of hair? Whose is
it?'
'He's dead!' she murmured.
'Who?'
'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' she said,
a sob hanging heavy in her voice.
'O, all right.'
'Do you mind my refusing? I will tell you some day.'
'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'
He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and when
he had got down to his factory in the city the subject came into
Marchmill's head again.
He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the house
they had occupied at Solentsea. Having seen the volume of poems in his
wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the landlady's conversation
about Trewe when they were her tenants, he all at once said to himself;
'Why of course it's he! How the devil did she get to know him? What sly
animals women are!'
Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his daily
affairs. By this time Ella at home had come to a determination. Mrs.
Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of the day
of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an overpowering wish
to know where they were laying him took possession of the sympathetic
woman. Caring very little now what her husband or any one else might
think of her eccentricities; she wrote Marchmill a brief note, stating
that she was called away for the afternoon and evening, but would return
on the following morning. This she left on his desk, and having given
the same information to the servants, went out of the house on foot.
When Mr. Marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servants
looked anxious. The nurse took him privately aside, and hinted that her
mistress's sadness during the past few days had been such that she
feared she had gone out to drown herself. Marchmill reflected. Upon the
whole he thought that she had not done that. Without saying whither he
was bound he also started off, telling them not to sit up for him. He
drove to the railway-station, and took a ticket for Solentsea.
It was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fast
train, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither it could
only have been by a slower train, arriving not a great while before his
own. The season at Solentsea was now past: the parade was gloomy, and
the flys were few and cheap. He asked the way to the Cemetery, and soon
reached it. The gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring,
however, that there was nobody within the precincts. Although it was not
late, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found some
difficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarter
where, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day
had taken place. He stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some
pegs, stooped now and then to discern if possible a figure against the
sky.
He could see none; but lighting on a spot where the soil was trodden,
beheld a crouching object beside a newly made grave. She heard him, and
sprang up.
'Ell, how silly this is!' he said indignantly. 'Running away from home-I
never heard such a thing! Of course I am not jealous of this unfortunate
man; but it is too ridiculous that you, a married woman with three
children and a fourth coming, should go losing your head like this over
a dead lover! . . . Do you know you were locked in? You might not have
been able to get out all night.'
She did not answer.
'I hope it didn't go far between you and him, for your own sake.'
'Don't insult me, Will.'
'Mind, I won't have any more of this sort of thing; do you hear?'
'Very well,' she said.
He drew her arm within his own, and conducted her out of the Cemetery.
It was impossible to get back that night; and not wishing to be
recognized in their present sorry condition, he took her to a miserable
little coffee-house close to the station, whence they departed early in
the morning, travelling almost without speaking, under the sense that it
was one of those dreary situations occurring in married life which words
could not mend, and reaching their own door at noon.
The months passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start a
conversation upon this episode. Ella seemed to be only too frequently in
a sad and listless mood, which might almost have been called pining. The
time was approaching when she would have to undergo the stress of
childbirth for a fourth time, and that apparently did not tend to raise
her spirits.
'I don't think I shall get over it this time!' she said one day.
'Pooh! what childish foreboding! Why shouldn't it be as well now as
ever?'
She shook her head. 'I feel almost sure I am going to die; and I should
be glad, if it were not for Nelly, and Frank, and Tiny.'
'And me!'
'You'll soon find somebody to fill my place,' she murmured, with a sad
smile. 'And you'll have a perfect right to; I assure you of that.'
'Ell, you are not thinking still about that-poetical friend of yours?'
She neither admitted nor denied the charge. 'I am not going to get over
my illness this time,' she reiterated. 'Something tells me I shan't.'
This view of things was rather a bad beginning, as it usually is; and,
in fact, six weeks later, in the month of May, she was lying in her
room, pulseless and bloodless, with hardly strength enough left to
follow up one feeble breath with another, the infant for whose
unnecessary life she was slowly parting with her own being fat and well.
Just before her death she spoke to Marchmill softly:-
'Will, I want to confess to you the entire circumstances of that-about
you know what-that time we visited Solentsea. I can't tell what
possessed me-how I could forget you so, my husband! But I had got into a
morbid state: I thought you had been unkind; that you had neglected me;
that you weren't up to my intellectual level, while he was, and far
above it. I wanted a fuller appreciator, perhaps, rather than another
lover-'
She could get no further then for very exhaustion; and she went off in
sudden collapse a few hours later, without having said anything more to
her husband on the subject of her love for the poet. William Marchmill,
in truth, like most husbands of several years' standing, was little
disturbed by retrospective jealousies, and had not shown the least
anxiety to press her for confessions concerning a man dead and gone
beyond any power of inconveniencing him more.
But when she had been buried a couple of years it chanced one day that,
in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished to destroy before
his second wife entered the house, he lighted on a lock of hair in an
envelope, with the photograph of the deceased poet, a date being written
on the back in his late wife's hand. It was that of the time they spent
at Solentsea.
Marchmill looked long and musingly at the hair and portrait, for
something struck him. Fetching the little boy who had been the death of
his mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee, held the lock
of hair against the child's head, and set up the photograph on the table
behind, so that he could closely compare the features each countenance
presented. There were undoubtedly strong traces of resemblance; the
dreamy and peculiar expression of the poet's face sat, as the
transmitted idea, upon the child's, and the hair was of the same hue.
'I'm damned if I didn't think so!' murmured Marchmill. 'Then she did
play me false with that fellow at the lodgings! Let me see: the dates-
the second week in August . . . the third week in May . . . Yes . . .
yes . . . Get away, you poor little brat! You are nothing to me!' 1893.
THE THREE STRANGERS
Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an
appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be
reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as
they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain
counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is
met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of
some shepherd.
Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may
possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the
spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-
town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland,
during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and
mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a
Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less
repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who
'conceive and meditate of pleasant things.'
Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some
starved fragment of ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in the
erection of these forlorn dwellings. But, in the present case, such a
kind of shelter had been disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house
was called, stood quite detached and undefended. The only reason for its
precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two footpaths at right
angles hard by, which may have crossed there and thus for a good five
hundred years. Hence the house was exposed to the elements on all sides.
But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the
rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of the winter
season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined
to be by dwellers on low ground. The raw rimes were not so pernicious as
in the hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so severe. When the
shepherd and his family who tenanted the house were pitied for their
sufferings from the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were
less inconvenienced by 'wuzzes and flames' (hoarses and phlegms) than
when they had lived by the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.
The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that were
wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. The level
rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard shafts of
Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood
with their buttocks to the winds; while the tails of little birds trying
to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside-out like umbrellas. The
gable-end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eavesdroppings
flapped against the wall. Yet never was commiseration for the shepherd
more misplaced. For that cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party
in glorification of the christening of his second girl.
The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were all
now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling. A glance into
the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful evening would have
resulted in the opinion that it was as cosy and comfortable a nook as
could be wished for in boisterous weather. The calling of its inhabitant
was proclaimed by a number of highly-polished sheep-crooks without stems
that were hung ornamentally over the fireplace, the curl of each shining
crook varying from the antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal
pictures of old family Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last
local sheep-fair. The room was lighted by half-a-dozen candles, having
wicks only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in
candlesticks that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and
family feasts. The lights were scattered about the room, two of them
standing on the chimney-piece. This position of candles was in itself
significant. Candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party.
On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a fire
of thorns, that crackled 'like the laughter of the fool.'
Nineteen persons were gathered here. Of these, five women, wearing gowns
of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy and not
shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley Jake the hedge-
carpenter, Elijah New the parish-clerk, and John Pitcher, a neighbouring
dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law, lolled in the settle; a young
man and maid, who were blushing over tentative pourparlers on a life-
companionship, sat beneath the corner-cupboard; and an elderly engaged
man of fifty or upward moved restlessly about from spots where his
betrothed was not to the spot where she was. Enjoyment was pretty
general, and so much the more prevailed in being unhampered by
conventional restrictions. Absolute confidence in each other's good
opinion begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner,
amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the
absence of any expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on
in the world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever-
which nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except
the two extremes of the social scale.
Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's daughter
from a vale at a distance, who brought fifty guineas in her pocket-and
kept them there, till they should be required for ministering to the
needs of a coming family. This frugal woman had been somewhat exercised
as to the character that should be given to the gathering. A sit-still
party had its advantages; but an undisturbed position of ease in chairs
and settles was apt to lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of
toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house dry. A dancing-
party was the alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing
objection on the score of good drink, had a counterbalancing
disadvantage in the matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites
engendered by the exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery.
Shepherdess Fennel fell back upon the intermediate plan of mingling
short dances with short periods of talk and singing, so as to hinder any
ungovernable rage in either. But this scheme was entirely confined to
her own gentle mind: the shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the
most reckless phases of hospitality.
The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who had
a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were so
small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the high
notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds
not of unmixed purity of tone. At seven the shrill tweedle-dee of this
youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass from Elijah
New, the parish-clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his
favourite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous,
Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the
dance exceed the length of a quarter of an hour.
But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite
forgot the injunction. Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen, one
of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of thirty-
three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece to the
musicians, as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle and wind.
Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the countenances of
her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's elbow and put her
hand on the serpent's mouth. But they took no notice, and fearing she
might lose her character of genial hostess if she were to interfere too
markedly, she retired and sat down helpless. And so the dance whizzed on
with cumulative fury, the performers moving in their planet-like
courses, direct and retrograde, from apogee to perigee, till the hand of
the well-kicked clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the
circumference of an hour.
While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within Fennel's
pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing on the party
had occurred in the gloomy night without. Mrs. Fennel's concern about
the growing fierceness of the dance corresponded in point of time with
the ascent of a human figure to the solitary hill of Higher Crowstairs
from the direction of the distant town. This personage strode on through
the rain without a pause, following the little-worn path which, further
on in its course, skirted the shepherd's cottage.
It was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though the sky
was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary objects out
of doors were readily visible. The sad wan light revealed the lonely
pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his gait suggested that he had
somewhat passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility, though
not so far as to be otherwise than rapid of motion when occasion
required. At a rough guess, he might have been about forty years of age.
He appeared tall, but a recruiting sergeant, or other person accustomed
to the judging of men's heights by the eye, would have discerned that
this was chiefly owing to his gauntness, and that he was not more than
five-feet-eight or nine.
Notwithstanding the regularity of his tread, there was caution in it, as
in that of one who mentally feels his way; and despite the fact that it
was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort that he wore, there
was something about him which suggested that he naturally belonged to
the black-coated tribes of men. His clothes were of fustian, and his
boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he showed not the mud-accustomed
bearing of hobnailed and fustianed peasantry.
By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises the
rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined violence.
The outskirts of the little settlement partially broke the force of wind
and rain, and this induced him to stand still. The most salient of the
shepherd's domestic erections was an empty sty at the forward corner of
his hedgeless garden, for in these latitudes the principle of masking
the homelier features of your establishment by a conventional frontage
was unknown. The traveller's eye was attracted to this small building by
the pallid shine of the wet slates that covered it. He turned aside,
and, finding it empty, stood under the pent-roof for shelter.
While he stood, the boom of the serpent within the adjacent house, and
the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment
to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on
the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just
discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of
buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage.
For at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated domiciles, the grand
difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency of water; and a casual
rainfall was utilized by turning out, as catchers, every utensil that
the house contained. Some queer stories might be told of the
contrivances for economy in suds and dish-waters that are absolutely
necessitated in upland habitations during the droughts of summer. But at
this season there were no such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the
skies bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store.
At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent. This
cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the reverie
into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with an
apparently new intention, he walked up the path to the house-door.
Arrived here, his first act was to kneel down on a large stone beside
the row of vessels, and to drink a copious draught from one of them.
Having quenched his thirst he rose and lifted his hand to knock, but
paused with his eye upon the panel. Since the dark surface of the wood
revealed absolutely nothing, it was evident that he must be mentally
looking through the door, as if he wished to measure thereby all the
possibilities that a house of this sort might include, and how they
might bear upon the question of his entry.
In his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around. Not a soul
was anywhere visible. The garden-path stretched downward from his feet,
gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little well (mostly
dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden-gate, were varnished
with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the vale, a faint
whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the rivers were high in
the meads. Beyond all this winked a few bleared lamplights through the
beating drops-lights that denoted the situation of the county-town from
which he had appeared to come. The absence of all notes of life in that
direction seemed to clinch his intentions, and he knocked at the door.
Within, a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical
sound. The hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company, which
nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock afforded a
not unwelcome diversion.
'Walk in!' said the shepherd promptly.
The latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian appeared
upon the door-mat. The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the nearest
candles, and turned to look at him.
Their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and not
unprepossessing as to feature. His hat, which for a moment he did not
remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they were large,
open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a glance round the
room. He seemed pleased with his survey, and, baring his shaggy head,
said, in a rich deep voice, 'The rain is so heavy, friends, that I ask
leave to come in and rest awhile.'
'To be sure, stranger,' said the shepherd. 'And faith, you've been lucky
in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling for a glad
cause-though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad cause to
happen more than once a year.'
'Nor less,' spoke up a woman. 'For 'tis best to get your family over and
done with, as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the
fag o't.'
'And what may be this glad cause?' asked the stranger.
'A birth and christening,' said the shepherd.
The stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too many
or too few of such episodes, and being invited by a gesture to a pull at
the mug, he readily acquiesced. His manner, which, before entering, had
been so dubious, was now altogether that of a careless and candid man.
'Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb-hey?' said the engaged man of
fifty.
'Late it is, master, as you say.-I'll take a seat in the chimney-corner,
if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am; for I am a little moist
on the side that was next the rain.'
Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited comer,
who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner, stretched out his
legs and his arms with the expansiveness of a person quite at home.
'Yes, I am rather cracked in the vamp,' he said freely, seeing that the
eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, 'and I am not well
fitted either. I have had some rough times lately, and have been forced
to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing, but I must find a suit
better fit for working-days when I reach home.'
'One of hereabouts?' she inquired.
'Not quite that-further up the country.'
'I thought so. And so be I; and by your tongue you come from my
neighbourhood.'
'But you would hardly have heard of me,' he said quickly. 'My time would
be long before yours, ma'am, you see.'
This testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect of
stopping her cross-examination.
'There is only one thing more wanted to make me happy,' continued the
new-comer. 'And that is a little baccy, which I am sorry to say I am out
of.'
'I'll fill your pipe,' said the shepherd.
'I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise.'
'A smoker, and no pipe about 'ee?'
'I have dropped it somewhere on the road.'
The shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying, as he did
so, 'Hand me your baccy-box-I'll fill that too, now I am about it.'
The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.
'Lost that too?' said his entertainer, with some surprise.
'I am afraid so,' said the man with some confusion. 'Give it to me in a
screw of paper.' Lighting his pipe at the candle with a suction that
drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner
and bent his looks upon the faint steam from his damp legs, as if he
wished to say no more.
Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice of
this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they were
engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance. The matter being
settled, they were about to stand up when an interruption came in the
shape of another knock at the door.
At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker and
began stirring the brands as if doing it thoroughly were the one aim of
his existence; and a second time the shepherd said, 'Walk in!' In a
moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat. He too was a
stranger.
This individual was one of a type radically different from the first.
There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a certain jovial
cosmopolitanism sat upon his features. He was several years older than
the first arrival, his hair being slightly frosted, his eyebrows
bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks. His face was rather
full and flabby, and yet it was not altogether a face without power. A
few grog-blossoms marked the neighbourhood of his nose. He flung back
his long drab greatcoat, revealing that beneath it he wore a suit of
cinder-gray shade throughout, large heavy seals, of some metal or other
that would take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal
ornament. Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned glazed hat, he
said, 'I must ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades, or I shall be
wetted to my skin before I get to Casterbridge.'
'Make yourself at home, master,' said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle
less heartily than on the first occasion. Not that Fennel had the least
tinge of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was far from
large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions were not
altogether desirable at close quarters for the women and girls in their
bright-coloured gowns.
However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and hanging
his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had been
specially invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the table.
This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all
available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow of
the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus the two
strangers were brought into close companionship. They nodded to each
other by way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance, and the first
stranger handed his neighbour the family mug-a huge vessel of brown
ware, having its upper edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of
whole generations of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh,
and bearing the following inscription burnt upon its rotund side in
yellow letters
THERE IS NO FUN UNTiLL i CUM.
The other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank on,
and on, and on-till a curious blueness overspread the countenance of the
shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the first
stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong to him to
dispense.
'I knew it!' said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction.
'When I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives all of
a row, I said to myself; "Where there's bees there's honey, and where
there's honey there's mead." But mead of such a truly comfortable sort
as this I really didn't expect to meet in my older days.' He took yet
another pull at the mug, till it assumed an ominous elevation.
'Glad you enjoy it!' said the shepherd warmly.
'It is goodish mead,' assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of
enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for
one's cellar at too heavy a price. 'It is trouble enough to make-and
really I hardly think we shall make any more. For honey sells well, and
we ourselves can make shift with a drop o' small mead and metheglin for
common use from the comb-washings.'
'O, but you'll never have the heart!' reproachfully cried the stranger
in cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time and setting it down
empty. 'I love mead, when 'tis old like this, as I love to go to church
o' Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of the week.'
'Ha, ha, ha!' said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the
taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not
refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.
Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or
maiden honey, four pounds to the gallon-with its due complement of white
of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and processes
of working, bottling, and cellaring-tasted remarkably strong; but it did
not taste so strong as it actually was. Hence, presently, the stranger
in cinder-gray at the table, moved by its creeping influence, unbuttoned
his waistcoat, threw himself back in his chair, spread his legs, and
made his presence felt in various ways.
'Well, well, as I say,' he resumed, 'I am going to Casterbridge, and to
Casterbridge I must go. I should have been almost there by this time;
but the rain drove me into your dwelling, and I'm not sorry for it.'
'You don't live in Casterbridge?' said the shepherd.
'Not as yet; though I shortly mean to move there.'
'Going to set up in trade, perhaps?'
'No, no,' said the shepherd's wife. 'It is easy to see that the
gentleman is rich, and don't want to work at anything.'
The cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would
accept that definition of himself. He presently rejected it by
answering, 'Rich is not quite the word for me, dame. I do work, and I
must work. And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I must
begin work there at eight to-morrow morning. Yes, het or wet, blow or
snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must be done.'
'Poor man! Then, in spite o' seeming, you be worse off than we?' replied
the shepherd's wife.
''Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens. 'Tis the nature of my
trade more than my poverty . . . But really and truly I must up and off,
or I shan't get a lodging in the town.' However, the speaker did not
move, and directly added, 'There's time for one more draught of
friendship before I go; and I'd perform it at once if the mug were not
dry.'
'Here's a mug o' small,' said Mrs. Fennel. 'Small, we call it, though to
be sure 'tis only the first wash o' the combs.'
'No,' said the stranger disdainfully. 'I won't spoil your first kindness
by partaking o' your second.'
'Certainly not,' broke in Fennel. 'We don't increase and multiply every
day, and I'll fill the mug again.' He went away to the dark place under
the stairs where the barrel stood. The shepherdess followed him.
'Why should you do this?' she said reproachfully, as soon as they were
alone. 'He's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten people; and
now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs call for more o'
the strong! And a stranger unbeknown to any of us. For my part, I don't
like the look o' the man at all.'
'But he's in the house, my honey; and 'tis a wet night, and a
christening. Daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less? There'll be
plenty more next bee-burning.'
'Very well-this time, then,' she answered, looking wistfully at the
barrel. 'But what is the man's calling, and where is he one of; that he
should come in and join us like this?'
'I don't know. I'll ask him again.'
The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the
stranger in cinder-gray was effectually guarded against this time by
Mrs. Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the
large one at a discreet distance from him. When he had tossed off his
portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the stranger's
occupation.
The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the chimney-corner,
with sudden demonstrativeness, said, 'Anybody may know my trade-I'm a
wheelwright.'
'A very good trade for these parts,' said the shepherd.
'And anybody may know mine-if they've the sense to find it out,' said
the stranger in cinder-gray.
'You may generally tell what a man is by his claws,' observed the hedge-
carpenter, looking at his own hands. 'My fingers be as full of thorns as
an old pin-cushion is of pins.'
The hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the
shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe. The man at the
table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly, 'True;
but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me,
it sets a mark upon my customers.'
No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this enigma,
the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles
presented themselves as at the former time-one had no voice, another had
forgotten the first verse. The stranger at the table, whose soul had now
risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty by
exclaiming that, to start the company, he would sing himself. Thrusting
one thumb into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, he waved the other hand in
the air, and, with an extemporizing gaze at the shining sheep-crooks
above the mantelpiece, began:-
'O my trade it is the rarest one, Simple shepherds all -My trade is a
sight to see; For my customers I tie, and take them up on high, And waft
'em to a far countree!'
The room was silent when he had finished the verse-with one exception,
that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer's word,
'Chorus! 'joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish -
'And waft 'em to a far countree!'
Oliver Giles, John Pitcher the dairyman, the parish-clerk, the engaged
man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall, seemed lost in
thought not of the gayest kind. The shepherd looked meditatively on the
ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the singer, and with some
suspicion; she was doubting whether this stranger were merely singing an
old song from recollection, or was composing one there and then for the
occasion. All were as perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests
at Belshazzar's Feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly
said, 'Second verse, stranger,' and smoked on.
The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inwards, and went
on with the next stanza as requested:-
'My tools are but common ones, Simple shepherds all -My tools are no
sight to see: A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing, Are
implements enough for me!'
Shepherd Fennel glanced round. There was no longer any doubt that the
stranger was answering his question rhythmically. The guests one and all
started back with suppressed exclamations. The young woman engaged to
the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have proceeded, but finding
him wanting in alacrity for catching her she sat down trembling.
'O, he's the-!' whispered the people in the background, mentioning the
name of an ominous public officer. 'He's come to do it! 'Tis to be at
Casterbridge jail to-morrow-the man for sheep-stealing-the poor clock-
maker we heard of; who used to live away at Shottsford and had no work
to do-Timothy Summers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out
of Shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep in open daylight,
defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's lad, and every
man jack among 'em. He' (and they nodded towards the stranger of the
deadly trade) 'is come from up the country to do it because there's not
enough to do in his own county-town, and he's got the place here now our
own county man's dead; he's going to live in the same cottage under the
prison wall.'
The stranger in cinder-gray took no notice of this whispered string of
observations, but again wetted his lips. Seeing that his friend in the
chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality in any
way, he held out his cup towards that appreciative comrade, who also
held out his own. They cWESSEXlinked together, the eyes of the rest of
the room hanging upon the singer's actions. He parted his lips for the
third verse; but at that moment another knock was audible upon the door.
This time the knock was faint and hesitating.
The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation
towards the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted his
alarmed wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third time the
welcoming words, 'Walk in!'
The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat. He, like
those who had preceded him, was a stranger. This time it was a short,
small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent suit of
dark clothes.
'Can you tell me the way to-?' he began: when, gazing round the room to
observe the nature of the company amongst whom he had fallen, his eyes
lighted on the stranger in cinder-gray. It was just at the instant when
the latter, who had thrown his mind into his song with such a will that
he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced all whispers and inquiries
by bursting into his third verse:-
'To-morrow is my working day, Simple shepherds all -To-morrow is a
working day for me: For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did
it ta'en, And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'
The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cups with the singer so
heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his bass
voice as before:-
'And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'
All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway.
Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests
particularly regarded him. They noticed to their surprise that he stood
before them the picture of abject terror-his knees trembling, his hand
shaking so violently that the door-latch by which he supported himself
rattled audibly: his white lips were parted, and his eyes fixed on the
merry officer of justice in the middle of the room. A moment more and he
had turned, closed the door, and fled.
'What a man can it be?' said the shepherd.
The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think,
and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew further and further from
the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for
the Prince of Darkness himself; till they formed a remote circle, an
empty space of floor being left between them and him -
' . . . circulus, cujus centrum diabolus.'
The room was so silent-though there were more than twenty people in it-
that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the
window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that
fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man
in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay.
The stillness was unexpectedly broken. The distant sound of a gun
reverberated through the air-apparently from the direction of the
county-town.
'Be jiggered!' cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.
'What does that mean?' asked several.
'A prisoner escaped from the jail-that's what it means.'
All listened. The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but the man
in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, 'I've often been told that in
this county they fire a gun at such times; but I never heard it till
now.'
'I wonder if it is my man?' murmured the personage in cinder-gray.
'Surely it is!' said the shepherd involuntarily. 'And surely we've zeed
him! That little man who looked in at the door by now, and quivered like
a leaf when he zeed ye and heard your song!'
'His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body,' said the
dairyman.
'And his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone,' said Oliver
Giles.
'And he bolted as if he'd been shot at,' said the hedge-carpenter.
'True-his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink; and he bolted
as if he'd been shot at,' slowly summed up the man in the chimney-
corner.
'I didn't notice it,' remarked the hangman.
'We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,'
faltered one of the women against the wall, 'and now 'tis explained!'
The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly, and
their suspicions became a certainty. The sinister gentleman in cinder-
gray roused himself. 'Is there a constable here?' he asked, in thick
tones. 'If so, let him step forward.'
The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out from the wall, his
betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.
'You are a sworn constable?'
'I be, sir.'
'Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him back
here. He can't have gone far.'
'I will, sir, I will-when I've got my staff. I'll go home and get it,
and come sharp here, and start in a body.'
'Staff!-never mind your staff; the man'll be gone!'
'But I can't do nothing without my staff-can I, William, and John, and
Charles Jake? No; for there's the king's royal crown a painted on en in
yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I raise en up
and hit my prisoner, 'tis made a lawful blow thereby. I wouldn't 'tempt
to take up a man without my staff-no, not I. If I hadn't the law to gie
me courage, why, instead o' my taking up him he might take up me!'
'Now, I'm a king's man myself; and can give you authority enough for
this,' said the formidable officer in gray. 'Now then, all of ye, be
ready. Have ye any lanterns?'
'Yes-have ye any lanterns?-I demand it!' said the constable.
'And the rest of you able-bodied-'
'Able-bodied men-yes-the rest of ye!' said the constable.
'Have you some good stout staves and pitch-forks-'
'Staves and pitchforks-in the name o' the law! And take 'em in yer hands
and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye!'
Thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase. The evidence was, indeed,
though circumstantial, so convincing, that but little argument was
needed to show the shepherd's guests that after what they had seen it
would look very much like connivance if they did not instantly pursue
the unhappy third stranger, who could not as yet have gone more than a
few hundred yards over such uneven country.
A shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting these
hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured out of the
door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill, away from the
town, the rain having fortunately a little abated.
Disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her baptism,
the child who had been christened began to cry heart-brokenly in the
room overhead. These notes of grief came down through the chinks of the
floor to the ears of the women below, who jumped up one by one, and
seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and comfort the baby, for the
incidents of the last half-hour greatly oppressed them. Thus in the
space of two or three minutes the room on the ground-floor was deserted
quite.
But it was not for long. Hardly had the sound of footsteps died away
when a man returned round the corner of the house from the direction the
pursuers had taken. Peeping in at the door, and seeing nobody there, he
entered leisurely. It was the stranger of the chimney-corner, who had
gone out with the rest. The motive of his return was shown by his
helping himself to a cut piece of skimmer-cake that lay on a ledge
beside where he had sat, and which he had apparently forgotten to take
with him. He also poured out half a cup more mead from the quantity that
remained, ravenously eating and drinking these as he stood. He had not
finished when another figure came in just as quietly-his friend in
cinder-gray.
'O-you here?' said the latter, smiling. 'I thought you had gone to help
in the capture.' And this speaker also revealed the object of his return
by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug of old mead.
'And I thought you had gone,' said the other, continuing his skimmer-
cake with some effort.
'Well, on second thoughts, I felt there were enough without me,' said
the first confidentially, 'and such a night as it is, too. Besides, 'tis
the business o' the Government to take care of its criminals-not mine.'
'True; so it is. And I felt as you did, that there were enough without
me.'
'I don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows of
this wild country.'
'Nor I neither, between you and me.'
'These shepherd-people are used to it-simple-minded souls, you know,
stirred up to anything in a moment. They'll have him ready for me before
the morning, and no trouble to me at all.'
'They'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labour in the
matter.'
'True, true. Well, my way is to Casterbridge; and 'tis as much as my
legs will do to take me that far. Going the same way?'
'No, I am sorry to say! I have to get home over there' (he nodded
indefinitely to the right), 'and I feel as you do, that it is quite
enough for my legs to do before bedtime.'
The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after which,
shaking hands heartily at the door, and wishing each other well, they
went their several ways.
In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the
hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the down. They had
decided on no particular plan of action; and, finding that the man of
the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed quite
unable to form any such plan now. They descended in all directions down
the hill, and straightway several of the party fell into the snare set
by Nature for all misguided midnight ramblers over this part of the
cretaceous formation. The 'lanchets,' or flint slopes, which belted the
escarpment at intervals of a dozen yards, took the less cautious ones
unawares, and losing their footing on the rubbly steep they slid sharply
downwards, the lanterns rolling from their hands to the bottom, and
there lying on their sides till the horn was scorched through.
When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as the
man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them round
these treacherous inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather to dazzle
their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in the exploration,
were extinguished, due silence was observed; and in this more rational
order they plunged into the vale. It was a grassy, briery, moist defile,
affording some shelter to any person who had sought it; but the party
perambulated it in vain, and ascended on the other side. Here they
wandered apart, and after an interval closed together again to report
progress.
At the second time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely
ash, the single tree on this part of the coomb, probably sown there by a
passing bird some fifty years before. And here, standing a little to one
side of the trunk, as motionless as the trunk itself; appeared the man
they were in quest of; his outline being well defined against the sky
beyond. The band noiselessly drew up and faced him.
'Your money or your life!' said the constable sternly to the still
figure.
'No, no,' whispered John Pitcher. ''Tisn't our side ought to say that.
That's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the side of the
law.'
'Well, well,' replied the constable impatiently; 'I must say something,
mustn't I? and if you had all the weight o' this undertaking upon your
mind, perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too!-Prisoner at the bar,
surrender, in the name of the Father-the Crown, I mane!'
The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time,
and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their courage,
he strolled slowly towards them. He was, indeed, the little man, the
third stranger; but his trepidation had in a great measure gone.
'Well, travellers,' he said, 'did I hear ye speak to me?'
'You did: you've got to come and be our prisoner at once!' said the
constable. 'We arrest 'ee on the charge of not biding in Casterbridge
jail in a decent proper manner to be hung to-morrow morning. Neighbours,
do your duty, and seize the culpet!'
On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not
another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the
search-party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him on
all sides, and marched him back towards the shepherd's cottage.
It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived. The light shining from
the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to them as
they approached the house that some new events had arisen in their
absence. On entering they discovered the shepherd's living room to be
invaded by two officers from Casterbridge jail, and a well-known
magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat, intelligence of the
escape having become generally circulated.
'Gentlemen,' said the constable, 'I have brought back your man-not
without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty! He is inside
this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid,
considering their ignorance of Crown work. Men, bring forward your
prisoner!' And the third stranger was led to the light.
'Who is this?' said one of the officials.
'The man,' said the constable.
'Certainly not,' said the turnkey; and the first corroborated his
statement.
'But how can it be otherwise?' asked the constable. 'Or why was he so
terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law who sat there?'
Here he related the strange behaviour of the third stranger on entering
the house during the hangman's song.
'Can't understand it,' said the officer coolly. 'All I know is that it
is not the condemned man. He's quite a different character from this
one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-looking,
and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once you'd never
mistake as long as you lived.'
'Why, souls-'twas the man in the chimney-corner!'
'Hey-what?' said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring
particulars from the shepherd in the background. 'Haven't you got the
man after all?'
'Well, sir,' said the constable, 'he's the man we were in search of,
that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man
we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you understand
my everyday way; for 'twas the man in the chimney-corner!'
'A pretty kettle of fish altogether!' said the magistrate. 'You had
better start for the other man at once.'
The prisoner now spoke for the first time. The mention of the man in the
chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do. 'Sir,'
he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, 'take no more trouble about
me. The time is come when I may as well speak. I have done nothing; my
crime is that the condemned man is my brother. Early this afternoon I
left home at Shottsford to tramp it all the way to Casterbridge jail to
bid him farewell. I was benighted, and called here to rest and ask the
way. When I opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother,
that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge. He was in
this chimney-corner; and jammed close to him, so that he could not have
got out if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his
life, singing a song about it and not knowing that it was his victim who
was close by, joining in to save appearances. My brother looked a glance
of agony at me, and I knew he meant, "Don't reveal what you see; my life
depends on it." I was so terror-struck that I could hardly stand, and,
not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried away.'
The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story
made a great impression on all around. 'And do you know where your
brother is at the present time?' asked the magistrate.
'I do not. I have never seen him since I closed this door.'
'I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since,' said the
constable.
'Where does he think to fly to?-what is his occupation?'
'He's a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.'
''A said 'a was a wheelwright-a wicked rogue,' said the constable.
'The wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt,' said Shepherd
Fennel. 'I thought his hands were palish for's trade.'
'Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this
poor man in custody,' said the magistrate; 'your business lies with the
other, unquestionably.'
And so the little man was released off-hand; but he looked nothing the
less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or
constable to raze out the written troubles in his brain, for they
concerned another whom he regarded with more solicitude than himself.
When this was done, and the man had gone his way, the night was found to
be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew the search before
the next morning.
Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became
general and keen, to all appearance at least. But the intended
punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the
sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly on
the side of the fugitive. Moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring
in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented
circumstances of the shepherd's party, won their admiration. So that it
may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in
exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came
to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses. Stories
were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some old
overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a
search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody was
found. Thus the days and weeks passed without tidings.
In brief; the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never
recaptured. Some said that he went across the sea, others that he did
not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city. At any rate,
the gentleman in cinder-gray never did his morning's work at
Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all, for business purposes, the genial
comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the lonely
house on the coomb.
The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and his
frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have mainly
followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honour they
all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf. But the arrival of
the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details
connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever in the country
about Higher Crowstairs.
March 1883.
THE WITHERED ARM
CHAPTER I-A LORN MILKMAID
It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and
supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet
but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows
were 'in full pail.' The hour was about six in the evening, and three-
fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off,
there was opportunity for a little conversation.
'He do bring home his bride to-morrow, I hear. They've come as far as
Anglebury to-day.'
The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry, but
the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank of
that motionless beast.
'Hav' anybody seen her?' said another.
There was a negative response from the first. 'Though they say she's a
rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added; and as the
milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her
cow's tail to the other side of the barton, where a thin, fading woman
of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.
'Years younger than he, they say,' continued the second, with also a
glance of reflectiveness in the same direction.
'How old do you call him, then?'
'Thirty or so.'
'More like forty,' broke in an old milkman near, in a long white
pinafore or 'wropper,' and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that
he looked like a woman. ''A was born before our Great Weir was builded,
and I hadn't man's wages when I laved water there.'
The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk-streams became
jerky, till a voice from another cow's belly cried with authority, 'Now
then, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer Lodge's age, or
Farmer Lodge's new mis'ess? I shall have to pay him nine pound a year
for the rent of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers.
Get on with your work, or 'twill be dark afore we have done. The evening
is pinking in a'ready.' This speaker was the dairyman himself; by whom
the milkmaids and men were employed.
Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge's wedding, but the
first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour, ''Tis hard for
she,' signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.
'O no,' said the second. 'He ha'n't spoke to Rhoda Brook for years.'
When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a
many-forked stand made of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set upright in
the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn. The majority then
dispersed in various directions homeward. The thin woman who had not
spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain went
away up the field also.
Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot high
above the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose
dark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to their
home.
'They've just been saying down in barton that your father brings his
young wife home from Anglebury to-morrow,' the woman observed. 'I shall
want to send you for a few things to market, and you'll be pretty sure
to meet 'em.'
'Yes, mother,' said the boy. 'Is father married then?'
'Yes . . . You can give her a look, and tell me what's she's like, if
you do see her.'
'Yes, mother.'
'If she's dark or fair, and if she's tall-as tall as I. And if she seems
like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has been
always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the
lady on her, as I expect she do.'
'Yes.'
They crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage. It was
built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains
into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face
visible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a
bone protruding through the skin.
She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf
laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes
with her breath till the turves flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek,
and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew.
'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice
if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever
done housework, or are milker's hands like mine.'
The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not
observing that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the
beech-backed chair.
CHAPTER II-THE YOUNG WIFE
The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level; but there is
one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony. Farmers homeward-
bound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way,
walk their horses up this short incline.
The next evening, while the sun was yet bright, a handsome new gig, with
a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the
level highway at the heels of a powerful mare. The driver was a yeoman
in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned
to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer's
features when returning home after successful dealings in the town.
Beside him sat a woman, many years his junior-almost, indeed, a girl.
Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different
quality-soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.
Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long
white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one
small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the
figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail's pace, and continually
looking behind him-the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if
not the reason of, his dilatoriness. When the bouncing gig-party slowed
at the bottom of the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a
few yards in front. Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on
his hip, he turned and looked straight at the farmer's wife as though he
would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the horse.
The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and
contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of
her eyes. The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy's persistent
presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad
preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her, till they reached the
top of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on with relief in his
lineaments-having taken no outward notice of the boy whatever.
'How that poor lad stared at me!' said the young wife.
'Yes, dear; I saw that he did.'
'He is one of the village, I suppose?'
'One of the neighbourhood. I think he lives with his mother a mile or
two off.'
'He knows who we are, no doubt?'
'O yes. You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty
Gertrude.'
'I do,-though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the hope we
might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from curiosity.'
'O no,' said her husband off-handedly. 'These country lads will carry a
hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his pack had more
size than weight in it. Now, then, another mile and I shall be able to
show you our house in the distance-if it is not too dark before we get
there.' The wheels spun round, and particles flew from their periphery
as before, till a white house of ample dimensions revealed itself, with
farm-buildings and ricks at the back.
Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane some
mile and half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards the leaner
pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.
She had reached home after her day's milking at the outlying dairy, and
was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light. 'Hold up the
net a moment,' she said, without preface, as the boy came up.
He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as she
filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, 'Well, did you
see her?'
'Yes; quite plain.'
'Is she ladylike?'
'Yes; and more. A lady complete.'
'Is she young?'
'Well, she's growed up, and her ways be quite a woman's.'
'Of course. What colour is her hair and face?'
'Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll's.'
'Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?'
'No-of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when she
smiles, her teeth show white.'
'Is she tall?' said the woman sharply.
'I couldn't see. She was sitting down.'
'Then do you go to Holmstoke church to-morrow morning: she's sure to be
there. Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and tell me if
she's taller than I.'
'Very well, mother. But why don't you go and see for yourself?'
'I go to see her! I wouldn't look up at her if she were to pass my
window this instant. She was with Mr. Lodge, of course. What did he say
or do?'
'Just the same as usual.'
'Took no notice of you?'
'None.'
Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him off
for Holmstoke church. He reached the ancient little pile when the door
was just being opened, and he was the first to enter. Taking his seat by
the font, he watched all the parishioners file in. The well-to-do Farmer
Lodge came nearly last; and his young wife, who accompanied him, walked
up the aisle with the shyness natural to a modest woman who had appeared
thus for the first time. As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the
youth's stare was not noticed now.
When he reached home his mother said, 'Well?' before he had entered the
room.
'She is not tall. She is rather short,' he replied.
'Ah!' said his mother, with satisfaction.
'But she's very pretty-very. In fact, she's lovely.'
The youthful freshness of the yeoman's wife had evidently made an
impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy.
'That's all I want to hear,' said his mother quickly. 'Now, spread the
table-cloth. The hare you caught is very tender; but mind that nobody
catches you.-You've never told me what sort of hands she had.'
'I have never seen 'em. She never took off her gloves.'
'What did she wear this morning?'
'A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd. It whewed and whistled so
loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up more than
ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep it from
touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more than ever.
Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great
golden seals hung like a lord's; but she seemed to wish her noisy gownd
anywhere but on her.'
'Not she! However, that will do now.'
These descriptions of the newly-married couple were continued from time
to time by the boy at his mother's request, after any chance encounter
he had had with them. But Rhoda Brook, though she might easily have seen
young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never
attempt an excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay.
Neither did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman's yard on Lodge's
outlying second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage.
The dairyman, who rented the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall
milkmaid's history, with manly kindliness always kept the gossip in the
cow-barton from annoying Rhoda. But the atmosphere thereabout was full
of the subject during the first days of Mrs. Lodge's arrival; and from
her boy's description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda
Brook could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs Lodge that was
realistic as a photograph.
CHAPTER III-A VISION
One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy was
gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she had
raked out in front of her to extinguish them. She contemplated so
intently the new wife, as presented to her in her mind's eye over the
embers, that she forgot the lapse of time. At last, wearied with her
day's work, she too retired.
But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the
previous days was not to be banished at night. For the first time
Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams. Rhoda Brook
dreamed-since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep,
was not to be believed-that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and
white bonnet, but with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by
age, was sitting upon her chest as she lay. The pressure of Mrs. Lodge's
person grew heavier; the blue eyes peered cruelly into her face; and
then the figure thrust forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make
the wedding-ring it wore glitter in Rhoda's eyes. Maddened mentally, and
nearly suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still
regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to come
forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as before.
Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her
right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm,
and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so
with a low cry.
'O, merciful heaven!' she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a
cold sweat; 'that was not a dream-she was here!'
She could feel her antagonist's arm within her grasp even now-the very
flesh and bone of it, as it seemed. She looked on the floor whither she
had whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be seen.
Rhoda Brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at the
next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked. The milk that
she drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed even yet, and
still retained the feel of the arm. She came home to breakfast as
wearily as if it had been suppertime.
'What was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?' said her son.
'You fell off the bed, surely?'
'Did you hear anything fall? At what time?'
'Just when the clock struck two.'
She could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently about
her household work, the boy assisting her, for he hated going afield on
the farms, and she indulged his reluctance. Between eleven and twelve
the garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes to the window. At the
bottom of the garden, within the gate, stood the woman of her vision.
Rhoda seemed transfixed.
'Ah, she said she would come!' exclaimed the boy, also observing her.
'Said so-when? How does she know us?'
'I have seen and spoken to her. I talked to her yesterday.'
'I told you,' said the mother, flushing indignantly, 'never to speak to
anybody in that house, or go near the place.'
'I did not speak to her till she spoke to me. And I did not go near the
place. I met her in the road.'
'What did you tell her?'
'Nothing. She said, "Are you the poor boy who had to bring the heavy
load from market?" And she looked at my boots, and said they would not
keep my feet dry if it came on wet, because they were so cracked. I told
her I lived with my mother, and we had enough to do to keep ourselves,
and that's how it was; and she said then, "I'll come and bring you some
better boots, and see your mother." She gives away things to other folks
in the meads besides us.'
Mrs. Lodge was by this time close to the door-not in her silk, as Rhoda
had seen her in the bed-chamber, but in a morning hat, and gown of
common light material, which became her better than silk. On her arm she
carried a basket.
The impression remaining from the night's experience was still strong.
Brook had almost expected to see the wrinkles, the scorn, and the
cruelty on her visitor's face.
She would have escaped an interview, had escape been possible. There
was, however, no backdoor to the cottage, and in an instant the boy had
lifted the latch to Mrs. Lodge's gentle knock.
'I see I have come to the right house,' said she, glancing at the lad,
and smiling. 'But I was not sure till you opened the door.'
The figure and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was so
indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender, so
unlike that of Rhoda's midnight visitant, that the latter could hardly
believe the evidence of her senses. She was truly glad that she had not
hidden away in sheer aversion, as she had been inclined to do. In her
basket Mrs. Lodge brought the pair of boots that she had promised to the
boy, and other useful articles.
At these proofs of a kindly feeling towards her and hers Rhoda's heart
reproached her bitterly. This innocent young thing should have her
blessing and not her curse. When she left them a light seemed gone from
the dwelling. Two days later she came again to know if the boots fitted;
and less than a fortnight after that paid Rhoda another call. On this
occasion the boy was absent.
'I walk a good deal,' said Mrs. Lodge, 'and your house is the nearest
outside our own parish. I hope you are well. You don't look quite well.'
Rhoda said she was well enough; and, indeed, though the paler of the
two, there was more of the strength that endures in her well-defined
features and large frame, than in the soft-cheeked young woman before
her. The conversation became quite confidential as regarded their powers
and weaknesses; and when Mrs. Lodge was leaving, Rhoda said, 'I hope you
will find this air agree with you, ma'am, and not suffer from the damp
of the water-meads.'
The younger one replied that there was not much doubt of it, her general
health being usually good. 'Though, now you remind me,' she added, 'I
have one little ailment which puzzles me. It is nothing serious, but I
cannot make it out.'
She uncovered her left hand and arm; and their outline confronted
Rhoda's gaze as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and seized
in her dream. Upon the pink round surface of the arm were faint marks of
an unhealthy colour, as if produced by a rough grasp. Rhoda's eyes
became riveted on the discolorations; she fancied that she discerned in
them the shape of her own four fingers.
'How did it happen?' she said mechanically.
'I cannot tell,' replied Mrs. Lodge, shaking her head. 'One night when I
was sound asleep, dreaming I was away in some strange place, a pain
suddenly shot into my arm there, and was so keen as to awaken me. I must
have struck it in the daytime, I suppose, though I don't remember doing
so.' She added, laughing, 'I tell my dear husband that it looks just as
if he had flown into a rage and struck me there. O, I daresay it will
soon disappear.'
'Ha, ha! Yes . . . On what night did it come?'
Mrs. Lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the
morrow. 'When I awoke I could not remember where I was,' she added,
'till the clock striking two reminded me.'
She had named the night and the hour of Rhoda's spectral encounter, and
Brook felt like a guilty thing. The artless disclosure startled her; she
did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that
ghastly night returned with double vividness to her mind.
'O, can it be,' she said to herself, when her visitor had departed,
'that I exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?' She
knew that she had been slily called a witch since her fall; but never
having understood why that particular stigma had been attached to her,
it had passed disregarded. Could this be the explanation, and had such
things as this ever happened before?
CHAPTER IV-A SUGGESTION
The summer drew on, and Rhoda Brook almost dreaded to meet Mrs. Lodge
again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife amounted
well-nigh to affection. Something in her own individuality seemed to
convict Rhoda of crime. Yet a fatality sometimes would direct the steps
of the latter to the outskirts of Holmstoke whenever she left her house
for any other purpose than her daily work; and hence it happened that
their next encounter was out of doors. Rhoda could not avoid the subject
which had so mystified her, and after the first few words she stammered,
'I hope your-arm is well again, ma'am?' She had perceived with
consternation that Gertrude Lodge carried her left arm stiffly.
'No; it is not quite well. Indeed it is no better at all; it is rather
worse. It pains me dreadfully sometimes.'
'Perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma'am.'
She replied that she had already seen a doctor. Her husband had insisted
upon her going to one. But the surgeon had not seemed to understand the
afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in hot water, and she
had bathed it, but the treatment had done no good.
'Will you let me see it?' said the milkwoman.
Mrs. Lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a few
inches above the wrist. As soon as Rhoda Brook saw it, she could hardly
preserve her composure. There was nothing of the nature of a wound, but
the arm at that point had a shrivelled look, and the outline of the four
fingers appeared more distinct than at the former time. Moreover, she
fancied that they were imprinted in precisely the relative position of
her clutch upon the arm in the trance; the first finger towards
Gertrude's wrist, and the fourth towards her elbow.
What the impress resembled seemed to have struck Gertrude herself since
their last meeting. 'It looks almost like finger-marks,' she said;
adding with a faint laugh, 'my husband says it is as if some witch, or
the devil himself, had taken hold of me there, and blasted the flesh.'
Rhoda shivered. 'That's fancy,' she said hurriedly. 'I wouldn't mind it,
if I were you.'
'I shouldn't so much mind it,' said the younger, with hesitation, 'if-if
I hadn't a notion that it makes my husband-dislike me-no, love me less.
Men think so much of personal appearance.'
'Some do-he for one.'
'Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.'
'Keep your arm covered from his sight.'
'Ah-he knows the disfigurement is there!' She tried to hide the tears
that filled her eyes.
'Well, ma'am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon.'
And so the milkwoman's mind was chained anew to the subject by a horrid
sort of spell as she returned home. The sense of having been guilty of
an act of malignity increased, affect as she might to ridicule her
superstition. In her secret heart Rhoda did not altogether object to a
slight diminution of her successor's beauty, by whatever means it had
come about; but she did not wish to inflict upon her physical pain. For
though this pretty young woman had rendered impossible any reparation
which Lodge might have made Rhoda for his past conduct, everything like
resentment at the unconscious usurpation had quite passed away from the
elder's mind.
If the sweet and kindly Gertrude Lodge only knew of the scene in the
bed-chamber, what would she think? Not to inform her of it seemed
treachery in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could not of
her own accord-neither could she devise a remedy.
She mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the next
day, after the morning milking, set out to obtain another glimpse of
Gertrude Lodge if she could, being held to her by a gruesome
fascination. By watching the house from a distance the milkmaid was
presently able to discern the farmer's wife in a ride she was taking
alone-probably to join her husband in some distant field. Mrs. Lodge
perceived her, and cantered in her direction.
'Good morning, Rhoda!' Gertrude said, when she had come up. 'I was going
to call.'
Rhoda noticed that Mrs. Lodge held the reins with some difficulty.
'I hope-the bad arm,' said Rhoda.
'They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to find
out the cause, and so perhaps the cure, of it,' replied the other
anxiously. 'It is by going to some clever man over in Egdon Heath. They
did not know if he was still alive-and I cannot remember his name at
this moment; but they said that you knew more of his movements than
anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if he were still to be
consulted. Dear me-what was his name? But you know.'
'Not Conjuror Trendle?' said her thin companion, turning pale.
'Trendle-yes. Is he alive?'
'I believe so,' said Rhoda, with reluctance.
'Why do you call him conjuror?'
'Well-they say-they used to say he was a-he had powers other folks have
not.'
'O, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of
that sort! I thought they meant some medical man. I shall think no more
of him.'
Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs. Lodge rode on. The milkwoman had
inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as
a reference for this man, that there must exist a sarcastic feeling
among the work-folk that a sorceress would know the whereabouts of the
exorcist. They suspected her, then. A short time ago this would have
given no concern to a woman of her common-sense. But she had a haunting
reason to be superstitious now; and she had been seized with sudden
dread that this Conjuror Trendle might name her as the malignant
influence which was blasting the fair person of Gertrude, and so lead
her friend to hate her for ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human
shape.
But all was not over. Two days after, a shadow intruded into the window-
pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook's floor by the afternoon sun. The woman
opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.
'Are you alone?' said Gertrude. She seemed to be no less harassed and
anxious than Brook herself.
'Yes,' said Rhoda.
'The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!' the young farmer's
wife went on. 'It is so mysterious! I do hope it will not be an
incurable wound. I have again been thinking of what they said about
Conjuror Trendle. I don't really believe in such men, but I should not
mind just visiting him, from curiosity-though on no account must my
husband know. Is it far to where he lives?'
'Yes-five miles,' said Rhoda backwardly. 'In the heart of Egdon.'
'Well, I should have to walk. Could not you go with me to show me the
way-say to-morrow afternoon?'
'O, not I-that is,' the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.
Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in
the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most
useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.
Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much
misgiving. Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not
conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her patron's
strange affliction. It was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their
mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of the heath at the corner
of a plantation which was visible from the spot where they now stood.
CHAPTER V-CONJUROR TRENDLE
By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this
inquiry. But she had promised to go. Moreover, there was a horrid
fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible
light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater
in the occult world than she had ever herself suspected.
She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and
half-an-hour's brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern extension
of the Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was. A slight
figure, cloaked and veiled, was already there. Rhoda recognized, almost
with a shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm in a sling.
They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb
into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high above the
rich alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before. It was a long
walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only
early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the
heath-not improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of the
Wessex King Ina, presented to after-ages as Lear. Gertrude Lodge talked
most, Rhoda replying with monosyllabic preoccupation. She had a strange
dislike to walking on the side of her companion where hung the afflicted
arm, moving round to the other when inadvertently near it. Much heather
had been brushed by their feet when they descended upon a cart-track,
beside which stood the house of the man they sought.
He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything about
their continuance, his direct interests being those of a dealer in
furze, turf, 'sharp sand,' and other local products. Indeed, he affected
not to believe largely in his own powers, and when warts that had been
shown him for cure miraculously disappeared-which it must be owned they
infallibly did-he would say lightly, 'O, I only drink a glass of grog
upon 'em-perhaps it's all chance,' and immediately turn the subject.
He was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them descending
into his valley. He was a gray-bearded man, with a reddish face, and he
looked singularly at Rhoda the first moment he beheld her. Mrs. Lodge
told him her errand; and then with words of self-disparagement he
examined her arm.
'Medicine can't cure it,' he said promptly. ''Tis the work of an enemy.'
Rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back.
'An enemy? What enemy?' asked Mrs. Lodge.
He shook his head. 'That's best known to yourself,' he said. 'If you
like, I can show the person to you, though I shall not myself know who
it is. I can do no more; and don't wish to do that.'
She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she stood,
and took Mrs. Lodge into the room. It opened immediately from the door;
and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could see the proceedings
without taking part in them. He brought a tumbler from the dresser,
nearly filled it with water, and fetching an egg, prepared it in some
private way; after which he broke it on the edge of the glass, so that
the white went in and the yolk remained. As it was getting gloomy, he
took the glass and its contents to the window, and told Gertrude to
watch them closely. They leant over the table together, and the
milkwoman could see the opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it
sank in the water, but she was not near enough to define the shape that
it assumed.
'Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?' demanded
the conjuror of the young woman.
She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda, and
continued to gaze intently into the glass. Rhoda turned, and walked a
few steps away.
When Mrs. Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it appeared
exceedingly pale-as pale as Rhoda's-against the sad dun shades of the
upland's garniture. Trendle shut the door behind her, and they at once
started homeward together. But Rhoda perceived that her companion had
quite changed.
'Did he charge much?' she asked tentatively.
'O no-nothing. He would not take a farthing,' said Gertrude.
'And what did you see?' inquired Rhoda.
'Nothing I-care to speak of.' The constraint in her manner was
remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect, faintly
suggestive of the face in Rhoda's bed-chamber.
'Was it you who first proposed coming here?' Mrs. Lodge suddenly
inquired, after a long pause. 'How very odd, if you did!'
'No. But I am not sorry we have come, all things considered,' she
replied. For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and she
did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side should learn
that their lives had been antagonized by other influences than their
own.
The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk home.
But in some way or other a story was whispered about the many-dairied
lowland that winter that Mrs. Lodge's gradual loss of the use of her
left arm was owing to her being 'overlooked' by Rhoda Brook. The latter
kept her own counsel about the incubus, but her face grew sadder and
thinner; and in the spring she and her boy disappeared from the
neighbourhood of Holmstoke.
CHAPTER VI-A SECOND ATTEMPT
Half-a-dozen years passed away, and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge's married
experience sank into prosiness, and worse. The farmer was usually gloomy
and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was
contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him
no child, which rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family
who had occupied that valley for some two hundred years. He thought of
Rhoda Brook and her son; and feared this might be a judgment from heaven
upon him.
The once blithe-hearted and enlightened Gertrude was changing into an
irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to
experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came across.
She was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever secretly hoping
against hope to win back his heart again by regaining some at least of
her personal beauty. Hence it arose that her closet was lined with
bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of every description-nay, bunches of
mystic herbs, charms, and books of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl
time she would have ridiculed as folly.
'Damned if you won't poison yourself with these apothecary messes and
witch mixtures some time or other,' said her husband, when his eye
chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array.
She did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such
heart-swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and added, 'I
only meant it for your good, you know, Gertrude.'
'I'll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,' said she huskily, 'and
try such remedies no more!'
'You want somebody to cheer you,' he observed. 'I once thought of
adopting a boy; but he is too old now. And he is gone away I don't know
where.'
She guessed to whom he alluded; for Rhoda Brook's story had in the
course of years become known to her; though not a word had ever passed
between her husband and herself on the subject. Neither had she ever
spoken to him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what was revealed
to her, or she thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heath-man.
She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older.
'Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,' she sometimes
whispered to herself. And then she thought of the apparent cause, and
said, with a tragic glance at her withering limb, 'If I could only again
be as I was when he first saw me!'
She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a
hankering wish to try something else-some other sort of cure altogether.
She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the
house of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly
occurred to Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at
deliverance from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet
lived. He was entitled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he
had raised in the glass had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the
world who-as she now knew, though not then-could have a reason for
bearing her ill-will. The visit should be paid.
This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and
roamed a considerable distance out of her way. Trendle's house was
reached at last, however: he was not indoors, and instead of waiting at
the cottage, she went to where his bent figure was pointed out to her at
work a long way off. Trendle remembered her, and laying down the handful
of furze-roots which he was gathering and throwing into a heap, he
offered to accompany her in her homeward direction, as the distance was
considerable and the days were short. So they walked together, his head
bowed nearly to the earth, and his form of a colour with it.
'You can send away warts and other excrescences I know,' she said; 'why
can't you send away this?' And the arm was uncovered.
'You think too much of my powers!' said Trendle; 'and I am old and weak
now, too. No, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own person.
What have ye tried?'
She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells which
she had adopted from time to time. He shook his head.
'Some were good enough,' he said approvingly; 'but not many of them for
such as this. This is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a
wound; and if you ever do throw it off; it will be all at once.'
'If I only could!'
'There is only one chance of doing it known to me. It has never failed
in kindred afflictions,-that I can declare. But it is hard to carry out,
and especially for a woman.'
'Tell me!' said she.
'You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who's been hanged.'
She started a little at the image he had raised.
'Before he's cold-just after he's cut down,' continued the conjuror
impassively.
'How can that do good?'
'It will turn the blood and change the constitution. But, as I say, to
do it is hard. You must get into jail, and wait for him when he's
brought off the gallows. Lots have done it, though perhaps not such
pretty women as you. I used to send dozens for skin complaints. But that
was in former times. The last I sent was in '13-near twenty years ago.'
He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight
track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.
CHAPTER VII-A RIDE
The communication sank deep into Gertrude's mind. Her nature was rather
a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could
have suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so
much aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way
of its adoption.
Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and
though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson,
and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not
likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided.
And the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word
of Trendle's suggestion to him or to anybody about him.
She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as
before. But her woman's nature, craving for renewed love, through the
medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating
her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm. 'What came
by a spell will go by a spell surely,' she would say. Whenever her
imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror from the possibility
of it: then the words of the conjuror, 'It will turn your blood,' were
seen to be capable of a scientific no less than a ghastly
interpretation; the mastering desire returned, and urged her on again.
There was at this time but one county paper, and that her husband only
occasionally borrowed. But old-fashioned days had old-fashioned means,
and news was extensively conveyed by word of mouth from market to
market, or from fair to fair, so that, whenever such an event as an
execution was about to take place, few within a radius of twenty miles
were ignorant of the coming sight; and, so far as Holmstoke was
concerned, some enthusiasts had been known to walk all the way to
Casterbridge and back in one day, solely to witness the spectacle. The
next assizes were in March; and when Gertrude Lodge heard that they had
been held, she inquired stealthily at the inn as to the result, as soon
as she could find opportunity.
She was, however, too late. The time at which the sentences were to be
carried out had arrived, and to make the journey and obtain admission at
such short notice required at least her husband's assistance. She dared
not tell him, for she had found by delicate experiment that these
smouldering village beliefs made him furious if mentioned, partly
because he half entertained them himself. It was therefore necessary to
wait for another opportunity.
Her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic
children had attended from this very village of Holmstoke many years
before with beneficial results, though the experiment had been strongly
condemned by the neighbouring clergy. April, May, June, passed; and it
is no overstatement to say that by the end of the last-named month
Gertrude well-nigh longed for the death of a fellow-creature. Instead of
her formal prayers each night, her unconscious prayer was, 'O Lord, hang
some guilty or innocent person soon!'
This time she made earlier inquiries, and was altogether more systematic
in her proceedings. Moreover, the season was summer, between the
haymaking and the harvest, and in the leisure thus afforded him her
husband had been holiday-taking away from home.
The assizes were in July, and she went to the inn as before. There was
to be one execution-only one-for arson.
Her greatest problem was not how to get to Casterbridge, but what means
she should adopt for obtaining admission to the jail. Though access for
such purposes had formerly never been denied, the custom had fallen into
desuetude; and in contemplating her possible difficulties, she was again
almost driven to fall back upon her husband. But, on sounding him about
the assizes, he was so uncommunicative, so more than usually cold, that
she did not proceed, and decided that whatever she did she would do
alone.
Fortune, obdurate hitherto, showed her unexpected favour. On the
Thursday before the Saturday fixed for the execution, Lodge remarked to
her that he was going away from home for another day or two on business
at a fair, and that he was sorry he could not take her with him.
She exhibited on this occasion so much readiness to stay at home that he
looked at her in surprise. Time had been when she would have shown deep
disappointment at the loss of such a jaunt. However, he lapsed into his
usual taciturnity, and on the day named left Holmstoke.
It was now her turn. She at first had thought of driving, but on
reflection held that driving would not do, since it would necessitate
her keeping to the turnpike-road, and so increase by tenfold the risk of
her ghastly errand being found out. She decided to ride, and avoid the
beaten track, notwithstanding that in her husband's stables there was no
animal just at present which by any stretch of imagination could be
considered a lady's mount, in spite of his promise before marriage to
always keep a mare for her. He had, however, many cart-horses, fine ones
of their kind; and among the rest was a serviceable creature, an equine
Amazon, with a back as broad as a sofa, on which Gertrude had
occasionally taken an airing when unwell. This horse she chose.
On Friday afternoon one of the men brought it round. She was dressed,
and before going down looked at her shrivelled arm. 'Ah!' she said to
it, 'if it had not been for you this terrible ordeal would have been
saved me!'
When strapping up the bundle in which she carried a few articles of
clothing, she took occasion to say to the servant, 'I take these in case
I should not get back to-night from the person I am going to visit.
Don't be alarmed if I am not in by ten, and close up the house as usual.
I shall be at home to-morrow for certain.' She meant then to privately
tell her husband: the deed accomplished was not like the deed projected.
He would almost certainly forgive her.
And then the pretty palpitating Gertrude Lodge went from her husband's
homestead; but though her goal was Casterbridge she did not take the
direct route thither through Stickleford. Her cunning course at first
was in precisely the opposite direction. As soon as she was out of
sight, however, she turned to the left, by a road which led into Egdon,
and on entering the heath wheeled round, and set out in the true course,
due westerly. A more private way down the county could not be imagined;
and as to direction, she had merely to keep her horse's head to a point
a little to the right of the sun. She knew that she would light upon a
furze-cutter or cottager of some sort from time to time, from whom she
might correct her bearing.
Though the date was comparatively recent, Egdon was much less
fragmentary in character than now. The attempts-successful and
otherwise-at cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and break up
the original heath into small detached heaths, had not been carried far;
Enclosure Acts had not taken effect, and the banks and fences which now
exclude the cattle of those villagers who formerly enjoyed rights of
commonage thereon, and the carts of those who had turbary privileges
which kept them in firing all the year round, were not erected.
Gertrude, therefore, rode along with no other obstacles than the prickly
furze bushes, the mats of heather, the white water-courses, and the
natural steeps and declivities of the ground.
Her horse was sure, if heavy-footed and slow, and though a draught
animal, was easy-paced; had it been otherwise, she was not a woman who
could have ventured to ride over such a bit of country with a half-dead
arm. It was therefore nearly eight o'clock when she drew rein to breathe
the mare on the last outlying high point of heath-land towards
Casterbridge, previous to leaving Egdon for the cultivated valleys.
She halted before a pool called Rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of two
hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing it in
half. Over the railing she saw the low green country; over the green
trees the roofs of the town; over the roofs a white flat fa\xE7ade,
denoting the entrance to the county jail. On the roof of this front
specks were moving about; they seemed to be workmen erecting something.
Her flesh crept. She descended slowly, and was soon amid corn-fields and
pastures. In another half-hour, when it was almost dusk, Gertrude
reached the White Hart, the first inn of the town on that side.
Little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers' wives rode on
horseback then more than they do now; though, for that matter, Mrs.
Lodge was not imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed her
some harum-skarum young woman who had come to attend 'hang-fair' next
day. Neither her husband nor herself ever dealt in Casterbridge market,
so that she was unknown. While dismounting she beheld a crowd of boys
standing at the door of a harness-maker's shop just above the inn,
looking inside it with deep interest.
'What is going on there?' she asked of the ostler.
'Making the rope for to-morrow.'
She throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm.
''Tis sold by the inch afterwards,' the man continued. 'I could get you
a bit, miss, for nothing, if you'd like?'
She hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious
creeping feeling that the condemned wretch's destiny was becoming
interwoven with her own; and having engaged a room for the night, sat
down to think.
Up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her means
of obtaining access to the prison. The words of the cunning-man returned
to her mind. He had implied that she should use her beauty, impaired
though it was, as a pass-key. In her inexperience she knew little about
jail functionaries; she had heard of a high-sheriff and an under-
sheriff; but dimly only. She knew, however, that there must be a
hangman, and to the hangman she determined to apply.
VIII-A WATER-SIDE HERMIT
At this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to almost
every jail. Gertrude found, on inquiry, that the Casterbridge official
dwelt in a lonely cottage by a deep slow river flowing under the cliff
on which the prison buildings were situate-the stream being the self-
same one, though she did not know it, which watered the Stickleford and
Holmstoke meads lower down in its course.
Having changed her dress, and before she had eaten or drunk-for she
could not take her ease till she had ascertained some particulars-
Gertrude pursued her way by a path along the water-side to the cottage
indicated. Passing thus the outskirts of the jail, she discerned on the
level roof over the gateway three rectangular lines against the sky,
where the specks had been moving in her distant view; she recognized
what the erection was, and passed quickly on. Another hundred yards
brought her to the executioner's house, which a boy pointed out It stood
close to the same stream, and was hard by a weir, the waters of which
emitted a steady roar.
While she stood hesitating the door opened, and an old man came forth
shading a candle with one hand. Locking the door on the outside, he
turned to a flight of wooden steps fixed against the end of the cottage,
and began to ascend them, this being evidently the staircase to his
bedroom. Gertrude hastened forward, but by the time she reached the foot
of the ladder he was at the top. She called to him loudly enough to be
heard above the roar of the weir; he looked down and said, 'What d'ye
want here?'
'To speak to you a minute.'
The candle-light, such as it was, fell upon her imploring, pale,
upturned face, and Davies (as the hangman was called) backed down the
ladder. 'I was just going to bed,' he said; '"Early to bed and early to
rise," but I don't mind stopping a minute for such a one as you. Come
into house.' He reopened the door, and preceded her to the room within.
The implements of his daily work, which was that of a jobbing gardener,
stood in a corner, and seeing probably that she looked rural, he said,
'If you want me to undertake country work I can't come, for I never
leave Casterbridge for gentle nor simple-not I. My real calling is
officer of justice,' he added formally.
'Yes, yes! That's it. To-morrow!'
'Ah! I thought so. Well, what's the matter about that? 'Tis no use to
come here about the knot-folks do come continually, but I tell 'em one
knot is as merciful as another if ye keep it under the ear. Is the
unfortunate man a relation; or, I should say, perhaps' (looking at her
dress) 'a person who's been in your employ?'
'No. What time is the execution?'
'The same as usual-twelve o'clock, or as soon after as the London mail-
coach gets in. We always wait for that, in case of a reprieve.'
'O-a reprieve-I hope not!' she said involuntarily,
'Well,-hee, hee!-as a matter of business, so do I! But still, if ever a
young fellow deserved to be let off, this one does; only just turned
eighteen, and only present by chance when the rick was fired.
Howsomever, there's not much risk of it, as they are obliged to make an
example of him, there having been so much destruction of property that
way lately.'
'I mean,' she explained, 'that I want to touch him for a charm, a cure
of an affliction, by the advice of a man who has proved the virtue of
the remedy.'
'O yes, miss! Now I understand. I've had such people come in past years.
But it didn't strike me that you looked of a sort to require blood-
turning. What's the complaint? The wrong kind for this, I'll be bound.'
'My arm.' She reluctantly showed the withered skin.
'Ah-'tis all a-scram!' said the hangman, examining it.
'Yes,' said she.
'Well,' he continued, with interest, 'that is the class o' subject, I'm
bound to admit! I like the look of the place; it is truly as suitable
for the cure as any I ever saw. 'Twas a knowing-man that sent 'ee,
whoever he was.'
'You can contrive for me all that's necessary?' she said breathlessly.
'You should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your
doctor with 'ee, and given your name and address-that's how it used to
be done, if I recollect. Still, perhaps, I can manage it for a trifling
fee.'
'O, thank you! I would rather do it this way, as I should like it kept
private.'
'Lover not to know, eh?'
'No-husband.'
'Aha! Very well. I'll get ee' a touch of the corpse.'
'Where is it now?' she said, shuddering.
'It?-he, you mean; he's living yet. Just inside that little small winder
up there in the glum.' He signified the jail on the cliff above.
She thought of her husband and her friends. 'Yes, of course,' she said;
'and how am I to proceed?'
He took her to the door. 'Now, do you be waiting at the little wicket in
the wall, that you'll find up there in the lane, not later than one
o'clock. I will open it from the inside, as I shan't come home to dinner
till he's cut down. Good-night. Be punctual; and if you don't want
anybody to know 'ee, wear a veil. Ah-once I had such a daughter as you!'
She went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that she
would be able to find the wicket next day. Its outline was soon visible
to her-a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison precincts. The
steep was so great that, having reached the wicket, she stopped a moment
to breathe; and, looking back upon the water-side cot, saw the hangman
again ascending his outdoor staircase. He entered the loft or chamber to
which it led, and in a few minutes extinguished his light.
The town clock struck ten, and she returned to the White Hart as she had
come.
IX-A RENCOUNTER
It was one o'clock on Saturday. Gertrude Lodge, having been admitted to
the jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-room within the
second gate, which stood under a classic archway of ashlar, then
comparatively modern, and bearing the inscription, 'COVNTY JAIL: 1793.'
This had been the fa\xE7ade she saw from the heath the day before. Near at
hand was a passage to the roof on which the gallows stood.
The town was thronged, and the market suspended; but Gertrude had seen
scarcely a soul. Having kept her room till the hour of the appointment,
she had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided the open space
below the cliff where the spectators had gathered; but she could, even
now, hear the multitudinous babble of their voices, out of which rose at
intervals the hoarse croak of a single voice uttering the words, 'Last
dying speech and confession!' There had been no reprieve, and the
execution was over; but the crowd still waited to see the body taken
down.
Soon the persistent girl heard a trampling overhead, then a hand
beckoned to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed the
inner paved court beyond the gatehouse, her knees trembling so that she
could scarcely walk. One of her arms was out of its sleeve, and only
covered by her shawl.
On the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and before
she could think of their purpose she heard heavy feet descending stairs
somewhere at her back. Turn her head she would not, or could not, and,
rigid in this position, she was conscious of a rough coffin passing her
shoulder, borne by four men. It was open, and in it lay the body of a
young man, wearing the smockfrock of a rustic, and fustian breeches. The
corpse had been thrown into the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the
smockfrock was hanging over. The burden was temporarily deposited on the
trestles.
By this time the young woman's state was such that a gray mist seemed to
float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil she wore, she
could scarcely discern anything: it was as though she had nearly died,
but was held up by a sort of galvanism.
'Now!' said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that the
word had been addressed to her.
By a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing
persons approaching behind her. She bared her poor curst arm; and
Davies, uncovering the face of the corpse, took Gertrude's hand, and
held it so that her arm lay across the dead man's neck, upon a line the
colour of an unripe blackberry, which surrounded it.
Gertrude shrieked: 'the turn o' the blood,' predicted by the conjuror,
had taken place. But at that moment a second shriek rent the air of the
enclosure: it was not Gertrude's, and its effect upon her was to make
her start round.
Immediately behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face drawn, and her eyes
red with weeping. Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude's own husband; his
countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear.
'D-n you! what are you doing here?' he said hoarsely.
'Hussy-to come between us and our child now!' cried Rhoda. 'This is the
meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision! You are like her at
last!' And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her
unresistingly back against the wall. Immediately Brook had loosened her
hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against the feet of her
husband. When he lifted her up she was unconscious.
The mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that the
dead young man was Rhoda's son. At that time the relatives of an
executed convict had the privilege of claiming the body for burial, if
they chose to do so; and it was for this purpose that Lodge was awaiting
the inquest with Rhoda. He had been summoned by her as soon as the young
man was taken in the crime, and at different times since; and he had
attended in court during the trial. This was the 'holiday' he had been
indulging in of late. The two wretched parents had wished to avoid
exposure; and hence had come themselves for the body, a waggon and sheet
for its conveyance and covering being in waiting outside.
Gertrude's case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call to
her the surgeon who was at hand. She was taken out of the jail into the
town; but she never reached home alive. Her delicate vitality, sapped
perhaps by the paralyzed arm, collapsed under the double shock that
followed the severe strain, physical and mental, to which she had
subjected herself during the previous twenty-four hours. Her blood had
been 'turned' indeed-too far. Her death took place in the town three
days after.
Her husband was never seen in Casterbridge again; once only in the old
market-place at Anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and very
seldom in public anywhere. Burdened at first with moodiness and remorse,
he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a chastened and
thoughtful man. Soon after attending the funeral of his poor young wife
he took steps towards giving up the farms in Holmstoke and the adjoining
parish, and, having sold every head of his stock, he went away to Port-
Bredy, at the other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings
till his death two years later of a painless decline. It was then found
that he had bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a
reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to Rhoda
Brook, if she could be found to claim it.
For some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared in
her old parish,-absolutely refusing, however, to have anything to do
with the provision made for her. Her monotonous milking at the dairy was
resumed, and followed for many long years, till her form became bent,
and her once abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead-
perhaps by long pressure against the cows. Here, sometimes, those who
knew her experiences would stand and observe her, and wonder what sombre
thoughts were beating inside that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the
rhythm of the alternating milk-streams.
('Blackwood's Magazine,' January 1888.)
FELLOW-TOWNSMEN
I
The shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence to
the shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town chimneys,
without great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did the steep
pastures encroach upon the burghers' backyards. And at night it was
possible to stand in the very midst of the town and hear from their
native paddocks on the lower levels of greensward the mild lowing of the
farmer's heifers, and the profound, warm blowings of breath in which
those creatures indulge. But the community which had jammed itself in
the valley thus flanked formed a veritable town, with a real mayor and
corporation, and a staple manufacture.
During a certain damp evening five-and-thirty years ago, before the
twilight was far advanced, a pedestrian of professional appearance,
carrying a small bag in his hand and an elevated umbrella, was
descending one of these hills by the turnpike road when he was overtaken
by a phaeton.
'Hullo, Downe-is that you?' said the driver of the vehicle, a young man
of pale and refined appearance. 'Jump up here with me, and ride down to
your door.'
The other turned a plump, cheery, rather self-indulgent face over his
shoulder towards the hailer.
'O, good evening, Mr. Barnet-thanks,' he said, and mounted beside his
acquaintance.
They were fellow-burgesses of the town which lay beneath them, but
though old and very good friends, they were differently circumstanced.
Barnet was a richer man than the struggling young lawyer Downe, a fact
which was to some extent perceptible in Downe's manner towards his
companion, though nothing of it ever showed in Barnet's manner towards
the solicitor. Barnet's position in the town was none of his own making;
his father had been a very successful flax-merchant in the same place,
where the trade was still carried on as briskly as the small capacities
of its quarters would allow. Having acquired a fair fortune, old Mr.
Barnet had retired from business, bringing up his son as a gentleman-
burgher, and, it must be added, as a well-educated, liberal- minded
young man.
'How is Mrs. Barnet?' asked Downe.
'Mrs. Barnet was very well when I left home,' the other answered
constrainedly, exchanging his meditative regard of the horse for one of
self-consciousness.
Mr. Downe seemed to regret his inquiry, and immediately took up another
thread of conversation. He congratulated his friend on his election as a
council-man; he thought he had not seen him since that event took place;
Mrs. Downe had meant to call and congratulate Mrs. Barnet, but he feared
that she had failed to do so as yet.
Barnet seemed hampered in his replies. 'We should have been glad to see
you. I-my wife would welcome Mrs. Downe at any time, as you know . . .
Yes, I am a member of the corporation-rather an inexperienced member,
some of them say. It is quite true; and I should have declined the
honour as premature-having other things on my hands just now, too-if it
had not been pressed upon me so very heartily.'
'There is one thing you have on your hands which I can never quite see
the necessity for,' said Downe, with good-humoured freedom. 'What the
deuce do you want to build that new mansion for, when you have already
got such an excellent house as the one you live in?'
Barnet's face acquired a warmer shade of colour; but as the question had
been idly asked by the solicitor while regarding the surrounding flocks
and fields, he answered after a moment with no apparent embarrassment -
'Well, we wanted to get out of the town, you know: the house I am living
in is rather old and inconvenient.' Mr. Downe declared that he had
chosen a pretty site for the new building. They would be able to see for
miles and miles from the windows. Was he going to give it a name? He
supposed so.
Barnet thought not. There was no other house near that was likely to be
mistaken for it. And he did not care for a name.
'But I think it has a name!' Downe observed: 'I went past-when was it?-
this morning; and I saw something,-"Ch\xE2teau Ringdale," I think it was,
stuck up on a board!'
'It was an idea she-we had for a short time,' said Barnet hastily. 'But
we have decided finally to do without a name-at any rate such a name as
that. It must have been a week ago that you saw it. It was taken down
last Saturday . . . Upon that matter I am firm!' he added grimly.
Downe murmured in an unconvinced tone that he thought he had seen it
yesterday.
Talking thus they drove into the town. The street was unusually still
for the hour of seven in the evening; an increasing drizzle had
prevailed since the afternoon, and now formed a gauze across the yellow
lamps, and trickled with a gentle rattle down the heavy roofs of stone
tile, that bent the house-ridges hollow-backed with its weight, and in
some instances caused the walls to bulge outwards in the upper story.
Their route took them past the little town-hall, the Black-Bull Hotel,
and onward to the junction of a small street on the right, consisting of
a row of those two-and-two windowed brick residences of no particular
age, which are exactly alike wherever found, except in the people they
contain.
'Wait-I'll drive you up to your door,' said Barnet, when Downe prepared
to alight at the corner. He thereupon turned into the narrow street,
when the faces of three little girls could be discerned close to the
panes of a lighted window a few yards ahead, surmounted by that of a
young matron, the gaze of all four being directed eagerly up the empty
street. 'You are a fortunate fellow, Downe,' Barnet continued, as mother
and children disappeared from the window to run to the door. 'You must
be happy if any man is. I would give a hundred such houses as my new one
to have a home like yours.'
'Well-yes, we get along pretty comfortably,' replied Downe complacently.
'That house, Downe, is none of my ordering,' Barnet broke out, revealing
a bitterness hitherto suppressed, and checking the horse a moment to
finish his speech before delivering up his passenger. 'The house I have
already is good enough for me, as you supposed. It is my own freehold;
it was built by my grandfather, and is stout enough for a castle. My
father was born there, lived there, and died there. I was born there,
and have always lived there; yet I must needs build a new one.'
'Why do you?' said Downe.
'Why do I? To preserve peace in the household. I do anything for that;
but I don't succeed. I was firm in resisting "Ch\xE2teau Ringdale,"
however; not that I would not have put up with the absurdity of the
name, but it was too much to have your house christened after Lord
Ringdale, because your wife once had a fancy for him. If you only knew
everything, you would think all attempt at reconciliation hopeless. In
your happy home you have had no such experiences; and God forbid that
you ever should. See, here they are all ready to receive you!'
'Of course! And so will your wife be waiting to receive you,' said
Downe. 'Take my word for it she will! And with a dinner prepared for you
far better than mine.'
'I hope so,' Barnet replied dubiously.
He moved on to Downe's door, which the solicitor's family had already
opened. Downe descended, but being encumbered with his bag and umbrella,
his foot slipped, and he fell upon his knees in the gutter.
'O, my dear Charles!' said his wife, running down the steps; and, quite
ignoring the presence of Barnet, she seized hold of her husband, pulled
him to his feet, and kissed him, exclaiming, 'I hope you are not hurt,
darling!' The children crowded round, chiming in piteously, 'Poor papa!'
'He's all right,' said Barnet, perceiving that Downe was only a little
muddy, and looking more at the wife than at the husband. Almost at any
other time-certainly during his fastidious bachelor years-he would have
thought her a too demonstrative woman; but those recent circumstances of
his own life to which he had just alluded made Mrs. Downe's solicitude
so affecting that his eye grew damp as he witnessed it. Bidding the
lawyer and his family good-night he left them, and drove slowly into the
main street towards his own house.
The heart of Barnet was sufficiently impressionable to be influenced by
Downe's parting prophecy that he might not be so unwelcome home as he
imagined: the dreary night might, at least on this one occasion, make
Downe's forecast true. Hence it was in a suspense that he could hardly
have believed possible that he halted at his door. On entering his wife
was nowhere to be seen, and he inquired for her. The servant informed
him that her mistress had the dressmaker with her, and would be engaged
for some time.
'Dressmaker at this time of day!'
'She dined early, sir, and hopes you will excuse her joining you this
evening.'
'But she knew I was coming to-night?'
'O yes, sir.'
'Go up and tell her I am come.'
The servant did so; but the mistress of the house merely transmitted her
former words.
Barnet said nothing more, and presently sat down to his lonely meal,
which was eaten abstractedly, the domestic scene he had lately witnessed
still impressing him by its contrast with the situation here. His mind
fell back into past years upon a certain pleasing and gentle being whose
face would loom out of their shades at such times as these. Barnet
turned in his chair, and looked with unfocused eyes in a direction
southward from where he sat, as if he saw not the room but a long way
beyond. 'I wonder if she lives there still!' he said.
II
He rose with a sudden rebelliousness, put on his hat and coat, and went
out of the house, pursuing his way along the glistening pavement while
eight o'clock was striking from St. Mary's tower, and the apprentices
and shopmen were slamming up the shutters from end to end of the town.
In two minutes only those shops which could boast of no attendant save
the master or the mistress remained with open eyes. These were ever
somewhat less prompt to exclude customers than the others: for their
owners' ears the closing hour had scarcely the cheerfulness that it
possessed for the hired servants of the rest. Yet the night being dreary
the delay was not for long, and their windows, too, bWESSEXlinked
together one by one.
During this time Barnet had proceeded with decided step in a direction
at right angles to the broad main thoroughfare of the town, by a long
street leading due southward. Here, though his family had no more to do
with the flax manufacture, his own name occasionally greeted him on
gates and warehouses, being used allusively by small rising tradesmen as
a recommendation, in such words as 'Smith, from Barnet & Co.'-'Robinson,
late manager at Barnet's.' The sight led him to reflect upon his
father's busy life, and he questioned if it had not been far happier
than his own.
The houses along the road became fewer, and presently open ground
appeared between them on either side, the track on the right hand rising
to a higher level till it merged in a knoll. On the summit a row of
builders' scaffold-poles probed the indistinct sky like spears, and at
their bases could be discerned the lower courses of a building lately
begun. Barnet slackened his pace and stood for a few moments without
leaving the centre of the road, apparently not much interested in the
sight, till suddenly his eye was caught by a post in the fore part of
the ground bearing a white board at the top. He went to the rails,
vaulted over, and walked in far enough to discern painted upon the board
'Ch\xE2teau Ringdale.'
A dismal irony seemed to lie in the words, and its effect was to
irritate him. Downe, then, had spoken truly. He stuck his umbrella into
the sod, and seized the post with both hands, as if intending to loosen
and throw it down. Then, like one bewildered by an opposition which
would exist none the less though its manifestations were removed, he
allowed his arms to sink to his side.
'Let it be,' he said to himself. 'I have declared there shall be peace-
if possible.'
Taking up his umbrella he quietly left the enclosure, and went on his
way, still keeping his back to the town. He had advanced with more
decision since passing the new building, and soon a hoarse murmur rose
upon the gloom; it was the sound of the sea. The road led to the
harbour, at a distance of a mile from the town, from which the trade of
the district was fed. After seeing the obnoxious name-board Barnet had
forgotten to open his umbrella, and the rain tapped smartly on his hat,
and occasionally stroked his face as he went on.
Though the lamps were still continued at the roadside, they stood at
wider intervals than before, and the pavement had given place to common
road. Every time he came to a lamp an increasing shine made itself
visible upon his shoulders, till at last they quite glistened with wet.
The murmur from the shore grew stronger, but it was still some distance
off when he paused before one of the smallest of the detached houses by
the wayside, standing in its own garden, the latter being divided from
the road by a row of wooden palings. Scrutinizing the spot to ensure
that he was not mistaken, he opened the gate and gently knocked at the
cottage door.
When he had patiently waited minutes enough to lead any man in ordinary
cases to knock again, the door was heard to open, though it was
impossible to see by whose hand, there being no light in the passage.
Barnet said at random, 'Does Miss Savile live here?'
A youthful voice assured him that she did live there, and by a sudden
afterthought asked him to come in. It would soon get a light, it said:
but the night being wet, mother had not thought it worth while to trim
the passage lamp.
'Don't trouble yourself to get a light for me,' said Barnet hastily; 'it
is not necessary at all. Which is Miss Savile's sitting-room?'
The young person, whose white pinafore could just be discerned,
signified a door in the side of the passage, and Barnet went forward at
the same moment, so that no light should fall upon his face. On entering
the room he closed the door behind him, pausing till he heard the
retreating footsteps of the child.
He found himself in an apartment which was simply and neatly, though not
poorly furnished; everything, from the miniature chiffonnier to the
shining little daguerreotype which formed the central ornament of the
mantelpiece, being in scrupulous order. The picture was enclosed by a
frame of embroidered card-board-evidently the work of feminine hands-and
it was the portrait of a thin faced, elderly lieutenant in the navy.
From behind the lamp on the table a female form now rose into view, that
of a young girl, and a resemblance between her and the portrait was
early discoverable. She had been so absorbed in some occupation on the
other side of the lamp as to have barely found time to realize her
visitor's presence.
They both remained standing for a few seconds without speaking. The face
that confronted Barnet had a beautiful outline; the Raffaelesque oval of
its contour was remarkable for an English countenance, and that
countenance housed in a remote country-road to an unheard-of harbour.
But her features did not do justice to this splendid beginning: Nature
had recollected that she was not in Italy; and the young lady's
lineaments, though not so inconsistent as to make her plain, would have
been accepted rather as pleasing than as correct. The preoccupied
expression which, like images on the retina, remained with her for a
moment after the state that caused it had ceased, now changed into a
reserved, half-proud, and slightly indignant look, in which the blood
diffused itself quickly across her cheek, and additional brightness
broke the shade of her rather heavy eyes.
'I know I have no business here,' he said, answering the look. 'But I
had a great wish to see you, and inquire how you were. You can give your
hand to me, seeing how often I have held it in past days?'
'I would rather forget than remember all that, Mr. Barnet,' she
answered, as she coldly complied with the request. 'When I think of the
circumstances of our last meeting, I can hardly consider it kind of you
to allude to such a thing as our past-or, indeed, to come here at all.'
'There was no harm in it surely? I don't trouble you often, Lucy.'
'I have not had the honour of a visit from you for a very long time,
certainly, and I did not expect it now,' she said, with the same
stiffness in her air. 'I hope Mrs. Barnet is very well?'
'Yes, yes!' he impatiently returned. 'At least I suppose so-though I
only speak from inference!'
'But she is your wife, sir,' said the young girl tremulously.
The unwonted tones of a man's voice in that feminine chamber had
startled a canary that was roosting in its cage by the window; the bird
awoke hastily, and fluttered against the bars. She went and stilled it
by laying her face against the cage and murmuring a coaxing sound. It
might partly have been done to still herself.
'I didn't come to talk of Mrs. Barnet,' he pursued; 'I came to talk of
you, of yourself alone; to inquire how you are getting on since your
great loss.' And he turned towards the portrait of her father.
'I am getting on fairly well, thank you.'
The force of her utterance was scarcely borne out by her look; but
Barnet courteously reproached himself for not having guessed a thing so
natural; and to dissipate all embarrassment, added, as he bent over the
table, 'What were you doing when I came?-painting flowers, and by
candlelight?'
'O no,' she said, 'not painting them-only sketching the outlines. I do
that at night to save time-I have to get three dozen done by the end of
the month.'
Barnet looked as if he regretted it deeply. 'You will wear your poor
eyes out,' he said, with more sentiment than he had hitherto shown. 'You
ought not to do it. There was a time when I should have said you must
not. Well-I almost wish I had never seen light with my own eyes when I
think of that!'
'Is this a time or place for recalling such matters?' she asked, with
dignity. 'You used to have a gentlemanly respect for me, and for
yourself. Don't speak any more as you have spoken, and don't come again.
I cannot think that this visit is serious, or was closely considered by
you.'
'Considered: well, I came to see you as an old and good friend-not to
mince matters, to visit a woman I loved. Don't be angry! I could not
help doing it, so many things brought you into my mind . . . This
evening I fell in with an acquaintance, and when I saw how happy he was
with his wife and family welcoming him home, though with only one-tenth
of my income and chances, and thought what might have been in my case,
it fairly broke down my discretion, and off I came here. Now I am here I
feel that I am wrong to some extent. But the feeling that I should like
to see you, and talk of those we used to know in common, was very
strong.'
'Before that can be the case a little more time must pass,' said Miss
Savile quietly; 'a time long enough for me to regard with some calmness
what at present I remember far too impatiently-though it may be you
almost forget it. Indeed you must have forgotten it long before you
acted as you did.' Her voice grew stronger and more vivacious as she
added: 'But I am doing my best to forget it too, and I know I shall
succeed from the progress I have made already!'
She had remained standing till now, when she turned and sat down, facing
half away from him.
Barnet watched her moodily. 'Yes, it is only what I deserve,' he said.
'Ambition pricked me on-no, it was not ambition, it was wrongheadedness!
Had I but reflected . . . ' He broke out vehemently: 'But always
remember this, Lucy: if you had written to me only one little line after
that misunderstanding, I declare I should have come back to you. That
ruined me!' he slowly walked as far as the little room would allow him
to go, and remained with his eyes on the skirting.
'But, Mr. Barnet, how could I write to you? There was no opening for my
doing so.'
'Then there ought to have been,' said Barnet, turning. 'That was my
fault!'
'Well, I don't know anything about that; but as there had been nothing
said by me which required any explanation by letter, I did not send one.
Everything was so indefinite, and feeling your position to be so much
wealthier than mine, I fancied I might have mistaken your meaning. And
when I heard of the other lady-a woman of whose family even you might be
proud-I thought how foolish I had been, and said nothing.'
'Then I suppose it was destiny-accident-I don't know what, that
separated us, dear Lucy. Anyhow you were the woman I ought to have made
my wife-and I let you slip, like the foolish man that I was!'
'O, Mr. Barnet,' she said, almost in tears, 'don't revive the subject to
me; I am the wrong one to console you-think, sir,-you should not be
here-it would be so bad for me if it were known!'
'It would-it would, indeed,' he said hastily. 'I am not right in doing
this, and I won't do it again.'
'It is a very common folly of human nature, you know, to think the
course you did not adopt must have been the best,' she continued, with
gentle solicitude, as she followed him to the door of the room. 'And you
don't know that I should have accepted you, even if you had asked me to
be your wife.' At this his eye met hers, and she dropped her gaze. She
knew that her voice belied her. There was a silence till she looked up
to add, in a voice of soothing playfulness, 'My family was so much
poorer than yours, even before I lost my dear father, that-perhaps your
companions would have made it unpleasant for us on account of my
deficiencies.'
'Your disposition would soon have won them round,' said Barnet.
She archly expostulated: 'Now, never mind my disposition; try to make it
up with your wife! Those are my commands to you. And now you are to
leave me at once.'
'I will. I must make the best of it all, I suppose,' he replied, more
cheerfully than he had as yet spoken. 'But I shall never again meet with
such a dear girl as you!' And he suddenly opened the door, and left her
alone. When his glance again fell on the lamps that were sparsely ranged
along the dreary level road, his eyes were in a state which showed
straw-like motes of light radiating from each flame into the surrounding
air.
On the other side of the way Barnet observed a man under an umbrella,
walking parallel with himself. Presently this man left the footway, and
gradually converged on Barnet's course. The latter then saw that it was
Charlson, a surgeon of the town, who owed him money. Charlson was a man
not without ability; yet he did not prosper. Sundry circumstances stood
in his way as a medical practitioner: he was needy; he was not a coddle;
he gossiped with men instead of with women; he had married a stranger
instead of one of the town young ladies; and he was given to
conversational buffoonery. Moreover, his look was quite erroneous. Those
only proper features in the family doctor, the quiet eye, and the thin
straight passionless lips which never curl in public either for laughter
or for scorn, were not his; he had a full-curved mouth, and a bold black
eye that made timid people nervous. His companions were what in old
times would have been called boon companions-an expression which, though
of irreproachable root, suggests fraternization carried to the point of
unscrupulousness. All this was against him in the little town of his
adoption.
Charlson had been in difficulties, and to oblige him Barnet had put his
name to a bill; and, as he had expected, was called upon to meet it when
it fell due. It had been only a matter of fifty pounds, which Barnet
could well afford to lose, and he bore no ill-will to the thriftless
surgeon on account of it. But Charlson had a little too much brazen
indifferentism in his composition to be altogether a desirable
acquaintance.
'I hope to be able to make that little bill-business right with you in
the course of three weeks, Mr. Barnet,' said Charlson with hail-fellow
friendliness.
Barnet replied good-naturedly that there was no hurry.
This particular three weeks had moved on in advance of Charlson's
present with the precision of a shadow for some considerable time.
'I've had a dream,' Charlson continued. Barnet knew from his tone that
the surgeon was going to begin his characteristic nonsense, and did not
encourage him. 'I've had a dream,' repeated Charlson, who required no
encouragement. 'I dreamed that a gentleman, who has been very kind to
me, married a haughty lady in haste, before he had quite forgotten a
nice little girl he knew before, and that one wet evening, like the
present, as I was walking up the harbour-road, I saw him come out of
that dear little girl's present abode.'
Barnet glanced towards the speaker. The rays from a neighbouring lamp
struck through the drizzle under Charlson's umbrella, so as just to
illumine his face against the shade behind, and show that his eye was
turned up under the outer corner of its lid, whence it leered with
impish jocoseness as he thrust his tongue into his cheek.
'Come,' said Barnet gravely, 'we'll have no more of that.'
'No, no-of course not,' Charlson hastily answered, seeing that his
humour had carried him too far, as it had done many times before. He was
profuse in his apologies, but Barnet did not reply. Of one thing he was
certain-that scandal was a plant of quick root, and that he was bound to
obey Lucy's injunction for Lucy's own sake.
III
He did so, to the letter; and though, as the crocus followed the
snowdrop and the daffodil the crocus in Lucy's garden, the harbour-road
was a not unpleasant place to walk in, Barnet's feet never trod its
stones, much less approached her door. He avoided a saunter that way as
he would have avoided a dangerous dram, and took his airings a long
distance northward, among severely square and brown ploughed fields,
where no other townsman came. Sometimes he went round by the lower lanes
of the borough, where the rope-walks stretched in which his family
formerly had share, and looked at the rope-makers walking backwards,
overhung by apple-trees and bushes, and intruded on by cows and calves,
as if trade had established itself there at considerable inconvenience
to Nature.
One morning, when the sun was so warm as to raise a steam from the
south-eastern slopes of those flanking hills that looked so lovely above
the old roofs, but made every low-chimneyed house in the town as smoky
as Tophet, Barnet glanced from the windows of the town-council room for
lack of interest in what was proceeding within. Several members of the
corporation were present, but there was not much business doing, and in
a few minutes Downe came leisurely across to him, saying that he seldom
saw Barnet now.
Barnet owned that he was not often present.
Downe looked at the crimson curtain which hung down beside the panes,
reflecting its hot hues into their faces, and then out of the window. At
that moment there passed along the street a tall commanding lady, in
whom the solicitor recognized Barnet's wife. Barnet had done the same
thing, and turned away.
'It will be all right some day,' said Downe, with cheering sympathy.
'You have heard, then, of her last outbreak?'
Downe depressed his cheerfulness to its very reverse in a moment. 'No, I
have not heard of anything serious,' he said, with as long a face as one
naturally round could be turned into at short notice. 'I only hear vague
reports of such things.'
'You may think it will be all right,' said Barnet drily. 'But I have a
different opinion . . . No, Downe, we must look the thing in the face.
Not poppy nor mandragora-however, how are your wife and children?'
Downe said that they were all well, thanks; they were out that morning
somewhere; he was just looking to see if they were walking that way. Ah,
there they were, just coming down the street; and Downe pointed to the
figures of two children with a nursemaid, and a lady walking behind
them.
'You will come out and speak to her?' he asked.
'Not this morning. The fact is I don't care to speak to anybody just
now.'
'You are too sensitive, Mr. Barnet. At school I remember you used to get
as red as a rose if anybody uttered a word that hurt your feelings.'
Barnet mused. 'Yes,' he admitted, 'there is a grain of truth in that. It
is because of that I often try to make peace at home. Life would be
tolerable then at any rate, even if not particularly bright.'
'I have thought more than once of proposing a little plan to you,' said
Downe with some hesitation. 'I don't know whether it will meet your
views, but take it or leave it, as you choose. In fact, it was my wife
who suggested it: that she would be very glad to call on Mrs. Barnet and
get into her confidence. She seems to think that Mrs. Barnet is rather
alone in the town, and without advisers. Her impression is that your
wife will listen to reason. Emily has a wonderful way of winning the
hearts of people of her own sex.'
'And of the other sex too, I think. She is a charming woman, and you
were a lucky fellow to find her.'
'Well, perhaps I was,' simpered Downe, trying to wear an aspect of being
the last man in the world to feel pride. 'However, she will be likely to
find out what ruffles Mrs. Barnet. Perhaps it is some misunderstanding,
you know-something that she is too proud to ask you to explain, or some
little thing in your conduct that irritates her because she does not
fully comprehend you. The truth is, Emily would have been more ready to
make advances if she had been quite sure of her fitness for Mrs.
Barnet's society, who has of course been accustomed to London people of
good position, which made Emily fearful of intruding.'
Barnet expressed his warmest thanks for the well-intentioned
proposition. There was reason in Mrs. Downe's fear-that he owned. 'But
do let her call,' he said. 'There is no woman in England I would so soon
trust on such an errand. I am afraid there will not be any brilliant
result; still I shall take it as the kindest and nicest thing if she
will try it, and not be frightened at a repulse.'
When Barnet and Downe had parted, the former went to the Town Savings-
Bank, of which he was a trustee, and endeavoured to forget his troubles
in the contemplation of low sums of money, and figures in a network of
red and blue lines. He sat and watched the working-people making their
deposits, to which at intervals he signed his name. Before he left in
the afternoon Downe put his head inside the door.
'Emily has seen Mrs. Barnet,' he said, in a low voice. 'She has got Mrs.
Barnet's promise to take her for a drive down to the shore to- morrow,
if it is fine. Good afternoon!'
Barnet shook Downe by the hand without speaking, and Downe went away.
IV
The next day was as fine as the arrangement could possibly require. As
the sun passed the meridian and declined westward, the tall shadows from
the scaffold-poles of Barnet's rising residence streaked the ground as
far as to the middle of the highway. Barnet himself was there inspecting
the progress of the works for the first time during several weeks. A
building in an old-fashioned town five-and-thirty years ago did not, as
in the modern fashion, rise from the sod like a booth at a fair. The
foundations and lower courses were put in and allowed to settle for many
weeks before the superstructure was built up, and a whole summer of
drying was hardly sufficient to do justice to the important issues
involved. Barnet stood within a window-niche which had as yet received
no frame, and thence looked down a slope into the road. The wheels of a
chaise were heard, and then his handsome Xantippe, in the company of
Mrs. Downe, drove past on their way to the shore. They were driving
slowly; there was a pleasing light in Mrs. Downe's face, which seemed
faintly to reflect itself upon the countenance of her companion-that
politesse du coeur which was so natural to her having possibly begun
already to work results. But whatever the situation, Barnet resolved not
to interfere, or do anything to hazard the promise of the day. He might
well afford to trust the issue to another when he could never direct it
but to ill himself. His wife's clenched rein-hand in its lemon-coloured
glove, her stiff erect figure, clad in velvet and lace, and her boldly-
outlined face, passed on, exhibiting their owner as one fixed for ever
above the level of her companion-socially by her early breeding, and
materially by her higher cushion.
Barnet decided to allow them a proper time to themselves, and then
stroll down to the shore and drive them home. After lingering on at the
house for another hour he started with this intention. A few hundred
yards below 'Ch\xE2teau Ringdale' stood the cottage in which the late
lieutenant's daughter had her lodging. Barnet had not been so far that
way for a long time, and as he approached the forbidden ground a curious
warmth passed into him, which led him to perceive that, unless he were
careful, he might have to fight the battle with himself about Lucy over
again. A tenth of his present excuse would, however, have justified him
in travelling by that road to-day.
He came opposite the dwelling, and turned his eyes for a momentary
glance into the little garden that stretched from the palings to the
door. Lucy was in the enclosure; she was walking and stooping to gather
some flowers, possibly for the purpose of painting them, for she moved
about quickly, as if anxious to save time. She did not see him; he might
have passed unnoticed; but a sensation which was not in strict unison
with his previous sentiments that day led him to pause in his walk and
watch her. She went nimbly round and round the beds of anemones, tulips,
jonquils, polyanthuses, and other old-fashioned flowers, looking a very
charming figure in her half-mourning bonnet, and with an incomplete
nosegay in her left hand. Raising herself to pull down a lilac blossom
she observed him.
'Mr. Barnet!' she said, innocently smiling. 'Why, I have been thinking
of you many times since Mrs. Barnet went by in the pony-carriage, and
now here you are!'
'Yes, Lucy,' he said.
Then she seemed to recall particulars of their last meeting, and he
believed that she flushed, though it might have been only the fancy of
his own supersensitivenesss.
'I am going to the harbour,' he added.
'Are you?' Lucy remarked simply. 'A great many people begin to go there
now the summer is drawing on.'
Her face had come more into his view as she spoke, and he noticed how
much thinner and paler it was than when he had seen it last. 'Lucy, how
weary you look! tell me, can I help you?' he was going to cry out.-'If I
do,' he thought, 'it will be the ruin of us both!' He merely said that
the afternoon was fine, and went on his way.
As he went a sudden blast of air came over the hill as if in
contradiction to his words, and spoilt the previous quiet of the scene.
The wind had already shifted violently, and now smelt of the sea.
The harbour-road soon began to justify its name. A gap appeared in the
rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the opening
rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the sunlight, the
companion cliff on the right being livid in shade. Between these cliffs,
like the Libyan bay which sheltered the shipwrecked Trojans, was a
little haven, seemingly a beginning made by Nature herself of a perfect
harbour, which appealed to the passer-by as only requiring a little
human industry to finish it and make it famous, the ground on each side
as far back as the daisied slopes that bounded the interior valley being
a mere layer of blown sand. But the Port-Bredy burgesses a mile inland
had, in the course of ten centuries, responded many times to that mute
appeal, with the result that the tides had invariably choked up their
works with sand and shingle as soon as completed. There were but few
houses here: a rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn, a residence
or two, a ketch unloading in the harbour, were the chief features of the
settlement. On the open ground by the shore stood his wife's pony-
carriage, empty, the boy in attendance holding the horse.
When Barnet drew nearer, he saw an indigo-coloured spot moving swiftly
along beneath the radiant base of the eastern cliff, which proved to be
a man in a jersey, running with all his might. He held up his hand to
Barnet, as it seemed, and they approached each other. The man was local,
but a stranger to him.
'What is it, my man?' said Barnet.
'A terrible calamity!' the boatman hastily explained. Two ladies had
been capsized in a boat-they were Mrs. Downe and Mrs. Barnet of the old
town; they had driven down there that afternoon-they had alighted, and
it was so fine, that, after walking about a little while, they had been
tempted to go out for a short sail round the cliff. Just as they were
putting in to the shore, the wind shifted with a sudden gust, the boat
listed over, and it was thought they were both drowned. How it could
have happened was beyond his mind to fathom, for John Green knew how to
sail a boat as well as any man there.
'Which is the way to the place?' said Barnet.
It was just round the cliff.
'Run to the carriage and tell the boy to bring it to the place as soon
as you can. Then go to the Harbour Inn and tell them to ride to town for
a doctor. Have they been got out of the water?'
'One lady has.'
'Which?'
'Mrs. Barnet. Mrs. Downe, it is feared, has fleeted out to sea.'
Barnet ran on to that part of the shore which the cliff had hitherto
obscured from his view, and there discerned, a long way ahead, a group
of fishermen standing. As soon as he came up one or two recognized him,
and, not liking to meet his eye, turned aside with misgiving. He went
amidst them and saw a small sailing-boat lying draggled at the water's
edge; and, on the sloping shingle beside it, a soaked and sandy woman's
form in the velvet dress and yellow gloves of his wife.
V
All had been done that could be done. Mrs. Barnet was in her own house
under medical hands, but the result was still uncertain. Barnet had
acted as if devotion to his wife were the dominant passion of his
existence. There had been much to decide-whether to attempt restoration
of the apparently lifeless body as it lay on the shore-whether to carry
her to the Harbour Inn-whether to drive with her at once to his own
house. The first course, with no skilled help or appliances near at
hand, had seemed hopeless. The second course would have occupied nearly
as much time as a drive to the town, owing to the intervening ridges of
shingle, and the necessity of crossing the harbour by boat to get to the
house, added to which much time must have elapsed before a doctor could
have arrived down there. By bringing her home in the carriage some
precious moments had slipped by; but she had been laid in her own bed in
seven minutes, a doctor called to her side, and every possible
restorative brought to bear upon her.
At what a tearing pace he had driven up that road, through the yellow
evening sunlight, the shadows flapping irksomely into his eyes as each
wayside object rushed past between him and the west! Tired workmen with
their baskets at their backs had turned on their homeward journey to
wonder at his speed. Halfway between the shore and Port-Bredy town he
had met Charlson, who had been the first surgeon to hear of the
accident. He was accompanied by his assistant in a gig. Barnet had sent
on the latter to the coast in case that Downe's poor wife should by that
time have been reclaimed from the waves, and had brought Charlson back
with him to the house.
Barnet's presence was not needed here, and he felt it to be his next
duty to set off at once and find Downe, that no other than himself might
break the news to him.
He was quite sure that no chance had been lost for Mrs. Downe by his
leaving the shore. By the time that Mrs. Barnet had been laid in the
carriage, a much larger group had assembled to lend assistance in
finding her friend, rendering his own help superfluous. But the duty of
breaking the news was made doubly painful by the circumstance that the
catastrophe which had befallen Mrs. Downe was solely the result of her
own and her husband's loving-kindness towards himself.
He found Downe in his office. When the solicitor comprehended the
intelligence he turned pale, stood up, and remained for a moment
perfectly still, as if bereft of his faculties; then his shoulders
heaved, he pulled out his handkerchief and began to cry like a child.
His sobs might have been heard in the next room. He seemed to have no
idea of going to the shore, or of doing anything; but when Barnet took
him gently by the hand and proposed to start at once, he quietly
acquiesced, neither uttering any further word nor making any effort to
repress his tears.
Barnet accompanied him to the shore, where, finding that no trace had as
yet been seen of Mrs. Downe, and that his stay would be of no avail, he
left Downe with his friends and the young doctor, and once more hastened
back to his own house.
At the door he met Charlson. 'Well!' Barnet said.
'I have just come down,' said the doctor; 'we have done everything, but
without result. I sympathize with you in your bereavement.'
Barnet did not much appreciate Charlson's sympathy, which sounded to his
ears as something of a mockery from the lips of a man who knew what
Charlson knew about their domestic relations. Indeed there seemed an odd
spark in Charlson's full black eye as he said the words; but that might
have been imaginary.
'And, Mr. Barnet,' Charlson resumed, 'that little matter between us-I
hope to settle it finally in three weeks at least.'
'Never mind that now,' said Barnet abruptly. He directed the surgeon to
go to the harbour in case his services might even now be necessary
there: and himself entered the house.
The servants were coming from his wife's chamber, looking helplessly at
each other and at him. He passed them by and entered the room, where he
stood mutely regarding the bed for a few minutes, after which he walked
into his own dressing-room adjoining, and there paced up and down. In a
minute or two he noticed what a strange and total silence had come over
the upper part of the house; his own movements, muffled as they were by
the carpet, seemed noisy, and his thoughts to disturb the air like
articulate utterances. His eye glanced through the window. Far down the
road to the harbour a roof detained his gaze: out of it rose a red
chimney, and out of the red chimney a curl of smoke, as from a fire
newly kindled. He had often seen such a sight before. In that house
lived Lucy Savile; and the smoke was from the fire which was regularly
lighted at this time to make her tea.
After that he went back to the bedroom, and stood there some time
regarding his wife's silent form. She was a woman some years older than
himself, but had not by any means overpassed the maturity of good looks
and vigour. Her passionate features, well-defined, firm, and statuesque
in life, were doubly so now: her mouth and brow, beneath her purplish
black hair, showed only too clearly that the turbulency of character
which had made a bear-garden of his house had been no temporary phase of
her existence. While he reflected, he suddenly said to himself, I wonder
if all has been done?
The thought was led up to by his having fancied that his wife's features
lacked in its complete form the expression which he had been accustomed
to associate with the faces of those whose spirits have fled for ever.
The effacement of life was not so marked but that, entering uninformed,
he might have supposed her sleeping. Her complexion was that seen in the
numerous faded portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds; it was pallid in
comparison with life, but there was visible on a close inspection the
remnant of what had once been a flush; the keeping between the cheeks
and the hollows of the face being thus preserved, although positive
colour was gone. Long orange rays of evening sun stole in through chinks
in the blind, striking on the large mirror, and being thence reflected
upon the crimson hangings and woodwork of the heavy bedstead, so that
the general tone of light was remarkably warm; and it was probable that
something might be due to this circumstance. Still the fact impressed
him as strange. Charlson had been gone more than a quarter of an hour:
could it be possible that he had left too soon, and that his attempts to
restore her had operated so sluggishly as only now to have made
themselves felt? Barnet laid his hand upon her chest, and fancied that
ever and anon a faint flutter of palpitation, gentle as that of a
butterfly's wing, disturbed the stillness there-ceasing for a time, then
struggling to go on, then breaking down in weakness and ceasing again.
Barnet's mother had been an active practitioner of the healing art among
her poorer neighbours, and her inspirations had all been derived from an
octavo volume of Domestic Medicine, which at this moment was lying, as
it had lain for many years, on a shelf in Barnet's dressing-room. He
hastily fetched it, and there read under the head 'Drowning:'-
'Exertions for the recovery of any person who has not been immersed for
a longer period than half-an-hour should be continued for at least four
hours, as there have been many cases in which returning life has made
itself visible even after a longer interval.
'Should, however, a weak action of any of the organs show itself when
the case seems almost hopeless, our efforts must be redoubled; the
feeble spark in this case requires to be solicited; it will certainly
disappear under a relaxation of labour.'
Barnet looked at his watch; it was now barely two hours and a half from
the time when he had first heard of the accident. He threw aside the
book and turned quickly to reach a stimulant which had previously been
used. Pulling up the blind for more light, his eye glanced out of the
window. There he saw that red chimney still smoking cheerily, and that
roof, and through the roof that somebody. His mechanical movements
stopped, his hand remained on the blind-cord, and he seemed to become
breathless, as if he had suddenly found himself treading a high rope.
While he stood a sparrow lighted on the windowsill, saw him, and flew
away. Next a man and a dog walked over one of the green hills which
bulged above the roofs of the town. But Barnet took no notice.
We may wonder what were the exact images that passed through his mind
during those minutes of gazing upon Lucy Savile's house, the sparrow,
the man and the dog, and Lucy Savile's house again. There are honest men
who will not admit to their thoughts, even as idle hypotheses, views of
the future that assume as done a deed which they would recoil from
doing; and there are other honest men for whom morality ends at the
surface of their own heads, who will deliberate what the first will not
so much as suppose. Barnet had a wife whose pretence distracted his
home; she now lay as in death; by merely doing nothing-by letting the
intelligence which had gone forth to the world lie undisturbed-he would
effect such a deliverance for himself as he had never hoped for, and
open up an opportunity of which till now he had never dreamed. Whether
the conjuncture had arisen through any unscrupulous, ill-considered
impulse of Charlson to help out of a strait the friend who was so kind
as never to press him for what was due could not be told; there was
nothing to prove it; and it was a question which could never be asked.
The triangular situation-himself-his wife-Lucy Savile-was the one clear
thing.
From Barnet's actions we may infer that he supposed such and such a
result, for a moment, but did not deliberate. He withdrew his hazel eyes
from the scene without, calmly turned, rang the bell for assistance, and
vigorously exerted himself to learn if life still lingered in that
motionless frame. In a short time another surgeon was in attendance; and
then Barnet's surmise proved to be true. The slow life timidly heaved
again; but much care and patience were needed to catch and retain it,
and a considerable period elapsed before it could be said with certainty
that Mrs. Barnet lived. When this was the case, and there was no further
room for doubt, Barnet left the chamber. The blue evening smoke from
Lucy's chimney had died down to an imperceptible stream, and as he
walked about downstairs he murmured to himself, 'My wife was dead, and
she is alive again.'
It was not so with Downe. After three hours' immersion his wife's body
had been recovered, life, of course, being quite extinct. Barnet on
descending, went straight to his friend's house, and there learned the
result. Downe was helpless in his wild grief, occasionally even
hysterical. Barnet said little, but finding that some guiding hand was
necessary in the sorrow-stricken household, took upon him to supervise
and manage till Downe should be in a state of mind to do so for himself.
VI
One September evening, four months later, when Mrs. Barnet was in
perfect health, and Mrs. Downe but a weakening memory, an errand-boy
paused to rest himself in front of Mr. Barnet's old house, depositing
his basket on one of the window-sills. The street was not yet lighted,
but there were lights in the house, and at intervals a flitting shadow
fell upon the blind at his elbow. Words also were audible from the same
apartment, and they seemed to be those of persons in violent
altercation. But the boy could not gather their purport, and he went on
his way.
Ten minutes afterwards the door of Barnet's house opened, and a tall
closely-veiled lady in a travelling-dress came out and descended the
freestone steps. The servant stood in the doorway watching her as she
went with a measured tread down the street. When she had been out of
sight for some minutes Barnet appeared at the door from within.
'Did your mistress leave word where she was going?' he asked.
'No, sir.'
'Is the carriage ordered to meet her anywhere?'
'No, sir.'
'Did she take a latch-key?'
'No, sir.'
Barnet went in again, sat down in his chair, and leaned back. Then in
solitude and silence he brooded over the bitter emotions that filled his
heart. It was for this that he had gratuitously restored her to life,
and made his union with another impossible! The evening drew on, and
nobody came to disturb him. At bedtime he told the servants to retire,
that he would sit up for Mrs. Barnet himself; and when they were gone he
leaned his head upon his hand and mused for hours.
The clock struck one, two; still his wife came not, and, with impatience
added to depression, he went from room to room till another weary hour
had passed. This was not altogether a new experience for Barnet; but she
had never before so prolonged her absence. At last he sat down again and
fell asleep.
He awoke at six o'clock to find that she had not returned. In searching
about the rooms he discovered that she had taken a case of jewels which
had been hers before her marriage. At eight a note was brought him; it
was from his wife, in which she stated that she had gone by the coach to
the house of a distant relative near London, and expressed a wish that
certain boxes, articles of clothing, and so on, might be sent to her
forthwith. The note was brought to him by a waiter at the Black-Bull
Hotel, and had been written by Mrs. Barnet immediately before she took
her place in the stage.
By the evening this order was carried out, and Barnet, with a sense of
relief, walked out into the town. A fair had been held during the day,
and the large clear moon which rose over the most prominent hill flung
its light upon the booths and standings that still remained in the
street, mixing its rays curiously with those from the flaring naphtha
lamps. The town was full of country-people who had come in to enjoy
themselves, and on this account Barnet strolled through the streets
unobserved. With a certain recklessness he made for the harbour-road,
and presently found himself by the shore, where he walked on till he
came to the spot near which his friend the kindly Mrs. Downe had lost
her life, and his own wife's life had been preserved. A tremulous
pathway of bright moonshine now stretched over the water which had
engulfed them, and not a living soul was near.
Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in
whom he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he had
been free to marry her. Nothing, so far as he was aware, had ever
appeared in his own conduct to show that such an interest existed. He
had made it a point of the utmost strictness to hinder that feeling from
influencing in the faintest degree his attitude towards his wife; and
this was made all the more easy for him by the small demand Mrs. Barnet
made upon his attentions, for which she ever evinced the greatest
contempt; thus unwittingly giving him the satisfaction of knowing that
their severance owed nothing to jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal
behaviour of his at all. Her concern was not with him or his feelings,
as she frequently told him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness,
thrown herself away upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at,
and possibly brought down, a peer of the realm. Her frequent
depreciation of Barnet in these terms had at times been so intense that
he was sorely tempted to retaliate on her egotism by owning that he
loved at the same low level on which he lived; but prudence had
prevailed, for which he was now thankful.
Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above the
raking of the wave. He looked round, and a slight girlish shape appeared
quite close to him, He could not see her face because it was in the
direction of the moon.
'Mr. Barnet?' the rambler said, in timid surprise. The voice was the
voice of Lucy Savile.
'Yes,' said Barnet. 'How can I repay you for this pleasure?'
'I only came because the night was so clear. I am now on my way home.'
'I am glad we have met. I want to know if you will let me do something
for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man? I am sure I ought to
help you, for I know you are almost without friends.'
She hesitated. 'Why should you tell me that?' she said.
'In the hope that you will be frank with me.'
'I am not altogether without friends here. But I am going to make a
little change in my life-to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing and
practical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively humble scale,
because I have not been specially educated for that profession. But I am
sure I shall like it much.'
'You have an opening?'
'I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.'
'Lucy, you must let me help you!'
'Not at all.'
'You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am indifferent to
delicacy. I bear in mind how we stand. It is very unlikely that you will
succeed as teacher of the class you mention, so let me do something of a
different kind for you. Say what you would like, and it shall be done.'
'No; if I can't be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of that
sort, I shall go to India and join my brother.'
'I wish I could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, Lucy, and
leave this place and its associations for ever!'
She played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned aside.
'Don't ever touch upon that kind of topic again,' she said, with a quick
severity not free from anger. 'It simply makes it impossible for me to
see you, much less receive any guidance from you. No, thank you, Mr.
Barnet; you can do nothing for me at present; and as I suppose my
uncertainty will end in my leaving for India, I fear you never will. If
ever I think you can do anything, I will take the trouble to ask you.
Till then, good-bye.'
The tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in
doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their sound,
she swept lightly round and left him alone. He saw her form get smaller
and smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb and flood; and
when she had vanished round the cliff into the harbour-road, he himself
followed in the same direction.
That her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread which
held Lucy Savile in England was too much for Barnet. On reaching the
town he went straight to the residence of Downe, now a widower with four
children. The young motherless brood had been sent to bed about a
quarter of an hour earlier, and when Barnet entered he found Downe
sitting alone. It was the same room as that from which the family had
been looking out for Downe at the beginning of the year, when Downe had
slipped into the gutter and his wife had been so enviably tender towards
him. The old neatness had gone from the house; articles lay in places
which could show no reason for their presence, as if momentarily
deposited there some months ago, and forgotten ever since; there were no
flowers; things were jumbled together on the furniture which should have
been in cupboards; and the place in general had that stagnant,
unrenovated air which usually pervades the maimed home of the widower.
Downe soon renewed his customary full-worded lament over his wife, and
even when he had worked himself up to tears, went on volubly, as if a
listener were a luxury to be enjoyed whenever he could be caught.
'She was a treasure beyond compare, Mr. Barnet! I shall never see such
another. Nobody now to nurse me-nobody to console me in those daily
troubles, you know, Barnet, which make consolation so necessary to a
nature like mine. It would be unbecoming to repine, for her spirit's
home was elsewhere-the tender light in her eyes always showed it; but it
is a long dreary time that I have before me, and nobody else can ever
fill the void left in my heart by her loss-nobody-nobody!' And Downe
wiped his eyes again.
'She was a good woman in the highest sense,' gravely answered Barnet,
who, though Downe's words drew genuine compassion from his heart, could
not help feeling that a tender reticence would have been a finer tribute
to Mrs. Downe's really sterling virtues than such a second-class lament
as this.
'I have something to show you,' Downe resumed, producing from a drawer a
sheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a canopied tomb.
'This has been sent me by the architect, but it is not exactly what I
want.'
'You have got Jones to do it, I see, the man who is carrying out my
house,' said Barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing.
'Yes, but it is not quite what I want. I want something more striking-
more like a tomb I have seen in St. Paul's Cathedral. Nothing less will
do justice to my feelings, and how far short of them that will fall!'
Barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as it
stood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no right to
criticize, he said gently, 'Downe, should you not live more in your
children's lives at the present time, and soften the sharpness of regret
for your own past by thinking of their future?'
'Yes, yes; but what can I do more?' asked Downe, wrinkling his forehead
hopelessly.
It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply-the secret
object of his visit to-night. 'Did you not say one day that you ought by
rights to get a governess for the children?'
Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his way to
it. 'The kind of woman I should like to have,' he said, 'would be rather
beyond my means. No; I think I shall send them to school in the town
when they are old enough to go out alone.'
'Now, I know of something better than that. The late Lieutenant Savile's
daughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the way of
teaching. She would be inexpensive, and would answer your purpose as
well as anybody for six or twelve months. She would probably come daily
if you were to ask her, and so your housekeeping arrangements would not
be much affected.'
'I thought she had gone away,' said the solicitor, musing. 'Where does
she live?'
Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her as
suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might be
on the wing. 'If you do see her,' he said, 'it would be advisable not to
mention my name. She is rather stiff in her ideas of me, and it might
prejudice her against a course if she knew that I recommended it.'
Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing more
was said about it just then. But when Barnet rose to go, which was not
till nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and went up the
street to his own solitary home with a sense of satisfaction at his
promising diplomacy in a charitable cause.
VII
The walls of his new house were carried up nearly to their full height.
By a curious though not infrequent reaction, Barnet's feelings about
that unnecessary structure had undergone a change; he took considerable
interest in its progress as a long-neglected thing, his wife before her
departure having grown quite weary of it as a hobby. Moreover, it was an
excellent distraction for a man in the unhappy position of having to
live in a provincial town with nothing to do. He was probably the first
of his line who had ever passed a day without toil, and perhaps
something like an inherited instinct disqualifies such men for a life of
pleasant inaction, such as lies in the power of those whose leisure is
not a personal accident, but a vast historical accretion which has
become part of their natures.
Thus Barnet got into a way of spending many of his leisure hours on the
site of the new building, and he might have been seen on most days at
this time trying the temper of the mortar by punching the joints with
his stick, looking at the grain of a floor-board, and meditating where
it grew, or picturing under what circumstances the last fire would be
kindled in the at present sootless chimneys. One day when thus occupied
he saw three children pass by in the company of a fair young woman,
whose sudden appearance caused him to flush perceptibly.
'Ah, she is there,' he thought. 'That's a blessed thing.'
Casting an interested glance over the rising building and the busy
workmen, Lucy Savile and the little Downes passed by; and after that
time it became a regular though almost unconscious custom of Barnet to
stand in the half-completed house and look from the ungarnished windows
at the governess as she tripped towards the sea-shore with her young
charges, which she was in the habit of doing on most fine afternoons. It
was on one of these occasions, when he had been loitering on the first-
floor landing, near the hole left for the staircase, not yet erected,
that there appeared above the edge of the floor a little hat, followed
by a little head.
Barnet withdrew through a doorway, and the child came to the top of the
ladder, stepping on to the floor and crying to her sisters and Miss
Savile to follow. Another head rose above the floor, and another, and
then Lucy herself came into view. The troop ran hither and thither
through the empty, shaving-strewn rooms, and Barnet came forward.
Lucy uttered a small exclamation: she was very sorry that she had
intruded; she had not the least idea that Mr. Barnet was there: the
children had come up, and she had followed.
Barnet replied that he was only too glad to see them there. 'And now,
let me show you the rooms,' he said.
She passively assented, and he took her round. There was not much to
show in such a bare skeleton of a house, but he made the most of it, and
explained the different ornamental fittings that were soon to be fixed
here and there. Lucy made but few remarks in reply, though she seemed
pleased with her visit, and stole away down the ladder, followed by her
companions.
After this the new residence became yet more of a hobby for Barnet.
Downe's children did not forget their first visit, and when the windows
were glazed, and the handsome staircase spread its broad low steps into
the hall, they came again, prancing in unwearied succession through
every room from ground-floor to attics, while Lucy stood waiting for
them at the door. Barnet, who rarely missed a day in coming to inspect
progress, stepped out from the drawing-room.
'I could not keep them out,' she said, with an apologetic blush. 'I
tried to do so very much: but they are rather wilful, and we are
directed to walk this way for the sea air.'
'Do let them make the house their regular playground, and you yours,'
said Barnet. 'There is no better place for children to romp and take
their exercise in than an empty house, particularly in muddy or damp
weather such as we shall get a good deal of now; and this place will not
be furnished for a long long time-perhaps never. I am not at all decided
about it.'
'O, but it must!' replied Lucy, looking round at the hall. 'The rooms
are excellent, twice as high as ours; and the views from the windows are
so lovely.'
'I daresay, I daresay,' he said absently.
'Will all the furniture be new?' she asked.
'All the furniture be new-that's a thing I have not thought of. In fact
I only come here and look on. My father's house would have been large
enough for me, but another person had a voice in the matter, and it was
settled that we should build. However, the place grows upon me; its
recent associations are cheerful, and I am getting to like it fast.'
A certain uneasiness in Lucy's manner showed that the conversation was
taking too personal a turn for her. 'Still, as modern tastes develop,
people require more room to gratify them in,' she said, withdrawing to
call the children; and serenely bidding him good afternoon she went on
her way.
Barnet's life at this period was singularly lonely, and yet he was
happier than he could have expected. His wife's estrangement and
absence, which promised to be permanent, left him free as a boy in his
movements, and the solitary walks that he took gave him ample
opportunity for chastened reflection on what might have been his lot if
he had only shown wisdom enough to claim Lucy Savile when there was no
bar between their lives, and she was to be had for the asking. He would
occasionally call at the house of his friend Downe; but there was
scarcely enough in common between their two natures to make them more
than friends of that excellent sort whose personal knowledge of each
other's history and character is always in excess of intimacy, whereby
they are not so likely to be severed by a clash of sentiment as in cases
where intimacy springs up in excess of knowledge. Lucy was never visible
at these times, being either engaged in the school-room, or in taking an
airing out of doors; but, knowing that she was now comfortable, and had
given up the, to him, depressing idea of going off to the other side of
the globe, he was quite content.
The new house had so far progressed that the gardeners were beginning to
grass down the front. During an afternoon which he was passing in
marking the curve for the carriage-drive, he beheld her coming in boldly
towards him from the road. Hitherto Barnet had only caught her on the
premises by stealth; and this advance seemed to show that at last her
reserve had broken down.
A smile gained strength upon her face as she approached, and it was
quite radiant when she came up, and said, without a trace of
embarrassment, 'I find I owe you a hundred thanks-and it comes to me
quite as a surprise! It was through your kindness that I was engaged by
Mr. Downe. Believe me, Mr. Barnet, I did not know it until yesterday, or
I should have thanked you long and long ago!'
'I had offended you-just a trifle-at the time, I think?' said Barnet,
smiling, 'and it was best that you should not know.'
'Yes, yes,' she returned hastily. 'Don't allude to that; it is past and
over, and we will let it be. The house is finished almost, is it not?
How beautiful it will look when the evergreens are grown! Do you call
the style Palladian, Mr. Barnet?'
'I-really don't quite know what it is. Yes, it must be Palladian,
certainly. But I'll ask Jones, the architect; for, to tell the truth, I
had not thought much about the style: I had nothing to do with choosing
it, I am sorry to say.'
She would not let him harp on this gloomy refrain, and talked on bright
matters till she said, producing a small roll of paper which he had
noticed in her hand all the while, 'Mr. Downe wished me to bring you
this revised drawing of the late Mrs. Downe's tomb, which the architect
has just sent him. He would like you to look it over.'
The children came up with their hoops, and she went off with them down
the harbour-road as usual. Barnet had been glad to get those words of
thanks; he had been thinking for many months that he would like her to
know of his share in finding her a home such as it was; and what he
could not do for himself, Downe had now kindly done for him. He returned
to his desolate house with a lighter tread; though in reason he hardly
knew why his tread should be light.
On examining the drawing, Barnet found that, instead of the vast altar-
tomb and canopy Downe had determined on at their last meeting, it was to
be a more modest memorial even than had been suggested by the architect;
a coped tomb of good solid construction, with no useless elaboration at
all. Barnet was truly glad to see that Downe had come to reason of his
own accord; and he returned the drawing with a note of approval.
He followed up the house-work as before, and as he walked up and down
the rooms, occasionally gazing from the windows over the bulging green
hills and the quiet harbour that lay between them, he murmured words and
fragments of words, which, if listened to, would have revealed all the
secrets of his existence. Whatever his reason in going there, Lucy did
not call again: the walk to the shore seemed to be abandoned: he must
have thought it as well for both that it should be so, for he did not go
anywhere out of his accustomed ways to endeavour to discover her.
VIII
The winter and the spring had passed, and the house was complete. It was
a fine morning in the early part of June, and Barnet, though not in the
habit of rising early, had taken a long walk before breakfast; returning
by way of the new building. A sufficiently exciting cause of his
restlessness to-day might have been the intelligence which had reached
him the night before, that Lucy Savile was going to India after all, and
notwithstanding the representations of her friends that such a journey
was unadvisable in many ways for an unpractised girl, unless some more
definite advantage lay at the end of it than she could show to be the
case. Barnet's walk up the slope to the building betrayed that he was in
a dissatisfied mood. He hardly saw that the dewy time of day lent an
unusual freshness to the bushes and trees which had so recently put on
their summer habit of heavy leafage, and made his newly-laid lawn look
as well established as an old manorial meadow. The house had been so
adroitly placed between six tall elms which were growing on the site
beforehand, that they seemed like real ancestral trees; and the rooks,
young and old, cawed melodiously to their visitor.
The door was not locked, and he entered. No workmen appeared to be
present, and he walked from sunny window to sunny window of the empty
rooms, with a sense of seclusion which might have been very pleasant but
for the antecedent knowledge that his almost paternal care of Lucy
Savile was to be thrown away by her wilfulness. Footsteps echoed through
an adjoining room; and bending his eyes in that direction, he perceived
Mr. Jones, the architect. He had come to look over the building before
giving the contractor his final certificate. They walked over the house
together. Everything was finished except the papering: there were the
latest improvements of the period in bell- hanging, ventilating, smoke-
jacks, fire-grates, and French windows. The business was soon ended, and
Jones, having directed Barnet's attention to a roll of wall-paper
patterns which lay on a bench for his choice, was leaving to keep
another engagement, when Barnet said, 'Is the tomb finished yet for Mrs.
Downe?'
'Well-yes: it is at last,' said the architect, coming back and speaking
as if he were in a mood to make a confidence. 'I have had no end of
trouble in the matter, and, to tell the truth, I am heartily glad it is
over.'
Barnet expressed his surprise. 'I thought poor Downe had given up those
extravagant notions of his? then he has gone back to the altar and
canopy after all? Well, he is to be excused, poor fellow!'
'O no-he has not at all gone back to them-quite the reverse,' Jones
hastened to say. 'He has so reduced design after design, that the whole
thing has been nothing but waste labour for me; till in the end it has
become a common headstone, which a mason put up in half a day.'
'A common headstone?' said Barnet.
'Yes. I held out for some time for the addition of a footstone at least.
But he said, "O no-he couldn't afford it."'
'Ah, well-his family is growing up, poor fellow, and his expenses are
getting serious.'
'Yes, exactly,' said Jones, as if the subject were none of his. And
again directing Barnet's attention to the wall-papers, the bustling
architect left him to keep some other engagement.
'A common headstone,' murmured Barnet, left again to himself. He mused a
minute or two, and next began looking over and selecting from the
patterns; but had not long been engaged in the work when he heard
another footstep on the gravel without, and somebody enter the open
porch.
Barnet went to the door-it was his manservant in search of him.
'I have been trying for some time to find you, sir,' he said. 'This
letter has come by the post, and it is marked immediate. And there's
this one from Mr. Downe, who called just now wanting to see you.' He
searched his pocket for the second.
Barnet took the first letter-it had a black border, and bore the London
postmark. It was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that of any person
he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the page, wherein he was
briefly informed that Mrs. Barnet had died suddenly on the previous day,
at the furnished villa she had occupied near London.
Barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out of
the doorway. Drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes downcast,
he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who doubted their
stability. The fact of his wife having, as it were, died once already,
and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the possibility of her actual
death from his conjecture. He went to the landing, leant over the
balusters, and after a reverie, of whose duration he had but the
faintest notion, turned to the window and stretched his gaze to the
cottage further down the road, which was visible from his landing, and
from which Lucy still walked to the solicitor's house by a cross path.
The faint words that came from his moving lips were simply, 'At last!'
Then, almost involuntarily, Barnet fell down on his knees and murmured
some incoherent words of thanksgiving. Surely his virtue in restoring
his wife to life had been rewarded! But, as if the impulse struck
uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed the dust from his
trousers and set himself to think of his next movements. He could not
start for London for some hours; and as he had no preparations to make
that could not be made in half-an-hour, he mechanically descended and
resumed his occupation of turning over the wall-papers. They had all got
brighter for him, those papers. It was all changed-who would sit in the
rooms that they were to line? He went on to muse upon Lucy's conduct in
so frequently coming to the house with the children; her occasional
blush in speaking to him; her evident interest in him. What woman can in
the long run avoid being interested in a man whom she knows to be
devoted to her? If human solicitation could ever effect anything, there
should be no going to India for Lucy now. All the papers previously
chosen seemed wrong in their shades, and he began from the beginning to
choose again.
While entering on the task he heard a forced 'Ahem!' from without the
porch, evidently uttered to attract his attention, and footsteps again
advancing to the door. His man, whom he had quite forgotten in his
mental turmoil, was still waiting there.
'I beg your pardon, sir,' the man said from round the doorway; 'but
here's the note from Mr. Downe that you didn't take. He called just
after you went out, and as he couldn't wait, he wrote this on your
study-table.'
He handed in the letter-no black-bordered one now, but a practical-
looking note in the well-known writing of the solicitor.
'DEAR BARNET'-it ran-'Perhaps you will be prepared for the information I
am about to give-that Lucy Savile and myself are going to be married
this morning. I have hitherto said nothing as to my intention to any of
my friends, for reasons which I am sure you will fully appreciate. The
crisis has been brought about by her expressing her intention to join
her brother in India. I then discovered that I could not do without her.
'It is to be quite a private wedding; but it is my particular wish that
you come down here quietly at ten, and go to church with us; it will add
greatly to the pleasure I shall experience in the ceremony, and, I
believe, to Lucy's also. I have called on you very early to make the
request, in the belief that I should find you at home; but you are
beforehand with me in your early rising.-Yours sincerely, C. Downe.'
'Need I wait, sir?' said the servant after a dead silence.
'That will do, William. No answer,' said Barnet calmly.
When the man had gone Barnet re-read the letter. Turning eventually to
the wall-papers, which he had been at such pains to select, he
deliberately tore them into halves and quarters, and threw them into the
empty fireplace. Then he went out of the house; locked the door, and
stood in the front awhile. Instead of returning into the town, he went
down the harbour-road and thoughtfully lingered about by the sea, near
the spot where the body of Downe's late wife had been found and brought
ashore.
Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt
that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. The events that had, as
it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour of this day
showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their arrangement which
often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god at other times known
as blind Circumstance. That his few minutes of hope, between the reading
of the first and second letters, had carried him to extraordinary
heights of rapture was proved by the immensity of his suffering now. The
sun blazing into his face would have shown a close watcher that a
horizontal line, which he had never noticed before, but which was never
to be gone thereafter, was somehow gradually forming itself in the
smooth of his forehead. His eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look
which can only be described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked
from them being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares.
The secondary particulars of his present position, too, were odd enough,
though for some time they appeared to engage little of his attention.
Not a soul in the town knew, as yet, of his wife's death; and he almost
owed Downe the kindness of not publishing it till the day was over: the
conjuncture, taken with that which had accompanied the death of Mrs.
Downe, being so singular as to be quite sufficient to darken the
pleasure of the impressionable solicitor to a cruel extent, if made
known to him. But as Barnet could not set out on his journey to London,
where his wife lay, for some hours (there being at this date no railway
within a distance of many miles), no great reason existed why he should
leave the town.
Impulse in all its forms characterized Barnet, and when he heard the
distant clock strike the hour of ten his feet began to carry him up the
harbour-road with the manner of a man who must do something to bring
himself to life. He passed Lucy Savile's old house, his own new one, and
came in view of the church. Now he gave a perceptible start, and his
mechanical condition went away. Before the church-gate were a couple of
carriages, and Barnet then could perceive that the marriage between
Downe and Lucy was at that moment being solemnized within. A feeling of
sudden, proud self-confidence, an indocile wish to walk unmoved in spite
of grim environments, plainly possessed him, and when he reached the
wicket-gate he turned in without apparent effort. Pacing up the paved
footway he entered the church and stood for a while in the nave passage.
A group of people was standing round the vestry door; Barnet advanced
through these and stepped into the vestry.
There they were, busily signing their names. Seeing Downe about to look
round, Barnet averted his somewhat disturbed face for a second or two;
when he turned again front to front he was calm and quite smiling; it
was a creditable triumph over himself, and deserved to be remembered in
his native town. He greeted Downe heartily, offering his
congratulations.
It seemed as if Barnet expected a half-guilty look upon Lucy's face; but
no, save the natural flush and flurry engendered by the service just
performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which showed a
disturbed mind: her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as at other
times the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude which never
went so far as to touch on hardness. She shook hands with him, and Downe
said warmly, 'I wish you could have come sooner: I called on purpose to
ask you. You'll drive back with us now?'
'No, no,' said Barnet; 'I am not at all prepared; but I thought I would
look in upon you for a moment, even though I had not time to go home and
dress. I'll stand back and see you pass out, and observe the effect of
the spectacle upon myself as one of the public.'
Then Lucy and her husband laughed, and Barnet laughed and retired; and
the quiet little party went gliding down the nave and towards the porch,
Lucy's new silk dress sweeping with a smart rustle round the base-
mouldings of the ancient font, and Downe's little daughters following in
a state of round-eyed interest in their position, and that of Lucy,
their teacher and friend.
So Downe was comforted after his Emily's death, which had taken place
twelve months, two weeks, and three days before that time.
When the two flys had driven off and the spectators had vanished, Barnet
followed to the door, and went out into the sun. He took no more trouble
to preserve a spruce exterior; his step was unequal, hesitating, almost
convulsive; and the slight changes of colour which went on in his face
seemed refracted from some inward flame. In the churchyard he became
pale as a summer cloud, and finding it not easy to proceed he sat down
on one of the tombstones and supported his head with his hand.
Hard by was a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time to
finish on the previous evening. Observing Barnet, he went up to him, and
recognizing him, said, 'Shall I help you home, sir?'
'O no, thank you,' said Barnet, rousing himself and standing up. The
sexton returned to his grave, followed by Barnet, who, after watching
him awhile, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and helped to
tread in the earth.
The sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he made
no observation, and when the grave was full, Barnet suddenly stopped,
looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the gate and
vanished. The sexton rested on his shovel and looked after him for a few
moments, and then began banking up the mound.
In those short minutes of treading in the dead man Barnet had formed a
design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for some
long time imagine. He went home, wrote several letters of business,
called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had been the
legal adviser of Barnet's father before him, and during the evening
overhauled a large quantity of letters and other documents in his
possession. By eleven o'clock the heap of papers in and before Barnet's
grate had reached formidable dimensions, and he began to burn them.
This, owing to their quantity, it was not so easy to do as he had
expected, and he sat long into the night to complete the task.
The next morning Barnet departed for London, leaving a note for Downe to
inform him of Mrs. Barnet's sudden death, and that he was gone to bury
her; but when a thrice-sufficient time for that purpose had elapsed, he
was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in his new house, or in
his old one. He was gone for good, nobody knew whither. It was soon
discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to dispose of all his
property, real and personal, in the borough, and pay in the proceeds to
the account of an unknown person at one of the large London banks. The
person was by some supposed to be himself under an assumed name; but
few, if any, had certain knowledge of that fact.
The elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions; and
its purchaser was no other than Downe, now a thriving man in the
borough, and one whose growing family and new wife required more roomy
accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the narrow side
street. Barnet's old habitation was bought by the trustees of the
Congregational Baptist body in that town, who pulled down the time-
honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site. By the time the
last hour of that, to Barnet, eventful year had chimed, every vestige of
him had disappeared from the precincts of his native place, and the name
became extinct in the borough of Port-Bredy, after having been a living
force therein for more than two hundred years.
IX
Twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark even
upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a period works
nothing less than transformation. In Barnet's old birthplace vivacious
young children with bones like india-rubber had grown up to be stable
men and women, men and women had dried in the skin, stiffened, withered,
and sunk into decrepitude; while selections from every class had been
consigned to the outlying cemetery. Of inorganic differences the
greatest was that a railway had invaded the town, tying it on to a main
line at a junction a dozen miles off. Barnet's house on the harbour-
road, once so insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness,
with ivy, Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even
constitutional infirmities of its own like its elder fellows. Its
architecture, once so very improved and modern, had already become stale
in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned.
Trees about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or
disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous
practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to
be scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends.
During this long interval George Barnet had never once been seen or
heard of in the town of his fathers.
It was the evening of a market-day, and some half-dozen middle-aged
farmers and dairymen were lounging round the bar of the Black-Bull
Hotel, occasionally dropping a remark to each other, and less frequently
to the two barmaids who stood within the pewter-topped counter in a
perfunctory attitude of attention, these latter sighing and making a
private observation to one another at odd intervals, on more interesting
experiences than the present.
'Days get shorter,' said one of the dairymen, as he looked towards the
street, and noticed that the lamp-lighter was passing by.
The farmers merely acknowledged by their countenances the propriety of
this remark, and finding that nobody else spoke, one of the barmaids
said 'yes,' in a tone of painful duty.
'Come fair-day we shall have to light up before we start for home-
along.'
'That's true,' his neighbour conceded, with a gaze of blankness.
'And after that we shan't see much further difference all's winter.'
The rest were not unwilling to go even so far as this.
The barmaid sighed again, and raised one of her hands from the counter
on which they rested to scratch the smallest surface of her face with
the smallest of her fingers. She looked towards the door, and presently
remarked, 'I think I hear the 'bus coming in from station.'
The eyes of the dairymen and farmers turned to the glass door dividing
the hall from the porch, and in a minute or two the omnibus drew up
outside. Then there was a lumbering down of luggage, and then a man came
into the hall, followed by a porter with a portmanteau on his poll,
which he deposited on a bench.
The stranger was an elderly person, with curly ashen white hair, a
deeply-creviced outer corner to each eyelid, and a countenance baked by
innumerable suns to the colour of terra-cotta, its hue and that of his
hair contrasting like heat and cold respectively. He walked meditatively
and gently, like one who was fearful of disturbing his own mental
equilibrium. But whatever lay at the bottom of his breast had evidently
made him so accustomed to its situation there that it caused him little
practical inconvenience.
He paused in silence while, with his dubious eyes fixed on the barmaids,
he seemed to consider himself. In a moment or two he addressed them, and
asked to be accommodated for the night. As he waited he looked curiously
round the hall, but said nothing. As soon as invited he disappeared up
the staircase, preceded by a chambermaid and candle, and followed by a
lad with his trunk. Not a soul had recognized him.
A quarter of an hour later, when the farmers and dairymen had driven off
to their homesteads in the country, he came downstairs, took a biscuit
and one glass of wine, and walked out into the town, where the radiance
from the shop-windows had grown so in volume of late years as to flood
with cheerfulness every standing cart, barrow, stall, and idler that
occupied the wayside, whether shabby or genteel. His chief interest at
present seemed to lie in the names painted over the shop-fronts and on
door-ways, as far as they were visible; these now differed to an ominous
extent from what they had been one-and-twenty years before.
The traveller passed on till he came to the bookseller's, where he
looked in through the glass door. A fresh-faced young man was standing
behind the counter, otherwise the shop was empty. The gray-haired
observer entered, asked for some periodical by way of paying for
admission, and with his elbow on the counter began to turn over the
pages he had bought, though that he read nothing was obvious.
At length he said, 'Is old Mr. Watkins still alive?' in a voice which
had a curious youthful cadence in it even now.
'My father is dead, sir,' said the young man.
'Ah, I am sorry to hear it,' said the stranger. 'But it is so many years
since I last visited this town that I could hardly expect it should be
otherwise.' After a short silence he continued-'And is the firm of
Barnet, Browse, and Company still in existence?-they used to be large
flax-merchants and twine-spinners here?'
'The firm is still going on, sir, but they have dropped the name of
Barnet. I believe that was a sort of fancy name-at least, I never knew
of any living Barnet. 'Tis now Browse and Co.'
'And does Andrew Jones still keep on as architect?'
'He's dead, sir.'
'And the Vicar of St. Mary's-Mr. Melrose?'
'He's been dead a great many years.'
'Dear me!' He paused yet longer, and cleared his voice. 'Is Mr. Downe,
the solicitor, still in practice?'
'No, sir, he's dead. He died about seven years ago.'
Here it was a longer silence still; and an attentive observer would have
noticed that the paper in the stranger's hand increased its
imperceptible tremor to a visible shake. That gray-haired gentleman
noticed it himself, and rested the paper on the counter. 'Is Mrs. Downe
still alive?' he asked, closing his lips firmly as soon as the words
were out of his mouth, and dropping his eyes.
'Yes, sir, she's alive and well. She's living at the old place.'
'In East Street?'
'O no; at Ch\xE2teau Ringdale. I believe it has been in the family for some
generations.'
'She lives with her children, perhaps?'
'No; she has no children of her own. There were some Miss Downes; I
think they were Mr. Downe's daughters by a former wife; but they are
married and living in other parts of the town. Mrs. Downe lives alone.'
'Quite alone?'
'Yes, sir; quite alone.'
The newly-arrived gentleman went back to the hotel and dined; after
which he made some change in his dress, shaved back his beard to the
fashion that had prevailed twenty years earlier, when he was young and
interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the direction of
the harbour-road. Just before getting to the point where the pavement
ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he overtook a shambling,
stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight appeared like a professional
tramp, his shoulders having a perceptible greasiness as they passed
under the gaslight. Each pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the
other, and the tramp-like gentleman started back.
'Good-why-is that Mr. Barnet? 'Tis Mr. Barnet, surely!'
'Yes; and you are Charlson?'
'Yes-ah-you notice my appearance. The Fates have rather ill-used me. By-
the-bye, that fifty pounds. I never paid it, did I? . . . But I was not
ungrateful!' Here the stooping man laid one hand emphatically on the
palm of the other. 'I gave you a chance, Mr. George Barnet, which many
men would have thought full value received-the chance to marry your
Lucy. As far as the world was concerned, your wife was a drowned woman,
hey?'
'Heaven forbid all that, Charlson!'
'Well, well, 'twas a wrong way of showing gratitude, I suppose. And now
a drop of something to drink for old acquaintance' sake! And Mr. Barnet,
she's again free-there's a chance now if you care for it-ha, ha!' And
the speaker pushed his tongue into his hollow cheek and slanted his eye
in the old fashion.
'I know all,' said Barnet quickly; and slipping a small present into the
hands of the needy, saddening man, he stepped ahead and was soon in the
outskirts of the town.
He reached the harbour-road, and paused before the entrance to a well-
known house. It was so highly bosomed in trees and shrubs planted since
the erection of the building that one would scarcely have recognized the
spot as that which had been a mere neglected slope till chosen as a site
for a dwelling. He opened the swing-gate, closed it noiselessly, and
gently moved into the semicircular drive, which remained exactly as it
had been marked out by Barnet on the morning when Lucy Savile ran in to
thank him for procuring her the post of governess to Downe's children.
But the growth of trees and bushes which revealed itself at every step
was beyond all expectation; sun-proof and moon-proof bowers vaulted the
walks, and the walls of the house were uniformly bearded with creeping
plants as high as the first-floor windows.
After lingering for a few minutes in the dusk of the bending boughs, the
visitor rang the door-bell, and on the servant appearing, he announced
himself as 'an old friend of Mrs. Downe's.'
The hall was lighted, but not brightly, the gas being turned low, as if
visitors were rare. There was a stagnation in the dwelling; it seemed to
be waiting. Could it really be waiting for him? The partitions which had
been probed by Barnet's walking-stick when the mortar was green, were
now quite brown with the antiquity of their varnish, and the ornamental
woodwork of the staircase, which had glistened with a pale yellow
newness when first erected, was now of a rich wine-colour. During the
servant's absence the following colloquy could be dimly heard through
the nearly closed door of the drawing-room.
'He didn't give his name?'
'He only said "an old friend," ma'am.'
'What kind of gentleman is he?'
'A staidish gentleman, with gray hair.'
The voice of the second speaker seemed to affect the listener greatly.
After a pause, the lady said, 'Very well, I will see him.'
And the stranger was shown in face to face with the Lucy who had once
been Lucy Savile. The round cheek of that formerly young lady had, of
course, alarmingly flattened its curve in her modern representative; a
pervasive grayness overspread her once dark brown hair, like morning
rime on heather. The parting down the middle was wide and jagged; once
it had been a thin white line, a narrow crevice between two high banks
of shade. But there was still enough left to form a handsome knob
behind, and some curls beneath inwrought with a few hairs like silver
wires were very becoming. In her eyes the only modification was that
their originally mild rectitude of expression had become a little more
stringent than heretofore. Yet she was still girlish-a girl who had been
gratuitously weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty years
instead of her proper twenty.
'Lucy, don't you know me?' he said, when the servant had closed the
door.
'I knew you the instant I saw you!' she returned cheerfully. 'I don't
know why, but I always thought you would come back to your old town
again.'
She gave him her hand, and then they sat down. 'They said you were
dead,' continued Lucy, 'but I never thought so. We should have heard of
it for certain if you had been.'
'It is a very long time since we met.'
'Yes; what you must have seen, Mr. Barnet, in all these roving years, in
comparison with what I have seen in this quiet place!' Her face grew
more serious. 'You know my husband has been dead a long time? I am a
lonely old woman now, considering what I have been; though Mr. Downe's
daughters-all married-manage to keep me pretty cheerful.'
'And I am a lonely old man, and have been any time these twenty years.'
'But where have you kept yourself? And why did you go off so
mysteriously?'
'Well, Lucy, I have kept myself a little in America, and a little in
Australia, a little in India, a little at the Cape, and so on; I have
not stayed in any place for a long time, as it seems to me, and yet more
than twenty years have flown. But when people get to my age two years go
like one!-Your second question, why did I go away so mysteriously, is
surely not necessary. You guessed why, didn't you?'
'No, I never once guessed,' she said simply; 'nor did Charles, nor did
anybody as far as I know.'
'Well, indeed! Now think it over again, and then look at me, and say if
you can't guess?'
She looked him in the face with an inquiring smile. 'Surely not because
of me?' she said, pausing at the commencement of surprise.
Barnet nodded, and smiled again; but his smile was sadder than hers.
'Because I married Charles?' she asked.
'Yes; solely because you married him on the day I was free to ask you to
marry me. My wife died four-and-twenty hours before you went to church
with Downe. The fixing of my journey at that particular moment was
because of her funeral; but once away I knew I should have no inducement
to come back, and took my steps accordingly.'
Her face assumed an aspect of gentle reflection, and she looked up and
down his form with great interest in her eyes. 'I never thought of it!'
she said. 'I knew, of course, that you had once implied some warmth of
feeling towards me, but I concluded that it passed off. And I have
always been under the impression that your wife was alive at the time of
my marriage. Was it not stupid of me!-But you will have some tea or
something? I have never dined late, you know, since my husband's death.
I have got into the way of making a regular meal of tea. You will have
some tea with me, will you not?'
The travelled man assented quite readily, and tea was brought in. They
sat and chatted over the meal, regardless of the flying hour. 'Well,
well!' said Barnet presently, as for the first time he leisurely
surveyed the room; 'how like it all is, and yet how different! Just
where your piano stands was a board on a couple of trestles, bearing the
patterns of wall-papers, when I was last here. I was choosing them-
standing in this way, as it might be. Then my servant came in at the
door, and handed me a note, so. It was from Downe, and announced that
you were just going to be married to him. I chose no more wall- papers-
tore up all those I had selected, and left the house. I never entered it
again till now.'
'Ah, at last I understand it all,' she murmured.
They had both risen and gone to the fireplace. The mantel came almost on
a level with her shoulder, which gently rested against it, and Barnet
laid his hand upon the shelf close beside her shoulder. 'Lucy,' he said,
'better late than never. Will you marry me now?'
She started back, and the surprise which was so obvious in her wrought
even greater surprise in him that it should be so. It was difficult to
believe that she had been quite blind to the situation, and yet all
reason and common sense went to prove that she was not acting.
'You take me quite unawares by such a question!' she said, with a forced
laugh of uneasiness. It was the first time she had shown any
embarrassment at all. 'Why,' she added, 'I couldn't marry you for the
world.'
'Not after all this! Why not?'
'It is-I would-I really think I may say it-I would upon the whole rather
marry you, Mr. Barnet, than any other man I have ever met, if I ever
dreamed of marriage again. But I don't dream of it-it is quite out of my
thoughts; I have not the least intention of marrying again.'
'But-on my account-couldn't you alter your plans a little? Come!'
'Dear Mr. Barnet,' she said with a little flutter, 'I would on your
account if on anybody's in existence. But you don't know in the least
what it is you are asking-such an impracticable thing-I won't say
ridiculous, of course, because I see that you are really in earnest, and
earnestness is never ridiculous to my mind.'
'Well, yes,' said Barnet more slowly, dropping her hand, which he had
taken at the moment of pleading, 'I am in earnest. The resolve, two
months ago, at the Cape, to come back once more was, it is true, rather
sudden, and as I see now, not well considered. But I am in earnest in
asking.'
'And I in declining. With all good feeling and all kindness, let me say
that I am quite opposed to the idea of marrying a second time.'
'Well, no harm has been done,' he answered, with the same subdued and
tender humorousness that he had shown on such occasions in early life.
'If you really won't accept me, I must put up with it, I suppose.' His
eye fell on the clock as he spoke. 'Had you any notion that it was so
late?' he asked. 'How absorbed I have been!'
She accompanied him to the hall, helped him to put on his overcoat, and
let him out of the house herself.
'Good-night,' said Barnet, on the doorstep, as the lamp shone in his
face. 'You are not offended with me?'
'Certainly not. Nor you with me?'
'I'll consider whether I am or not,' he pleasantly replied. 'Good-
night.'
She watched him safely through the gate; and when his footsteps had died
away upon the road, closed the door softly and returned to the room.
Here the modest widow long pondered his speeches, with eyes dropped to
an unusually low level. Barnet's urbanity under the blow of her refusal
greatly impressed her. After having his long period of probation
rendered useless by her decision, he had shown no anger, and had
philosophically taken her words as if he deserved no better ones. It was
very gentlemanly of him, certainly; it was more than gentlemanly; it was
heroic and grand. The more she meditated, the more she questioned the
virtue of her conduct in checking him so peremptorily; and went to her
bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction. On looking in the glass she was
reminded that there was not so much remaining of her former beauty as to
make his frank declaration an impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and
eyes; it must undoubtedly have arisen from an old staunch feeling of
his, deserving tenderest consideration. She recalled to her mind with
much pleasure that he had told her he was staying at the Black-Bull
Hotel; so that if, after waiting a day or two, he should not, in his
modesty, call again, she might then send him a nice little note. To
alter her views for the present was far from her intention; but she
would allow herself to be induced to reconsider the case, as any
generous woman ought to do.
The morrow came and passed, and Mr. Barnet did not drop in. At every
knock, light youthful hues flew across her cheek; and she was abstracted
in the presence of her other visitors. In the evening she walked about
the house, not knowing what to do with herself; the conditions of
existence seemed totally different from those which ruled only four-and-
twenty short hours ago. What had been at first a tantalizing elusive
sentiment was getting acclimatized within her as a definite hope, and
her person was so informed by that emotion that she might almost have
stood as its emblematical representative by the time the clock struck
ten. In short, an interest in Barnet precisely resembling that of her
early youth led her present heart to belie her yesterday's words to him,
and she longed to see him again.
The next day she walked out early, thinking she might meet him in the
street. The growing beauty of her romance absorbed her, and she went
from the street to the fields, and from the fields to the shore, without
any consciousness of distance, till reminded by her weariness that she
could go no further. He had nowhere appeared. In the evening she took a
step which under the circumstances seemed justifiable; she wrote a note
to him at the hotel, inviting him to tea with her at six precisely, and
signing her note 'Lucy.'
In a quarter of an hour the messenger came back. Mr. Barnet had left the
hotel early in the morning of the day before, but he had stated that he
would probably return in the course of the week.
The note was sent back, to be given to him immediately on his arrival.
There was no sign from the inn that this desired event had occurred,
either on the next day or the day following. On both nights she had been
restless, and had scarcely slept half-an-hour.
On the Saturday, putting off all diffidence, Lucy went herself to the
Black-Bull, and questioned the staff closely.
Mr. Barnet had cursorily remarked when leaving that he might return on
the Thursday or Friday, but they were directed not to reserve a room for
him unless he should write.
He had left no address.
Lucy sorrowfully took back her note went home, and resolved to wait.
She did wait-years and years-but Barnet never reappeared.
April 1880.
INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP
I
The north road from Casterbridge is tedious and lonely, especially in
winter-time. Along a part of its course it connects with Long-Ash Lane,
a monotonous track without a village or hamlet for many miles, and with
very seldom a turning. Unapprized wayfarers who are too old, or too
young, or in other respects too weak for the distance to be traversed,
but who, nevertheless, have to walk it, say, as they look wistfully
ahead, 'Once at the top of that hill, and I must surely see the end of
Long-Ash Lane!' But they reach the hilltop, and Long-Ash Lane stretches
in front as mercilessly as before.
Some few years ago a certain farmer was riding through this lane in the
gloom of a winter evening. The farmer's friend, a dairyman, was riding
beside him. A few paces in the rear rode the farmer's man. All three
were well horsed on strong, round-barrelled cobs; and to be well horsed
was to be in better spirits about Long-Ash Lane than poor pedestrians
could attain to during its passage.
But the farmer did not talk much to his friend as he rode along. The
enterprise which had brought him there filled his mind; for in truth it
was important. Not altogether so important was it, perhaps, when
estimated by its value to society at large; but if the true measure of a
deed be proportionate to the space it occupies in the heart of him who
undertakes it, Farmer Charles Darton's business to-night could hold its
own with the business of kings.
He was a large farmer. His turnover, as it is called, was probably
thirty thousand pounds a year. He had a great many draught horses, a
great many milch cows, and of sheep a multitude. This comfortable
position was, however, none of his own making. It had been created by
his father, a man of a very different stamp from the present
representative of the line.
Darton, the father, had been a one-idea'd character, with a buttoned-up
pocket and a chink-like eye brimming with commercial subtlety. In Darton
the son, this trade subtlety had become transmuted into emotional, and
the harshness had disappeared; he would have been called a sad man but
for his constant care not to divide himself from lively friends by
piping notes out of harmony with theirs. Contemplative, he allowed his
mind to be a quiet meeting-place for memories and hopes. So that,
naturally enough, since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up
to his present age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as
a capitalist-a stationary result which did not agitate one of his
unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired. The
motive of his expedition to-night showed the same absence of anxious
regard for Number One.
The party rode on in the slow, safe trot proper to night-time and bad
roads, Farmer Darton's head jigging rather unromantically up and down
against the sky, and his motions being repeated with bolder emphasis by
his friend Japheth Johns; while those of the latter were travestied in
jerks still less softened by art in the person of the lad who attended
them. A pair of whitish objects hung one on each side of the latter,
bumping against him at each step, and still further spoiling the grace
of his seat. On close inspection they might have been perceived to be
open rush baskets-one containing a turkey, and the other some bottles of
wine.
'D'ye feel ye can meet your fate like a man, neighbour Darton?' asked
Johns, breaking a silence which had lasted while five-and-twenty
hedgerow trees had glided by.
Mr. Darton with a half-laugh murmured, 'Ay-call it my fate! Hanging and
wiving go by destiny.' And then they were silent again.
The darkness thickened rapidly, at intervals shutting down on the land
in a perceptible flap, like the wave of a wing. The customary close of
day was accelerated by a simultaneous blurring of the air. With the fall
of night had come a mist just damp enough to incommode, but not
sufficient to saturate them. Countrymen as they were-born, as may be
said, with only an open door between them and the four seasons-they
regarded the mist but as an added obscuration, and ignored its humid
quality.
They were travelling in a direction that was enlivened by no modern
current of traffic, the place of Darton's pilgrimage being an old-
fashioned village-one of the Hintocks (several villages of that name,
with a distinctive prefix or affix, lying thereabout)-where the people
make the best cider and cider-wine in all Wessex, and where the
dunghills smell of pomace instead of stable refuse as elsewhere. The
lane was sometimes so narrow that the brambles of the hedge, which hung
forward like anglers' rods over a stream, scratched their hats and
curry-combed their whiskers as they passed. Yet this neglected lane had
been a highway to Queen Elizabeth's subjects and the cavalcades of the
past. Its day was over now, and its history as a national artery done
for ever.
'Why I have decided to marry her,' resumed Darton (in a measured musical
voice of confidence which revealed a good deal of his composition), as
he glanced round to see that the lad was not too near, 'is not only that
I like her, but that I can do no better, even from a fairly practical
point of view. That I might ha' looked higher is possibly true, though
it is really all nonsense. I have had experience enough in looking above
me. "No more superior women for me," said I-you know when. Sally is a
comely, independent, simple character, with no make-up about her, who'll
think me as much a superior to her as I used to think-you know who I
mean-was to me.'
'Ay,' said Johns. 'However, I shouldn't call Sally Hall simple. Primary,
because no Sally is; secondary, because if some could be, this one
wouldn't. 'Tis a wrong denomination to apply to a woman, Charles, and
affects me, as your best man, like cold water. 'Tis like recommending a
stage play by saying there's neither murder, villainy, nor harm of any
sort in it, when that's what you've paid your half-crown to see.'
'Well; may your opinion do you good. Mine's a different one.' And
turning the conversation from the philosophical to the practical, Darton
expressed a hope that the said Sally had received what he'd sent on by
the carrier that day.
Johns wanted to know what that was.
'It is a dress,' said Darton. 'Not exactly a wedding-dress; though she
may use it as one if she likes. It is rather serviceable than showy-
suitable for the winter weather.'
'Good,' said Johns. 'Serviceable is a wise word in a bridegroom. I
commend ye, Charles.'
'For,' said Darton, 'why should a woman dress up like a rope-dancer
because she's going to do the most solemn deed of her life except
dying?'
'Faith, why? But she will, because she will, I suppose,' said Dairyman
Johns.
'H'm,' said Darton.
The lane they followed had been nearly straight for several miles, but
it now took a turn, and winding uncertainly for some distance forked
into two. By night country roads are apt to reveal ungainly qualities
which pass without observation during day; and though Darton had
travelled this way before, he had not done so frequently, Sally having
been wooed at the house of a relative near his own. He never remembered
seeing at this spot a pair of alternative ways looking so equally
probable as these two did now. Johns rode on a few steps.
'Don't be out of heart, sonny,' he cried. 'Here's a handpost. Enoch-come
and climm this post, and tell us the way.'
The lad dismounted, and jumped into the hedge where the post stood under
a tree.
'Unstrap the baskets, or you'll smash up that wine!' cried Darton, as
the young man began spasmodically to climb the post, baskets and all.
'Was there ever less head in a brainless world?' said Johns. 'Here,
simple Nocky, I'll do it.' He leapt off, and with much puffing climbed
the post, striking a match when he reached the top, and moving the light
along the arm, the lad standing and gazing at the spectacle.
'I have faced tantalization these twenty years with a temper as mild as
milk!' said Japheth; 'but such things as this don't come short of
devilry!' And flinging the match away, he slipped down to the ground.
'What's the matter?' asked Darton.
'Not a letter, sacred or heathen-not so much as would tell us the way to
the great fireplace-ever I should sin to say it! Either the moss and
mildew have eat away the words, or we have arrived in a land where the
natyves have lost the art o' writing, and should ha' brought our compass
like Christopher Columbus.'
'Let us take the straightest road,' said Darton placidly; 'I shan't be
sorry to get there-'tis a tiresome ride. I would have driven if I had
known.'
'Nor I neither, sir,' said Enoch. 'These straps plough my shoulder like
a zull. If 'tis much further to your lady's home, Maister Darton, I
shall ask to be let carry half of these good things in my innerds-hee,
hee!'
'Don't you be such a reforming radical, Enoch,' said Johns sternly.
'Here, I'll take the turkey.'
This being done, they went forward by the right-hand lane, which
ascended a hill, the left winding away under a plantation. The pit-a-
pat of their horses' hoofs lessened up the slope; and the ironical
directing-post stood in solitude as before, holding out its blank arms
to the raw breeze, which brought a snore from the wood as if Skrymir the
Giant were sleeping there.
II
Three miles to the left of the travellers, along the road they had not
followed, rose an old house with mullioned windows of Ham-hill stone,
and chimneys of lavish solidity. It stood at the top of a slope beside
King's-Hintock village-street; and immediately in front of it grew a
large sycamore-tree, whose bared roots formed a convenient staircase
from the road below to the front door of the dwelling. Its situation
gave the house what little distinctive name it possessed, namely, 'The
Knap.' Some forty yards off a brook dribbled past, which, for its size,
made a great deal of noise. At the back was a dairy barton, accessible
for vehicles and live-stock by a side 'drong.' Thus much only of the
character of the homestead could be divined out of doors at this shady
evening-time.
But within there was plenty of light to see by, as plenty was construed
at Hintock. Beside a Tudor fireplace, whose moulded four-centred arch
was nearly hidden by a figured blue-cloth blower, were seated two women-
mother and daughter-Mrs. Hall, and Sarah, or Sally; for this was a part
of the world where the latter modification had not as yet been effaced
as a vulgarity by the march of intellect. The owner of the name was the
young woman by whose means Mr. Darton proposed to put an end to his
bachelor condition on the approaching day.
The mother's bereavement had been so long ago as not to leave much mark
of its occurrence upon her now, either in face or clothes. She had
resumed the mob-cap of her early married life, enlivening its whiteness
by a few rose-du-Barry ribbons. Sally required no such aids to pinkness.
Roseate good-nature lit up her gaze; her features showed curves of
decision and judgment; and she might have been regarded without much
mistake as a warm-hearted, quick-spirited, handsome girl.
She did most of the talking, her mother listening with a half-absent
air, as she picked up fragments of red-hot wood ember with the tongs,
and piled them upon the brands. But the number of speeches that passed
was very small in proportion to the meanings exchanged. Long experience
together often enabled them to see the course of thought in each other's
minds without a word being spoken. Behind them, in the centre of the
room, the table was spread for supper, certain whiffs of air laden with
fat vapours, which ever and anon entered from the kitchen, denoting its
preparation there.
'The new gown he was going to send you stays about on the way like
himself,' Sally's mother was saying.
'Yes, not finished, I daresay,' cried Sally independently. 'Lord, I
shouldn't be amazed if it didn't come at all! Young men make such kind
promises when they are near you, and forget 'em when they go away. But
he doesn't intend it as a wedding-gown-he gives it to me merely as a
gown to wear when I like-a travelling-dress is what it would be called
by some. Come rathe or come late it don't much matter, as I have a dress
of my own to fall back upon. But what time is it?'
She went to the family clock and opened the glass, for the hour was not
otherwise discernible by night, and indeed at all times was rather a
thing to be investigated than beheld, so much more wall than window was
there in the apartment. 'It is nearly eight,' said she.
'Eight o'clock, and neither dress nor man,' said Mrs. Hall.
'Mother, if you think to tantalize me by talking like that, you are much
mistaken! Let him be as late as he will-or stay away altogether-I don't
care,' said Sally. But a tender, minute quaver in the negation showed
that there was something forced in that statement.
Mrs. Hall perceived it, and drily observed that she was not so sure
about Sally not caring. 'But perhaps you don't care so much as I do,
after all,' she said. 'For I see what you don't, that it is a good and
flourishing match for you; a very honourable offer in Mr. Darton. And I
think I see a kind husband in him. So pray God 'twill go smooth, and
wind up well.'
Sally would not listen to misgivings. Of course it would go smoothly,
she asserted. 'How you are up and down, mother!' she went on. 'At this
moment, whatever hinders him, we are not so anxious to see him as he is
to be here, and his thought runs on before him, and settles down upon us
like the star in the east. Hark!' she exclaimed, with a breath of
relief, her eyes sparkling. 'I heard something. Yes-here they are!'
The next moment her mother's slower ear also distinguished the familiar
reverberation occasioned by footsteps clambering up the roots of the
sycamore.
'Yes it sounds like them at last,' she said. 'Well, it is not so very
late after all, considering the distance.'
The footfall ceased, and they arose, expecting a knock. They began to
think it might have been, after all, some neighbouring villager under
Bacchic influence, giving the centre of the road a wide berth, when
their doubts were dispelled by the new-comer's entry into the passage.
The door of the room was gently opened, and there appeared, not the pair
of travellers with whom we have already made acquaintance, but a pale-
faced man in the garb of extreme poverty-almost in rags.
'O, it's a tramp-gracious me!' said Sally, starting back.
His cheeks and eye-orbits were deep concaves-rather, it might be, from
natural weakness of constitution than irregular living, though there
were indications that he had led no careful life. He gazed at the two
women fixedly for a moment: then with an abashed, humiliated demeanour,
dropped his glance to the floor, and sank into a chair without uttering
a word.
Sally was in advance of her mother, who had remained standing by the
fire. She now tried to discern the visitor across the candles.
'Why-mother,' said Sally faintly, turning back to Mrs. Hall. 'It is
Phil, from Australia!'
Mrs. Hall started, and grew pale, and a fit of coughing seized the man
with the ragged clothes. 'To come home like this!' she said. 'O, Philip-
are you ill?'
'No, no, mother,' replied he impatiently, as soon as he could speak.
'But for God's sake how do you come here-and just now too?'
'Well, I am here,' said the man. 'How it is I hardly know. I've come
home, mother, because I was driven to it. Things were against me out
there, and went from bad to worse.'
'Then why didn't you let us know?-you've not writ a line for the last
two or three years.'
The son admitted sadly that he had not. He said that he had hoped and
thought he might fetch up again, and be able to send good news. Then he
had been obliged to abandon that hope, and had finally come home from
sheer necessity-previously to making a new start. 'Yes, things are very
bad with me,' he repeated, perceiving their commiserating glances at his
clothes.
They brought him nearer the fire, took his hat from his thin hand, which
was so small and smooth as to show that his attempts to fetch up again
had not been in a manual direction. His mother resumed her inquiries,
and dubiously asked if he had chosen to come that particular night for
any special reason.
For no reason, he told her. His arrival had been quite at random. Then
Philip Hall looked round the room, and saw for the first time that the
table was laid somewhat luxuriously, and for a larger number than
themselves; and that an air of festivity pervaded their dress. He asked
quickly what was going on.
'Sally is going to be married in a day or two,' replied the mother; and
she explained how Mr. Darton, Sally's intended husband, was coming there
that night with the groomsman, Mr. Johns, and other details. 'We thought
it must be their step when we heard you,' said Mrs. Hall.
The needy wanderer looked again on the floor. 'I see-I see,' he
murmured. 'Why, indeed, should I have come to-night? Such folk as I are
not wanted here at these times, naturally. And I have no business here-
spoiling other people's happiness.'
'Phil,' said his mother, with a tear in her eye, but with a thinness of
lip and severity of manner which were presumably not more than past
events justified; 'since you speak like that to me, I'll speak honestly
to you. For these three years you have taken no thought for us. You left
home with a good supply of money, and strength and education, and you
ought to have made good use of it all. But you come back like a beggar;
and that you come in a very awkward time for us cannot be denied. Your
return to-night may do us much harm. But mind-you are welcome to this
home as long as it is mine. I don't wish to turn you adrift. We will
make the best of a bad job; and I hope you are not seriously ill?'
'O no. I have only this infernal cough.'
She looked at him anxiously. 'I think you had better go to bed at once,'
she said.
'Well-I shall be out of the way there,' said the son wearily. 'Having
ruined myself, don't let me ruin you by being seen in these togs, for
Heaven's sake. Who do you say Sally is going to be married to-a Farmer
Darton?'
'Yes-a gentleman-farmer-quite a wealthy man. Far better in station than
she could have expected. It is a good thing, altogether.'
'Well done, little Sal!' said her brother, brightening and looking up at
her with a smile. 'I ought to have written; but perhaps I have thought
of you all the more. But let me get out of sight. I would rather go and
jump into the river than be seen here. But have you anything I can
drink? I am confoundedly thirsty with my long tramp.'
'Yes, yes, we will bring something upstairs to you,' said Sally, with
grief in her face.
'Ay, that will do nicely. But, Sally and mother-' He stopped, and they
waited. 'Mother, I have not told you all,' he resumed slowly, still
looking on the floor between his knees. 'Sad as what you see of me is,
there's worse behind.'
His mother gazed upon him in grieved suspense, and Sally went and leant
upon the bureau, listening for every sound, and sighing. Suddenly she
turned round, saying, 'Let them come, I don't care! Philip, tell the
worst, and take your time.'
'Well, then,' said the unhappy Phil, 'I am not the only one in this
mess. Would to Heaven I were! But-'
'O, Phil!'
'I have a wife as destitute as I.'
'A wife?' said his mother.
'Unhappily!'
'A wife! Yes, that is the way with sons!'
'And besides-' said he.
'Besides! O, Philip, surely-'
'I have two little children.'
'Wife and children!' whispered Mrs. Hall, sinking down confounded.
'Poor little things!' said Sally involuntarily.
His mother turned again to him. 'I suppose these helpless beings are
left in Australia?'
'No. They are in England.'
'Well, I can only hope you've left them in a respectable place.'
'I have not left them at all. They are here-within a few yards of us. In
short, they are in the stable.'
'Where?'
'In the stable. I did not like to bring them indoors till I had seen
you, mother, and broken the bad news a bit to you. They were very tired,
and are resting out there on some straw.'
Mrs. Hall's fortitude visibly broke down. She had been brought up not
without refinement, and was even more moved by such a collapse of
genteel aims as this than a substantial dairyman's widow would in
ordinary have been moved. 'Well, it must be borne,' she said, in a low
voice, with her hands tightly joined. 'A starving son, a starving wife,
starving children! Let it be. But why is this come to us now, to-day,
to-night? Could no other misfortune happen to helpless women than this,
which will quite upset my poor girl's chance of a happy life? Why have
you done us this wrong, Philip? What respectable man will come here, and
marry open-eyed into a family of vagabonds?'
'Nonsense, mother!' said Sally vehemently, while her face flushed.
'Charley isn't the man to desert me. But if he should be, and won't
marry me because Phil's come, let him go and marry elsewhere. I won't be
ashamed of my own flesh and blood for any man in England-not I!' And
then Sally turned away and burst into tears.
'Wait till you are twenty years older and you will tell a different
tale,' replied her mother.
The son stood up. 'Mother,' he said bitterly, 'as I have come, so I will
go. All I ask of you is that you will allow me and mine to lie in your
stable to-night. I give you my word that we'll be gone by break of day,
and trouble you no further!'
Mrs. Hall, the mother, changed at that. 'O no,' she answered hastily;
'never shall it be said that I sent any of my own family from my door.
Bring 'em in, Philip, or take me out to them.'
'We will put 'em all into the large bedroom,' said Sally, brightening,
'and make up a large fire. Let's go and help them in, and call Rebekah.'
(Rebekah was the woman who assisted at the dairy and housework; she
lived in a cottage hard by with her husband, who attended to the cows.)
Sally went to fetch a lantern from the back-kitchen, but her brother
said, 'You won't want a light. I lit the lantern that was hanging
there.'
'What must we call your wife?' asked Mrs. Hall.
'Helena,' said Philip.
With shawls over their heads they proceeded towards the back door.
'One minute before you go,' interrupted Philip. 'I-I haven't confessed
all.'
'Then Heaven help us!' said Mrs. Hall, pushing to the door and clasping
her hands in calm despair.
'We passed through Evershead as we came,' he continued, 'and I just
looked in at the "Sow-and-Acorn" to see if old Mike still kept on there
as usual. The carrier had come in from Sherton Abbas at that moment, and
guessing that I was bound for this place-for I think he knew me-he asked
me to bring on a dressmaker's parcel for Sally that was marked
"immediate." My wife had walked on with the children. 'Twas a flimsy
parcel, and the paper was torn, and I found on looking at it that it was
a thick warm gown. I didn't wish you to see poor Helena in a shabby
state. I was ashamed that you should-'twas not what she was born to. I
untied the parcel in the road, took it on to her where she was waiting
in the Lower Barn, and told her I had managed to get it for her, and
that she was to ask no question. She, poor thing, must have supposed I
obtained it on trust, through having reached a place where I was known,
for she put it on gladly enough. She has it on now. Sally has other
gowns, I daresay.'
Sally looked at her mother, speechless.
'You have others, I daresay!' repeated Phil, with a sick man's
impatience. 'I thought to myself, "Better Sally cry than Helena freeze."
Well, is the dress of great consequence? 'Twas nothing very ornamental,
as far as I could see.'
'No-no; not of consequence,' returned Sally sadly, adding in a gentle
voice, 'You will not mind if I lend her another instead of that one,
will you?'
Philip's agitation at the confession had brought on another attack of
the cough, which seemed to shake him to pieces. He was so obviously
unfit to sit in a chair that they helped him upstairs at once; and
having hastily given him a cordial and kindled the bedroom fire, they
descended to fetch their unhappy new relations.
III
It was with strange feelings that the girl and her mother, lately so
cheerful, passed out of the back door into the open air of the barton,
laden with hay scents and the herby breath of cows. A fine sleet had
begun to fall, and they trotted across the yard quickly. The stable-
door was open; a light shone from it-from the lantern which always hung
there, and which Philip had lighted, as he said. Softly nearing the
door, Mrs. Hall pronounced the name 'Helena!'
There was no answer for the moment. Looking in she was taken by
surprise. Two people appeared before her. For one, instead of the
drabbish woman she had expected, Mrs. Hall saw a pale, dark-eyed,
ladylike creature, whose personality ruled her attire rather than was
ruled by it. She was in a new and handsome gown, of course, and an old
bonnet. She was standing up, agitated; her hand was held by her
companion-none else than Sally's affianced, Farmer Charles Darton, upon
whose fine figure the pale stranger's eyes were fixed, as his were fixed
upon her. His other hand held the rein of his horse, which was standing
saddled as if just led in.
At sight of Mrs. Hall they both turned, looking at her in a way neither
quite conscious nor unconscious, and without seeming to recollect that
words were necessary as a solution to the scene. In another moment Sally
entered also, when Mr. Darton dropped his companion's hand, led the
horse aside, and came to greet his betrothed and Mrs. Hall.
'Ah!' he said, smiling-with something like forced composure-'this is a
roundabout way of arriving, you will say, my dear Mrs. Hall. But we lost
our way, which made us late. I saw a light here, and led in my horse at
once-my friend Johns and my man have gone back to the little inn with
theirs, not to crowd you too much. No sooner had I entered than I saw
that this lady had taken temporary shelter here-and found I was
intruding.'
'She is my daughter-in-law,' said Mrs. Hall calmly. 'My son, too, is in
the house, but he has gone to bed unwell.'
Sally had stood staring wonderingly at the scene until this moment,
hardly recognizing Darton's shake of the hand. The spell that bound her
was broken by her perceiving the two little children seated on a heap of
hay. She suddenly went forward, spoke to them, and took one on her arm
and the other in her hand.
'And two children?' said Mr. Darton, showing thus that he had not been
there long enough as yet to understand the situation.
'My grandchildren,' said Mrs. Hall, with as much affected ease as
before.
Philip Hall's wife, in spite of this interruption to her first
rencounter, seemed scarcely so much affected by it as to feel any one's
presence in addition to Mr. Darton's. However, arousing herself by a
quick reflection, she threw a sudden critical glance of her sad eyes
upon Mrs. Hall; and, apparently finding her satisfactory, advanced to
her in a meek initiative. Then Sally and the stranger spoke some
friendly words to each other, and Sally went on with the children into
the house. Mrs. Hall and Helena followed, and Mr. Darton followed these,
looking at Helena's dress and outline, and listening to her voice like a
man in a dream.
By the time the others reached the house Sally had already gone upstairs
with the tired children. She rapped against the wall for Rebekah to come
in and help to attend to them, Rebekah's house being a little 'spit-and-
dab' cabin leaning against the substantial stone-work of Mrs. Hall's
taller erection. When she came a bed was made up for the little ones,
and some supper given to them. On descending the stairs after seeing
this done Sally went to the sitting-room. Young Mrs. Hall entered it
just in advance of her, having in the interim retired with her mother-
in-law to take off her bonnet, and otherwise make herself presentable.
Hence it was evident that no further communication could have passed
between her and Mr. Darton since their brief interview in the stable.
Mr. Japheth Johns now opportunely arrived, and broke up the restraint of
the company, after a few orthodox meteorological commentaries had passed
between him and Mrs. Hall by way of introduction. They at once sat down
to supper, the present of wine and turkey not being produced for
consumption to-night, lest the premature display of those gifts should
seem to throw doubt on Mrs. Hall's capacities as a provider.
'Drink hearty, Mr. Johns-drink hearty,' said that matron magnanimously.
'Such as it is there's plenty of. But perhaps cider-wine is not to your
taste?-though there's body in it.'
'Quite the contrairy, ma'am-quite the contrairy,' said the dairyman.
'For though I inherit the malt-liquor principle from my father, I am a
cider-drinker on my mother's side. She came from these parts, you know.
And there's this to be said for't-'tis a more peaceful liquor, and don't
lie about a man like your hotter drinks. With care, one may live on it a
twelvemonth without knocking down a neighbour, or getting a black eye
from an old acquaintance.'
The general conversation thus begun was continued briskly, though it was
in the main restricted to Mrs. Hall and Japheth, who in truth required
but little help from anybody. There being slight call upon Sally's
tongue, she had ample leisure to do what her heart most desired, namely,
watch her intended husband and her sister-in-law with a view of
elucidating the strange momentary scene in which her mother and herself
had surprised them in the stable. If that scene meant anything, it
meant, at least, that they had met before. That there had been no time
for explanations Sally could see, for their manner was still one of
suppressed amazement at each other's presence there. Darton's eyes, too,
fell continually on the gown worn by Helena as if this were an added
riddle to his perplexity; though to Sally it was the one feature in the
case which was no mystery. He seemed to feel that fate had impishly
changed his vis-\xE0-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that
while the gown had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face
looked out from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from
the sleeves.
Sally could see that whatever Helena might know of Darton, she knew
nothing of how the dress entered into his embarrassment. And at moments
the young girl would have persuaded herself that Darton's looks at her
sister-in-law were entirely the fruit of the clothes query. But surely
at other times a more extensive range of speculation and sentiment was
expressed by her lover's eye than that which the changed dress would
account for.
Sally's independence made her one of the least jealous of women. But
there was something in the relations of these two visitors which ought
to be explained.
Japheth Johns continued to converse in his well-known style,
interspersing his talk with some private reflections on the position of
Darton and Sally, which, though the sparkle in his eye showed them to be
highly entertaining to himself, were apparently not quite communicable
to the company. At last he withdrew for the night, going off to the
roadside inn half-a-mile back, whither Darton promised to follow him in
a few minutes.
Half-an-hour passed, and then Mr. Darton also rose to leave, Sally and
her sister-in-law simultaneously wishing him good-night as they retired
upstairs to their rooms. But on his arriving at the front door with Mrs.
Hall a sharp shower of rain began to come down, when the widow suggested
that he should return to the fire-side till the storm ceased.
Darton accepted her proposal, but insisted that, as it was getting late,
and she was obviously tired, she should not sit up on his account, since
he could let himself out of the house, and would quite enjoy smoking a
pipe by the hearth alone. Mrs. Hall assented; and Darton was left by
himself. He spread his knees to the brands, lit up his tobacco as he had
said, and sat gazing into the fire, and at the notches of the chimney-
crook which hung above.
An occasional drop of rain rolled down the chimney with a hiss, and
still he smoked on; but not like a man whose mind was at rest. In the
long run, however, despite his meditations, early hours afield and a
long ride in the open air produced their natural result. He began to
doze.
How long he remained in this half-unconscious state he did not know. He
suddenly opened his eyes. The back-brand had burnt itself in two, and
ceased to flame; the light which he had placed on the mantelpiece had
nearly gone out. But in spite of these deficiencies there was a light in
the apartment, and it came from elsewhere. Turning his head he saw
Philip Hall's wife standing at the entrance of the room with a bed-
candle in one hand, a small brass tea-kettle in the other, and his gown,
as it certainly seemed, still upon her.
'Helena!' said Darton, starting up.
Her countenance expressed dismay, and her first words were an apology.
'I-did not know you were here, Mr. Darton,' she said, while a blush
flashed to her cheek. 'I thought every one had retired-I was coming to
make a little water boil; my husband seems to be worse. But perhaps the
kitchen fire can be lighted up again.'
'Don't go on my account. By all means put it on here as you intended,'
said Darton. 'Allow me to help you.' He went forward to take the kettle
from her hand, but she did not allow him, and placed it on the fire
herself.
They stood some way apart, one on each side of the fireplace, waiting
till the water should boil, the candle on the mantel between them, and
Helena with her eyes on the kettle. Darton was the first to break the
silence. 'Shall I call Sally?' he said.
'O no,' she quickly returned. 'We have given trouble enough already. We
have no right here. But we are the sport of fate, and were obliged to
come.'
'No right here!' said he in surprise.
'None. I can't explain it now,' answered Helena. 'This kettle is very
slow.'
There was another pause; the proverbial dilatoriness of watched pots was
never more clearly exemplified.
Helena's face was of that sort which seems to ask for assistance without
the owner's knowledge-the very antipodes of Sally's, which was self-
reliance expressed. Darton's eyes travelled from the kettle to Helena's
face, then back to the kettle, then to the face for rather a longer
time. 'So I am not to know anything of the mystery that has distracted
me all the evening?' he said. 'How is it that a woman, who refused me
because (as I supposed) my position was not good enough for her taste,
is found to be the wife of a man who certainly seems to be worse off
than I?'
'He had the prior claim,' said she.
'What! you knew him at that time?'
'Yes, yes! Please say no more,' she implored.
'Whatever my errors, I have paid for them during the last five years!'
The heart of Darton was subject to sudden overflowings. He was kind to a
fault. 'I am sorry from my soul,' he said, involuntarily approaching
her. Helena withdrew a step or two, at which he became conscious of his
movement, and quickly took his former place. Here he stood without
speaking, and the little kettle began to sing.
'Well, you might have been my wife if you had chosen,' he said at last.
'But that's all past and gone. However, if you are in any trouble or
poverty I shall be glad to be of service, and as your relation by
marriage I shall have a right to be. Does your uncle know of your
distress?'
'My uncle is dead. He left me without a farthing. And now we have two
children to maintain.'
'What, left you nothing? How could he be so cruel as that?'
'I disgraced myself in his eyes.'
'Now,' said Darton earnestly, 'let me take care of the children, at
least while you are so unsettled. You belong to another, so I cannot
take care of you.'
'Yes you can,' said a voice; and suddenly a third figure stood beside
them. It was Sally. 'You can, since you seem to wish to?' she repeated.
'She no longer belongs to another . . . My poor brother is dead!'
Her face was red, her eyes sparkled, and all the woman came to the
front. 'I have heard it!' she went on to him passionately. 'You can
protect her now as well as the children!' She turned then to her
agitated sister-in-law. 'I heard something,' said Sally (in a gentle
murmur, differing much from her previous passionate words), 'and I went
into his room. It must have been the moment you left. He went off so
quickly, and weakly, and it was so unexpected, that I couldn't leave
even to call you.'
Darton was just able to gather from the confused discourse which
followed that, during his sleep by the fire, this brother whom he had
never seen had become worse; and that during Helena's absence for water
the end had unexpectedly come. The two young women hastened upstairs,
and he was again left alone.
After standing there a short time he went to the front door and looked
out; till, softly closing it behind him, he advanced and stood under the
large sycamore-tree. The stars were flickering coldly, and the dampness
which had just descended upon the earth in rain now sent up a chill from
it. Darton was in a strange position, and he felt it. The unexpected
appearance, in deep poverty, of Helena-a young lady, daughter of a
deceased naval officer, who had been brought up by her uncle, a
solicitor, and had refused Darton in marriage years ago-the passionate,
almost angry demeanour of Sally at discovering them, the abrupt
announcement that Helena was a widow; all this coming together was a
conjuncture difficult to cope with in a moment, and made him question
whether he ought to leave the house or offer assistance. But for Sally's
manner he would unhesitatingly have done the latter.
He was still standing under the tree when the door in front of him
opened, and Mrs. Hall came out. She went round to the garden-gate at the
side without seeing him. Darton followed her, intending to speak.
Pausing outside, as if in thought, she proceeded to a spot where the sun
came earliest in spring-time, and where the north wind never blew; it
was where the row of beehives stood under the wall. Discerning her
object, he waited till she had accomplished it.
It was the universal custom thereabout to wake the bees by tapping at
their hives whenever a death occurred in the household, under the belief
that if this were not done the bees themselves would pine away and
perish during the ensuing year. As soon as an interior buzzing responded
to her tap at the first hive Mrs. Hall went on to the second, and thus
passed down the row. As soon as she came back he met her.
'What can I do in this trouble, Mrs. Hall?' he said.
'O-nothing, thank you, nothing,' she said in a tearful voice, now just
perceiving him. 'We have called Rebekah and her husband, and they will
do everything necessary.' She told him in a few words the particulars of
her son's arrival, broken in health-indeed, at death's very door, though
they did not suspect it-and suggested, as the result of a conversation
between her and her daughter, that the wedding should be postponed.
'Yes, of course,' said Darton. 'I think now to go straight to the inn
and tell Johns what has happened.' It was not till after he had shaken
hands with her that he turned hesitatingly and added, 'Will you tell the
mother of his children that, as they are now left fatherless, I shall be
glad to take the eldest of them, if it would be any convenience to her
and to you?'
Mrs. Hall promised that her son's widow should he told of the offer, and
they parted. He retired down the rooty slope and disappeared in the
direction of the inn, where he informed Johns of the circumstances.
Meanwhile Mrs. Hall had entered the house, Sally was downstairs in the
sitting-room alone, and her mother explained to her that Darton had
readily assented to the postponement.
'No doubt he has,' said Sally, with sad emphasis. 'It is not put off for
a week, or a month, or a year. I shall never marry him, and she will!'
IV
Time passed, and the household on the Knap became again serene under the
composing influences of daily routine. A desultory, very desultory
correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton, who, not quite
knowing how to take her petulant words on the night of her brother's
death, had continued passive thus long. Helena and her children remained
at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and Darton therefore deemed it
advisable to stay away.
One day, seven months later on, when Mr. Darton was as usual at his
farm, twenty miles from Hintock, a note reached him from Helena. She
thanked him for his kind offer about her children, which her mother-in-
law had duly communicated, and stated that she would be glad to accept
it as regarded the eldest, the boy. Helena had, in truth, good need to
do so, for her uncle had left her penniless, and all application to some
relatives in the north had failed. There was, besides, as she said, no
good school near Hintock to which she could send the child.
On a fine summer day the boy came. He was accompanied half-way by Sally
and his mother-to the 'White Horse,' at Chalk Newton-where he was handed
over to Darton's bailiff in a shining spring-cart, who met them there.
He was entered as a day-scholar at a popular school at Casterbridge,
three or four miles from Darton's, having first been taught by Darton to
ride a forest-pony, on which he cantered to and from the aforesaid fount
of knowledge, and (as Darton hoped) brought away a promising headful of
the same at each diurnal expedition. The thoughtful taciturnity into
which Darton had latterly fallen was quite dissipated by the presence of
this boy.
When the Christmas holidays came it was arranged that he should spend
them with his mother. The journey was, for some reason or other,
performed in two stages, as at his coming, except that Darton in person
took the place of the bailiff, and that the boy and himself rode on
horseback.
Reaching the renowned 'White Horse,' Darton inquired if Miss and young
Mrs. Hall were there to meet little Philip (as they had agreed to be).
He was answered by the appearance of Helena alone at the door.
'At the last moment Sally would not come,' she faltered.
That meeting practically settled the point towards which these long-
severed persons were converging. But nothing was broached about it for
some time yet. Sally Hall had, in fact, imparted the first decisive
motion to events by refusing to accompany Helena. She soon gave them a
second move by writing the following note
'[Private.]
'DEAR CHARLES,-Living here so long and intimately with Helena, I have
naturally learnt her history, especially that of it which refers to you.
I am sure she would accept you as a husband at the proper time, and I
think you ought to give her the opportunity. You inquire in an old note
if I am sorry that I showed temper (which it wasn't) that night when I
heard you talking to her. No, Charles, I am not sorry at all for what I
said then.-Yours sincerely, SALLY HALL.'
Thus set in train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its original
quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time. In the following July, Darton
went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil the bridal
office which had been in abeyance since the previous January
twelvemonths.
'With all my heart, man o' constancy!' said Dairyman Johns warmly. 'I've
lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot weather, 'tis
true, but I'll do your business as well as them that look better. There
be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet, thank God, and they'll
take off the roughest o' my edge. I'll compliment her. "Better late than
never, Sally Hall," I'll say.'
'It is not Sally,' said Darton hurriedly. 'It is young Mrs. Hall.'
Japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture of
reproachful dismay. 'Not Sally?' he said. 'Why not Sally? I can't
believe it! Young Mrs. Hall! Well, well-where's your wisdom?'
Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be reconciled.
'She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he cried. 'And now to
let her go!'
'But I suppose I can marry where I like,' said Darton.
'H'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively. 'This
don't become you, Charles-it really do not. If I had done such a thing
you would have sworn I was a curst no'thern fool to be drawn off the
scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.'
Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that
the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before.
Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had flatly
declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as
Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that the words
which had divided them were not likely to be explained away or softened
down.
A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a simple
matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined the boy who
had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.
For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness and
satisfaction. There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly
mended as was humanly possible. But after a season the stream of events
followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries. Helena was
a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and
since the time that he had originally known her-eight or ten years
before-she had been severely tried. She had loved herself out, in short,
and was now occasionally given to moping. Sometimes she spoke
regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of
comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the
unlucky Hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the
first fatal step of clandestinely marrying him. She did not care to
please such people as those with whom she was thrown as a thriving
farmer's wife. She allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural
domesticity to glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for
the children Darton's house would have seemed but little brighter than
it had been before.
This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes declared
to himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early deviations of
the heart by harking back to the old point mostly failed of success.
'Perhaps Johns was right,' he would say. 'I should have gone on with
Sally. Better go with the tide and make the best of its course than stem
it at the risk of a capsize.' But he kept these unmelodious thoughts to
himself, and was outwardly considerate and kind.
This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a year
and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of the woman
they concerned. When she was in her grave he thought better of her than
when she had been alive; the farm was a worse place without her than
with her, after all. No woman short of divine could have gone through
such an experience as hers with her first husband without becoming a
little soured. Her stagnant sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable
manner, had covered a heart frank and well meaning, and originally
hopeful and warm. She left him a tiny red infant in white wrappings. To
make life as easy as possible to this touching object became at once his
care.
As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see feasibility
in a scheme which pleased him. Revolving the experiment which he had
hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained wisdom from his
mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.
What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover. Once more he had
opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by
returning to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her mother's
roof at Hintock. Helena had been a woman to lend pathos and refinement
to a home; Sally was the woman to brighten it. She would not, as Helena
did, despise the rural simplicities of a farmer's fireside. Moreover,
she had a pre-eminent qualification for Darton's household; no other
woman could make so desirable a mother to her brother's two children and
Darton's one as Sally-while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more
promising husband for Sally than he had ever been when liable to
reminders from an uncured sentimental wound.
Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his
reparative designs might have been delayed for some time. But there came
a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over that
former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should postpone
longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of that attempt.
He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with a
younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and rode
off. To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he would fain
have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him. But Johns, alas!
was missing. His removal to the other side of the county had left
unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him and Darton; and
though Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as Johns had probably
forgiven Darton, the effort of reunion in present circumstances was one
not likely to be made.
He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his
former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode,
instead of the words of a companion. The sun went down; the boughs
appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked men
with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir,' and Darton replied
'Good-night' right heartily.
By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as it
had been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post. Darton
made no mistake this time. 'Nor shall I be able to mistake, thank
Heaven, when I arrive,' he murmured. It gave him peculiar satisfaction
to think that the proposed marriage, like his first, was of the nature
of setting in order things long awry, and not a momentary freak of
fancy.
Nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not half
its former length. Though dark, it was only between five and six o'clock
when the bulky chimneys of Mrs. Hall's residence appeared in view behind
the sycamore-tree. On second thoughts he retreated and put up at the
ale-house as in former time; and when he had plumed himself before the
inn mirror, called for something to drink, and smoothed out the
incipient wrinkles of care, he walked on to the Knap with a quick step.
V
That evening Sally was making 'pinners' for the milkers, who were now
increased by two, for her mother and herself no longer joined in milking
the cows themselves. But upon the whole there was little change in the
household economy, and not much in its appearance, beyond such minor
particulars as that the crack over the window, which had been a hundred
years coming, was a trifle wider; that the beams were a shade blacker;
that the influence of modernism had supplanted the open chimney corner
by a grate; that Rebekah, who had worn a cap when she had plenty of
hair, had left it off now she had scarce any, because it was reported
that caps were not fashionable; and that Sally's face had naturally
assumed a more womanly and experienced cast.
Mrs. Hall was actually lifting coals with the tongs, as she had used to
do.
'Five years ago this very night, if I am not mistaken-' she said, laying
on an ember.
'Not this very night-though 'twas one night this week,' said the correct
Sally.
'Well, 'tis near enough. Five years ago Mr. Darton came to marry you,
and my poor boy Phil came home to die.' She sighed. 'Ah, Sally,' she
presently said, 'if you had managed well Mr. Darton would have had you,
Helena or none.'
'Don't be sentimental about that, mother,' begged Sally. 'I didn't care
to manage well in such a case. Though I liked him, I wasn't so anxious.
I would never have married the man in the midst of such a hitch as that
was,' she added with decision; 'and I don't think I would if he were to
ask me now.'
'I am not sure about that, unless you have another in your eye.'
'I wouldn't; and I'll tell you why. I could hardly marry him for love at
this time o' day. And as we've quite enough to live on if we give up the
dairy to-morrow, I should have no need to marry for any meaner reason .
. . I am quite happy enough as I am, and there's an end of it.'
Now it was not long after this dialogue that there came a mild rap at
the door, and in a moment there entered Rebekah, looking as though a
ghost had arrived. The fact was that that accomplished skimmer and
churner (now a resident in the house) had overheard the desultory
observations between mother and daughter, and on opening the door to Mr.
Darton thought the coincidence must have a grisly meaning in it. Mrs.
Hall welcomed the farmer with warm surprise, as did Sally, and for a
moment they rather wanted words.
'Can you push up the chimney-crook for me, Mr Darton? the notches
hitch,' said the matron. He did it, and the homely little act bridged
over the awkward consciousness that he had been a stranger for four
years.
Mrs. Hall soon saw what he had come for, and left the principals
together while she went to prepare him a late tea, smiling at Sally's
recent hasty assertions of indifference, when she saw how civil Sally
was. When tea was ready she joined them. She fancied that Darton did not
look so confident as when he had arrived; but Sally was quite light-
hearted, and the meal passed pleasantly.
About seven he took his leave of them. Mrs. Hall went as far as the door
to light him down the slope. On the doorstep he said frankly-'I came to
ask your daughter to marry me; chose the night and everything, with an
eye to a favourable answer. But she won't.'
'Then she's a very ungrateful girl!' emphatically said Mrs. Hall.
Darton paused to shape his sentence, and asked, 'I-I suppose there's
nobody else more favoured?'
'I can't say that there is, or that there isn't,' answered Mrs. Hall.
'She's private in some things. I'm on your side, however, Mr. Darton,
and I'll talk to her.'
'Thank 'ee, thank 'ee!' said the farmer in a gayer accent; and with this
assurance the not very satisfactory visit came to an end. Darton
descended the roots of the sycamore, the light was withdrawn, and the
door closed. At the bottom of the slope he nearly ran against a man
about to ascend.
'Can a jack-o'-lent believe his few senses on such a dark night, or
can't he?' exclaimed one whose utterance Darton recognized in a moment,
despite its unexpectedness. 'I dare not swear he can, though I fain
would!' The speaker was Johns.
Darton said he was glad of this opportunity, bad as it was, of putting
an end to the silence of years, and asked the dairyman what he was
travelling that way for.
Japheth showed the old jovial confidence in a moment. 'I'm going to see
your-relations-as they always seem to me,' he said-'Mrs. Hall and Sally.
Well, Charles, the fact is I find the natural barbarousness of man is
much increased by a bachelor life, and, as your leavings were always
good enough for me, I'm trying civilization here.' He nodded towards the
house.
'Not with Sally-to marry her?' said Darton, feeling something like a
rill of ice water between his shoulders.
'Yes, by the help of Providence and my personal charms. And I think I
shall get her. I am this road every week-my present dairy is only four
miles off, you know, and I see her through the window. 'Tis rather odd
that I was going to speak practical to-night to her for the first time.
You've just called?'
'Yes, for a short while. But she didn't say a word about you.'
'A good sign, a good sign. Now that decides me. I'll swing the mallet
and get her answer this very night as I planned.'
A few more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a
slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. Johns promised to
write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house
and tree. A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and all
was dark again.
'Happy Japheth!' said Darton. 'This then is the explanation!'
He determined to return home that night. In a quarter of an hour he
passed out of the village, and the next day went about his swede-lifting
and storing as if nothing had occurred.
He waited and waited to hear from Johns whether the wedding-day was
fixed: but no letter came. He learnt not a single particular till,
meeting Johns one day at a horse-auction, Darton exclaimed genially-
rather more genially than he felt-'When is the joyful day to be?'
To his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous in
Johns. 'Not at all,' he said, in a very subdued tone. ''Tis a bad job;
she won't have me.'
Darton held his breath till he said with treacherous solicitude, 'Try
again-'tis coyness.'
'O no,' said Johns decisively. 'There's been none of that. We talked it
over dozens of times in the most fair and square way. She tells me
plainly, I don't suit her. 'Twould be simply annoying her to ask her
again. Ah, Charles, you threw a prize away when you let her slip five
years ago.'
'I did-I did,' said Darton.
He returned from that auction with a new set of feelings in play. He had
certainly made a surprising mistake in thinking Johns his successful
rival. It really seemed as if he might hope for Sally after all.
This time, being rather pressed by business, Darton had recourse to pen-
and-ink, and wrote her as manly and straightforward a proposal as any
woman could wish to receive. The reply came promptly:-
'DEAR MR. DARTON,-I am as sensible as any woman can be of the goodness
that leads you to make me this offer a second time. Better women than I
would be proud of the honour, for when I read your nice long speeches on
mangold-wurzel, and such like topics, at the Casterbridge Farmers' Club,
I do feel it an honour, I assure you. But my answer is just the same as
before. I will not try to explain what, in truth, I cannot explain-my
reasons; I will simply say that I must decline to be married to you.
With good wishes as in former times, I am, your faithful friend, 'SALLY
HALL.'
Darton dropped the letter hopelessly. Beyond the negative, there was
just a possibility of sarcasm in it-'nice long speeches on mangold-
wurzel' had a suspicious sound. However, sarcasm or none, there was the
answer, and he had to be content.
He proceeded to seek relief in a business which at this time engrossed
much of his attention-that of clearing up a curious mistake just current
in the county, that he had been nearly ruined by the recent failure of a
local bank. A farmer named Darton had lost heavily, and the similarity
of name had probably led to the error. Belief in it was so persistent
that it demanded several days of letter-writing to set matters straight,
and persuade the world that he was as solvent as ever he had been in his
life. He had hardly concluded this worrying task when, to his delight,
another letter arrived in the handwriting of Sally.
Darton tore it open; it was very short.
'DEAR MR. DARTON,-We have been so alarmed these last few days by the
report that you were ruined by the stoppage of \x97's Bank, that, now it is
contradicted I hasten, by my mother's wish, to say how truly glad we are
to find there is no foundation for the report. After your kindness to my
poor brother's children, I can do no less than write at such a moment.
We had a letter from each of them a few days ago.-Your faithful friend,
'SALLY HALL.'
'Mercenary little woman!' said Darton to himself with a smile. 'Then
that was the secret of her refusal this time-she thought I was ruined.'
Now, such was Darton, that as hours went on he could not help feeling
too generously towards Sally to condemn her in this. What did he want in
a wife? he asked himself. Love and integrity. What next? Worldly wisdom.
And was there really more than worldly wisdom in her refusal to go
aboard a sinking ship? She now knew it was otherwise. 'Begad,' he said,
'I'll try her again.'
The fact was he had so set his heart upon Sally, and Sally alone, that
nothing was to be allowed to baulk him; and his reasoning was purely
formal.
Anniversaries having been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright day
late in May-a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its trusting,
foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for evermore. As he
rode through Long-Ash Lane it was scarce recognizable as the track of
his two winter journeys. No mistake could be made now, even with his
eyes shut. The cuckoo's note was at its best, between April
tentativeness and midsummer decrepitude, and the reptiles in the sun
behaved as winningly as kittens on a hearth. Though afternoon, and about
the same time as on the last occasion, it was broad day and sunshine
when he entered Hintock, and the details of the Knap dairy- house were
visible far up the road. He saw Sally in the garden, and was set
vibrating. He had first intended to go on to the inn; but 'No,' he said;
'I'll tie my horse to the garden-gate. If all goes well it can soon be
taken round: if not, I mount and ride away'
The tall shade of the horseman darkened the room in which Mrs. Hall sat,
and made her start, for he had ridden by a side path to the top of the
slope, where riders seldom came. In a few seconds he was in the garden
with Sally.
Five-ay, three minutes-did the business at the back of that row of bees.
Though spring had come, and heavenly blue consecrated the scene, Darton
succeeded not. 'No,' said Sally firmly. 'I will never, never marry you,
Mr. Darton. I would have done it once; but now I never can.'
'But!'-implored Mr. Darton. And with a burst of real eloquence he went
on to declare all sorts of things that he would do for her. He would
drive her to see her mother every week-take her to London-settle so much
money upon her-Heaven knows what he did not promise, suggest, and tempt
her with. But it availed nothing. She interposed with a stout negative,
which closed the course of his argument like an iron gate across a
highway. Darton paused.
'Then,' said he simply, 'you hadn't heard of my supposed failure when
you declined last time?'
'I had not,' she said. 'But if I had 'twould have been all the same.'
'And 'tis not because of any soreness from my slighting you years ago?'
'No. That soreness is long past.'
'Ah-then you despise me, Sally?'
'No,' she slowly answered. 'I don't altogether despise you. I don't
think you quite such a hero as I once did-that's all. The truth is, I am
happy enough as I am; and I don't mean to marry at all. Now, may I ask a
favour, sir?' She spoke with an ineffable charm, which, whenever he
thought of it, made him curse his loss of her as long as he lived.
'To any extent.'
'Please do not put this question to me any more. Friends as long as you
like, but lovers and married never.'
'I never will,' said Darton. 'Not if I live a hundred years.'
And he never did. That he had worn out his welcome in her heart was only
too plain.
When his step-children had grown up, and were placed out in life, all
communication between Darton and the Hall family ceased. It was only by
chance that, years after, he learnt that Sally, notwithstanding the
solicitations her attractions drew down upon her, had refused several
offers of marriage, and steadily adhered to her purpose of leading a
single life
May 1884.
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
I-HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED
Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young man
came temporarily in his stead. It was on the thirteenth of January 183-
that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry
into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the
inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted
with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise,
though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient
to steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure
blood who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in
addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in
the morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea-as many
as a hundred-and-ten people more, all told, and including the parish-
clerk in the winter-time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe
who passed up the street at seven o'clock-which, to be just to him, he
was never anxious to do.
It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated
population-puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district around
Nether-Moynton: how could it be that a parish containing fifteen score
of strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly thirteen score of well-
matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-twenty score adults in all?
The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came in
contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of his
sufficiency. It is said that at this time of his life his eyes were
affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was curly,
and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable youth, who
won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard him, and
caused them to say, 'Why didn't we know of this before he came, that we
might have gied him a warmer welcome!'
The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected, and
expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and the
rest of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as indifferent about
his advent as if they had been the soundest church-going parishioners in
the country, and he their true and appointed parson. Thus when Stockdale
set foot in the place nobody had secured a lodging for him, and though
his journey had given him a bad cold in the head, he was forced to
attend to that business himself. On inquiry he learnt that the only
possible accommodation in the village would be found at the house of one
Mrs. Lizzy Newberry, at the upper end of the street.
It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him who
Mrs. Newberry might be.
The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband, because
he was dead. Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do man enough,
as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in a decline. As
regarded Mrs. Newberry's serious side, Stockdale gathered that she was
one of the trimmers who went to church and chapel both.
'I'll go there,' said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of purely
sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.
'She's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or curates,
or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad dubiously.
'Ah, that may be a promising sign: I'll call. Or no; just you go up and
ask first if she can find room for me. I have to see one or two persons
on another matter. You will find me down at the carrier's.'
In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs. Newberry
would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon Stockdale called
at the house.
It stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and comfortable.
He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made arrangements to come the same
night, since there was no inn in the place, and he wished to house
himself as soon as possible; the village being a local centre from which
he was to radiate at once to the different small chapels in the
neighbourhood. He forthwith sent his luggage to Mrs. Newberry's from the
carrier's, where he had taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to
his temporary home.
As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the
door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps
scudding away like mice into the back quarters. He advanced to the
parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was
scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden
areas, leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the table-
legs, playing with brass furniture. But the room looked snug and
cheerful. The firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the knobs and
handles, and lurking in great strength on the under surface of the
chimney-piece. A deep arm-chair, covered with horsehair, and studded
with a countless throng of brass nails, was pulled up on one side of the
fireplace. The tea-things were on the table, the teapot cover was open,
and a little hand-bell had been laid at that precise point towards which
a person seated in the great chair might be expected instinctively to
stretch his hand.
Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus
far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell. A little girl crept
in at the summons, and made tea for him. Her name, she said, was Marther
Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road and village
generally. Before Stockdale had got far with his meal, a tap sounded on
the door behind him, and on his telling the inquirer to come in, a
rustle of garments caused him to turn his head. He saw before him a fine
and extremely well-made young woman, with dark hair, a wide, sensible,
beautiful forehead, eyes that warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth
that was in itself a picture to all appreciative souls.
'Can I get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a step
or two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her hand waving
the door by its edge.
'Nothing, thank you,' said Stockdale, thinking less of what he replied
than of what might be her relation to the household.
'You are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he had
not considered his answer.
He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all there.
'Quite sure, Miss Newberry,' he said.
'It is Mrs. Newberry,' she said. 'Lizzy Newberry, I used to be Lizzy
Simpkins.'
'O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.' And before he had occasion to say
more she left the room.
Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the
table. 'Whose house is this, my little woman,' said he.
'Mrs. Lizzy Newberry's, sir.'
'Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?'
'No. That's Mrs. Newberry's mother. It was Mrs. Newberry who comed in to
you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-looking.'
Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she came
again. 'I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,' she said. The minister stood
up in acknowledgment of the honour. 'I am afraid little Marther might
not make you understand. What will you have for supper?-there's cold
rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.'
Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper was
laid. He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the door
again. The minister had already learnt that this particular rhythm in
taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and the doomed
young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of receptive
blandness.
'We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale-I quite forgot to mention
it just now. Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring it up?'
Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to say
that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up herself; but
when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry of the speech,
perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a minister. In three
minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great surprise, only in the
hands of Martha Sarah. Stockdale was disappointed, which perhaps it was
intended that he should be.
He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs.
Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.
Stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not
appearing when expected. It happened that the cold in the head from
which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of night,
and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of sneezing
which he could not anyhow repress.
Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity. 'Your cold is very bad to-night, Mr.
Stockdale.'
Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.
'And I've a good mind'-she added archly, looking at the cheerless glass
of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going to drink.
'Yes, Mrs. Newberry?'
'I've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure it
than that cold stuff.'
'Well,' said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no inn
here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it will
do.'
To this she replied, 'There is something better, not far off, though not
in the house. I really think you must try it, or you may be ill. Yes,
Mr. Stockdale, you shall.' She held up her finger, seeing that he was
about to speak. 'Don't ask what it is; wait, and you shall see.'
Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood. Presently she
returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'I am so sorry, but you
must help me to get it. Mother has gone to bed. Will you wrap yourself
up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with you?'
Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving
for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even
tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide through
the back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the boundary was
a wall. This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale discerned in the
night shades several grey headstones, and the outlines of the church
roof and tower.
'It is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank which
abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the stonework,
and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much higher, as is
the manner of graveyards to be. Stockdale did the same, and followed her
in the dusk across the irregular ground till they came to the tower
door, which, when they had entered, she softly closed behind them.
'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.
'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.
Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern, which
the minister had not noticed that she carried at all. The light showed
them to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under which lay a heap
of lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of decayed framework,
pews, panels, and pieces of flooring, that from time to time had been
removed from their original fixings in the body of the edifice and
replaced by new.
'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said, holding
the lantern over her head to light him better. 'Or will you take the
lantern while I move them?'
'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he
uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood
hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy waggon-
wheel.
When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered
what he would say.
'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.
'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply. He was an inland man, the son of
highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the
ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such
articles were there.
'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic tone
of candour that was not without a touch of irony.
Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving. 'Not smugglers'
liquor?' he said.
'Yes,' said she. 'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come
over in the dark from France.'
In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at
the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and these
little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as
turnips. So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm
when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike Lizzy first as
ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good impression that she
wished to produce upon him.
'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a
gentle, apologetic voice. 'It has been their practice for generations,
and they think it no harm. Now, will you roll out one of the tubs?'
'What to do with it?' said the minister.
'To draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered. 'It is so
'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy. O, it
is all right about our taking it. I may have what I like; the owner of
the tubs says so. I ought to have had some in the house, and then I
shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but I drink none myself, and so
I often forget to keep it indoors.'
'You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not inform
where their hiding-place is?'
'Well, no; not that particularly; but I may take any if I want it. So
help yourself.'
'I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the
minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the
performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into the
middle of the tower floor. 'How do you wish me to get it out-with a
gimlet, I suppose?'
'No, I'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up
with her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer. 'You must never do
these things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and when the
buyers pour out the brandy that would tell them that the tub had been
broached. An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly closes up again. Now
tap one of the hoops forward.'
Stockdale took the hammer and did so.
'Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.'
He made the hole as directed. 'It won't run out,' he said.
'O yes it will,' said she. 'Take the tub between your knees, and squeeze
the heads; and I'll hold the cup.'
Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which
seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream. When the cup was
full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped. 'Now we must
fill up the keg with water,' said Lizzy, 'or it will cluck like forty
hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not full.'
'But they tell you you may take it?'
'Yes, the smugglers: but the buyers must not know that the smugglers
have been kind to me at their expense.'
'I see,' said Stockdale doubtfully. 'I much question the honesty of this
proceeding.'
By her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he
went through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to press,
she produced a bottle of water, from which she took mouthfuls, conveying
each to the keg by putting her pretty lips to the hole, where it was
sucked in at each recovery of the cask from pressure. When it was again
full he plugged the hole, knocked the hoop down to its place, and buried
the tub in the lumber as before.
'Aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they
recrossed the churchyard.
'O no; they are not afraid of that. I couldn't do such a thing.'
'They have put you into a very awkward corner,' said Stockdale
emphatically. 'You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes feel
that it is your duty to inform-really you must.'
'Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my
first husband-' She stopped, and there was some confusion in her voice.
Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not at once
discern why she paused: but at last he did perceive that the words were
a slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first husband' by accident
unless she had thought pretty frequently of a second. He felt for her
confusion, and allowed her time to recover and proceed. 'My husband,'
she said, in a self-corrected tone, 'used to know of their doings, and
so did my father, and kept the secret. I cannot inform, in fact, against
anybody.'
'I see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far into
the moral of things. 'And it is very cruel that you should be tossed and
tantalized between your memories and your conscience. I do hope, Mrs.
Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this unpleasant
position.'
'Well, I don't just now,' she murmured.
By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house, where
she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own
reflections. He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself whether
he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining light, even
though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were quite justified in
doing this thing. A sneeze settled the question; and he found that when
the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition of twice or thrice the
quantity of water, it was one of the prettiest cures for a cold in the
head that he had ever known, particularly at this chilly time of the
year.
Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and
meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and longed
for the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again. He then felt
that, though chronologically at a short distance, it would in an
emotional sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked
restlessly round the room. His eye was attracted by a framed and glazed
sampler in which a running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks surrounded
the following pretty bit of sentiment:-
'Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive, Here's my work while I'm alive;
Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed, Here's my work when I am dead.
'Lizzy Simpkins. Fear God. Honour the King.
'Aged 11 years.
''Tis hers,' he said to himself. 'Heavens, how I like that name!'
Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to Zenobia
would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came again upon
the door; and the minister started as her face appeared yet another
time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious would have
refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his feelings by her
seductive eyes.
'Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of your
cold?'
The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for
countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-
chastisement. 'No, I thank you,' he said firmly; 'it is not necessary. I
have never been used to one in my life, and it would be giving way to
luxury too far.'
'Then I won't insist,' she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing
instantly.
Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had chosen
to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out of bed and
endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days. However, he consoled
himself with what was in truth a rare consolation for a budding lover,
that he was under the same roof with Lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take
a poetical view of the term lodger; and that he would certainly see her
on the morrow.
The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone. He had
never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did that day,
and punctually at eight o'clock, after a short walk, to reconnoitre the
premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling. Breakfast passed, and
Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came voluntarily as on the night
before to inquire if there were other wants which he had not mentioned,
and which she would attempt to gratify. He was disappointed, and went
out, hoping to see her at dinner. Dinner time came; he sat down to the
meal, finished it, lingered on for a whole hour, although two new
teachers were at that moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him
by appointment. It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his
way down the lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see
her in the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-
broaching in the neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he resolved
to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water should be
introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like all the hens in
Christendom. But nothing could disguise the fact that it was a queer
business; and his countenance fell when he thought how much more his
mind was interested in that matter than in his serious duties.
However, compunction vanished with the decline of day. Night came, and
his tea and supper; but no Lizzy Newberry, and no sweet temptations. At
last the minister could bear it no longer, and said to his quaint little
attendant, 'Where is Mrs. Newberry to-day?' judiciously handing a penny
as he spoke.
'She's busy,' said Martha.
'Anything serious happened?' he asked, handing another penny, and
revealing yet additional pennies in the background.
'O no-nothing at all!' said she, with breathless confidence. 'Nothing
ever happens to her. She's only biding upstairs in bed because 'tis her
way sometimes.'
Being a young man of some honour, he would not question further, and
assuming that Lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight ailment,
in spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed dissatisfied, not
even setting eyes on old Mrs. Simpkins. 'I said last night that I should
see her to-morrow,' he reflected; 'but that was not to be!'
Next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of the
stairs in the morning, and being favoured by a visit or two from her
during the day-once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries about his
comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to place a bunch
of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to renew them when they
drooped. On these occasions there was something in her smile which
showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must
be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness,
and savoured more of pride than of vanity.
As for Stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited
capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not
denied to Dissenters. He set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for the
space of one hour and a half, after which he found it was useless to
struggle further, and gave himself up to the situation. 'The other
minister will be here in a month,' he said to himself when sitting over
the fire. 'Then I shall be off, and she will distract my mind no more! .
. . And then, shall I go on living by myself for ever? No; when my two
years of probation are finished, I shall have a furnished house to live
in, with a varnished door and a brass knocker; and I'll march straight
back to her, and ask her flat, as soon as the last plate is on the
dresser!
Thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young Stockdale, during which
time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever since the
beginning of history. He saw the object of attachment several times one
day, did not see her at all the next, met her when he least expected to
do so, missed her when hints and signs as to where she should be at a
given hour almost amounted to an appointment. This mild coquetry was
perhaps fair enough under the circumstances of their being so closely
lodged, and Stockdale put up with it as philosophically as he was able.
Being in her own house, she could, after vexing him or disappointing him
of her presence, easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with
those little attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her
power to bestow. When he had waited indoors half the day to see her, and
on finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the
dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore
equilibrium in the evening with 'Mr. Stockdale, I have fancied you must
feel draught o' nights from your bedroom window, and so I have been
putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;' or, 'I
noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, Mr. Stockdale. Depend
upon it that cold is hanging about you yet; I am sure it is-I have
thought of it continually; and you must let me make a posset for you.'
Sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged, chairs
placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented with the few
fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this season, so as to
add a novelty to the room. At times she would be standing on a chair
outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of the monthly rose which
the winter wind had blown down; and of course he stepped forward to
assist her, when their hands got mixed in passing the shreds and nails.
Thus they became friends again after a disagreement. She would utter on
these occasions some pretty and deprecatory remark on the necessity of
her troubling him anew; and he would straightway say that he would do a
hundred times as much for her if she should so require.
II-HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN
Matters being in this advancing state, Stockdale was rather surprised
one cloudy evening, while sitting in his room, at hearing her speak in
low tones of expostulation to some one at the door. It was nearly dark,
but the shutters were not yet closed, nor the candles lighted; and
Stockdale was tempted to stretch his head towards the window. He saw
outside the door a young man in clothes of a whitish colour, and upon
reflection judged their wearer to be the well-built and rather handsome
miller who lived below. The miller's voice was alternately low and firm,
and sometimes it reached the level of positive entreaty; but what the
words were Stockdale could in no way hear.
Before the colloquy had ended, the minister's attention was attracted by
a second incident. Opposite Lizzy's home grew a clump of laurels,
forming a thick and permanent shade. One of the laurel boughs now
quivered against the light background of sky, and in a moment the head
of a man peered out, and remained still. He seemed to be also much
interested in the conversation at the door, and was plainly lingering
there to watch and listen. Had Stockdale stood in any other relation to
Lizzy than that of a lover, he might have gone out and investigated the
meaning of this: but being as yet but an unprivileged ally, he did
nothing more than stand up and show himself against the firelight,
whereupon the listener disappeared, and Lizzy and the miller spoke in
lower tones.
Stockdale was made so uneasy by the circumstance, that as soon as the
miller was gone, he said, 'Mrs. Newberry, are you aware that you were
watched just now, and your conversation heard?'
'When?' she said.
'When you were talking to that miller. A man was looking from the
laurel-tree as jealously as if he could have eaten you.'
She showed more concern than the trifling event seemed to demand, and he
added, 'Perhaps you were talking of things you did not wish to be
overheard?'
'I was talking only on business,' she said.
'Lizzy, be frank!' said the young man. 'If it was only on business, why
should anybody wish to listen to you?'
She looked curiously at him. 'What else do you think it could be, then?'
'Well-the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to
amuse an eavesdropper.'
'Ah yes,' she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation. 'Well, my
cousin Owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and then,
that's true; but he was not speaking of it then. I wish he had been
speaking of it, with all my heart. It would have been much less serious
for me.'
'O Mrs. Newberry!'
'It would. Not that I should ha' chimed in with him, of course. I wish
it for other reasons. I am glad, Mr. Stockdale, that you have told me of
that listener. It is a timely warning, and I must see my cousin again.'
'But don't go away till I have spoken,' said the minister. 'I'll out
with it at once, and make no more ado. Let it be Yes or No between us,
Lizzy; please do!' And he held out his hand, in which she freely allowed
her own to rest, but without speaking.
'You mean Yes by that?' he asked, after waiting a while.
'You may be my sweetheart, if you will.'
'Why not say at once you will wait for me until I have a house and can
come back to marry you.'
'Because I am thinking-thinking of something else,' she said with
embarrassment. 'It all comes upon me at once, and I must settle one
thing at a time.'
'At any rate, dear Lizzy, you can assure me that the miller shall not be
allowed to speak to you except on business? You have never directly
encouraged him?'
She parried the question by saying, 'You see, he and his party have been
in the habit of leaving things on my premises sometimes, and as I have
not denied him, it makes him rather forward.'
'Things-what things?'
'Tubs-they are called Things here.'
'But why don't you deny him, my dear Lizzy?'
'I cannot well.'
'You are too timid. It is unfair of him to impose so upon you, and get
your good name into danger by his smuggling tricks. Promise me that the
next time he wants to leave his tubs here you will let me roll them into
the street?'
She shook her head. 'I would not venture to offend the neighbours so
much as that,' said she, 'or do anything that would be so likely to put
poor Owlett into the hands of the excisemen.'
Stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken generosity
when it extended to assisting those who cheated the king of his dues.
'At any rate, you will let me make him keep his distance as your lover,
and tell him flatly that you are not for him?'
'Please not, at present,' she said. 'I don't wish to offend my old
neighbours. It is not only Owlett who is concerned.'
'This is too bad,' said Stockdale impatiently.
'On my honour, I won't encourage him as my lover,' Lizzy answered
earnestly. 'A reasonable man will be satisfied with that.'
'Well, so I am,' said Stockdale, his countenance clearing.
III-THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT
Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the life of
his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but scarcely ever
thought of before. It was that she was markedly irregular in her hours
of rising. For a week or two she would be tolerably punctual, reaching
the ground-floor within a few minutes of half-past seven. Then suddenly
she would not be visible till twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four
days in succession; and twice he had certain proof that she did not
leave her room till half-past three in the afternoon. The second time
that this extreme lateness came under his notice was on a day when he
had particularly wished to consult with her about his future movements;
and he concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache,
or other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid meeting
and talking to him, which he could hardly believe. The former
supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying, some days
later, when they were speaking on a question of health, that she had
never had a moment's heaviness, headache, or illness of any kind since
the previous January twelvemonth.
'I am glad to hear it,' said he. 'I thought quite otherwise.'
'What, do I look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the
impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a
moment.
'Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged to
keep your room through the best part of the day.'
'O, as for that-it means nothing,' she murmured, with a look which some
might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he liked to
see upon her. 'It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.'
'Never!'
'It is, I tell you. When I stay in my room till half-past three in the
afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till three, or I
shouldn't have stayed there.'
'It is dreadful,' said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects of
such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it become a
habit of everyday occurrence.
'But then,' she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, 'it only
happens when I stay awake all night. I don't go to sleep till five or
six in the morning sometimes.'
'Ah, that's another matter,' said Stockdale. 'Sleeplessness to such an
alarming extent is real illness. Have you spoken to a doctor?'
'O no-there is no need for doing that-it is all natural to me.' And she
went away without further remark.
Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of her
sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was sitting in
his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which occupied him
perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other members of the
household had retired. He did not get to bed till one o'clock. Before he
had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the front door, first rather
timidly performed, and then louder. Nobody answered it, and the person
knocked again. As the house still remained undisturbed, Stockdale got
out of bed, went to his window, which overlooked the door, and opening
it, asked who was there.
A young woman's voice replied that Susan Wallis was there, and that she
had come to ask if Mrs. Newberry could give her some mustard to make a
plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest.
The minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act in
person. 'I will call Mrs. Newberry,' he said. Partly dressing himself;
he went along the passage and tapped at Lizzy's door. She did not
answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of sleep, he
thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its moving ajar
under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed to. As there was
now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked no longer, but said in
firm tones, 'Mrs. Newberry, you are wanted.'
The room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from any
part of it. Stockdale now sent a positive shout through the open space
of the door: 'Mrs. Newberry!'-still no answer, or movement of any kind
within. Then he heard sounds from the opposite room, that of Lizzy's
mother, as if she had been aroused by his uproar though Lizzy had not,
and was dressing herself hastily. Stockdale softly closed the younger
woman's door and went on to the other, which was opened by Mrs. Simpkins
before he could reach it. She was in her ordinary clothes, and had a
light in her hand.
'What's the person calling about?' she said in alarm.
Stockdale told the girl's errand, adding seriously, 'I cannot wake Mrs.
Newberry.'
'It is no matter,' said her mother. 'I can let the girl have what she
wants as well as my daughter.' And she came out of the room and went
downstairs.
Stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to Mrs.
Simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, 'I suppose there is
nothing the matter with Mrs. Newberry, that I could not wake her?'
'O no,' said the old lady hastily. 'Nothing at all.'
Still the minister was not satisfied. 'Will you go in and see?' he said.
'I should be much more at ease.'
Mrs. Simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter's room,
and came out again almost instantly. 'There is nothing at all the matter
with Lizzy,' she said; and descended again to attend to the applicant,
who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during this interval.
Stockdale went into his room and lay down as before. He heard Lizzy's
mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the murmured
discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for the medicament
required. The girl departed, the door was fastened, Mrs. Simpkins came
upstairs, and the house was again in silence. Still the minister did not
fall asleep. He could not get rid of a singular suspicion, which was all
the more harassing in being, if true, the most unaccountable thing
within his experience. That Lizzy Newberry was in her bedroom when he
made such a clamour at the door he could not possibly convince himself;
notwithstanding that he had heard her come upstairs at the usual time,
go into her chamber, and shut herself up in the usual way. Yet all
reason was so much against her being elsewhere, that he was constrained
to go back again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had
heard neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud
enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.
Before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and did
not awake till day. He saw nothing of Mrs. Newberry in the morning,
before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to do when the
weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual, he took no notice
of it. At breakfast-time he knew that she was not far off by hearing her
in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of her person, that back
apartment being rigorously closed against his eyes, she seemed to be
talking, ordering, and bustling about among the pots and skimmers in so
ordinary a manner, that there was no reason for his wasting more time in
fruitless surmise.
The minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized
sermons were not improved thereby. Already he often said Romans for
Corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped metres,
that hitherto had always been skipped, because the congregation could
not raise a tune to fit them. He fully resolved that as soon as his few
weeks of stay approached their end he would cut the matter short, and
commit himself by proposing a definite engagement, repenting at leisure
if necessary.
With this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her
mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before dark,
the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they might
return home unseen. She consented to go; and away they went over a
stile, to a shrouded footpath suited for the occasion. But, in spite of
attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much spirit into the
ramble. She looked rather paler than usual, and sometimes turned her
head away.
'Lizzy,' said Stockdale reproachfully, when they had walked in silence a
long distance.
'Yes,' said she.
'You yawned-much my company is to you!' He put it in that way, but he
was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to do
with physical weariness from the night before than mental weariness of
that present moment. Lizzy apologized, and owned that she was rather
tired, which gave him an opening for a direct question on the point; but
his modesty would not allow him to put it to her; and he uncomfortably
resolved to wait.
The month of February passed with alternations of mud and frost, rain
and sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales. The hollow places in the
ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water, which had settled
there from the higher levels, and had not yet found time to soak away.
The birds began to get lively, and a single thrush came just before
sunset each evening, and sang hopefully on the large elm-tree which
stood nearest to Mrs. Newberry's house. Cold blasts and brittle earth
had given place to an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than
frost; but it suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a
bearable kind.
Stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding with
Lizzy at least half-a-dozen times; but, what with the mystery of her
apparent absence on the night of the neighbour's call, and her curious
way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a check within him
whenever he wanted to speak out. Thus they still lived on as
indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly acknowledged the
other's claim to the name of chosen one. Stockdale persuaded himself
that his hesitation was owing to the postponement of the ordained
minister's arrival, and the consequent delay in his own departure, which
did away with all necessity for haste in his courtship; but perhaps it
was only that his discretion was reasserting itself, and telling him
that he had better get clearer ideas of Lizzy before arranging for the
grand contract of his life with her. She, on her part, always seemed
ready to be urged further on that question than he had hitherto
attempted to go; but she was none the less independent, and to a degree
which would have kept from flagging the passion of a far more mutable
man.
On the evening of the first of March he went casually into his bedroom
about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a greatcoat, hat, and breeches.
Having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his own in that spot,
he went and examined them as well as he could in the twilight, and found
that they did not belong to him. He paused for a moment to consider how
they might have got there. He was the only man living in the house; and
yet these were not his garments, unless he had made a mistake. No, they
were not his. He called up Martha Sarah.
'How did these things come in my room?' he said, flinging the
objectionable articles to the floor.
Martha said that Mrs. Newberry had given them to her to brush, and that
she had brought them up there thinking they must be Mr. Stockdale's, as
there was no other gentleman a-lodging there.
'Of course you did,' said Stockdale. 'Now take them down to your
mis'ess, and say they are some clothes I have found here and know
nothing about.'
As the door was left open he heard the conversation downstairs. 'How
stupid!' said Mrs. Newberry, in a tone of confusion. 'Why, Marther
Sarer, I did not tell you to take 'em to Mr. Stockdale's room?'
'I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said Martha humbly.
'You should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young mistress
severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her arm, quickly
passed Stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a closet at the
end of a passage. With this the incident ended, and the house was silent
again.
There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a
widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy
from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud
bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is in the aspen
stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a
really substantial incongruity of this complexion is a disturbing thing.
However, nothing further occurred at that time; but he became watchful,
and given to conjecture, and was unable to forget the circumstance.
One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry herself
brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he mistook not,
was the very same garment as the one that had adorned the chair of his
room. It was densely splashed up to the hollow of the back with
neighbouring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its colour, the spots being
distinctly visible to him in the sunlight. The previous day or two
having been wet, the inference was irresistible that the wearer had
quite recently been walking some considerable distance about the lanes
and fields. Stockdale opened the window and looked out, and Mrs.
Newberry turned her head. Her face became slowly red; she never had
looked prettier, or more incomprehensible, he waved his hand
affectionately, and said good-morning; she answered with embarrassment,
having ceased her occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled
up the coat half-cleaned.
Stockdale shut the window. Some simple explanation of her proceeding was
doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he himself could not
think of one; and he wished that she had placed the matter beyond
conjecture by voluntarily saying something about it there and then.
But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the
subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their meeting.
She was chatting to him concerning some other event, and remarked that
it happened about the time when she was dusting some old clothes that
had belonged to her poor husband.
'You keep them clean out of respect to his memory?' said Stockdale
tentatively.
'I air and dust them sometimes,' she said, with the most charming
innocence in the world.
'Do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?' murmured the
minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising.
'What did you say?' asked Lizzy.
'Nothing, nothing,' said he mournfully. 'Mere words-a phrase that will
do for my sermon next Sunday.' It was too plain that Lizzy was unaware
that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts of the tell-
tale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it had come direct
from some chest or drawer.
The aspect of the case was now considerably darker. Stockdale was so
much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation, or
threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or reproach
her in any way whatever. He simply parted from her when she had done
talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees his natural manner
became sad and constrained.
IV-AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON
The following Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the night
threatened to be windy and unpleasant. Stockdale had gone away to
Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration service
there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy in the
passage. Whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness which had
attended him that day, or by the drive through the open air, or whether
from a natural disposition to let bygones alone, he allowed himself to
be fascinated into forgetfulness of the greatcoat incident, and upon the
whole passed a pleasant evening; not so much in her society as within
sound of her voice, as she sat talking in the back parlour to her
mother, till the latter went to bed. Shortly after this Mrs. Newberry
retired, and then Stockdale prepared to go upstairs himself. But before
he left the room he remained standing by the dying embers awhile,
thinking long of one thing and another; and was only aroused by the
flickering of his candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went
out. Knowing that there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle
in his bedroom, he felt his way upstairs without a light. On reaching
his chamber he laid his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the
tinderbox, but for a long time in vain. Discovering it at length,
Stockdale produced a spark, and was kindling the brimstone, when he
fancied that he heard a movement in the passage. He blew harder at the
lint, the match flared up, and looking by aid of the blue light through
the door, which had been standing open all this time, he was surprised
to see a male figure vanishing round the top of the staircase with the
evident intention of escaping unobserved. The personage wore the clothes
which Lizzy had been brushing, and something in the outline and gait
suggested to the minister that the wearer was Lizzy herself.
But he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, Stockdale determined
to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for doing it. He
blew out the match without lighting the candle, went into the passage,
and proceeded on tiptoe towards Lizzy's room. A faint grey square of
light in the direction of the chamber-window as he approached told him
that the door was open, and at once suggested that the occupant was
gone. He turned and brought down his fist upon the handrail of the
staircase: 'It was she; in her late husband's coat and hat!'
Somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case, yet
none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs, softly put
on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front door. It was
fastened as usual: he went to the back door, found this unlocked, and
emerged into the garden. The night was mild and moonless, and rain had
lately been falling, though for the present it had ceased. There was a
sudden dropping from the trees and bushes every now and then, as each
passing wind shook their boughs. Among these sounds Stockdale heard the
faint fall of feet upon the road outside, and he guessed from the step
that it was Lizzy's. He followed the sound, and, helped by the
circumstance of the wind blowing from the direction in which the
pedestrian moved, he got nearly close to her, and kept there, without
risk of being overheard. While he thus followed her up the street or
lane, as it might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than
houses on either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the
cottage doors. Lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and
stopped also.
'Is that Mrs. Newberry?' said the man who had come out, whose voice
Stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of his
congregation.
'It is,' said Lizzy.
'I be quite ready-I've been here this quarter-hour.'
'Ah, John,' said she, 'I have bad news; there is danger to-night for our
venture.'
'And d'ye tell o't! I dreamed there might be.'
'Yes,' she said hurriedly; 'and you must go at once round to where the
chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till to-morrow
night at the same time. I go to burn the lugger off.'
'I will,' he said; and instantly went off through a gate, Lizzy
continuing her way.
On she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the
turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for Ringsworth.
Here she ascended the hill without the least hesitation, passed the
lonely hamlet of Holworth, and went down the vale on the other side.
Stockdale had never taken any extensive walks in this direction, but he
was aware that if she persisted in her course much longer she would draw
near to the coast, which was here between two and three miles distant
from Nether-Moynton; and as it had been about a quarter-past eleven
o'clock when they set out, her intention seemed to be to reach the shore
about midnight.
Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time
adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon his
ear. The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the cliffs, and
by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay. There was light
enough in the sky to show her disguised figure against it when she
reached the top, where she paused, and afterwards sat down. Stockdale,
not wishing on any account to alarm her at this moment, yet desirous of
being near her, sank upon his hands and knees, crept a little higher up,
and there stayed still.
The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which he
did not care to remain long. However, before he had decided to leave it,
the young man heard voices behind him. What they signified he did not
know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he was about to run forward
and warn her that she might be seen, when she crept to the shelter of a
little bush which maintained a precarious existence in that exposed
spot; and her form was absorbed in its dark and stunted outline as if
she had become part of it. She had evidently heard the men as well as
he. They passed near him, talking in loud and careless tones, which
could be heard above the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which
suggested that they were not engaged in any business at their own risk.
This proved to be the fact: some of their words floated across to him,
and caused him to forget at once the coldness of his situation.
'What's the vessel?'
'A lugger, about fifty tons.'
'From Cherbourg, I suppose?'
'Yes, 'a b'lieve.'
'But it don't all belong to Owlett?'
'O no. He's only got a share. There's another or two in it-a farmer and
such like, but the names I don't know.'
The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men diminished
towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.
'My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever Owlett,'
groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having quickened to
its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name.
'That's why she's here,' he said to himself. 'O, it will be the ruin of
her!'
His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a bright
and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding. A few
seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a blaze, he heard
her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from a sling, in the
direction of home. The light now flared high and wide, and showed its
position clearly. She had kindled a bough of furze and stuck it into the
bush under which she had been crouching; the wind fanned the flame,
which crackled fiercely, and threatened to consume the bush as well as
the bough. Stockdale paused just long enough to notice thus much, and
then followed rapidly the route taken by the young woman. His intention
was to overtake her, and reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would
he could see nothing of her. Thus he flew across the open country about
Holworth, twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and
descents, till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he
was forced to pause to get breath. There was no audible movement either
in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun
him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of the
excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and let him
pass by.
He went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village. On reaching the
house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate was on the latch,
and the door unfastened, just as he had left them. Stockdale closed the
door behind him, and waited silently in the passage. In about ten
minutes he heard the same light footstep that he had heard in going out;
it paused at the gate, which opened and shut softly, and then the door-
latch was lifted, and Lizzy came in.
Stockdale went forward and said at once, 'Lizzy, don't be frightened. I
have been waiting up for you.'
She started, though she had recognized the voice. 'It is Mr. Stockdale,
isn't it?' she said.
'Yes,' he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors, and
not alarmed. 'And a nice game I've found you out in to-night. You are in
man's clothes, and I am ashamed of you!'
Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.
'I am only partly in man's clothes,' she faltered, shrinking back to the
wall. 'It is only his greatcoat and hat and breeches that I've got on,
which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only because a
cloak blows about so, and you can't use your arms. I have got my own
dress under just the same-it is only tucked in! Will you go away
upstairs and let me pass? I didn't want you to see me at such a time as
this!'
'But I have a right to see you! How do you think there can be anything
between us now?' Lizzy was silent. 'You are a smuggler,' he continued
sadly.
'I have only a share in the run,' she said.
'That makes no difference. Whatever did you engage in such a trade as
that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?'
'I don't do it always. I only do it in winter-time when 'tis new moon.'
'Well, I suppose that's because it can't be done anywhen else . . . You
have regularly upset me, Lizzy.'
'I am sorry for that,' Lizzy meekly replied.
'Well now,' said he more tenderly, 'no harm is done as yet. Won't you
for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice
altogether?'
'I must do my best to save this run,' said she, getting rather husky in
the throat. 'I don't want to give you up-you know that; but I don't want
to lose my venture. I don't know what to do now! Why I have kept it so
secret from you is that I was afraid you would be angry if you knew.'
'I should think so! I suppose if I had married you without finding this
out you'd have gone on with it just the same?'
'I don't know. I did not think so far ahead. I only went to-night to
burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew where the
tubs were to be landed.'
'It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,' said the distracted
young minister. 'Well, what will you do now?'
Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of which
were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of the shore
the next night; that three landing-places were always agreed upon before
the run was attempted, with the understanding that, if the vessel was
'burnt off' from the first point, which was Ringsworth, as it had been
by her to-night, the crew should attempt to make the second, which was
Lulstead Cove, on the second night; and if there, too, danger
threatened, they should on the third night try the third place, which
was behind a headland further west.
'Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?' he said, his
attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his
concern at her share in it.
'Then we shan't try anywhere else all this dark-that's what we call the
time between moon and moon-and perhaps they'll string the tubs to a
stray-line, and sink 'em a little-ways from shore, and take the
bearings; and then when they have a chance they'll go to creep for 'em.'
'What's that?'
'O, they'll go out in a boat and drag a creeper-that's a grapnel-along
the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.'
The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but the
tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of Lizzy,
partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood close to
the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could discern
against its whitewashed surface the greatcoat and broad hat which
covered her.
'Lizzy, all this is very wrong,' he said. 'Don't you remember the lesson
of the tribute-money? "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."
Surely you have heard that read times enough in your growing up?'
'He's dead,' she pouted.
'But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.'
'My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody in
Nether-Moynton lives by it, and life would be so dull if it wasn't for
that, that I should not care to live at all.'
'I am nothing to live for, of course,' he replied bitterly. 'You would
not think it worth while to give up this wild business and live for me
alone?'
'I have never looked at it like that.'
'And you won't promise and wait till I am ready?'
'I cannot give you my word to-night.' And, looking thoughtfully down,
she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining room, and
closing the door between them. She remained there in the dark till he
was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own chamber.
Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the
discoveries of the night before. Lizzy was unmistakably a fascinating
young woman, but as a minister's wife she was hardly to be contemplated.
'If I had only stuck to father's little grocery business, instead of
going in for the ministry, she would have suited me beautifully!' he
said sadly, until he remembered that in that case he would never have
come from his distant home to Nether-Moynton, and never have known her.
The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was sufficient to
keep them out of each other's company. Once during the day he met her in
the garden-path, and said, turning a reproachful eye upon her, 'Do you
promise, Lizzy?' But she did not reply. The evening drew on, and he knew
well enough that Lizzy would repeat her excursion at night-her half-
offended manner had shown that she had not the slightest intention of
altering her plans at present. He did not wish to repeat his own share
of the adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account
increased with the decline of day. Supposing that an accident should
befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being there to help,
much as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful
escapades.
V-HOW THEY WENT TO LULSTEAD COVE
As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night, this
time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well that he
would be watching, and were resolved to brave his displeasure. He was
quite ready, opened the door quickly, and reached the back door almost
as soon as she.
'Then you will go, Lizzy?' he said as he stood on the step beside her,
who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether unsuited
to his clothes.
'I must,' she said, repressed by his stern manner.
'Then I shall go too,' said he.
'And I am sure you will enjoy it!' she exclaimed in more buoyant tones.
'Everybody does who tries it.'
'God forbid that I should!' he said. 'But I must look after you.'
They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other, but
at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them. The
evening was rather less favourable to smuggling enterprise than the last
had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear towards the
north.
'It is rather lighter,' said Stockdale.
''Tis, unfortunately,' said she. 'But it is only from those few stars
over there. The moon was new to-day at four o'clock, and I expected
clouds. I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for when we have to
sink 'em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy, and folks don't like
it so well.'
Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching off
to the left over Lord's Barrow as soon as they had got out of the lane
and crossed the highway. By the time they reached Chaldon Down,
Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he should say to
her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation now, while she was
excited by the adventure, but wait till it was over, and endeavour to
keep her from such practices in future. It occurred to him once or
twice, as they rambled on, that should they be surprised by the
excisemen, his situation would be more awkward than hers, for it would
be difficult to prove his true motive in coming to the spot; but the
risk was a slight consideration beside his wish to be with her.
They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon, a
village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they
sought. Lizzy broke the silence this time: 'I have to wait here to meet
the carriers. I don't know if they have come yet. As I told you, we go
to Lulstead Cove to-night, and it is two miles further than Ringsworth.'
It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two or
three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of them at
once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in wait. These
carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors regularly employed to
bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place inland. They were all
young fellows of Nether-Moynton, Chaldon, and the neighbourhood, quiet
and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged to carry the cargo for Lizzy
and her cousin Owlett, as they would have engaged in any other labour
for which they were fairly well paid.
At a word from her they closed in together. 'You had better take it
now,' she said to them; and handed to each a packet. It contained six
shillings, their remuneration for the night's undertaking, which was
paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but, besides
this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the run was
successfully made. As soon as it was done, she said to them, 'The place
is the old one near Lulstead Cove;' the men till that moment not having
been told whither they were bound, for obvious reasons. 'Owlett will
meet you there,' added Lizzy. 'I shall follow behind, to see that we are
not watched.'
The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at a
distance of a stone's throw. 'What do these men do by day?' he said.
'Twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men. Some are brickmakers,
some carpenters, some shoe-makers, some thatchers. They are all known to
me very well. Nine of 'em are of your own congregation.'
'I can't help that,' said Stockdale.
'O, I know you can't. I only told you. The others are more church-
inclined, because they supply the pa'son with all the spirits he
requires, and they don't wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.'
'How do you choose 'em?' said Stockdale.
'We choose 'em for their closeness, and because they are strong and
surefooted, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being
tired.'
Stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved how
far involved in the business a woman must be who was so well acquainted
with its conditions and needs. And yet he felt more tenderly towards her
at this moment than he had felt all the foregoing day. Perhaps it was
that her experienced manner and hold indifference stirred his admiration
in spite of himself.
'Take my arm, Lizzy,' he murmured.
'I don't want it,' she said. 'Besides, we may never be to each other
again what we once have been.'
'That depends upon you,' said he, and they went on again as before.
The hired carriers paced along over Chaldon Down with as little
hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving the
village of East Chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of the
hill at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient earthwork
called Round Pound. An hour's brisk walking brought them within sound of
the sea, not many hundred yards from Lulstead Cove. Here they paused,
and Lizzy and Stockdale came up with them, when they went on together to
the verge of the cliff. One of the men now produced an iron bar, which
he drove firmly into the soil a yard from the edge, and attached to it a
rope that he had uncoiled from his body. They all began to descend,
partly stepping, partly sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped
through their hands.
'You will not go to the bottom, Lizzy?' said Stockdale anxiously.
'No. I stay here to watch,' she said. 'Owlett is down there.'
The men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the next
thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars, and the
dashing of waves against a boat's bow. In a moment the keel gently
touched the shingle, and Stockdale heard the footsteps of the thirty-six
carriers running forwards over the pebbles towards the point of landing.
There was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in,
showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their legs,
or even their waists, dry from the brine: but it was impossible to see
what they were doing, and in a few minutes the shingle was trampled
again. The iron bar sustaining the rope, on which Stockdale's hand
rested, began to swerve a little, and the carriers one by one appeared
climbing up the sloping cliff; dripping audibly as they came, and
sustaining themselves by the guide-rope. Each man on reaching the top
was seen to be carrying a pair of tubs, one on his back and one on his
chest, the two being slung together by cords passing round the chine
hoops, and resting on the carrier's shoulders. Some of the stronger men
carried three by putting an extra one on the top behind, but the
customary load was a pair, these being quite weighty enough to give
their bearer the sensation of having chest and backbone in contact after
a walk of four or five miles.
'Where is Owlett?' said Lizzy to one of them.
'He will not come up this way,' said the carrier. 'He's to bide on shore
till we be safe off.' Then, without waiting for the rest, the foremost
men plunged across the down; and, when the last had ascended, Lizzy
pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled the bar from the
sod, and turned to follow the carriers.
'You are very anxious about Owlett's safety,' said the minister.
'Was there ever such a man!' said Lizzy. 'Why, isn't he my cousin?'
'Yes. Well, it is a bad night's work,' said Stockdale heavily. 'But I'll
carry the bar and rope for you.'
'Thank God, the tubs have got so far all right,' said she.
Stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side
towards the downs; and the moan of the sea was heard no more.
'Is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having business
with Owlett?' the young man asked.
'This is it,' she replied. 'I never see him on any other matter.'
'A partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.'
'It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.'
Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes and
pursuits were so akin as Lizzy's and Owlett's, and where risks were
shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a peculiar
appropriateness in her answering Owlett's standing question on matrimony
in the affirmative. This did not soothe Stockdale, its tendency being
rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate
as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of
conduct and a minister's parlour in some far-removed inland county.
They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for Stockdale
to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split
up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a
direction of its own. One company, the smaller of the two, went towards
the church, and by the time that Lizzy and Stockdale reached their own
house these men had scaled the churchyard wall, and were proceeding
noiselessly over the grass within.
'I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church
again,' observed Lizzy. 'Do you remember my taking you there the first
night you came?'
'Yes, of course,' said Stockdale. 'No wonder you had permission to
broach the tubs-they were his, I suppose?'
'No, they were not-they were mine; I had permission from myself. The day
after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load of manure,
and sold very well.'
At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time
before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy's house,
and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward.
'Mrs. Newberry, isn't it?' he said hastily.
'Yes, Jim,' said she. 'What's the matter?'
'I find that we can't put any in Badger's Clump to-night, Lizzy,' said
Owlett. 'The place is watched. We must sling the apple-tree in the
orchet if there's time. We can't put any more under the church lumber
than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is
safe.'
'Very well,' she said. 'Be quick about it-that's all. What can I do?'
'Nothing at all, please. Ah, it is the minister!-you two that can't do
anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.'
While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and
so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed him had been
descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that
when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which sustained his
tubs: the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them
being stove in by the blow.
''Od drown it all!' said Owlett, rushing back.
'It is worth a good deal, I suppose?' said Stockdale.
'O no-about two guineas and half to us now,' said Lizzy excitedly. 'It
isn't that-it is the smell! It is so blazing strong before it has been
lowered by water, that it smells dreadfully when spilt in the road like
that! I do hope Latimer won't pass by till it is gone off.'
Owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to scrape
and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as possible;
and then they all entered the gate of Owlett's orchard, which adjoined
Lizzy's garden on the right. Stockdale did not care to follow them, for
several on recognizing him had looked wonderingly at his presence,
though they said nothing. Lizzy left his side and went to the bottom of
the garden, looking over the hedge into the orchard, where the men could
be dimly seen bustling about, and apparently hiding the tubs. All was
done noiselessly, and without a light; and when it was over they
dispersed in different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to
the church having already gone off to their homes.
Lizzy returned to the garden-gate, over which Stockdale was still
abstractedly leaning. 'It is all finished: I am going indoors now,' she
said gently. 'I will leave the door ajar for you.'
'O no-you needn't,' said Stockdale; 'I am coming too.'
But before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses' hoofs
broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where the track
across the down joined the hard road.
'They are just too late!' cried Lizzy exultingly.
'Who?' said Stockdale.
'Latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his. We had better
go indoors.'
They entered the house, and Lizzy bolted the door. 'Please don't get a
light, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.
'Of course I will not,' said he.
'I thought you might be on the side of the king,' said Lizzy, with
faintest sarcasm.
'I am,' said Stockdale. 'But, Lizzy Newberry, I love you, and you know
it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what I have
suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!'
'I guess very well,' she said hurriedly. 'Yet I don't see why. Ah, you
are better than I!'
The trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the pair
of listeners touched each other's fingers in the cold 'Good-night' of
those whom something seriously divided. They were on the landing, but
before they had taken three steps apart, the tramp of the horsemen
suddenly revived, almost close to the house. Lizzy turned to the
staircase window, opened the casement about an inch, and put her face
close to the aperture. 'Yes, one of 'em is Latimer,' she whispered. 'He
always rides a white horse. One would think it was the last colour for a
man in that line.'
Stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed by;
but before the riders had gone another ten yards, Latimer reined in his
horse, and said something to his companion which neither Stockdale nor
Lizzy could hear. Its drift was, however, soon made evident, for the
other man stopped also; and sharply turning the horses' heads they
cautiously retraced their steps. When they were again opposite Mrs.
Newberry's garden, Latimer dismounted, and the man on the dark horse did
the same.
Lizzy and Stockdale, intently listening and observing the proceedings,
naturally put their heads as close as possible to the slit formed by the
slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred that at last their cheeks
came positively into contact. They went on listening, as if they did not
know of the singular incident which had happened to their faces, and the
pressure of each to each rather increased than lessened with the lapse
of time.
They could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they paced
slowly along. When they reached the spot where the tub had burst, both
stopped on the instant.
'Ay, ay, 'tis quite strong here,' said the second officer. 'Shall we
knock at the door?'
'Well, no,' said Latimer. 'Maybe this is only a trick to put us off the
scent. They wouldn't kick up this stink anywhere near their hiding-
place. I have known such things before.'
'Anyhow, the things, or some of 'em, must have been brought this way,'
said the other.
'Yes,' said Latimer musingly. 'Unless 'tis all done to tole us the wrong
way. I have a mind that we go home for to-night without saying a word,
and come the first thing in the morning with more hands. I know they
have storages about here, but we can do nothing by this owl's light. We
will look round the parish and see if everybody is in bed, John; and if
all is quiet, we will do as I say.'
They went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing
leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved round at
the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another junction. This way
the excisemen followed, and the amble of their horses died quite away.
'What will you do?' said Stockdale, withdrawing from his position.
She knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to divert
her attention from their own tender incident by the casement, which he
wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamt of than done. 'O,
nothing,' she replied, with as much coolness as she could command under
her disappointment at his manner. 'We often have such storms as this.
You would not be frightened if you knew what fools they are. Fancy
riding o' horseback through the place: of course they will hear and see
nobody while they make that noise; but they are always afraid to get
off, in case some of our fellows should burst out upon 'em, and tie them
up to the gate-post, as they have done before now. Good-night, Mr.
Stockdale.'
She closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from her
eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-officers.
VI-THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON
Stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the dilemma
that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he did not
sleep, or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at noonday. As
soon as the grey light began to touch ever so faintly the whiter objects
in his bedroom he arose, dressed himself, and went downstairs into the
road.
The village was already astir. Several of the carriers had heard the
well-known tramp of Latimer's horse while they were undressing in the
dark that night, and had already communicated with each other and Owlett
on the subject. The only doubt seemed to be about the safety of those
tubs which had been left under the church gallery-stairs, and after a
short discussion at the corner of the mill, it was agreed that these
should be removed before it got lighter, and hidden in the middle of a
double hedge bordering the adjoining field. However, before anything
could be carried into effect, the footsteps of many men were heard
coming down the lane from the highway.
'Damn it, here they be,' said Owlett, who, having already drawn the
hatch and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill-door
covered with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was bound up in
the shaking walls around him.
The two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their usual
work, and when the excise officers, and the formidable body of men they
had hired, reached the village cross, between the mill and Mrs.
Newberry's house, the village wore the natural aspect of a place
beginning its morning labours.
'Now,' said Latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in all,
'what I know is that the things are somewhere in this here place. We
have got the day before us, and 'tis hard if we can't light upon 'em and
get 'em to Budmouth Custom-house before night. First we will try the
fuel-houses, and then we'll work our way into the chimmers, and then to
the ricks and stables, and so creep round. You have nothing but your
noses to guide ye, mind, so use 'em to-day if you never did in your
lives before.'
Then the search began. Owlett, during the early part, watched from his
mill-window, Lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest self-
possession. A farmer down below, who also had a share in the run, rode
about with one eye on his fields and the other on Latimer and his
myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should be asked a
question. Stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt more anxiety than
the worst of them, and went about his studies with a heavy heart, coming
frequently to the door to ask Lizzy some question or other on the
consequences to her of the tubs being found.
'The consequences,' she said quietly, 'are simply that I shall lose 'em.
As I have none in the house or garden, they can't touch me personally.'
'But you have some in the orchard?'
'Owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others. So it will be hard
to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.'
There was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took
place in Nether-Moynton parish and its vicinity this day. All was done
methodically, and mostly on hands and knees. At different hours of the
day they had different plans. From daybreak to breakfast-time the
officers used their sense of smell in a direct and straightforward
manner only, pausing nowhere but at such places as the tubs might be
supposed to be secreted in at that very moment, pending their removal on
the following night. Among the places tested and examined were
Hollow trees Cupboards Culverts Potato-graves Clock-cases Hedgerows
Fuel-houses Chimney-flues Faggot-ricks Bedrooms Rainwater-butts
Haystacks Apple-lofts Pigsties Coppers and ovens.
After breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigour, taking a new line;
that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that might be
supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their removal from the
shore, such garments being usually tainted with the spirit, owing to its
oozing between the staves. They now sniffed at -
Smock-frocks Smiths' and shoemakers' aprons Old shirts and waistcoats
Knee-naps and hedging-gloves Coats and hats Tarpaulins Breeches and
leggings Market-cloaks Women's shawls and gowns Scarecrows
And as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search into
places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:-
Horse-ponds Mixens Sinks in yards Stable-drains Wet ditches Road-
scrapings, and Cinder-heaps Cesspools Back- door gutters.
But still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than the
original tell-tale smell in the road opposite Lizzy's house, which even
yet had not passed off.
'I'll tell ye what it is, men,' said Latimer, about three o'clock in the
afternoon, 'we must begin over again. Find them tubs I will.'
The men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and
knees, muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed their
noses, as if they had almost had enough of it; for the quantity of bad
air which had passed into each one's nostril had rendered it nearly as
insensible as a flue. However, after a moment's hesitation, they
prepared to start anew, except three, whose power of smell had quite
succumbed under the excessive wear and tear of the day.
By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish. Owlett
was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields, the parson
was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and the
wheelwright's shop was silent.
'Where the divil are the folk gone?' said Latimer, waking up to the fact
of their absence, and looking round. 'I'll have 'em up for this! Why
don't they come and help us? There's not a man about the place but the
Methodist parson, and he's an old woman. I demand assistance in the
king's name!'
'We must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,' said his
lieutenant.
'Well, well, we shall do better without 'em,' said Latimer, who changed
his moods at a moment's notice. 'But there's great cause of suspicion in
this silence and this keeping out of sight, and I'll bear it in mind.
Now we will go across to Owlett's orchard, and see what we can find
there.'
Stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden-gate, over which he
had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a mistake of the
villagers to keep so completely out of the way. He himself, like the
excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-hour what could have
become of them. Some labourers were of necessity engaged in distant
fields, but the master-workmen should have been at home; though one and
all, after just showing themselves at their shops, had apparently gone
off for the day. He went in to Lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing,
and said, 'Lizzy, where are the men?'
Lizzy laughed. 'Where they mostly are when they're run so hard as this.'
She cast her eyes to heaven. 'Up there,' she said.
Stockdale looked up. 'What-on the top of the church tower?' he asked,
seeing the direction of her glance.
'Yes.'
'Well, I expect they will soon have to come down,' said he gravely. 'I
have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search the
orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.'
Lizzy looked alarmed for the first time. 'Will you go and tell our
folk?' she said. 'They ought to be let know.' Seeing his conscience
struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, 'No, never mind,
I'll go myself.'
She went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the churchyard wall
at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the road to the
orchard. Stockdale could do no less than follow her. By the time that
she reached the tower entrance he was at her side, and they entered
together.
Nether-Moynton church-tower was, as in many villages, without a turret,
and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers' gallery, and
thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in the floor of the
bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was fixed, passing through the
bells to a hole in the roof. When Lizzy and Stockdale reached the
gallery and looked up, nothing but the trap-door and the five holes for
the bell-ropes appeared. The ladder was gone.
'There's no getting up,' said Stockdale.
'O yes, there is,' said she. 'There's an eye looking at us at this
moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.'
And as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder was
seen descending against the white-washed wall. When it touched the
bottom Lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, 'If you'll go up, I'll
follow.'
The young man ascended, and presently found himself among consecrated
bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity having been in the
Stockdale blood for some generations. He eyed them uneasily, and looked
round for Lizzy. Owlett stood here, holding the top of the ladder.
'What, be you really one of us?' said the miller.
'It seems so,' said Stockdale sadly.
'He's not,' said Lizzy, who overheard. 'He's neither for nor against us.
He'll do us no harm.'
She stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage,
which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of
easy ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky
appeared, and into the open air. Owlett remained behind for a moment, to
pull up the lower ladder.
'Keep down your heads,' said a voice, as soon as they set foot on the
flat.
Stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their
stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their hands
and knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet. Stockdale
did the same, and saw the village lying like a map below him, over which
moved the figures of the excisemen, each foreshortened to a crablike
object, the crown of his hat forming a circular disc in the centre of
him. Some of the men had turned their heads when the young preacher's
figure arose among them.
'What, Mr. Stockdale?' said Matt Grey, in a tone of surprise.
'I'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said Jim Clarke. 'If the pa'son
should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the
better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members. He'd never buy a
tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have got this side o'
Warm'll.'
'Where is the pa'son?' said Lizzy.
'In his house, to be sure, that he mid see nothing of what's going on-
where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.'
'Well, he has brought some news,' said Lizzy. 'They are going to search
the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should find?'
'Yes,' said her cousin Owlett. 'That's what we've been talking o', and
we have settled our line. Well, be dazed!'
The exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the searchers,
having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and creeping hither and
thither, were pausing in the middle, where a tree smaller than the rest
was growing. They drew closer, and bent lower than ever upon the ground.
'O, my tubs!' said Lizzy faintly, as she peered through the parapet at
them.
'They have got 'em, 'a b'lieve,' said Owlett.
The interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a
single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a
shout from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the
smugglers, as it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to
their feet and went towards the churchyard wall. At the same time those
of the Government men who had entered the church unperceived by the
smugglers cried aloud, 'Here be some of 'em at last.'
The smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether 'some of
'em' meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the edge of
the tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried; and soon these
fated articles were brought one by one into the middle of the churchyard
from their hiding-place under the gallery-stairs.
'They are going to put 'em on Hinton's vault till they find the rest!'
said Lizzy hopelessly. The excisemen had, in fact, begun to pile up the
tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and when all were
brought out from the tower, two or three of the men were left standing
by them, the rest of the party again proceeding to the orchard.
The interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their enemies
became painfully intense. Only about thirty tubs had been secreted in
the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the orchard, making
up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the remainder of the cargo
having been tied to a sinker and dropped overboard for another night's
operations. The excisemen, having re-entered the orchard, acted as if
they were positive that here lay hidden the rest of the tubs, which they
were determined to find before nightfall. They spread themselves out
round the field, and advancing on all fours as before, went anew round
every apple-tree in the enclosure. The young tree in the middle again
led them to pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a
way which signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same
results as the first.
When they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the
men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept,
and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which they set
to work.
'Are they really buried there?' said the minister, for the grass was so
green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been
disturbed. The smugglers were too interested to reply, and presently
they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand several on each side of
the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the soil, they
bodily lifted the tree and the turf around it. The apple-tree now showed
itself to be growing in a shallow box, with handles for lifting at each
of the four sides. Under the site of the tree a square hole was
revealed, and an exciseman went and looked down.
'It is all up now,' said Owlett quietly. 'And now all of ye get down
before they notice we are here; and be ready for our next move. I had
better bide here till dark, or they may take me on suspicion, as 'tis on
my ground. I'll be with ye as soon as daylight begins to pink in.'
'And I?' said Lizzy.
'You please look to the linch-pins and screws; then go indoors and know
nothing at all. The chaps will do the rest.'
The ladder was replaced, and all but Owlett descended, the men passing
off one by one at the back of the church, and vanishing on their
respective errands.
Lizzy walked boldly along the street, followed closely by the minister.
'You are going indoors, Mrs. Newberry?' he said.
She knew from the words 'Mrs. Newberry' that the division between them
had widened yet another degree.
'I am not going home,' she said. 'I have a little thing to do before I
go in. Martha Sarah will get your tea.'
'O, I don't mean on that account,' said Stockdale. 'What can you have to
do further in this unhallowed affair?'
'Only a little,' she said.
'What is that? I'll go with you.'
'No, I shall go by myself. Will you please go indoors? I shall be there
in less than an hour.'
'You are not going to run any danger, Lizzy?' said the young man, his
tenderness reasserting itself.
'None whatever-worth mentioning,' answered she, and went down towards
the Cross.
Stockdale entered the garden gate, and stood behind it looking on. The
excisemen were still busy in the orchard, and at last he was tempted to
enter, and watch their proceedings. When he came closer he found that
the secret cellar, of whose existence he had been totally unaware, was
formed by timbers placed across from side to side about a foot under the
ground, and grassed over.
The excisemen looked up at Stockdale's fair and downy countenance, and
evidently thinking him above suspicion, went on with their work again.
As soon as all the tubs were taken out, they began tearing up the turf;
pulling out the timbers, and breaking in the sides, till the cellar was
wholly dismantled and shapeless, the apple-tree lying with its roots
high to the air. But the hole which had in its time held so much
contraband merchandize was never completely filled up, either then or
afterwards, a depression in the greensward marking the spot to this day.
VII-THE WALK TO WARM'ELL CROSS AND AFTERWARDS
As the goods had all to be carried to Budmouth that night, the
excisemen's next object was to find horses and carts for the journey,
and they went about the village for that purpose. Latimer strode hither
and thither with a lump of chalk in his hand, marking broad-arrows so
vigorously on every vehicle and set of harness that he came across, that
it seemed as if he would chalk broad-arrows on the very hedges and
roads. The owner of every conveyance so marked was bound to give it up
for Government purposes. Stockdale, who had had enough of the scene,
turned indoors thoughtful and depressed. Lizzy was already there, having
come in at the back, though she had not yet taken off her bonnet. She
looked tired, and her mood was not much brighter than his own. They had
but little to say to each other; and the minister went away and
attempted to read; but at this he could not succeed, and he shook the
little bell for tea.
Lizzy herself brought in the tray, the girl having run off into the
village during the afternoon, too full of excitement at the proceedings
to remember her state of life. However, almost before the sad lovers had
said anything to each other, Martha came in in a steaming state.
'O, there's such a stoor, Mrs. Newberry and Mr. Stockdale! The king's
excisemen can't get the carts ready nohow at all! They pulled Thomas
Ballam's, and William Rogers's, and Stephen Sprake's carts into the
road, and off came the wheels, and down fell the carts; and they found
there was no linch-pins in the arms; and then they tried Samuel Shane's
waggon, and found that the screws were gone from he, and at last they
looked at the dairyman's cart, and he's got none neither! They have gone
now to the blacksmith's to get some made, but he's nowhere to be found!'
Stockdale looked at Lizzy, who blushed very slightly, and went out of
the room, followed by Martha Sarah. But before they had got through the
passage there was a rap at the front door, and Stockdale recognized
Latimer's voice addressing Mrs. Newberry, who had turned back.
'For God's sake, Mrs. Newberry, have you seen Hardman the blacksmith up
this way? If we could get hold of him, we'd e'en a'most drag him by the
hair of his head to his anvil, where he ought to be.'
'He's an idle man, Mr. Latimer,' said Lizzy archly. 'What do you want
him for?'
'Why, there isn't a horse in the place that has got more than three
shoes on, and some have only two. The waggon-wheels be without strakes,
and there's no linch-pins to the carts. What with that, and the bother
about every set of harness being out of order, we shan't be off before
nightfall-upon my soul we shan't. 'Tis a rough lot, Mrs. Newberry, that
you've got about you here; but they'll play at this game once too often,
mark my words they will! There's not a man in the parish that don't
deserve to be whipped.'
It happened that Hardman was at that moment a little further up the
lane, smoking his pipe behind a holly-bush. When Latimer had done
speaking he went on in this direction, and Hardman, hearing the
exciseman's steps, found curiosity too strong for prudence. He peeped
out from the bush at the very moment that Latimer's glance was on it.
There was nothing left for him to do but to come forward with unconcern.
'I've been looking for you for the last hour!' said Latimer with a glare
in his eye.
'Sorry to hear that,' said Hardman. 'I've been out for a stroll, to look
for more hid tubs, to deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.'
'O yes, Hardman, we know it,' said Latimer, with withering sarcasm. 'We
know that you'll deliver 'em up to Gover'ment. We know that all the
parish is helping us, and have been all day! Now you please walk along
with me down to your shop, and kindly let me hire ye in the king's
name.'
They went down the lane together; and presently there resounded from the
smithy the ring of a hammer not very briskly swung. However, the carts
and horses were got into some sort of travelling condition, but it was
not until after the clock had struck six, when the muddy roads were
glistening under the horizontal light of the fading day. The smuggled
tubs were soon packed into the vehicles, and Latimer, with three of his
assistants, drove slowly out of the village in the direction of the port
of Budmouth, some considerable number of miles distant, the other
excisemen being left to watch for the remainder of the cargo, which they
knew to have been sunk somewhere between Ringsworth and Lulstead Cove,
and to unearth Owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the
discovery of the cave.
Women and children stood at the doors as the carts, each chalked with
the Government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight; and as they
stood they looked at the confiscated property with a melancholy
expression that told only too plainly the relation which they bore to
the trade.
'Well, Lizzy,' said Stockdale, when the crackle of the wheels had nearly
died away. 'This is a fit finish to your adventure. I am truly thankful
that you have got off without suspicion, and the loss only of the
liquor. Will you sit down and let me talk to you?'
'By and by,' she said. 'But I must go out now.'
'Not to that horrid shore again?' he said blankly.
'No, not there. I am only going to see the end of this day's business.'
He did not answer to this, and she moved towards the door slowly, as if
waiting for him to say something more.
'You don't offer to come with me,' she added at last. 'I suppose that's
because you hate me after all this?'
'Can you say it, Lizzy, when you know I only want to save you from such
practices? Come with you of course I will, if it is only to take care of
you. But why will you go out again?'
'Because I cannot rest indoors. Something is happening, and I must know
what. Now, come!' And they went into the dusk together.
When they reached the turnpike-road she turned to the right, and he soon
perceived that they were following the direction of the excisemen and
their load. He had given her his arm, and every now and then she
suddenly pulled it back, to signify that he was to halt a moment and
listen. They had walked rather quickly along the first quarter of a
mile, and on the second or third time of standing still she said, 'I
hear them ahead-don't you?'
'Yes,' he said; 'I hear the wheels. But what of that?'
'I only want to know if they get clear away from the neighbourhood.'
'Ah,' said he, a light breaking upon him. 'Something desperate is to be
attempted!-and now I remember there was not a man about the village when
we left.'
'Hark!' she murmured. The noise of the cartwheels had stopped, and given
place to another sort of sound.
''Tis a scuffle!' said Stockdale. 'There'll be murder! Lizzy, let go my
arm; I am going on. On my conscience, I must not stay here and do
nothing!'
'There'll be no murder, and not even a broken head,' she said. 'Our men
are thirty to four of them: no harm will be done at all.'
'Then there is an attack!' exclaimed Stockdale; 'and you knew it was to
be. Why should you side with men who break the laws like this?'
'Why should you side with men who take from country traders what they
have honestly bought wi' their own money in France?' said she firmly.
'They are not honestly bought,' said he.
'They are,' she contradicted. 'I and Owlett and the others paid thirty
shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on board at
Cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his people to steal
our property, we have a right to steal it back again.'
Stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the
direction of the noise, Lizzy keeping at his side. 'Don't you interfere,
will you, dear Richard?' she said anxiously, as they drew near. 'Don't
let us go any closer: 'tis at Warm'ell Cross where they are seizing 'em.
You can do no good, and you may meet with a hard blow!'
'Let us see first what is going on,' he said. But before they had got
much further the noise of the cartwheels began again; and Stockdale soon
found that they were coming towards him. In another minute the three
carts came up, and Stockdale and Lizzy stood in the ditch to let them
pass.
Instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they went
out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied by a body
of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as Stockdale perceived to his
astonishment, had blackened faces. Among them walked six or eight huge
female figures, whom, from their wide strides, Stockdale guessed to be
men in disguise. As soon as the party discerned Lizzy and her companion
four or five fell back, and when the carts had passed, came close to the
pair.
'There is no walking up this way for the present,' said one of the gaunt
women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of her face,
in the fashion of the time. Stockdale recognized this lady's voice as
Owlett's.
'Why not?' said Stockdale. 'This is the public highway.'
'Now look here, youngster,' said Owlett. 'O, 'tis the Methodist parson!-
what, and Mrs. Newberry! Well, you'd better not go up that way, Lizzy.
They've all run off, and folks have got their own again.'
The miller then hastened on and joined his comrades. Stockdale and Lizzy
also turned back. 'I wish all this hadn't been forced upon us,' she said
regretfully. 'But if those excisemen had got off with the tubs, half the
people in the parish would have been in want for the next month or two.'
Stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said, 'I
don't think I can go back like this. Those four poor excisemen may be
murdered for all I know.'
'Murdered!' said Lizzy impatiently. 'We don't do murder here.'
'Well, I shall go as far as Warm'ell Cross to see,' said Stockdale
decisively; and, without wishing her safe home or anything else, the
minister turned back. Lizzy stood looking at him till his form was
absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the
direction of Nether-Moynton.
The road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year there
was often not a passer for hours. Stockdale pursued his way without
hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps; and in due time he
passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded the Warm'ell
Cross-road. Before he had reached the point of intersection he heard
voices from the thicket.
'Hoi-hoi-hoi! Help, help!'
The voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were
unmistakably anxious. Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging into
the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from the hedge,
to use in case of need. When he got among the trees he shouted-'What's
the matter-where are you?'
'Here,' answered the voices; and, pushing through the brambles in that
direction, he came near the objects of his search.
'Why don't you come forward?' said Stockdale.
'We be tied to the trees!'
'Who are you?'
'Poor Will Latimer the exciseman!' said one plaintively. 'Just come and
cut these cords, there's a good man. We were afraid nobody would pass by
to-night.'
Stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs and
stood at their ease.
'The rascals!' said Latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had
seemed quite meek when Stockdale first came up. ''Tis the same set of
fellows. I know they were Moynton chaps to a man.'
'But we can't swear to 'em,' said another. 'Not one of 'em spoke.'
'What are you going to do?' said Stockdale.
'I'd fain go back to Moynton, and have at 'em again!' said Latimer.
'So would we!' said his comrades.
'Fight till we die!' said Latimer.
'We will, we will!' said his men.
'But,' said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the plantation,
'we don't know that these chaps with black faces were Moynton men? And
proof is a hard thing.'
'So it is,' said the rest.
'And therefore we won't do nothing at all,' said Latimer, with complete
dispassionateness. 'For my part, I'd sooner be them than we. The
clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords those two
strapping women tied round 'em. My opinion is, now I have had time to
think o't, that you may serve your Gover'ment at too high a price. For
these two nights and days I have not had an hour's rest; and, please
God, here's for home-along.'
The other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking
Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the Cross,
taking themselves the western road, and Stockdale going back to Nether-
Moynton.
During that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most painful
kind. As soon as he got into the house, and before entering his own
rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlour in which Lizzy
usually sat with her mother. He found her there alone. Stockdale went
forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon the table that
stood between him and the young woman, who had her bonnet and cloak
still on. As he did not speak, she looked up from her chair at him, with
misgiving in her eye.
'Where are they gone?' he then said listlessly.
'Who?-I don't know. I have seen nothing of them since. I came straight
in here.'
'If your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a great
profit to you, I suppose?'
'A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett's, a share to each of
the two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped us.'
'And you still think,' he went on slowly, 'that you will not give this
business up?'
Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder. 'Don't ask that,' she
whispered. 'You don't know what you are asking. I must tell you, though
I meant not to do it. What I make by that trade is all I have to keep my
mother and myself with.'
He was astonished. 'I did not dream of such a thing,' he said. 'I would
rather have swept the streets, had I been you. What is money compared
with a clear conscience?'
'My conscience is clear. I know my mother, but the king I have never
seen. His dues are nothing to me. But it is a great deal to me that my
mother and I should live.'
'Marry me, and promise to give it up. I will keep your mother.'
'It is good of you,' she said, trembling a little. 'Let me think of it
by myself. I would rather not answer now.'
She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room with a
solemn face. 'I cannot do what you wished!' she said passionately. 'It
is too much to ask. My whole life ha' been passed in this way.' Her
words and manner showed that before entering she had been struggling
with herself in private, and that the contention had been strong.
Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly. 'Then, Lizzy, we must part.
I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I cannot make my
profession a mockery. You know how I love you, and what I would do for
you; but this one thing I cannot do.'
'But why should you belong to that profession?' she burst out. 'I have
got this large house; why can't you marry me, and live here with us, and
not be a Methodist preacher any more? I assure you, Richard, it is no
harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do! We only carry it on in
winter: in summer it is never done at all. It stirs up one's dull life
at this time o' the year, and gives excitement, which I have got so used
to now that I should hardly know how to do 'ithout it. At nights, when
the wind blows, instead of being dull and stupid, and not noticing
whether it do blow or not, your mind is afield, even if you are not
afield yourself; and you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and
you walk up and down the room, and look out o' window, and then you go
out yourself, and know your way about as well by night as by day, and
have hairbreadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too
stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.'
'He frightened you a little last night, anyhow: and I would advise you
to drop it before it is worse.'
She shook her head. 'No, I must go on as I have begun. I was born to it.
It is in my blood, and I can't be cured. O, Richard, you cannot think
what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you put
me between this and my love for 'ee!'
Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over
his eyes. 'We ought never to have met, Lizzy,' he said. 'It was an ill
day for us! I little thought there was anything so hopeless and
impossible in our engagement as this. Well, it is too late now to regret
consequences in this way. I have had the happiness of seeing you and
knowing you at least.'
'You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,' she said. 'And I
don't see why we are not well matched.'
He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning
to overflow.
That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed
were unhappy days. Both she and he went mechanically about their
employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than
one of his denomination with whom he came in contact. But Lizzy, who
passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was
generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between
her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.
Thus uncertainly the week passed on; till one morning Stockdale said to
her: 'I have had a letter, Lizzy. I must call you that till I am gone.'
'Gone?' said she blankly.
'Yes,' he said. 'I am going from this place. I felt it would be better
for us both that I should not stay after what has happened. In fact, I
couldn't stay here, and look on you from day to day, without becoming
weak and faltering in my course. I have just heard of an arrangement by
which the other minister can arrive here in about a week; and let me go
elsewhere.'
That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his resolution
came upon her as a grievous surprise. 'You never loved me!' she said
bitterly.
'I might say the same,' he returned; 'but I will not. Grant me one
favour. Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.'
Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended
Stockdale's chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-minded;
and she promised.
It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many
people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it. The intervening days
flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which preceded the
morning of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to hear him for the
last time. The little building was full to overflowing, and he took up
the subject which all had expected, that of the contraband trade so
extensively practised among them. His hearers, in laying his words to
their own hearts, did not perceive that they were most particularly
directed against Lizzy, till the sermon waxed warm, and Stockdale nearly
broke down with emotion. In truth his own earnestness, and her sad eyes
looking up at him, were too much for the young man's equanimity. He
hardly knew how he ended. He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go
away with the rest of the congregation; and shortly afterwards followed
her home.
She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother having,
as was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.
'We will part friends, won't we?' said Lizzy, with forced gaiety, and
never alluding to the sermon: a reticence which rather disappointed him.
'We will,' he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat down.
It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their lives,
and probably the last that they would so share. When it was over, and
the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued, he arose and
took her hand. 'Lizzy,' he said, 'do you say we must part-do you?'
'You do,' she said solemnly. 'I can say no more.'
'Nor I,' said he. 'If that is your answer, good-bye!'
Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily returned
his kiss. 'I shall go early,' he said hurriedly. 'I shall not see you
again.'
And he did leave early. He fancied, when stepping forth into the grey
morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away, that he saw
a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy's window, but the light was
faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he could not be sure.
Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and on the following Sunday
the new minister preached in the chapel of the Moynton Wesleyans.
One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a
midland town, came into Nether-Moynton by carrier in the original way.
Jogging along in the van that afternoon he had put questions to the
driver, and the answers that he received interested the minister deeply.
The result of them was that he went without the least hesitation to the
door of his former lodging. It was about six o'clock in the evening, and
the same time of year as when he had left; now, too, the ground was damp
and glistening, the west was bright, and Lizzy's snowdrops were raising
their heads in the border under the wall.
Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time
that he reached the door she was there holding it open: and then, as if
she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she drew
herself back, saying with some constraint, 'Mr. Stockdale!'
'You knew it was,' said Stockdale, taking her hand. 'I wrote to say I
should call.'
'Yes, but you did not say when,' she answered.
'I did not. I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to these
parts.'
'You only came because business brought you near?'
'Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to come
on purpose to see you . . . But what's all this that has happened? I
told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not listen to me.'
'I would not,' she said sadly. 'But I had been brought up to that life;
and it was second nature to me. However, it is all over now. The
officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and the trade
is going to nothing. We were hunted down like rats.'
'Owlett is quite gone, I hear.'
'Yes. He is in America. We had a dreadful struggle that last time, when
they tried to take him. It is a perfect miracle that he lived through
it; and it is a wonder that I was not killed. I was shot in the hand. It
was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my cousin; but I was
behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came to me. It bled
terribly, but I got home without fainting; and it healed after a time.
You know how he suffered?'
'No,' said Stockdale. 'I only heard that he just escaped with his life.'
'He was shot in the back; but a rib turned the ball. He was badly hurt.
We would not let him be took. The men carried him all night across the
meads to Kingsbere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his wound as well as
they could, till he was so far recovered as to be able to get about. He
had gied up his mill for some time; and at last he got to Bristol, and
took a passage to America, and he's settled in Wisconsin.'
'What do you think of smuggling now?' said the minister gravely.
'I own that we were wrong,' said she. 'But I have suffered for it. I am
very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months . . . But
won't you come in, Mr. Stockdale?'
Stockdale went in; and it is to be supposed that they came to an
understanding; for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy's
furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighbouring town.
He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made for
himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a
minister's wife with praiseworthy assiduity. It is said that in after
years she wrote an excellent tract called Render unto Caesar; or, The
Repentant Villagers, in which her own experience was anonymously used as
the introductory story. Stockdale got it printed, after making some
corrections, and putting in a few powerful sentences of his own; and
many hundreds of copies were distributed by the couple in the course of
their married life.
April 1879.
A CHANGED MAN AND OTHER TALES By Thomas Hardy
CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE
A CHANGED MAN
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
THE WAITING SUPPER
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
ALICIA'S DIARY
CHAPTER I.-SHE MISSES HER SISTER
CHAPTER II.-NEWS INTERESTING AND SERIOUS
CHAPTER III.-HER GLOOM LIGHTENS A LITTLE
CHAPTER IV.-SHE BEHOLDS THE ATTRACTIVE STRANGER
CHAPTER V.-HER SITUATION IS A TRYING ONE
CHAPTER VI.-HER INGENUITY INSTIGATES HER
CHAPTER VII.-A SURPRISE AWAITS HER
CHAPTER VIII.-SHE TRAVELS IN PURSUIT
CHAPTER IX.-SHE WITNESSES THE END
CHAPTER X.-SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER
THE GRAVE BY THE HANDPOST
ENTER A DRAGOON
A TRYST AT AN ANCIENT EARTH WORK
WHAT THE SHEPHERD SAW
A COMMITTEE-MAN OF 'THE TERROR'
MASTER JOHN HORSELEIGH, KNIGHT
THE DUKE'S REAPPEARANCE-A FAMILY TRADITION
A MERE INTERLUDE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
PREFATORY NOTE
I reprint in this volume, for what they may be worth, a dozen minor
novels that have been published in the periodical press at various dates
in the past, in order to render them accessible to readers who desire to
have them in the complete series issued by my publishers. For aid in
reclaiming some of the narratives I express my thanks to the proprietors
and editors of the newspapers and magazines in whose pages they first
appeared.
T. H. August 1913.
A CHANGED MAN
CHAPTER I
The person who, next to the actors themselves, chanced to know most of
their story, lived just below 'Top o' Town' (as the spot was called) in
an old substantially-built house, distinguished among its neighbours by
having an oriel window on the first floor, whence could be obtained a
raking view of the High Street, west and east, the former including
Laura's dwelling, the end of the Town Avenue hard by (in which were
played the odd pranks hereafter to be mentioned), the Port-Bredy road
rising westwards, and the turning that led to the cavalry barracks where
the Captain was quartered. Looking eastward down the town from the same
favoured gazebo, the long perspective of houses declined and dwindled
till they merged in the highway across the moor. The white riband of
road disappeared over Grey's Bridge a quarter of a mile off, to plunge
into innumerable rustic windings, shy shades, and solitary undulations
up hill and down dale for one hundred and twenty miles till it exhibited
itself at Hyde Park Corner as a smooth bland surface in touch with a
busy and fashionable world.
To the barracks aforesaid had recently arrived the \x97-th Hussars, a
regiment new to the locality. Almost before any acquaintance with its
members had been made by the townspeople, a report spread that they were
a 'crack' body of men, and had brought a splendid band. For some reason
or other the town had not been used as the headquarters of cavalry for
many years, the various troops stationed there having consisted of
casual detachments only; so that it was with a sense of honour that
everybody-even the small furniture-broker from whom the married troopers
hired tables and chairs-received the news of their crack quality.
In those days the Hussar regiments still wore over the left shoulder
that attractive attachment, or frilled half-coat, hanging loosely behind
like the wounded wing of a bird, which was called the pelisse, though it
was known among the troopers themselves as a 'sling-jacket.' It added
amazingly to their picturesqueness in women's eyes, and, indeed, in the
eyes of men also.
The burgher who lived in the house with the oriel window sat during a
great many hours of the day in that projection, for he was an invalid,
and time hung heavily on his hands unless he maintained a constant
interest in proceedings without. Not more than a week after the arrival
of the Hussars his ears were assailed by the shout of one schoolboy to
another in the street below.
'Have 'ee heard this about the Hussars? They are haunted! Yes-a ghost
troubles 'em; he has followed 'em about the world for years.'
A haunted regiment: that was a new idea for either invalid or stalwart.
The listener in the oriel came to the conclusion that there were some
lively characters among the \x97-th Hussars.
He made Captain Maumbry's acquaintance in an informal manner at an
afternoon tea to which he went in a wheeled chair-one of the very rare
outings that the state of his health permitted. Maumbry showed himself
to be a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, with an attractive hint
of wickedness in his manner that was sure to make him adorable with good
young women. The large dark eyes that lit his pale face expressed this
wickedness strongly, though such was the adaptability of their rays that
one could think they might have expressed sadness or seriousness just as
readily, if he had had a mind for such.
An old and deaf lady who was present asked Captain Maumbry bluntly:
'What's this we hear about you? They say your regiment is haunted.'
The Captain's face assumed an aspect of grave, even sad, concern. 'Yes,'
he replied, 'it is too true.'
Some younger ladies smiled till they saw how serious he looked, when
they looked serious likewise.
'Really?' said the old lady.
'Yes. We naturally don't wish to say much about it.'
'No, no; of course not. But-how haunted?'
'Well; the-thing, as I'll call it, follows us. In country quarters or
town, abroad or at home, it's just the same.'
'How do you account for it?'
'H'm.' Maumbry lowered his voice. 'Some crime committed by certain of
our regiment in past years, we suppose.'
'Dear me . . . How very horrid, and singular!'
'But, as I said, we don't speak of it much.'
'No . . . no.'
When the Hussar was gone, a young lady, disclosing a long-suppressed
interest, asked if the ghost had been seen by any of the town.
The lawyer's son, who always had the latest borough news, said that,
though it was seldom seen by any one but the Hussars themselves, more
than one townsman and woman had already set eyes on it, to his or her
terror. The phantom mostly appeared very late at night, under the dense
trees of the town-avenue nearest the barracks. It was about ten feet
high; its teeth chattered with a dry naked sound, as if they were those
of a skeleton; and its hip-bones could be heard grating in their
sockets.
During the darkest weeks of winter several timid persons were seriously
frightened by the object answering to this cheerful description, and the
police began to look into the matter. Whereupon the appearances grew
less frequent, and some of the Boys of the regiment thankfully stated
that they had not been so free from ghostly visitation for years as they
had become since their arrival in Casterbridge.
This playing at ghosts was the most innocent of the amusements indulged
in by the choice young spirits who inhabited the lichened, red-brick
building at the top of the town bearing 'W.D.' and a broad arrow on its
quoins. Far more serious escapades-levities relating to love, wine,
cards, betting-were talked of, with no doubt more or less of
exaggeration. That the Hussars, Captain Maumbry included, were the cause
of bitter tears to several young women of the town and country is
unquestionably true, despite the fact that the gaieties of the young men
wore a more staring colour in this old-fashioned place than they would
have done in a large and modern city.
CHAPTER II Regularly once a week they rode out in marching order.
Returning up the town on one of these occasions, the romantic pelisse
flapping behind each horseman's shoulder in the soft south-west wind,
Captain Maumbry glanced up at the oriel. A mutual nod was exchanged
between him and the person who sat there reading. The reader and a
friend in the room with him followed the troop with their eyes all the
way up the street, till, when the soldiers were opposite the house in
which Laura lived, that young lady became discernible in the balcony.
'They are engaged to be married, I hear,' said the friend.
'Who-Maumbry and Laura? Never-so soon?'
'Yes.'
'He'll never marry. Several girls have been mentioned in connection with
his name. I am sorry for Laura.'
'Oh, but you needn't be. They are excellently matched.'
'She's only one more.'
'She's one more, and more still. She has regularly caught him. She is a
born player of the game of hearts, and she knew how to beat him in his
own practices. If there is one woman in the town who has any chance of
holding her own and marrying him, she is that woman.'
This was true, as it turned out. By natural proclivity Laura had from
the first entered heart and soul into military romance as exhibited in
the plots and characters of those living exponents of it who came under
her notice. From her earliest young womanhood civilians, however
promising, had no chance of winning her interest if the meanest warrior
were within the horizon. It may be that the position of her uncle's
house (which was her home) at the corner of West Street nearest the
barracks, the daily passing of the troops, the constant blowing of
trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows, coupled with the fact that she
knew nothing of the inner realities of military life, and hence
idealized it, had also helped her mind's original bias for thinking men-
at-arms the only ones worthy of a woman's heart.
Captain Maumbry was a typical prize; one whom all surrounding maidens
had coveted, ached for, angled for, wept for, had by her judicious
management become subdued to her purpose; and in addition to the
pleasure of marrying the man she loved, Laura had the joy of feeling
herself hated by the mothers of all the marriageable girls of the
neighbourhood.
The man in the oriel went to the wedding; not as a guest, for at this
time he was but slightly acquainted with the parties; but mainly because
the church was close to his house; partly, too, for a reason which moved
many others to be spectators of the ceremony; a subconsciousness that,
though the couple might be happy in their experiences, there was
sufficient possibility of their being otherwise to colour the musings of
an onlooker with a pleasing pathos of conjecture. He could on occasion
do a pretty stroke of rhyming in those days, and he beguiled the time of
waiting by pencilling on a blank page of his prayer-book a few lines
which, though kept private then, may be given here:-AT A HASTY WEDDING
(Triolet)
If hours be years the twain are blest, For now they solace swift desire
By lifelong ties that tether zest If hours be years. The twain are blest
Do eastern suns slope never west, Nor pallid ashes follow fire. If hours
be years the twain are blest For now they solace swift desire.
As if, however, to falsify all prophecies, the couple seemed to find in
marriage the secret of perpetuating the intoxication of a courtship
which, on Maumbry's side at least, had opened without serious intent.
During the winter following they were the most popular pair in and about
Casterbridge-nay in South Wessex itself. No smart dinner in the country
houses of the younger and gayer families within driving distance of the
borough was complete without their lively presence; Mrs. Maumbry was the
blithest of the whirling figures at the county ball; and when followed
that inevitable incident of garrison-town life, an amateur dramatic
entertainment, it was just the same. The acting was for the benefit of
such and such an excellent charity-nobody cared what, provided the play
were played-and both Captain Maumbry and his wife were in the piece,
having been in fact, by mutual consent, the originators of the
performance. And so with laughter, and thoughtlessness, and movement,
all went merrily. There was a little backwardness in the bill-paying of
the couple; but in justice to them it must be added that sooner or later
all owings were paid.
CHAPTER III
At the chapel-of-ease attended by the troops there arose above the edge
of the pulpit one Sunday an unknown face. This was the face of a new
curate. He placed upon the desk, not the familiar sermon book, but
merely a Bible. The person who tells these things was not present at
that service, but he soon learnt that the young curate was nothing less
than a great surprise to his congregation; a mixed one always, for
though the Hussars occupied the body of the building, its nooks and
corners were crammed with civilians, whom, up to the present, even the
least uncharitable would have described as being attracted thither less
by the services than by the soldiery.
Now there arose a second reason for squeezing into an already
overcrowded church. The persuasive and gentle eloquence of Mr. Sainway
operated like a charm upon those accustomed only to the higher and dryer
styles of preaching, and for a time the other churches of the town were
thinned of their sitters.
At this point in the nineteenth century the sermon was the sole reason
for churchgoing amongst a vast body of religious people. The liturgy was
a formal preliminary, which, like the Royal proclamation in a court of
assize, had to be got through before the real interest began; and on
reaching home the question was simply: Who preached, and how did he
handle his subject? Even had an archbishop officiated in the service
proper nobody would have cared much about what was said or sung. People
who had formerly attended in the morning only began to go in the
evening, and even to the special addresses in the afternoon.
One day when Captain Maumbry entered his wife's drawing-room, filled
with hired furniture, she thought he was somebody else, for he had not
come upstairs humming the most catching air afloat in musical circles or
in his usual careless way.
'What's the matter, Jack?' she said without looking up from a note she
was writing.
'Well-not much, that I know.'
'O, but there is,' she murmured as she wrote.
'Why-this cursed new lath in a sheet-I mean the new parson! He wants us
to stop the band-playing on Sunday afternoons.'
Laura looked up aghast.
'Why, it is the one thing that enables the few rational beings
hereabouts to keep alive from Saturday to Monday!'
'He says all the town flock to the music and don't come to the service,
and that the pieces played are profane, or mundane, or inane, or
something-not what ought to be played on Sunday. Of course 'tis Lautmann
who settles those things.'
Lautmann was the bandmaster.
The barrack-green on Sunday afternoons had, indeed, become the promenade
of a great many townspeople cheerfully inclined, many even of those who
attended in the morning at Mr. Sainway's service; and little boys who
ought to have been listening to the curate's afternoon lecture were too
often seen rolling upon the grass and making faces behind the more
dignified listeners.
Laura heard no more about the matter, however, for two or three weeks,
when suddenly remembering it she asked her husband if any further
objections had been raised.
'O-Mr. Sainway. I forgot to tell you. I've made his acquaintance. He is
not a bad sort of man.'
Laura asked if either Maumbry or some others of the officers did not
give the presumptuous curate a good setting down for his interference.
'O well-we've forgotten that. He's a stunning preacher, they tell me.'
The acquaintance developed apparently, for the Captain said to her a
little later on, 'There's a good deal in Sainway's argument about having
no band on Sunday afternoons. After all, it is close to his church. But
he doesn't press his objections unduly.'
'I am surprised to hear you defend him!'
'It was only a passing thought of mine. We naturally don't wish to
offend the inhabitants of the town if they don't like it.'
'But they do.'
The invalid in the oriel never clearly gathered the details of progress
in this conflict of lay and clerical opinion; but so it was that, to the
disappointment of musicians, the grief of out-walking lovers, and the
regret of the junior population of the town and country round, the band-
playing on Sunday afternoons ceased in Casterbridge barrack-square.
By this time the Maumbrys had frequently listened to the preaching of
the gentle if narrow-minded curate; for these light-natured, hit-or-
miss, rackety people went to church like others for respectability's
sake. None so orthodox as your unmitigated worldling. A more remarkable
event was the sight to the man in the window of Captain Maumbry and Mr.
Sainway walking down the High Street in earnest conversation. On his
mentioning this fact to a caller he was assured that it was a matter of
common talk that they were always together.
The observer would soon have learnt this with his own eyes if he had not
been told. They began to pass together nearly every day. Hitherto Mrs.
Maumbry, in fashionable walking clothes, had usually been her husband's
companion; but this was less frequent now. The close and singular
friendship between the two men went on for nearly a year, when Mr.
Sainway was presented to a living in a densely-populated town in the
midland counties. He bade the parishioners of his old place a reluctant
farewell and departed, the touching sermon he preached on the occasion
being published by the local printer. Everybody was sorry to lose him;
and it was with genuine grief that his Casterbridge congregation learnt
later on that soon after his induction to his benefice, during some
bitter weather, he had fallen seriously ill of inflammation of the
lungs, of which he eventually died.
We now get below the surface of things. Of all who had known the dead
curate, none grieved for him like the man who on his first arrival had
called him a 'lath in a sheet.' Mrs. Maumbry had never greatly
sympathized with the impressive parson; indeed, she had been secretly
glad that he had gone away to better himself. He had considerably
diminished the pleasures of a woman by whom the joys of earth and good
company had been appreciated to the full. Sorry for her husband in his
loss of a friend who had been none of hers, she was yet quite unprepared
for the sequel.
'There is something that I have wanted to tell you lately, dear,' he
said one morning at breakfast with hesitation. 'Have you guessed what it
is?'
She had guessed nothing.
'That I think of retiring from the army.'
'What!'
'I have thought more and more of Sainway since his death, and of what he
used to say to me so earnestly. And I feel certain I shall be right in
obeying a call within me to give up this fighting trade and enter the
Church.'
'What-be a parson?'
'Yes.'
'But what should I do?'
'Be a parson's wife.'
'Never!' she affirmed.
'But how can you help it?'
'I'll run away rather!' she said vehemently;
'No, you mustn't,' Maumbry replied, in the tone he used when his mind
was made up. 'You'll get accustomed to the idea, for I am constrained to
carry it out, though it is against my worldly interests. I am forced on
by a Hand outside me to tread in the steps of Sainway.'
'Jack,' she asked, with calm pallor and round eyes; 'do you mean to say
seriously that you are arranging to be a curate instead of a soldier?'
'I might say a curate is a soldier-of the church militant; but I don't
want to offend you with doctrine. I distinctly say, yes.'
Late one evening, a little time onward, he caught her sitting by the dim
firelight in her room. She did not know he had entered; and he found her
weeping. 'What are you crying about, poor dearest?' he said.
She started. 'Because of what you have told me!' The Captain grew very
unhappy; but he was undeterred.
In due time the town learnt, to its intense surprise, that Captain
Maumbry had retired from the \x97-th Hussars and gone to Fountall
Theological College to prepare for the ministry.
CHAPTER IV
'O, the pity of it! Such a dashing soldier-so popular-such an
acquisition to the town-the soul of social life here! And now! . . . One
should not speak ill of the dead, but that dreadful Mr. Sainway-it was
too cruel of him!'
This is a summary of what was said when Captain, now the Reverend, John
Maumbry was enabled by circumstances to indulge his heart's desire of
returning to the scene of his former exploits in the capacity of a
minister of the Gospel. A low-lying district of the town, which at that
date was crowded with impoverished cottagers, was crying for a curate,
and Mr. Maumbry generously offered himself as one willing to undertake
labours that were certain to produce little result, and no thanks,
credit, or emolument.
Let the truth be told about him as a clergyman; he proved to be anything
but a brilliant success. Painstaking, single-minded, deeply in earnest
as all could see, his delivery was laboured, his sermons were dull to
listen to, and alas, too, too long. Even the dispassionate judges who
sat by the hour in the bar-parlour of the White Hart-an inn standing at
the dividing line between the poor quarter aforesaid and the fashionable
quarter of Maumbry's former triumphs, and hence affording a position of
strict impartiality-agreed in substance with the young ladies to the
westward, though their views were somewhat more tersely expressed:
'Surely, God A'mighty spwiled a good sojer to make a bad pa'son when He
shifted Cap'n Ma'mbry into a sarpless!'
The latter knew that such things were said, but he pursued his daily'
labours in and out of the hovels with serene unconcern.
It was about this time that the invalid in the oriel became more than a
mere bowing acquaintance of Mrs. Maumbry's. She had returned to the town
with her husband, and was living with him in a little house in the
centre of his circle of ministration, when by some means she became one
of the invalid's visitors. After a general conversation while sitting in
his room with a friend of both, an incident led up to the matter that
still rankled deeply in her soul. Her face was now paler and thinner
than it had been; even more attractive, her disappointments having
inscribed themselves as meek thoughtfulness on a look that was once a
little frivolous. The two ladies had called to be allowed to use the
window for observing the departure of the Hussars, who were leaving for
barracks much nearer to London.
The troopers turned the corner of Barrack Road into the top of High
Street, headed by their band playing 'The girl I left behind me' (which
was formerly always the tune for such times, though it is now nearly
disused). They came and passed the oriel, where an officer or two,
looking up and discovering Mrs. Maumbry, saluted her, whose eyes filled
with tears as the notes of the band waned away. Before the little group
had recovered from that sense of the romantic which such spectacles
impart, Mr. Maumbry came along the pavement. He probably had bidden his
former brethren-in-arms a farewell at the top of the street, for he
walked from that direction in his rather shabby clerical clothes, and
with a basket on his arm which seemed to hold some purchases he had been
making for his poorer parishioners. Unlike the soldiers he went along
quite unconscious of his appearance or of the scene around.
The contrast was too much for Laura. With lips that now quivered, she
asked the invalid what he thought of the change that had come to her.
It was difficult to answer, and with a wilfulness that was too strong in
her she repeated the question.
'Do you think,' she added, 'that a woman's husband has a right to do
such a thing, even if he does feel a certain call to it?'
Her listener sympathized too largely with both of them to be anything
but unsatisfactory in his reply. Laura gazed longingly out of the window
towards the thin dusty line of Hussars, now smalling towards the
Mellstock Ridge. 'I,' she said, 'who should have been in their van on
the way to London, am doomed to fester in a hole in Durnover Lane!'
Many events had passed and many rumours had been current concerning her
before the invalid saw her again after her leave-taking that day.
CHAPTER V
Casterbridge had known many military and civil episodes; many happy
times, and times less happy; and now came the time of her visitation.
The scourge of cholera had been laid on the suffering country, and the
low-lying purlieus of this ancient borough had more than their share of
the infliction. Mixen Lane, in the Durnover quarter, and in Maumbry's
parish, was where the blow fell most heavily. Yet there was a certain
mercy in its choice of a date, for Maumbry was the man for such an hour.
The spread of the epidemic was so rapid that many left the town and took
lodgings in the villages and farms. Mr. Maumbry's house was close to the
most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn, noon, and night
in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in alleviating the sufferings
of the victims. So, as a matter of ordinary precaution, he decided to
isolate his wife somewhere away from him for a while.
She suggested a village by the sea, near Budmouth Regis, and lodgings
were obtained for her at Creston, a spot divided from the Casterbridge
valley by a high ridge that gave it quite another atmosphere, though it
lay no more than six miles off.
Thither she went. While she was rusticating in this place of safety, and
her husband was slaving in the slums, she struck up an acquaintance with
a lieutenant in the \x97-st Foot, a Mr. Vannicock, who was stationed with
his regiment at the Budmouth infantry barracks. As Laura frequently sat
on the shelving beach, watching each thin wave slide up to her, and
hearing, without heeding, its gnaw at the pebbles in its retreat, he
often took a walk that way.
The acquaintance grew and ripened. Her situation, her history, her
beauty, her age-a year or two above his own-all tended to make an
impression on the young man's heart, and a reckless flirtation was soon
in blithe progress upon that lonely shore.
It was said by her detractors afterwards that she had chosen her lodging
to be near this gentleman, but there is reason to believe that she had
never seen him till her arrival there. Just now Casterbridge was so
deeply occupied with its own sad affairs-a daily burying of the dead and
destruction of contaminated clothes and bedding-that it had little
inclination to promulgate such gossip as may have reached its ears on
the pair. Nobody long considered Laura in the tragic cloud which
overhung all.
Meanwhile, on the Budmouth side of the hill the very mood of men was in
contrast. The visitation there had been slight and much earlier, and
normal occupations and pastimes had been resumed. Mr. Maumbry had
arranged to see Laura twice a week in the open air, that she might run
no risk from him; and, having heard nothing of the faint rumour, he met
her as usual one dry and windy afternoon on the summit of the dividing
hill, near where the high road from town to town crosses the old Ridge-
way at right angles.
He waved his hand, and smiled as she approached, shouting to her: 'We
will keep this wall between us, dear.' (Walls formed the field-fences
here.) 'You mustn't be endangered. It won't be for long, with God's
help!'
'I will do as you tell me, Jack. But you are running too much risk
yourself, aren't you? I get little news of you; but I fancy you are.'
'Not more than others.'
Thus somewhat formally they talked, an insulating wind beating the wall
between them like a mill-weir.
'But you wanted to ask me something?' he added.
'Yes. You know we are trying in Budmouth to raise some money for your
sufferers; and the way we have thought of is by a dramatic performance.
They want me to take a part.'
His face saddened. 'I have known so much of that sort of thing, and all
that accompanies it! I wish you had thought of some other way.'
She said lightly that she was afraid it was all settled. 'You object to
my taking a part, then? Of course-'
He told her that he did not like to say he positively objected. He
wished they had chosen an oratorio, or lecture, or anything more in
keeping with the necessity it was to relieve.
'But,' said she impatiently, 'people won't come to oratorios or
lectures! They will crowd to comedies and farces.'
'Well, I cannot dictate to Budmouth how it shall earn the money it is
going to give us. Who is getting up this performance?'
'The boys of the \x97-st.'
'Ah, yes; our old game!' replied Mr. Maumbry. 'The grief of Casterbridge
is the excuse for their frivolity. Candidly, dear Laura, I wish you
wouldn't play in it. But I don't forbid you to. I leave the whole to
your judgment.'
The interview ended, and they went their ways northward and southward.
Time disclosed to all concerned that Mrs. Maumbry played in the comedy
as the heroine, the lover's part being taken by Mr. Vannicock.
CHAPTER VI
Thus was helped on an event which the conduct of the mutually-attracted
ones had been generating for some time.
It is unnecessary to give details. The \x97-st Foot left for Bristol, and
this precipitated their action. After a week of hesitation she agreed to
leave her home at Creston and meet Vannicock on the ridge hard by, and
to accompany him to Bath, where he had secured lodgings for her, so that
she would be only about a dozen miles from his quarters.
Accordingly, on the evening chosen, she laid on her dressing-table a
note for her husband, running thus:-
DEAR JACK-I am unable to endure this life any longer, and I have
resolved to put an end to it. I told you I should run away if you
persisted in being a clergyman, and now I am doing it. One cannot help
one's nature. I have resolved to throw in my lot with Mr. Vannicock, and
I hope rather than expect you will forgive me.-L.
Then, with hardly a scrap of luggage, she went, ascending to the ridge
in the dusk of early evening. Almost on the very spot where her husband
had stood at their last tryst she beheld the outline of Vannicock, who
had come all the way from Bristol to fetch her.
'I don't like meeting here-it is so unlucky!' she cried to him. 'For
God's sake let us have a place of our own. Go back to the milestone, and
I'll come on.'
He went back to the milestone that stands on the north slope of the
ridge, where the old and new roads diverge, and she joined him there.
She was taciturn and sorrowful when he asked her why she would not meet
him on the top. At last she inquired how they were going to travel.
He explained that he proposed to walk to Mellstock Hill, on the other
side of Casterbridge, where a fly was waiting to take them by a cross-
cut into the Ivell Road, and onward to that town. The Bristol railway
was open to Ivell.
This plan they followed, and walked briskly through the dull gloom till
they neared Casterbridge, which place they avoided by turning to the
right at the Roman Amphitheatre and bearing round to Durnover Cross.
Thence the way was solitary and open across the moor to the hill whereon
the Ivell fly awaited them.
'I have noticed for some time,' she said, 'a lurid glare over the
Durnover end of the town. It seems to come from somewhere about Mixen
Lane.'
'The lamps,' he suggested.
'There's not a lamp as big as a rushlight in the whole lane. It is where
the cholera is worst.'
By Standfast Corner, a little beyond the Cross, they suddenly obtained
an end view of the lane. Large bonfires were burning in the middle of
the way, with a view to purifying the air; and from the wretched
tenements with which the lane was lined in those days persons were
bringing out bedding and clothing. Some was thrown into the fires, the
rest placed in wheel-barrows and wheeled into the moor directly in the
track of the fugitives.
They followed on, and came up to where a vast copper was set in the open
air. Here the linen was boiled and disinfected. By the light of the
lanterns Laura discovered that her husband was standing by the copper,
and that it was he who unloaded the barrow and immersed its contents.
The night was so calm and muggy that the conversation by the copper
reached her ears.
'Are there many more loads to-night?'
'There's the clothes o' they that died this afternoon, sir. But that
might bide till to-morrow, for you must be tired out.'
'We'll do it at once, for I can't ask anybody else to undertake it.
Overturn that load on the grass and fetch the rest.'
The man did so and went off with the barrow. Maumbry paused for a moment
to wipe his face, and resumed his homely drudgery amid this squalid and
reeking scene, pressing down and stirring the contents of the copper
with what looked like an old rolling-pin. The steam therefrom, laden
with death, travelled in a low trail across the meadow.
Laura spoke suddenly: 'I won't go to-night after all. He is so tired,
and I must help him. I didn't know things were so bad as this!'
Vannicock's arm dropped from her waist, where it had been resting as
they walked. 'Will you leave?' she asked.
'I will if you say I must. But I'd rather help too.' There was no
expostulation in his tone.
Laura had gone forward. 'Jack,' she said, 'I am come to help!'
The weary curate turned and held up the lantern. 'O-what, is it you,
Laura?' he asked in surprise. 'Why did you come into this? You had
better go back-the risk is great.'
'But I want to help you, Jack. Please let me help! I didn't come by
myself-Mr. Vannicock kept me company. He will make himself useful too,
if he's not gone on. Mr. Vannicock!'
The young lieutenant came forward reluctantly. Mr. Maumbry spoke
formally to him, adding as he resumed his labour, 'I thought the \x97-st
Foot had gone to Bristol.'
'We have. But I have run down again for a few things.'
The two newcomers began to assist, Vannicock placing on the ground the
small bag containing Laura's toilet articles that he had been carrying.
The barrowman soon returned with another load, and all continued work
for nearly a half-hour, when a coachman came out from the shadows to the
north.
'Beg pardon, sir,' he whispered to Vannicock, 'but I've waited so long
on Mellstock hill that at last I drove down to the turnpike; and seeing
the light here, I ran on to find out what had happened.'
Lieutenant Vannicock told him to wait a few minutes, and the last
barrow-load was got through. Mr. Maumbry stretched himself and breathed
heavily, saying, 'There; we can do no more.'
As if from the relaxation of effort he seemed to be seized with violent
pain. He pressed his hands to his sides and bent forward.
'Ah! I think it has got hold of me at last,' he said with difficulty. 'I
must try to get home. Let Mr. Vannicock take you back, Laura.'
He walked a few steps, they helping him, but was obliged to sink down on
the grass.
'I am-afraid-you'll have to send for a hurdle, or shutter, or
something,' he went on feebly, 'or try to get me into the barrow.'
But Vannicock had called to the driver of the fly, and they waited until
it was brought on from the turnpike hard by. Mr. Maumbry was placed
therein. Laura entered with him, and they drove to his humble residence
near the Cross, where he was got upstairs.
Vannicock stood outside by the empty fly awhile, but Laura did not
reappear. He thereupon entered the fly and told the driver to take him
back to Ivell.
CHAPTER VII
Mr. Maumbry had over-exerted himself in the relief of the suffering
poor, and fell a victim-one of the last-to the pestilence which had
carried off so many. Two days later he lay in his coffin.
Laura was in the room below. A servant brought in some letters, and she
glanced them over. One was the note from herself to Maumbry, informing
him that she was unable to endure life with him any longer and was about
to elope with Vannicock. Having read the letter she took it upstairs to
where the dead man was, and slipped it into his coffin. The next day she
buried him.
She was now free.
She shut up his house at Durnover Cross and returned to her lodgings at
Creston. Soon she had a letter from Vannicock, and six weeks after her
husband's death her lover came to see her.
'I forgot to give you back this-that night,' he said presently, handing
her the little bag she had taken as her whole luggage when leaving.
Laura received it and absently shook it out. There fell upon the carpet
her brush, comb, slippers, nightdress, and other simple necessaries for
a journey. They had an intolerably ghastly look now, and she tried to
cover them.
'I can now,' he said, 'ask you to belong to me legally-when a proper
interval has gone-instead of as we meant.'
There was languor in his utterance, hinting at a possibility that it was
perfunctorily made. Laura picked up her articles, answering that he
certainly could so ask her-she was free. Yet not her expression either
could be called an ardent response. Then she bCHANGElinked more and more
quickly and put her handkerchief to her face. She was weeping violently.
He did not move or try to comfort her in any way. What had come between
them? No living person. They had been lovers. There was now no material
obstacle whatever to their union. But there was the insistent shadow of
that unconscious one; the thin figure of him, moving to and fro in front
of the ghastly furnace in the gloom of Durnover Moor.
Yet Vannicock called upon Laura when he was in the neighbourhood, which
was not often; but in two years, as if on purpose to further the
marriage which everybody was expecting, the \x97-st Foot returned to
Budmouth Regis.
Thereupon the two could not help encountering each other at times. But
whether because the obstacle had been the source of the love, or from a
sense of error, and because Mrs. Maumbry bore a less attractive look as
a widow than before, their feelings seemed to decline from their former
incandescence to a mere tepid civility. What domestic issues supervened
in Vannicock's further story the man in the oriel never knew; but Mrs.
Maumbry lived and died a widow. 1900.
THE WAITING SUPPER
CHAPTER I
Whoever had perceived the yeoman standing on Squire Everard's lawn in
the dusk of that October evening fifty years ago, might have said at
first sight that he was loitering there from idle curiosity. For a large
five-light window of the manor-house in front of him was unshuttered and
uncurtained, so that the illuminated room within could be scanned almost
to its four corners. Obviously nobody was ever expected to be in this
part of the grounds after nightfall.
The apartment thus swept by an eye from without was occupied by two
persons; they were sitting over dessert, the tablecloth having been
removed in the old-fashioned way. The fruits were local, consisting of
apples, pears, nuts, and such other products of the summer as might be
presumed to grow on the estate. There was strong ale and rum on the
table, and but little wine. Moreover, the appointments of the dining-
room were simple and homely even for the date, betokening a countrified
household of the smaller gentry, without much wealth or ambition-
formerly a numerous class, but now in great part ousted by the
territorial landlords.
One of the two sitters was a young lady in white muslin, who listened
somewhat impatiently to the remarks of her companion, an elderly,
rubicund personage, whom the merest stranger could have pronounced to be
her father. The watcher evinced no signs of moving, and it became
evident that affairs were not so simple as they first had seemed. The
tall farmer was in fact no accidental spectator, and he stood by
premeditation close to the trunk of a tree, so that had any traveller
passed along the road without the park gate, or even round the lawn to
the door, that person would scarce have noticed the other,
notwithstanding that the gate was quite near at hand, and the park
little larger than a paddock. There was still light enough in the
western heaven to brighten faintly one side of the man's face, and to
show against the trunk of the tree behind the admirable cut of his
profile; also to reveal that the front of the manor-house, small though
it seemed, was solidly built of stone in that never-to-be-surpassed
style for the English country residence-the mullioned and transomed
Elizabethan.
The lawn, although neglected, was still as level as a bowling- green-
which indeed it might once have served for; and the blades of grass
before the window were raked by the candle-shine, which stretched over
them so far as to touch the yeoman's face in front.
Within the dining-room there were also, with one of the twain, the same
signs of a hidden purpose that marked the farmer. The young lady's mind
was straying as clearly into the shadows as that of the loiterer was
fixed upon the room-nay, it could be said that she was quite conscious
of his presence outside. Impatience caused her foot to beat silently on
the carpet, and she more than once rose to leave the table. This
proceeding was checked by her father, who would put his hand upon her
shoulder and unceremoniously press her down into her chair, till he
should have concluded his observations. Her replies were brief enough,
and there was factitiousness in her smiles of assent to his views. A
small iron casement between two of the mullions was open, and some
occasional words of the dialogue were audible without.
'As for drains-how can I put in drains? The pipes don't cost much,
that's true; but the labour in sinking the trenches is ruination. And
then the gates-they should be hung to stone posts, otherwise there's no
keeping them up through harvest.' The Squire's voice was strongly toned
with the local accent, so that he said 'dra\xEFns' and 'ge\xE4ts' like the
rustics on his estate.
The landscape without grew darker, and the young man's figure seemed to
be absorbed into the trunk of the tree. The small stars filled in
between the larger, the nebulae between the small stars, the trees quite
lost their voice; and if there was still a sound, it was from the
cascade of a stream which stretched along under the trees that bounded
the lawn on its northern side.
At last the young girl did get to her feet and secure her retreat. 'I
have something to do, papa,' she said. 'I shall not be in the drawing-
room just yet.'
'Very well,' replied he. 'Then I won't hurry.' And closing the door
behind her, he drew his decanters together and settled down in his
chair.
Three minutes after that a woman's shape emerged from the drawing-room
window, and passing through a wall-door to the entrance front, came
across the grass. She kept well clear of the dining-room window, but
enough of its light fell on her to show, escaping from the dark-hooded
cloak that she wore, stray verges of the same light dress which had
figured but recently at the dinner-table. The hood was contracted tight
about her face with a drawing-string, making her countenance small and
baby-like, and lovelier even than before.
Without hesitation she brushed across the grass to the tree under which
the young man stood concealed. The moment she had reached him he
enclosed her form with his arm. The meeting and embrace, though by no
means formal, were yet not passionate; the whole proceeding was that of
persons who had repeated the act so often as to be unconscious of its
performance. She turned within his arm, and faced in the same direction
with himself, which was towards the window; and thus they stood without
speaking, the back of her head leaning against his shoulder. For a while
each seemed to be thinking his and her diverse thoughts.
'You have kept me waiting a long time, dear Christine,' he said at last.
'I wanted to speak to you particularly, or I should not have stayed. How
came you to be dining at this time o' night?'
'Father has been out all day, and dinner was put back till six. I know I
have kept you; but Nicholas, how can I help it sometimes, if I am not to
run any risk? My poor father insists upon my listening to all he has to
say; since my brother left he has had nobody else to listen to him; and
to-night he was particularly tedious on his usual topics-draining, and
tenant-farmers, and the village people. I must take daddy to London; he
gets so narrow always staying here.'
'And what did you say to it all?'
'Well, I took the part of the tenant-farmers, of course, as the beloved
of one should in duty do.' There followed a little break or gasp,
implying a strangled sigh.
'You are sorry you have encouraged that beloving one?'
'O no, Nicholas . . . What is it you want to see me for particularly?'
'I know you are sorry, as time goes on, and everything is at a dead-
lock, with no prospect of change, and your rural swain loses his
freshness! Only think, this secret understanding between us has lasted
near three year, ever since you was a little over sixteen.'
'Yes; it has been a long time.'
'And I an untamed, uncultivated man, who has never seen London, and
knows nothing about society at all.'
'Not uncultivated, dear Nicholas. Untravelled, socially unpractised, if
you will,' she said, smiling. 'Well, I did sigh; but not because I
regret being your promised one. What I do sometimes regret is that the
scheme, which my meetings with you are but a part of, has not been
carried out completely. You said, Nicholas, that if I consented to swear
to keep faith with you, you would go away and travel, and see nations,
and peoples, and cities, and take a professor with you, and study books
and art, simultaneously with your study of men and manners; and then
come back at the end of two years, when I should find that my father
would by no means be indisposed to accept you as a son-in-law. You said
your reason for wishing to get my promise before starting was that your
mind would then be more at rest when you were far away, and so could
give itself more completely to knowledge than if you went as my
unaccepted lover only, fuming with anxiety as to how I should be when
you came back. I saw how reasonable that was; and solemnly swore myself
to you in consequence. But instead of going to see the world you stay on
and on here to see me.'
'And you don't want me to see you?'
'Yes-no-it is not that. It is that I have latterly felt frightened at
what I am doing when not in your actual presence. It seems so wicked not
to tell my father that I have a lover close at hand, within touch and
view of both of us; whereas if you were absent my conduct would not seem
quite so treacherous. The realities would not stare at one so. You would
be a pleasant dream to me, which I should be free to indulge in without
reproach of my conscience; I should live in hopeful expectation of your
returning fully qualified to boldly claim me of my father. There, I have
been terribly frank, I know.'
He in his turn had lapsed into gloomy breathings now. 'I did plan it as
you state,' he answered. 'I did mean to go away the moment I had your
promise. But, dear Christine, I did not foresee two or three things. I
did not know what a lot of pain it would cost to tear myself from you.
And I did not know that my stingy uncle-heaven forgive me calling him
so!-would so flatly refuse to advance me money for my purpose-the scheme
of travelling with a first-rate tutor costing a formidable sum o' money.
You have no idea what it would cost!'
'But I have said that I'll find the money.'
'Ah, there,' he returned, 'you have hit a sore place. To speak truly,
dear, I would rather stay unpolished a hundred years than take your
money.'
'But why? Men continually use the money of the women they marry.'
'Yes; but not till afterwards. No man would like to touch your money at
present, and I should feel very mean if I were to do so in present
circumstances. That brings me to what I was going to propose. But no-
upon the whole I will not propose it now.'
'Ah! I would guarantee expenses, and you won't let me! The money is my
personal possession: it comes to me from my late grandfather, and not
from my father at all.'
He laughed forcedly and pressed her hand. 'There are more reasons why I
cannot tear myself away,' he added. 'What would become of my uncle's
farming? Six hundred acres in this parish, and five hundred in the next-
a constant traipsing from one farm to the other; he can't be in two
places at once. Still, that might be got over if it were not for the
other matters. Besides, dear, I still should be a little uneasy, even
though I have your promise, lest somebody should snap you up away from
me.'
'Ah, you should have thought of that before. Otherwise I have committed
myself for nothing.'
'I should have thought of it,' he answered gravely. 'But I did not.
There lies my fault, I admit it freely. Ah, if you would only commit
yourself a little more, I might at least get over that difficulty! But I
won't ask you. You have no idea how much you are to me still; you could
not argue so coolly if you had. What property belongs to you I hate the
very sound of; it is you I care for. I wish you hadn't a farthing in the
world but what I could earn for you!'
'I don't altogether wish that,' she murmured.
'I wish it, because it would have made what I was going to propose much
easier to do than it is now. Indeed I will not propose it, although I
came on purpose, after what you have said in your frankness.'
'Nonsense, Nic. Come, tell me. How can you be so touchy?'
'Look at this then, Christine dear.' He drew from his breast-pocket a
sheet of paper and unfolded it, when it was observable that a seal
dangled from the bottom.
'What is it?' She held the paper sideways, so that what there was of
window-light fell on its surface. 'I can only read the Old English
letters-why-our names! Surely it is not a marriage-licence?'
'It is.'
She trembled. 'O Nic! how could you do this-and without telling me!'
'Why should I have thought I must tell you? You had not spoken "frankly"
then as you have now. We have been all to each other more than these two
years, and I thought I would propose that we marry privately, and that I
then leave you on the instant. I would have taken my travelling-bag to
church, and you would have gone home alone. I should not have started on
my adventures in the brilliant manner of our original plan, but should
have roughed it a little at first; my great gain would have been that
the absolute possession of you would have enabled me to work with spirit
and purpose, such as nothing else could do. But I dare not ask you now-
so frank as you have been.'
She did not answer. The document he had produced gave such unexpected
substantiality to the venture with which she had so long toyed as a
vague dream merely, that she was, in truth, frightened a little. 'I-
don't know about it!' she said.
'Perhaps not. Ah, my little lady, you are wearying of me!'
'No, Nic,' responded she, creeping closer. 'I am not. Upon my word, and
truth, and honour, I am not, Nic.'
'A mere tiller of the soil, as I should be called,' he continued,
without heeding her. 'And you-well, a daughter of one of the-I won't say
oldest families, because that's absurd, all families are the same age-
one of the longest chronicled families about here, whose name is
actually the name of the place.'
'That's not much, I am sorry to say! My poor brother-but I won't speak
of that . . . Well,' she murmured mischievously, after a pause, 'you
certainly would not need to be uneasy if I were to do this that you want
me to do. You would have me safe enough in your trap then; I couldn't
get away!'
'That's just it!' he said vehemently. 'It is a trap-you feel it so, and
that though you wouldn't be able to get away from me you might
particularly wish to! Ah, if I had asked you two years ago you would
have agreed instantly. But I thought I was bound to wait for the
proposal to come from you as the superior!'
'Now you are angry, and take seriously what I meant purely in fun. You
don't know me even yet! To show you that you have not been mistaken in
me, I do propose to carry out this licence. I'll marry you, dear
Nicholas, to-morrow morning.'
'Ah, Christine! I am afraid I have stung you on to this, so that I
cannot-'
'No, no, no!' she hastily rejoined; and there was something in her tone
which suggested that she had been put upon her mettle and would not
flinch. 'Take me whilst I am in the humour. What church is the licence
for?'
'That I've not looked to see-why our parish church here, of course. Ah,
then we cannot use it! We dare not be married here.'
'We do dare,' said she. 'And we will too, if you'll be there.'
'If I'll be there!'
They speedily came to an agreement that he should be in the church-porch
at ten minutes to eight on the following morning, awaiting her; and
that, immediately after the conclusion of the service which would make
them one, Nicholas should set out on his long-deferred educational tour,
towards the cost of which she was resolving to bring a substantial
subscription with her to church. Then, slipping from him, she went
indoors by the way she had come, and Nicholas bent his steps homewards.
CHAPTER II
Instead of leaving the spot by the gate, he flung himself over the
fence, and pursued a direction towards the river under the trees. And it
was now, in his lonely progress, that he showed for the first time
outwardly that he was not altogether unworthy of her. He wore long
water-boots reaching above his knees, and, instead of making a circuit
to find a bridge by which he might cross the Froom-the river aforesaid-
he made straight for the point whence proceeded the low roar that was at
this hour the only evidence of the stream's existence. He speedily stood
on the verge of the waterfall which caused the noise, and stepping into
the water at the top of the fall, waded through with the sure tread of
one who knew every inch of his footing, even though the canopy of trees
rendered the darkness almost absolute, and a false step would have
precipitated him into the pool beneath. Soon reaching the boundary of
the grounds, he continued in the same direct line to traverse the
alluvial valley, full of brooks and tributaries to the main stream-in
former times quite impassable, and impassable in winter now. Sometimes
he would cross a deep gully on a plank not wider than the hand; at
another time he ploughed his way through beds of spear-grass, where at a
few feet to the right or left he might have been sucked down into a
morass. At last he reached firm land on the other side of this watery
tract, and came to his house on the rise behind-Elsenford-an ordinary
farmstead, from the back of which rose indistinct breathings, belchings,
and snortings, the rattle of halters, and other familiar features of an
agriculturist's home.
While Nicholas Long was packing his bag in an upper room of this
dwelling, Miss Christine Everard sat at a desk in her own chamber at
Froom-Everard manor-house, looking with pale fixed countenance at the
candles.
'I ought-I must now!' she whispered to herself. 'I should not have begun
it if I had not meant to carry it through! It runs in the blood of us, I
suppose.' She alluded to a fact unknown to her lover, the clandestine
marriage of an aunt under circumstances somewhat similar to the present.
In a few minutes she had penned the following note:-
October 13, 183-.
DEAR MR. BEALAND-Can you make it convenient to yourself to meet me at
the Church to-morrow morning at eight? I name the early hour because it
would suit me better than later on in the day. You will find me in the
chancel, if you can come. An answer yes or no by the bearer of this will
be sufficient. CHRISTINE EVERARD.
She sent the note to the rector immediately, waiting at a small side-
door of the house till she heard the servant's footsteps returning along
the lane, when she went round and met him in the passage. The rector had
taken the trouble to write a line, and answered that he would meet her
with pleasure.
A dripping fog which ushered in the next morning was highly favourable
to the scheme of the pair. At that time of the century Froom-Everard
House had not been altered and enlarged; the public lane passed close
under its walls; and there was a door opening directly from one of the
old parlours-the south parlour, as it was called-into the lane which led
to the village. Christine came out this way, and after following the
lane for a short distance entered upon a path within a belt of
plantation, by which the church could be reached privately. She even
avoided the churchyard gate, walking along to a place where the turf
without the low wall rose into a mound, enabling her to mount upon the
coping and spring down inside. She crossed the wet graves, and so glided
round to the door. He was there, with his bag in his hand. He kissed her
with a sort of surprise, as if he had expected that at the last moment
her heart would fail her.
Though it had not failed her, there was, nevertheless, no great ardour
in Christine's bearing-merely the momentum of an antecedent impulse.
They went up the aisle together, the bottle-green glass of the old lead
quarries admitting but little light at that hour, and under such an
atmosphere. They stood by the altar-rail in silence, Christine's skirt
visibly quivering at each beat of her heart.
Presently a quick step ground upon the gravel, and Mr. Bealand came
round by the front. He was a quiet bachelor, courteous towards
Christine, and not at first recognizing in Nicholas a neighbouring
yeoman (for he lived aloofly in the next parish), advanced to her
without revealing any surprise at her unusual request. But in truth he
was surprised, the keen interest taken by many country young women at
the present day in church decoration and festivals being then unknown.
'Good morning,' he said; and repeated the same words to Nicholas more
mechanically.
'Good morning,' she replied gravely. 'Mr. Bealand, I have a serious
reason for asking you to meet me-us, I may say. We wish you to marry
us.'
The rector's gaze hardened to fixity, rather between than upon either of
them, and he neither moved nor replied for some time.
'Ah!' he said at last.
'And we are quite ready.'
'I had no idea-'
'It has been kept rather private,' she said calmly.
'Where are your witnesses?'
'They are outside in the meadow, sir. I can call them in a moment,' said
Nicholas.
'Oh-I see it is-Mr. Nicholas Long,' said Mr. Bealand, and turning again
to Christine, 'Does your father know of this?'
'Is it necessary that I should answer that question, Mr. Bealand?'
'I am afraid it is-highly necessary.'
Christine began to look concerned.
'Where is the licence?' the rector asked; 'since there have been no
banns.'
Nicholas produced it, Mr. Bealand read it, an operation which occupied
him several minutes-or at least he made it appear so; till Christine
said impatiently, 'We are quite ready, Mr. Bealand. Will you proceed?
Mr. Long has to take a journey of a great many miles to-day.'
'And you?'
'No. I remain.'
Mr. Bealand assumed firmness. 'There is something wrong in this,' he
said. 'I cannot marry you without your father's presence.'
'But have you a right to refuse us?' interposed Nicholas. 'I believe we
are in a position to demand your fulfilment of our request.'
'No, you are not! Is Miss Everard of age? I think not. I think she is
months from being so. Eh, Miss Everard?'
'Am I bound to tell that?'
'Certainly. At any rate you are bound to write it. Meanwhile I refuse to
solemnize the service. And let me entreat you two young people to do
nothing so rash as this, even if by going to some strange church, you
may do so without discovery. The tragedy of marriage-'
'Tragedy?'
'Certainly. It is full of crises and catastrophes, and ends with the
death of one of the actors. The tragedy of marriage, as I was saying, is
one I shall not be a party to your beginning with such light hearts, and
I shall feel bound to put your father on his guard, Miss Everard. Think
better of it, I entreat you! Remember the proverb, "Marry in haste and
repent at leisure."'
Christine, spurred by opposition, almost stormed at him. Nicholas
implored; but nothing would turn that obstinate rector. She sat down and
reflected. By-and-by she confronted Mr. Bealand.
'Our marriage is not to be this morning, I see,' she said. 'Now grant me
one favour, and in return I'll promise you to do nothing rashly. Do not
tell my father a word of what has happened here.'
'I agree-if you undertake not to elope.'
She looked at Nicholas, and he looked at her. 'Do you wish me to elope,
Nic?' she asked.
'No,' he said.
So the compact was made, and they left the church singly, Nicholas
remaining till the last, and closing the door. On his way home, carrying
the well-packed bag which was just now to go no further, the two men who
were mending water-carriers in the meadows approached the hedge, as if
they had been on the alert all the time.
'You said you mid want us for zummat, sir?'
'All right-never mind,' he answered through the hedge. 'I did not
require you after all.'
CHAPTER III
At a manor not far away there lived a queer and primitive couple who had
lately been blessed with a son and heir. The christening took place
during the week under notice, and this had been followed by a feast to
the parishioners. Christine's father, one of the same generation and
kind, had been asked to drive over and assist in the entertainment, and
Christine, as a matter of course, accompanied him.
When they reached Athelhall, as the house was called, they found the
usually quiet nook a lively spectacle. Tables had been spread in the
apartment which lent its name to the whole building-the hall proper-
covered with a fine open-timbered roof, whose braces, purlins, and
rafters made a brown thicket of oak overhead. Here tenantry of all ages
sat with their wives and families, and the servants were assisted in
their ministrations by the sons and daughters of the owner's friends and
neighbours. Christine lent a hand among the rest.
She was holding a plate in each hand towards a huge brown platter of
baked rice-pudding, from which a footman was scooping a large spoonful,
when a voice reached her ear over her shoulder: 'Allow me to hold them
for you.'
Christine turned, and recognized in the speaker the nephew of the
entertainer, a young man from London, whom she had already met on two or
three occasions.
She accepted the proffered help, and from that moment, whenever he
passed her in their marchings to and fro during the remainder of the
serving, he smiled acquaintance. When their work was done, he improved
the few words into a conversation. He plainly had been attracted by her
fairness.
Bellston was a self-assured young man, not particularly good-looking,
with more colour in his skin than even Nicholas had. He had flushed a
little in attracting her notice, though the flush had nothing of
nervousness in it-the air with which it was accompanied making it
curiously suggestive of a flush of anger; and even when he laughed it
was difficult to banish that fancy.
The late autumn sunlight streamed in through the window panes upon the
heads and shoulders of the venerable patriarchs of the hamlet, and upon
the middle-aged, and upon the young; upon men and women who had played
out, or were to play, tragedies or tragi-comedies in that nook of
civilization not less great, essentially, than those which, enacted on
more central arenas, fix the attention of the world. One of the party
was a cousin of Nicholas Long's, who sat with her husband and children.
To make himself as locally harmonious as possible, Mr. Bellston remarked
to his companion on the scene-'It does one's heart good,' he said, 'to
see these simple peasants enjoying themselves.'
'O Mr. Bellston!' exclaimed Christine; 'don't be too sure about that
word "simple"! You little think what they see and meditate! Their
reasonings and emotions are as complicated as ours.'
She spoke with a vehemence which would have been hardly present in her
words but for her own relation to Nicholas. The sense of that produced
in her a nameless depression thenceforward. The young man, however,
still followed her up.
'I am glad to hear you say it,' he returned warmly. 'I was merely
attuning myself to your mood, as I thought. The real truth is that I
know more of the Parthians, and Medes, and dwellers in Mesopotamia-
almost of any people, indeed-than of the English rustics. Travel and
exploration are my profession, not the study of the British peasantry.'
Travel. There was sufficient coincidence between his declaration and the
course she had urged upon her lover, to lend Bellston's account of
himself a certain interest in Christine's ears. He might perhaps be able
to tell her something that would be useful to Nicholas, if their dream
were carried out. A door opened from the hall into the garden, and she
somehow found herself outside, chatting with Mr. Bellston on this topic,
till she thought that upon the whole she liked the young man. The garden
being his uncle's, he took her round it with an air of proprietorship;
and they went on amongst the Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, and
through a door to the fruit-garden. A green-house was open, and he went
in and cut her a bunch of grapes.
'How daring of you! They are your uncle's.'
'O, he don't mind-I do anything here. A rough old buffer, isn't he?'
She was thinking of her Nic, and felt that, by comparison with her
present acquaintance, the farmer more than held his own as a fine and
intelligent fellow; but the harmony with her own existence in little
things, which she found here, imparted an alien tinge to Nicholas just
now. The latter, idealized by moonlight, or a thousand miles of
distance, was altogether a more romantic object for a woman's dream than
this smart new-lacquered man; but in the sun of afternoon, and amid a
surrounding company, Mr. Bellston was a very tolerable companion.
When they re-entered the hall, Bellston entreated her to come with him
up a spiral stair in the thickness of the wall, leading to a passage and
gallery whence they could look down upon the scene below. The people had
finished their feast, the newly-christened baby had been exhibited, and
a few words having been spoken to them they began, amid a racketing of
forms, to make for the greensward without, Nicholas's cousin and
cousin's wife and cousin's children among the rest. While they were
filing out, a voice was heard calling-'Hullo!-here, Jim; where are you?'
said Bellston's uncle. The young man descended, Christine following at
leisure.
'Now will ye be a good fellow,' the Squire continued, 'and set them
going outside in some dance or other that they know? I'm dog-tired, and
I want to have a yew words with Mr. Everard before we join 'em-hey,
Everard? They are shy till somebody starts 'em; afterwards they'll keep
gwine brisk enough.'
'Ay, that they wool,' said Squire Everard.
They followed to the lawn; and here it proved that James Bellston was as
shy, or rather as averse, as any of the tenantry themselves, to acting
the part of fugleman. Only the parish people had been at the feast, but
outlying neighbours had now strolled in for a dance.
'They want "Speed the Plough,"' said Bellston, coming up breathless. 'It
must be a country dance, I suppose? Now, Miss Everard, do have pity upon
me. I am supposed to lead off; but really I know no more about speeding
the plough than a child just born! Would you take one of the villagers?-
just to start them, my uncle says. Suppose you take that handsome young
farmer over there-I don't know his name, but I dare say you do-and I'll
come on with one of the dairyman's daughters as a second couple.'
Christine turned in the direction signified, and changed colour-though
in the shade nobody noticed it, 'Oh, yes-I know him,' she said coolly.
'He is from near our own place-Mr. Nicholas Long.'
'That's capital-then you can easily make him stand as first couple with
you. Now I must pick up mine.'
'I-I think I'll dance with you, Mr. Bellston,' she said with some
trepidation. 'Because, you see,' she explained eagerly, 'I know the
figure and you don't-so that I can help you; while Nicholas Long, I
know, is familiar with the figure, and that will make two couples who
know it-which is necessary, at least.'
Bellston showed his gratification by one of his angry-pleasant flushes-
he had hardly dared to ask for what she proffered freely; and having
requested Nicholas to take the dairyman's daughter, led Christine to her
place, Long promptly stepping up second with his charge. There were grim
silent depths in Nic's character; a small deedy spark in his eye, as it
caught Christine's, was all that showed his consciousness of her. Then
the fiddlers began-the celebrated Mellstock fiddlers who, given free
stripping, could play from sunset to dawn without turning a hair. The
couples wheeled and swung, Nicholas taking Christine's hand in the
course of business with the figure, when she waited for him to give it a
little squeeze; but he did not.
Christine had the greatest difficulty in steering her partner through
the maze, on account of his self-will, and when at last they reached the
bottom of the long line, she was breathless with her hard labour..
Resting here, she watched Nic and his lady; and, though she had
decidedly cooled off in these later months, began to admire him anew.
Nobody knew these dances like him, after all, or could do anything of
this sort so well. His performance with the dairyman's daughter so won
upon her, that when 'Speed the Plough' was over she contrived to speak
to him.
'Nic, you are to dance with me next time.'
He said he would, and presently asked her in a formal public manner,
lifting his hat gallantly. She showed a little backwardness, which he
quite understood, and allowed him to lead her to the top, a row of
enormous length appearing below them as if by magic as soon as they had
taken their places. Truly the Squire was right when he said that they
only wanted starting.
'What is it to be?' whispered Nicholas.
She turned to the band. 'The Honeymoon,' she said.
And then they trod the delightful last-century measure of that name,
which if it had been ever danced better, was never danced with more
zest. The perfect responsiveness which their tender acquaintance threw
into the motions of Nicholas and his partner lent to their gyrations the
fine adjustment of two interacting parts of a single machine. The
excitement of the movement carried Christine back to the time-the
unreflecting passionate time, about two years before-when she and Nic
had been incipient lovers only; and it made her forget the carking
anxieties, the vision of social breakers ahead, that had begun to take
the gilding off her position now. Nicholas, on his part, had never
ceased to be a lover; no personal worries had as yet made him conscious
of any staleness, flatness, or unprofitableness in his admiration of
Christine.
'Not quite so wildly, Nic,' she whispered. 'I don't object personally;
but they'll notice us. How came you here?'
'I heard that you had driven over; and I set out-on purpose for this.'
'What-you have walked?'
'Yes. If I had waited for one of uncle's horses I should have been too
late.'
'Five miles here and five back-ten miles on foot-merely to dance!'
'With you. What made you think of this old "Honeymoon" thing?'
'O! it came into my head when I saw you, as what would have been a
reality with us if you had not been stupid about that licence, and had
got it for a distant church.'
'Shall we try again?'
'No-I don't know. I'll think it over.'
The villagers admired their grace and skill, as the dancers themselves
perceived; but they did not know what accompanied that admiration in one
spot, at least.
'People who wonder they can foot it so featly together should know what
some others think,' a waterman was saying to his neighbour. 'Then their
wonder would be less.'
His comrade asked for information.
'Well-really I hardly believe it-but 'tis said they be man and wife.
Yes, sure-went to church and did the job a'most afore 'twas light one
morning. But mind, not a word of this; for 'twould be the loss of a
winter's work to me if I had spread such a report and it were not true.'
When the dance had ended she rejoined her own section of the company.
Her father and Mr. Bellston the elder had now come out from the house,
and were smoking in the background. Presently she found that her father
was at her elbow.
'Christine, don't dance too often with young Long-as a mere matter of
prudence, I mean, as volk might think it odd, he being one of our own
neighbouring farmers. I should not mention this to 'ee if he were an
ordinary young fellow; but being superior to the rest it behoves you to
be careful.'
'Exactly, papa,' said Christine.
But the revived sense that she was deceiving him threw a damp over her
spirits. 'But, after all,' she said to herself, 'he is a young man of
Elsenford, handsome, able, and the soul of honour; and I am a young
woman of the adjoining parish, who have been constantly thrown into
communication with him. Is it not, by nature's rule, the most proper
thing in the world that I should marry him, and is it not an absurd
conventional regulation which says that such a union would be wrong?'
It may be concluded that the strength of Christine's large-minded
argument was rather an evidence of weakness than of strength in the
passion it concerned, which had required neither argument nor reasoning
of any kind for its maintenance when full and flush in its early days.
When driving home in the dark with her father she sank into pensive
silence. She was thinking of Nicholas having to trudge on foot all those
miles back after his exertions on the sward. Mr. Everard, arousing
himself from a nap, said suddenly, 'I have something to mention to 'ee,
by George-so I have, Chris! You probably know what it is?'
She expressed ignorance, wondering if her father had discovered anything
of her secret.
'Well, according to him you know it. But I will tell 'ee. Perhaps you
noticed young Jim Bellston walking me off down the lawn with him?-
whether or no, we walked together a good while; and he informed me that
he wanted to pay his addresses to 'ee. I naturally said that it depended
upon yourself; and he replied that you were willing enough; you had
given him particular encouragement-showing your preference for him by
specially choosing him for your partner-hey? "In that case," says I, "go
on and conquer-settle it with her-I have no objection." The poor fellow
was very grateful, and in short, there we left the matter. He'll propose
to-morrow.'
She saw now to her dismay what James Bellston had read as encouragement.
'He has mistaken me altogether,' she said. 'I had no idea of such a
thing.'
'What, you won't have him?'
'Indeed, I cannot!'
'Chrissy,' said Mr. Everard with emphasis, 'there's noobody whom I
should so like you to marry as that young man. He's a thoroughly clever
fellow, and fairly well provided for. He's travelled all over the
temperate zone; but he says that directly he marries he's going to give
up all that, and be a regular stay-at-home. You would be nowhere safer
than in his hands.'
'It is true,' she answered. 'He is a highly desirable match, and I
should be well provided for, and probably very safe in his hands.'
'Then don't be skittish, and stand-to.'
She had spoken from her conscience and understanding, and not to please
her father. As a reflecting woman she believed that such a marriage
would be a wise one. In great things Nicholas was closest to her nature;
in little things Bellston seemed immeasurably nearer than Nic; and life
was made up of little things.
Altogether the firmament looked black for Nicholas Long, notwithstanding
her half-hour's ardour for him when she saw him dancing with the
dairyman's daughter. Most great passions, movements, and beliefs-
individual and national-burst during their decline into a temporary
irradiation, which rivals their original splendour; and then they
speedily become extinct. Perhaps the dance had given the last flare-up
to Christine's love. It seemed to have improvidently consumed for its
immediate purpose all her ardour forwards, so that for the future there
was nothing left but frigidity.
Nicholas had certainly been very foolish about that licence!
CHAPTER IV
This laxity of emotional tone was further increased by an incident,
when, two days later, she kept an appointment with Nicholas in the
Sallows. The Sallows was an extension of shrubberies and plantations
along the banks of the Froom, accessible from the lawn of Froom-Everard
House only, except by wading through the river at the waterfall or
elsewhere. Near the brink was a thicket of box in which a trunk lay
prostrate; this had been once or twice their trysting-place, though it
was by no means a safe one; and it was here she sat awaiting him now.
The noise of the stream muffled any sound of footsteps, and it was
before she was aware of his approach that she looked up and saw him
wading across at the top of the waterfall.
Noontide lights and dwarfed shadows always banished the romantic aspect
of her love for Nicholas. Moreover, something new had occurred to
disturb her; and if ever she had regretted giving way to a tenderness
for him-which perhaps she had not done with any distinctness-she
regretted it now. Yet in the bottom of their hearts those two were
excellently paired, the very twin halves of a perfect whole; and their
love was pure. But at this hour surfaces showed garishly, and obscured
the depths. Probably her regret appeared in her face.
He walked up to her without speaking, the water running from his boots;
and, taking one of her hands in each of his own, looked narrowly into
her eyes.
'Have you thought it over?'
'What?'
'Whether we shall try again; you remember saying you would at the
dance?'
'Oh, I had forgotten that!'
'You are sorry we tried at all!' he said accusingly.
'I am not so sorry for the fact as for the rumours,' she said.
'Ah! rumours?'
'They say we are already married.'
'Who?'
'I cannot tell exactly. I heard some whispering to that effect. Somebody
in the village told one of the servants, I believe. This man said that
he was crossing the churchyard early on that unfortunate foggy morning,
and heard voices in the chancel, and peeped through the window as well
as the dim panes would let him; and there he saw you and me and Mr.
Bealand, and so on; but thinking his surmises would be dangerous
knowledge, he hastened on. And so the story got afloat. Then your aunt,
too-'
'Good Lord!-what has she done?'
The story was, told her, and she said proudly, "O yes, it is true
enough. I have seen the licence. But it is not to be known yet."'
'Seen the licence? How the-'
'Accidentally, I believe, when your coat was hanging somewhere.'
The information, coupled with the infelicitous word 'proudly,' caused
Nicholas to flush with mortification. He knew that it was in his aunt's
nature to make a brag of that sort; but worse than the brag was the fact
that this was the first occasion on which Christine had deigned to show
her consciousness that such a marriage would be a source of pride to his
relatives-the only two he had in the world.
'You are sorry, then, even to be thought my wife, much less to be it.'
He dropped her hand, which fell lifelessly.
'It is not sorry exactly, dear Nic. But I feel uncomfortable and vexed,
that after screwing up my courage, my fidelity, to the point of going to
church, you should have so muddled-managed the matter that it has ended
in neither one thing nor the other. How can I meet acquaintances, when I
don't know what they are thinking of me?'
'Then, dear Christine, let us mend the muddle. I'll go away for a few
days and get another licence, and you can come to me.'
She shrank from this perceptibly. 'I cannot screw myself up to it a
second time,' she said. 'I am sure I cannot! Besides, I promised Mr.
Bealand. And yet how can I continue to see you after such a rumour? We
shall be watched now, for certain.'
'Then don't see me.'
'I fear I must not for the present. Altogether-'
'What?'
'I am very depressed.'
These views were not very inspiriting to Nicholas, as he construed them.
It may indeed have been possible that he construed them wrongly, and
should have insisted upon her making the rumour true. Unfortunately,
too, he had come to her in a hurry through brambles and briars, water
and weed, and the shaggy wildness which hung about his appearance at
this fine and correct time of day lent an impracticability to the look
of him.
'You blame me-you repent your courses-you repent that you ever, ever
owned anything to me!'
'No, Nicholas, I do not repent that,' she returned gently, though with
firmness. 'But I think that you ought not to have got that licence
without asking me first; and I also think that you ought to have known
how it would be if you lived on here in your present position, and made
no effort to better it. I can bear whatever comes, for social ruin is
not personal ruin or even personal disgrace. But as a sensible, new-
risen poet says, whom I have been reading this morning:-
The world and its ways have a certain worth: And to press a point while
these oppose Were simple policy. Better wait.
As soon as you had got my promise, Nic, you should have gone away-yes-
and made a name, and come back to claim me. That was my silly girlish
dream about my hero.'
'Perhaps I can do as much yet! And would you have indeed liked better to
live away from me for family reasons, than to run a risk in seeing me
for affection's sake? O what a cold heart it has grown! If I had been a
prince, and you a dairymaid, I'd have stood by you in the face of the
world!'
She shook her head. 'Ah-you don't know what society is-you don't know.'
'Perhaps not. Who was that strange gentleman of about seven-and-twenty I
saw at Mr. Bellston's christening feast?'
'Oh-that was his nephew James. Now he is a man who has seen an unusual
extent of the world for his age. He is a great traveller, you know.'
'Indeed.'
'In fact an explorer. He is very entertaining.'
'No doubt.'
Nicholas received no shock of jealousy from her announcement. He knew
her so well that he could see she was not in the least in love with
Bellston. But he asked if Bellston were going to continue his
explorations.
'Not if he settles in life. Otherwise he will, I suppose.'
'Perhaps I could be a great explorer, too, if I tried.'
'You could, I am sure.'
They sat apart, and not together; each looking afar off at vague
objects, and not in each other's eyes. Thus the sad autumn afternoon
waned, while the waterfall hissed sarcastically of the inevitableness of
the unpleasant. Very different this from the time when they had first
met there.
The nook was most picturesque; but it looked horridly common and stupid
now. Their sentiment had set a colour hardly less visible than a
material one on surrounding objects, as sentiment must where life is but
thought. Nicholas was as devoted as ever to the fair Christine; but
unhappily he too had moods and humours, and the division between them
was not closed.
She had no sooner got indoors and sat down to her work-table than her
father entered the drawing-room.
She handed him his newspaper; he took it without a word, went and stood
on the hearthrug, and flung the paper on the floor.
'Christine, what's the meaning of this terrible story? I was just on my
way to look at the register.'
She looked at him without speech.
'You have married-Nicholas Long?'
'No, father.'
'No? Can you say no in the face of such facts as I have been put in
possession of?'
'Yes.'
'But-the note you wrote to the rector-and the going to church?'
She briefly explained that their attempt had failed.
'Ah! Then this is what that dancing meant, was it? By \x97-, it makes me \x97-
. How long has this been going on, may I ask?'
'This what?'
'What, indeed! Why, making him your beau. Now listen to me. All's well
that ends well; from this day, madam, this moment, he is to be nothing
more to you. You are not to see him. Cut him adrift instantly! I only
wish his volk were on my farm-out they should go, or I would know the
reason why. However, you are to write him a letter to this effect at
once.'
'How can I cut him adrift?'
'Why not? You must, my good maid!'
'Well, though I have not actually married him, I have solemnly sworn to
be his wife when he comes home from abroad to claim me. It would be
gross perjury not to fulfil my promise. Besides, no woman can go to
church with a man to deliberately solemnize matrimony, and refuse him
afterwards, if he does nothing wrong meanwhile.'
The uttered sound of her strong conviction seemed to kindle in Christine
a livelier perception of all its bearings than she had known while it
had lain unformulated in her mind. For when she had done speaking she
fell down on her knees before her father, covered her face, and said,
'Please, please forgive me, papa! How could I do it without letting you
know! I don't know, I don't know!'
When she looked up she found that, in the turmoil of his mind, her
father was moving about the room. 'You are within an ace of ruining
yourself, ruining me, ruining us all!' he said. 'You are nearly as bad
as your brother, begad!'
'Perhaps I am-yes-perhaps I am!'
'That I should father such a harum-scarum brood!'
'It is very bad; but Nicholas-'
'He's a scoundrel!'
'He is not a scoundrel!' cried she, turning quickly. 'He's as good and
worthy as you or I, or anybody bearing our name, or any nobleman in the
kingdom, if you come to that! Only-only'-she could not continue the
argument on those lines. 'Now, father, listen!' she sobbed; 'if you
taunt me I'll go off and join him at his farm this very day, and marry
him to-morrow, that's what I'll do!'
'I don't taant ye!'
'I wish to avoid unseemliness as much as you.'
She went away. When she came back a quarter of an hour later, thinking
to find the room empty, he was standing there as before, never having
apparently moved. His manner had quite changed. He seemed to take a
resigned and entirely different view of circumstances.
'Christine, here's a paragraph in the paper hinting at a secret wedding,
and I'm blazed if it don't point to you. Well, since this was to happen,
I'll bear it, and not complain. All volk have crosses, and this is one
of mine. Now, this is what I've got to say-I feel that you must carry
out this attempt at marrying Nicholas Long. Faith, you must! The rumour
will become a scandal if you don't-that's my view. I have tried to look
at the brightest side of the case. Nicholas Long is a young man superior
to most of his class, and fairly presentable. And he's not poor-at least
his uncle is not. I believe the old muddler could buy me up any day.
However, a farmer's wife you must be, as far as I can see. As you've
made your bed, so ye must lie. Parents propose, and ungrateful children
dispose. You shall marry him, and immediately.'
Christine hardly knew what to make of this. 'He is quite willing to
wait, and so am I. We can wait for two or three years, and then he will
be as worthy as-'
'You must marry him. And the sooner the better, if 'tis to be done at
all . . . And yet I did wish you could have been Jim Bellston's wife. I
did wish it! But no.'
'I, too, wished it and do still, in one sense,' she returned gently. His
moderation had won her out of her defiant mood, and she was willing to
reason with him.
'You do?' he said surprised.
'I see that in a worldly sense my conduct with Mr. Long may be
considered a mistake.'
'H'm-I am glad to hear that-after my death you may see it more clearly
still; and you won't have long to wait, to my reckoning.'
She fell into bitter repentance, and kissed him in her anguish. 'Don't
say that!' she cried. 'Tell me what to do?'
'If you'll leave me for an hour or two I'll think. Drive to the market
and back-the carriage is at the door-and I'll try to collect my senses.
Dinner can be put back till you return.'
In a few minutes she was dressed, and the carriage bore her up the hill
which divided the village and manor from the market-town.
CHAPTER V
A quarter of an hour brought her into the High Street, and for want of a
more important errand she called at the harness-maker's for a dog-collar
that she required.
It happened to be market-day, and Nicholas, having postponed the
engagements which called him thither to keep the appointment with her in
the Sallows, rushed off at the end of the afternoon to attend to them as
well as he could. Arriving thus in a great hurry on account of the
lateness of the hour, he still retained the wild, amphibious appearance
which had marked him when he came up from the meadows to her side-an
exceptional condition of things which had scarcely ever before occurred.
When she crossed the pavement from the shop door, the shopman bowing and
escorting her to the carriage, Nicholas chanced to be standing at the
road-waggon office, talking to the master of the waggons. There were a
good many people about, and those near paused and looked at her transit,
in the full stroke of the level October sun, which went under the brims
of their hats, and pierced through their button-holes. From the group
she heard murmured the words: 'Mrs. Nicholas Long.'
The unexpected remark, not without distinct satire in its tone, took her
so greatly by surprise that she was confounded. Nicholas was by this
time nearer, though coming against the sun he had not yet perceived her.
Influenced by her father's lecture, she felt angry with him for being
there and causing this awkwardness. Her notice of him was therefore
slight, supercilious perhaps, slurred over; and her vexation at his
presence showed distinctly in her face as she sat down in her seat.
Instead of catching his waiting eye, she positively turned her head
away.
A moment after she was sorry she had treated him so; but he was gone.
Reaching home she found on her dressing-table a note from her father.
The statement was brief:
I have considered and am of the same opinion. You must marry him. He can
leave home at once and travel as proposed. I have written to him to this
effect. I don't want any victuals, so don't wait dinner for me.
Nicholas was the wrong kind of man to be blind to his Christine's
mortification, though he did not know its entire cause. He had lately
foreseen something of this sort as possible.
'It serves me right,' he thought, as he trotted homeward. 'It was
absurd-wicked of me to lead her on so. The sacrifice would have been too
great-too cruel!' And yet, though he thus took her part, he flushed with
indignation every time he said to himself, 'She is ashamed of me!'
On the ridge which overlooked Froom-Everard he met a neighbour of his-a
stock-dealer-in his gig, and they drew rein and exchanged a few words. A
part of the dealer's conversation had much meaning for Nicholas.
'I've had occasion to call on Squire Everard,' the former said; 'but he
couldn't see me on account of being quite knocked up at some bad news he
has heard.'
Nicholas rode on past Froom-Everard to Elsenford Farm, pondering. He had
new and startling matter for thought as soon as he got there. The
Squire's note had arrived. At first he could not credit its import; then
he saw further, took in the tone of the letter, saw the writer's
contempt behind the words, and understood that the letter was written as
by a man hemmed into a corner. Christine was defiantly-insultingly-
hurled at his head. He was accepted because he was so despised.
And yet with what respect he had treated her and hers! Now he was
reminded of what an agricultural friend had said years ago, seeing the
eyes of Nicholas fixed on Christine as on an angel when she passed:
'Better a little fire to warm 'ee than a great one to burn 'ee. No good
can come of throwing your heart there.' He went into the mead, sat down,
and asked himself four questions:
1. How could she live near her acquaintance as his wife, even in his
absence, without suffering martyrdom from the stings of their contempt?
2. Would not this entail total estrangement between Christine and her
family also, and her own consequent misery?
3. Must not such isolation extinguish her affection for him?
4. Supposing that her father rigged them out as colonists and sent them
off to America, was not the effect of such exile upon one of her gentle
nurture likely to be as the last?
In short, whatever they should embark in together would be cruelty to
her, and his death would be a relief. It would, indeed, in one aspect be
a relief to her now, if she were so ashamed of him as she had appeared
to be that day. Were he dead, this little episode with him would fade
away like a dream.
Mr. Everard was a good-hearted man at bottom, but to take his enraged
offer seriously was impossible. Obviously it was hotly made in his first
bitterness at what he had heard. The least thing that he could do would
be to go away and never trouble her more. To travel and learn and come
back in two years, as mapped out in their first sanguine scheme,
required a staunch heart on her side, if the necessary expenditure of
time and money were to be afterwards justified; and it were folly to
calculate on that when he had seen to-day that her heart was failing her
already. To travel and disappear and not be heard of for many years
would be a far more independent stroke, and it would leave her entirely
unfettered. Perhaps he might rival in this kind the accomplished Mr.
Bellston, of whose journeyings he had heard so much.
He sat and sat, and the fog rose out of the river, enveloping him like a
fleece; first his feet and knees, then his arms and body, and finally
submerging his head. When he had come to a decision he went up again
into the homestead. He would be independent, if he died for it, and he
would free Christine. Exile was the only course. The first step was to
inform his uncle of his determination.
Two days later Nicholas was on the same spot in the mead, at almost the
same hour of eve. But there was no fog now; a blusterous autumn wind had
ousted the still, golden days and misty nights; and he was going, full
of purpose, in the opposite direction. When he had last entered the mead
he was an inhabitant of the Froom valley; in forty-eight hours he had
severed himself from that spot as completely as if he had never belonged
to it. All that appertained to him in the Froom valley now was
circumscribed by the portmanteau in his hand.
In making his preparations for departure he had unconsciously held a
faint, foolish hope that she would communicate with him and make up
their estrangement in some soft womanly way. But she had given no
signal, and it was too evident to him that her latest mood had grown to
be her fixed one, proving how well founded had been his impulse to set
her free.
He entered the Sallows, found his way in the dark to the garden-door of
the house, slipped under it a note to tell her of his departure, and
explaining its true reason to be a consciousness of her growing feeling
that he was an encumbrance and a humiliation. Of the direction of his
journey and of the date of his return he said nothing.
His course now took him into the high road, which he pursued for some
miles in a north-easterly direction, still spinning the thread of sad
inferences, and asking himself why he should ever return. At daybreak he
stood on the hill above Shottsford-Forum, and awaited a coach which
passed about this time along that highway towards Melchester and London.
CHAPTER VI
Some fifteen years after the date of the foregoing incidents, a man who
had dwelt in far countries, and viewed many cities, arrived at Roy-Town,
a roadside hamlet on the old western turnpike road, not five miles from
Froom-Everard, and put up at the Buck's Head, an isolated inn at that
spot. He was still barely of middle age, but it could be seen that a
haze of grey was settling upon the locks of his hair, and that his face
had lost colour and curve, as if by exposure to bleaching climates and
strange atmospheres, or from ailments incidental thereto. He seemed to
observe little around him, by reason of the intrusion of his musings
upon the scene. In truth Nicholas Long was just now the creature of old
hopes and fears consequent upon his arrival-this man who once had not
cared if his name were blotted out from that district. The evening light
showed wistful lines which he could not smooth away by the worldling's
gloss of nonchalance that he had learnt to fling over his face.
The Buck's Head was a somewhat unusual place for a man of this sort to
choose as a house of sojourn in preference to some Casterbridge inn four
miles further on. Before he left home it had been a lively old tavern at
which High-flyers, and Heralds, and Tally-hoes had changed horses on
their stages up and down the country; but now the house was rather
cavernous and chilly, the stable-roofs were hollow-backed, the landlord
was asthmatic, and the traffic gone.
He arrived in the afternoon, and when he had sent back the fly and was
having a nondescript meal, he put a question to the waiting-maid with a
mien of indifference.
'Squire Everard, of Froom-Everard Manor, has been dead some years, I
believe?'
She replied in the affirmative.
'And are any of the family left there still?'
'O no, bless you, sir! They sold the place years ago-Squire Everard's
son did-and went away. I've never heard where they went to. They came
quite to nothing.'
'Never heard anything of the young lady-the Squire's daughter?'
'No. You see 'twas before I came to these parts.'
When the waitress left the room, Nicholas pushed aside his plate and
gazed out of the window. He was not going over into the Froom Valley
altogether on Christine's account, but she had greatly animated his
motive in coming that way. Anyhow he would push on there now that he was
so near, and not ask questions here where he was liable to be wrongly
informed. The fundamental inquiry he had not ventured to make-whether
Christine had married before the family went away. He had abstained
because of an absurd dread of extinguishing hopeful surmise. That the
Everards had left their old home was bad enough intelligence for one
day.
Rising from the table he put on his hat and went out, ascending towards
the upland which divided this district from his native vale. The first
familiar feature that met his eye was a little spot on the distant sky-a
clump of trees standing on a barrow which surmounted a yet more remote
upland-a point where, in his childhood, he had believed people could
stand and see America. He reached the further verge of the plateau on
which he had entered. Ah, there was the valley-a greenish-grey stretch
of colour-still looking placid and serene, as though it had not much
missed him. If Christine was no longer there, why should he pause over
it this evening? His uncle and aunt were dead, and to-morrow would be
soon enough to inquire for remoter relatives. Thus, disinclined to go
further, he turned to retrace his way to the inn.
In the backward path he now perceived the figure of a woman, who had
been walking at a distance behind him; and as she drew nearer he began
to be startled. Surely, despite the variations introduced into that
figure by changing years, its ground-lines were those of Christine?
Nicholas had been sentimental enough to write to Christine immediately
on landing at Southampton a day or two before this, addressing his
letter at a venture to the old house, and merely telling her that he
planned to reach the Roy-Town inn on the present afternoon. The news of
the scattering of the Everards had dissipated his hope of hearing of
her; but here she was.
So they met-there, alone, on the open down by a pond, just as if the
meeting had been carefully arranged.
She threw up her veil. She was still beautiful, though the years had
touched her; a little more matronly-much more homely. Or was it only
that he was much less homely now-a man of the world-the sense of
homeliness being relative? Her face had grown to be pre-eminently of the
sort that would be called interesting. Her habiliments were of a demure
and sober cast, though she was one who had used to dress so airily and
so gaily. Years had laid on a few shadows too in this.
'I received your letter,' she said, when the momentary embarrassment of
their first approach had passed. 'And I thought I would walk across the
hills to-day, as it was fine. I have just called at the inn, and they
told me you were out. I was now on my way homeward.'
He hardly listened to this, though he intently gazed at her.
'Christine,' he said, 'one word. Are you free?'
'I-I am in a certain sense,' she replied, colouring.
The announcement had a magical effect. The intervening time between past
and present closed up for him, and moved by an impulse which he had
combated for fifteen years, he seized her two hands and drew her towards
him.
She started back, and became almost a mere acquaintance. 'I have to tell
you,' she gasped, 'that I have-been married.'
Nicholas's rose-coloured dream was immediately toned down to a greyish
tinge.
'I did not marry till many years after you had left,' she continued in
the humble tones of one confessing to a crime. 'Oh Nic,' she cried
reproachfully, 'how could you stay away so long?'
'Whom did you marry?'
'Mr. Bellston.'
'I-ought to have expected it.' He was going to add, 'And is he dead?'
but he checked himself. Her dress unmistakably suggested widowhood; and
she had said she was free.
'I must now hasten home,' said she. 'I felt that, considering my
shortcomings at our parting so many years ago, I owed you the initiative
now.'
'There is some of your old generosity in that. I'll walk with you, if I
may. Where are you living, Christine?'
'In the same house, but not on the old conditions. I have part of it on
lease; the farmer now tenanting the premises found the whole more than
he wanted, and the owner allowed me to keep what rooms I chose. I am
poor now, you know, Nicholas, and almost friendless. My brother sold the
Froom-Everard estate when it came to him, and the person who bought it
turned our home into a farmhouse. Till my father's death my husband and
I lived in the manor-house with him, so that I have never lived away
from the spot.'
She was poor. That, and the change of name, sufficiently accounted for
the inn-servant's ignorance of her continued existence within the walls
of her old home.
It was growing dusk, and he still walked with her. A woman's head arose
from the declivity before them, and as she drew nearer, Christine asked
him to go back.
'This is the wife of the farmer who shares the house,' she said. 'She is
accustomed to come out and meet me whenever I walk far and am benighted.
I am obliged to walk everywhere now.'
The farmer's wife, seeing that Christine was not alone, paused in her
advance, and Nicholas said, 'Dear Christine, if you are obliged to do
these things, I am not, and what wealth I can command you may command
likewise. They say rolling stones gather no moss; but they gather dross
sometimes. I was one of the pioneers to the gold-fields, you know, and
made a sufficient fortune there for my wants. What is more, I kept it.
When I had done this I was coming home, but hearing of my uncle's death
I changed my plan, travelled, speculated, and increased my fortune. Now,
before we part: you remember you stood with me at the altar once, and
therefore I speak with less preparation than I should otherwise use.
Before we part then I ask, shall another again intrude between us? Or
shall we complete the union we began?'
She trembled-just as she had done at that very minute of standing with
him in the church, to which he had recalled her mind. 'I will not enter
into that now, dear Nicholas,' she replied. 'There will be more to talk
of and consider first-more to explain, which it would have spoiled this
meeting to have entered into now.'
'Yes, yes; but-'
'Further than the brief answer I first gave, Nic, don't press me to-
night. I still have the old affection for you, or I should not have
sought you. Let that suffice for the moment.'
'Very well, dear one. And when shall I call to see you?'
'I will write and fix an hour. I will tell you everything of my history
then.'
And thus they parted, Nicholas feeling that he had not come here
fruitlessly. When she and her companion were out of sight he retraced
his steps to Roy-Town, where he made himself as comfortable as he could
in the deserted old inn of his boyhood's days. He missed her
companionship this evening more than he had done at any time during the
whole fifteen years; and it was as though instead of separation there
had been constant communion with her throughout that period. The tones
of her voice had stirred his heart in a nook which had lain stagnant
ever since he last heard them. They recalled the woman to whom he had
once lifted his eyes as to a goddess. Her announcement that she had been
another's came as a little shock to him, and he did not now lift his
eyes to her in precisely the same way as he had lifted them at first.
But he forgave her for marrying Bellston; what could he expect after
fifteen years?
He slept at Roy-Town that night, and in the morning there was a short
note from her, repeating more emphatically her statement of the previous
evening-that she wished to inform him clearly of her circumstances, and
to calmly consider with him the position in which she was placed. Would
he call upon her on Sunday afternoon, when she was sure to be alone?
'Nic,' she wrote on, 'what a cosmopolite you are! I expected to find my
old yeoman still; but I was quite awed in the presence of such a citizen
of the world. Did I seem rusty and unpractised? Ah-you seemed so once to
me!'
Tender playful words; the old Christine was in them. She said Sunday
afternoon, and it was now only Saturday morning. He wished she had said
to-day; that short revival of her image had vitalized to sudden heat
feelings that had almost been stilled. Whatever she might have to
explain as to her position-and it was awkwardly narrowed, no doubt-he
could not give her up. Miss Everard or Mrs. Bellston, what mattered it?-
she was the same Christine.
He did not go outside the inn all Saturday. He had no wish to see or do
anything but to await the coming interview. So he smoked, and read the
local newspaper of the previous week, and stowed himself in the chimney-
corner. In the evening he felt that he could remain indoors no longer,
and the moon being near the full, he started from the inn on foot in the
same direction as that of yesterday, with the view of contemplating the
old village and its precincts, and hovering round her house under the
cloak of night.
With a stout stick in his hand he climbed over the five miles of upland
in a comparatively short space of time. Nicholas had seen many strange
lands and trodden many strange ways since he last walked that path, but
as he trudged he seemed wonderfully like his old self, and had not the
slightest difficulty in finding the way. In descending to the meads the
streams perplexed him a little, some of the old foot-bridges having been
removed; but he ultimately got across the larger water-courses, and
pushed on to the village, avoiding her residence for the moment, lest
she should encounter him, and think he had not respected the time of her
appointment.
He found his way to the churchyard, and first ascertained where lay the
two relations he had left alive at his departure; then he observed the
gravestones of other inhabitants with whom he had been well acquainted,
till by degrees he seemed to be in the society of all the elder Froom-
Everard population, as he had known the place. Side by side as they had
lived in his day here were they now. They had moved house in mass.
But no tomb of Mr. Bellston was visible, though, as he had lived at the
manor-house, it would have been natural to find it here. In truth
Nicholas was more anxious to discover that than anything, being curious
to know how long he had been dead. Seeing from the glimmer of a light in
the church that somebody was there cleaning for Sunday he entered, and
looked round upon the walls as well as he could. But there was no
monument to her husband, though one had been erected to the Squire.
Nicholas addressed the young man who was sweeping. 'I don't see any
monument or tomb to the late Mr. Bellston?'
'O no, sir; you won't see that,' said the young man drily.
'Why, pray?'
'Because he's not buried here. He's not Christian-buried anywhere, as
far as we know. In short, perhaps he's not buried at all; and between
ourselves, perhaps he's alive.'
Nicholas sank an inch shorter. 'Ah,' he answered.
'Then you don't know the peculiar circumstances, sir?'
'I am a stranger here-as to late years.'
'Mr. Bellston was a traveller-an explorer-it was his calling; you may
have heard his name as such?'
'I remember.' Nicholas recalled the fact that this very bent of Mr.
Bellston's was the incentive to his own roaming.
'Well, when he married he came and lived here with his wife and his
wife's father, and said he would travel no more. But after a time he got
weary of biding quiet here, and weary of her-he was not a good husband
to the young lady by any means-and he betook himself again to his old
trick of roving-with her money. Away he went, quite out of the realm of
human foot, into the bowels of Asia, and never was heard of more. He was
murdered, it is said, but nobody knows; though as that was nine years
ago he's dead enough in principle, if not in corporation. His widow
lives quite humble, for between her husband and her brother she's left
in very lean pasturage.'
Nicholas went back to the Buck's Head without hovering round her
dwelling. This then was the explanation which she had wanted to make.
Not dead, but missing. How could he have expected that the first fair
promise of happiness held out to him would remain untarnished? She had
said that she was free; and legally she was free, no doubt. Moreover,
from her tone and manner he felt himself justified in concluding that
she would be willing to run the risk of a union with him, in the
improbability of her husband's existence. Even if that husband lived,
his return was not a likely event, to judge from his character. A man
who could spend her money on his own personal adventures would not be
anxious to disturb her poverty after such a lapse of time.
Well, the prospect was not so unclouded as it had seemed. But could he,
even now, give up Christine?
CHAPTER VII
Two months more brought the year nearly to a close, and found Nicholas
Long tenant of a spacious house in the market-town nearest to Froom-
Everard. A man of means, genial character, and a bachelor, he was an
object of great interest to his neighbours, and to his neighbours' wives
and daughters. But he took little note of this, and had made it his
business to go twice a week, no matter what the weather, to the now
farmhouse at Froom-Everard, a wing of which had been retained as the
refuge of Christine. He always walked, to give no trouble in putting up
a horse to a housekeeper whose staff was limited.
The two had put their heads together on the situation, had gone to a
solicitor, had balanced possibilities, and had resolved to make the
plunge of matrimony. 'Nothing venture, nothing have,' Christine had
said, with some of her old audacity.
With almost gratuitous honesty they had let their intentions be widely
known. Christine, it is true, had rather shrunk from publicity at first;
but Nicholas argued that their boldness in this respect would have good
results. With his friends he held that there was not the slightest
probability of her being other than a widow, and a challenge to the
missing man now, followed by no response, would stultify any unpleasant
remarks which might be thrown at her after their union. To this end a
paragraph was inserted in the Wessex papers, announcing that their
marriage was proposed to be celebrated on such and such a day in
December.
His periodic walks along the south side of the valley to visit her were
among the happiest experiences of his life. The yellow leaves falling
around him in the foreground, the well-watered meads on the left hand,
and the woman he loved awaiting him at the back of the scene, promised a
future of much serenity, as far as human judgment could foresee. On
arriving, he would sit with her in the 'parlour' of the wing she
retained, her general sitting-room, where the only relics of her early
surroundings were an old clock from the other end of the house, and her
own piano. Before it was quite dark they would stand, hand in hand,
looking out of the window across the flat turf to the dark clump of
trees which hid further view from their eyes.
'Do you wish you were still mistress here, dear?' he once said.
'Not at all,' said she cheerfully. 'I have a good enough room, and a
good enough fire, and a good enough friend. Besides, my latter days as
mistress of the house were not happy ones, and they spoilt the place for
me. It was a punishment for my faithlessness. Nic, you do forgive me?
Really you do?'
The twenty-third of December, the eve of the wedding-day, had arrived at
last in the train of such uneventful ones as these. Nicholas had
arranged to visit her that day a little later than usual, and see that
everything was ready with her for the morrow's event and her removal to
his house; for he had begun to look after her domestic affairs, and to
lighten as much as possible the duties of her housekeeping.
He was to come to an early supper, which she had arranged to take the
place of a wedding-breakfast next day-the latter not being feasible in
her present situation. An hour or so after dark the wife of the farmer
who lived in the other part of the house entered Christine's parlour to
lay the cloth.
'What with getting the ham skinned, and the black-puddings hotted up,'
she said, 'it will take me all my time before he's here, if I begin this
minute.'
'I'll lay the table myself,' said Christine, jumping up. 'Do you attend
to the cooking.'
'Thank you, ma'am. And perhaps 'tis no matter, seeing that it is the
last night you'll have to do such work. I knew this sort of life
wouldn't last long for 'ee, being born to better things.'
'It has lasted rather long, Mrs. Wake. And if he had not found me out it
would have lasted all my days.'
'But he did find you out.'
'He did. And I'll lay the cloth immediately.'
Mrs. Wake went back to the kitchen, and Christine began to bustle about.
She greatly enjoyed preparing this table for Nicholas and herself with
her own hands. She took artistic pleasure in adjusting each article to
its position, as if half an inch error were a point of high importance.
Finally she placed the two candles where they were to stand, and sat
down by the fire.
Mrs. Wake re-entered and regarded the effect. 'Why not have another
candle or two, ma'am?' she said. ''Twould make it livelier. Say four.'
'Very well,' said Christine, and four candles were lighted. 'Really,'
she added, surveying them, 'I have been now so long accustomed to little
economies that they look quite extravagant.'
'Ah, you'll soon think nothing of forty in his grand new house! Shall I
bring in supper directly he comes, ma'am?'
'No, not for half an hour; and, Mrs. Wake, you and Betsy are busy in the
kitchen, I know; so when he knocks don't disturb yourselves; I can let
him in.'
She was again left alone, and, as it still wanted some time to
Nicholas's appointment, she stood by the fire, looking at herself in the
glass over the mantel. Reflectively raising a lock of her hair just
above her temple she uncovered a small scar. That scar had a history.
The terrible temper of her late husband-those sudden moods of
irascibility which had made even his friendly excitements look like
anger-had once caused him to set that mark upon her with the bezel of a
ring he wore. He declared that the whole thing was an accident. She was
a woman, and kept her own opinion.
Christine then turned her back to the glass and scanned the table and
the candles, shining one at each corner like types of the four
Evangelists, and thought they looked too assuming-too confident. She
glanced up at the clock, which stood also in this room, there not being
space enough for it in the passage. It was nearly seven, and she
expected Nicholas at half-past. She liked the company of this venerable
article in her lonely life: its tickings and whizzings were a sort of
conversation. It now began to strike the hour. At the end something
grated slightly. Then, without any warning, the clock slowly inclined
forward and fell at full length upon the floor.
The crash brought the farmer's wife rushing into the room. Christine had
well-nigh sprung out of her shoes. Mrs. Wake's enquiry what had happened
was answered by the evidence of her own eyes.
'How did it occur?' she said.
'I cannot say; it was not firmly fixed, I suppose. Dear me, how sorry I
am! My dear father's hall-clock! And now I suppose it is ruined.'
Assisted by Mrs. Wake, she lifted the clock. Every inch of glass was, of
course, shattered, but very little harm besides appeared to be done.
They propped it up temporarily, though it would not go again.
Christine had soon recovered her composure, but she saw that Mrs. Wake
was gloomy. 'What does it mean, Mrs. Wake?' she said. 'Is it ominous?'
'It is a sign of a violent death in the family.'
'Don't talk of it. I don't believe such things; and don't mention it to
Mr. Long when he comes. He's not in the family yet, you know.'
'O no, it cannot refer to him,' said Mrs. Wake musingly.
'Some remote cousin, perhaps,' observed Christine, no less willing to
humour her than to get rid of a shapeless dread which the incident had
caused in her own mind. 'And-supper is almost ready, Mrs. Wake?'
'In three-quarters of an hour.'
Mrs. Wake left the room, and Christine sat on. Though it still wanted
fifteen minutes to the hour at which Nicholas had promised to be there,
she began to grow impatient. After the accustomed ticking the dead
silence was oppressive. But she had not to wait so long as she had
expected; steps were heard approaching the door, and there was a knock.
Christine was already there to open it. The entrance had no lamp, but it
was not particularly dark out of doors. She could see the outline of a
man, and cried cheerfully, 'You are early; it is very good of you.'
'I beg pardon. It is not Mr. Bellston himself-only a messenger with his
bag and great-coat. But he will be here soon.'
The voice was not the voice of Nicholas, and the intelligence was
strange. 'I-I don't understand. Mr. Bellston?' she faintly replied.
'Yes, ma'am. A gentleman-a stranger to me-gave me these things at
Casterbridge station to bring on here, and told me to say that Mr.
Bellston had arrived there, and is detained for half-an-hour, but will
be here in the course of the evening.'
She sank into a chair. The porter put a small battered portmanteau on
the floor, the coat on a chair, and looking into the room at the spread
table said, 'If you are disappointed, ma'am, that your husband (as I
s'pose he is) is not come, I can assure you he'll soon be here. He's
stopped to get a shave, to my thinking, seeing he wanted it. What he
said was that I could tell you he had heard the news in Ireland, and
would have come sooner, his hand being forced; but was hindered crossing
by the weather, having took passage in a sailing vessel. What news he
meant he didn't say.'
'Ah, yes,' she faltered. It was plain that the man knew nothing of her
intended re-marriage.
Mechanically rising and giving him a shilling, she answered to his
'good-night,' and he withdrew, the beat of his footsteps lessening in
the distance. She was alone; but in what a solitude.
Christine stood in the middle of the hall, just as the man had left her,
in the gloomy silence of the stopped clock within the adjoining room,
till she aroused herself, and turning to the portmanteau and great-coat
brought them to the light of the candles, and examined them. The
portmanteau bore painted upon it the initials 'J. B.' in white letters-
the well-known initials of her husband.
She examined the great-coat. In the breast-pocket was an empty spirit
flask, which she firmly fancied she recognized as the one she had filled
many times for him when he was living at home with her.
She turned desultorily hither and thither, until she heard another tread
without, and there came a second knocking at the door. She did not
respond to it; and Nicholas-for it was he-thinking that he was not heard
by reason of a concentration on to-morrow's proceedings, opened the door
softly, and came on to the door of her room, which stood unclosed, just
as it had been left by the Casterbridge porter.
Nicholas uttered a blithe greeting, cast his eye round the parlour,
which with its tall candles, blazing fire, snow-white cloth, and
prettily-spread table, formed a cheerful spectacle enough for a man who
had been walking in the dark for an hour.
'My bride-almost, at last!' he cried, encircling her with his arms.
Instead of responding, her figure became limp, frigid, heavy; her head
fell back, and he found that she had fainted.
It was natural, he thought. She had had many little worrying matters to
attend to, and but slight assistance. He ought to have seen more
effectually to her affairs; the closeness of the event had over-excited
her. Nicholas kissed her unconscious face-more than once, little
thinking what news it was that had changed its aspect. Loth to call Mrs.
Wake, he carried Christine to a couch and laid her down. This had the
effect of reviving her. Nicholas bent and whispered in her ear, 'Lie
quiet, dearest, no hurry; and dream, dream, dream of happy days. It is
only I. You will soon be better.' He held her by the hand.
'No, no, no!' she said, with a stare. 'O, how can this be?'
Nicholas was alarmed and perplexed, but the disclosure was not long
delayed. When she had sat up, and by degrees made the stunning event
known to him, he stood as if transfixed.
'Ah-is it so?' said he. Then, becoming quite meek, 'And why was he so
cruel as to-delay his return till now?'
She dutifully recited the explanation her husband had given her through
the messenger; but her mechanical manner of telling it showed how much
she doubted its truth. It was too unlikely that his arrival at such a
dramatic moment should not be a contrived surprise, quite of a piece
with his previous dealings towards her.
'But perhaps it may be true-and he may have become kind now-not as he
used to be,' she faltered. 'Yes, perhaps, Nicholas, he is an altered
man-we'll hope he is. I suppose I ought not to have listened to my legal
advisers, and assumed his death so surely! Anyhow, I am roughly received
back into-the right way!'
Nicholas burst out bitterly: 'O what too, too honest fools we were!-to
so court daylight upon our intention by putting that announcement in the
papers! Why could we not have married privately, and gone away, so that
he would never have known what had become of you, even if he had
returned? Christine, he has done it to . . . But I'll say no more. Of
course we-might fly now.'
'No, no; we might not,' said she hastily.
'Very well. But this is hard to bear! "When I looked for good then evil
came unto me, and when I waited for light there came darkness." So once
said a sorely tried man in the land of Uz, and so say I now! . . . I
wonder if he is almost here at this moment?'
She told him she supposed Bellston was approaching by the path across
the fields, having sent on his great-coat, which he would not want
walking.
'And is this meal laid for him, or for me?'
'It was laid for you.'
'And it will be eaten by him?'
'Yes.'
'Christine, are you sure that he is come, or have you been sleeping over
the fire and dreaming it?'
She pointed anew to the portmanteau with the initials 'J. B.,' and to
the coat beside it.
'Well, good-bye-good-bye! Curse that parson for not marrying us fifteen
years ago!'
It is unnecessary to dwell further upon that parting. There are scenes
wherein the words spoken do not even approximate to the level of the
mental communion between the actors. Suffice it to say that part they
did, and quickly; and Nicholas, more dead than alive, went out of the
house homewards.
Why had he ever come back? During his absence he had not cared for
Christine as he cared now. If he had been younger he might have felt
tempted to descend into the meads instead of keeping along their edge.
The Froom was down there, and he knew of quiet pools in that stream to
which death would come easily. But he was too old to put an end to
himself for such a reason as love; and another thought, too, kept him
from seriously contemplating any desperate act. His affection for her
was strongly protective, and in the event of her requiring a friend's
support in future troubles there was none but himself left in the world
to afford it. So he walked on.
Meanwhile Christine had resigned herself to circumstances. A resolve to
continue worthy of her history and of her family lent her heroism and
dignity. She called Mrs. Wake, and explained to that worthy woman as
much of what had occurred as she deemed necessary. Mrs. Wake was too
amazed to reply; she retreated slowly, her lips parted; till at the door
she said with a dry mouth, 'And the beautiful supper, ma'am?'
'Serve it when he comes.'
'When Mr. Bellston-yes, ma'am, I will.' She still stood gazing, as if
she could hardly take in the order.
'That will do, Mrs. Wake. I am much obliged to you for all your
kindness.' And Christine was left alone again, and then she wept.
She sat down and waited. That awful silence of the stopped clock began
anew, but she did not mind it now. She was listening for a footfall in a
state of mental tensity which almost took away from her the power of
motion. It seemed to her that the natural interval for her husband's
journey thither must have expired; but she was not sure, and waited on.
Mrs. Wake again came in. 'You have not rung for supper-'
'He is not yet come, Mrs. Wake. If you want to go to bed, bring in the
supper and set it on the table. It will be nearly as good cold. Leave
the door unbarred.'
Mrs. Wake did as was suggested, made up the fire, and went away. Shortly
afterwards Christine heard her retire to her chamber. But Christine
still sat on, and still her husband postponed his entry.
She aroused herself once or twice to freshen the fire, but was ignorant
how the night was going. Her watch was upstairs and she did not make the
effort to go up to consult it. In her seat she continued; and still the
supper waited, and still he did not come.
At length she was so nearly persuaded that the arrival of his things
must have been a dream after all, that she again went over to them, felt
them, and examined them. His they unquestionably were; and their
forwarding by the porter had been quite natural. She sighed and sat down
again.
Presently she fell into a doze, and when she again became conscious she
found that the four candles had burnt into their sockets and gone out.
The fire still emitted a feeble shine. Christine did not take the
trouble to get more candles, but stirred the fire and sat on.
After a long period she heard a creaking of the chamber floor and stairs
at the other end of the house, and knew that the farmer's family were
getting up. By-and-by Mrs. Wake entered the room, candle in hand,
bouncing open the door in her morning manner, obviously without any
expectation of finding a person there.
'Lord-a-mercy! What, sitting here again, ma'am?'
'Yes, I am sitting here still.'
'You've been there ever since last night?'
'Yes.'
'Then-'
'He's not come.'
'Well, he won't come at this time o' morning,' said the farmer's wife.
'Do 'ee get on to bed, ma'am. You must be shrammed to death!'
It occurred to Christine now that possibly her husband had thought
better of obtruding himself upon her company within an hour of revealing
his existence to her, and had decided to pay a more formal visit next
day. She therefore adopted Mrs. Wake's suggestion and retired.
CHAPTER VIII
Nicholas had gone straight home, neither speaking to nor seeing a soul.
From that hour a change seemed to come over him. He had ever possessed a
full share of self-consciousness; he had been readily piqued, had shown
an unusual dread of being personally obtrusive. But now his sense of
self, as an individual provoking opinion, appeared to leave him. When,
therefore, after a day or two of seclusion, he came forth again, and the
few acquaintances he had formed in the town condoled with him on what
had happened, and pitied his haggard looks, he did not shrink from their
regard as he would have done formerly, but took their sympathy as it
would have been accepted by a child.
It reached his ears that Bellston had not appeared on the evening of his
arrival at any hotel in the town or neighbourhood, or entered his wife's
house at all. 'That's a part of his cruelty,' thought Nicholas. And when
two or three days had passed, and still no account came to him of
Bellston having joined her, he ventured to set out for Froom-Everard.
Christine was so shaken that she was obliged to receive him as she lay
on a sofa, beside the square table which was to have borne their evening
feast. She fixed her eyes wistfully upon him, and smiled a sad smile.
'He has not come?' said Nicholas under his breath.
'He has not.'
Then Nicholas sat beside her, and they talked on general topics merely
like saddened old friends. But they could not keep away the subject of
Bellston, their voices dropping as it forced its way in. Christine, no
less than Nicholas, knowing her husband's character, inferred that,
having stopped her game, as he would have phrased it, he was taking
things leisurely, and, finding nothing very attractive in her limited
mode of living, was meaning to return to her only when he had nothing
better to do.
The bolt which laid low their hopes had struck so recently that they
could hardly look each other in the face when speaking that day. But
when a week or two had passed, and all the horizon still remained as
vacant of Bellston as before, Nicholas and she could talk of the event
with calm wonderment. Why had he come, to go again like this?
And then there set in a period of resigned surmise, during which
So like, so very like, was day to day,
that to tell of one of them is to tell of all. Nicholas would arrive
between three and four in the afternoon, a faint trepidation influencing
his walk as he neared her door. He would knock; she would always reply
in person, having watched for him from the window. Then he would
whisper-'He has not come?'
'He has not,' she would say.
Nicholas would enter then, and she being ready bonneted, they would walk
into the Sallows together as far as to the spot which they had
frequently made their place of appointment in their youthful days. A
plank bridge, which Bellston had caused to be thrown over the stream
during his residence with her in the manor-house, was now again removed,
and all was just the same as in Nicholas's time, when he had been
accustomed to wade across on the edge of the cascade and come up to her
like a merman from the deep. Here on the felled trunk, which still lay
rotting in its old place, they would now sit, gazing at the descending
sheet of water, with its never-ending sarcastic hiss at their baffled
attempts to make themselves one flesh. Returning to the house they would
sit down together to tea, after which, and the confidential chat that
accompanied it, he walked home by the declining light. This proceeding
became as periodic as an astronomical recurrence. Twice a week he came-
all through that winter, all through the spring following, through the
summer, through the autumn, the next winter, the next year, and the
next, till an appreciable span of human life had passed by. Bellston
still tarried.
Years and years Nic walked that way, at this interval of three days,
from his house in the neighbouring town; and in every instance the
aforesaid order of things was customary; and still on his arrival the
form of words went on-'He has not come?'
'He has not.'
So they grew older. The dim shape of that third one stood continually
between them; they could not displace it; neither, on the other hand,
could it effectually part them. They were in close communion, yet not
indissolubly united; lovers, yet never growing cured of love. By the
time that the fifth year of Nic's visiting had arrived, on about the
five-hundredth occasion of his presence at her tea-table, he noticed
that the bleaching process which had begun upon his own locks was also
spreading to hers. He told her so, and they laughed. Yet she was in good
health: a condition of suspense, which would have half-killed a man, had
been endured by her without complaint, and even with composure.
One day, when these years of abeyance had numbered seven, they had
strolled as usual as far as the waterfall, whose faint roar formed a
sort of calling voice sufficient in the circumstances to direct their
listlessness. Pausing there, he looked up at her face and said, 'Why
should we not try again, Christine? We are legally at liberty to do so
now. Nothing venture nothing have.'
But she would not. Perhaps a little primness of idea was by this time
ousting the native daring of Christine. 'What he has done once he can do
twice,' she said. 'He is not dead, and if we were to marry he would say
we had "forced his hand," as he said before, and duly reappear.'
Some years after, when Christine was about fifty, and Nicholas fifty-
three, a new trouble of a minor kind arrived. He found an inconvenience
in traversing the distance between their two houses, particularly in
damp weather, the years he had spent in trying climates abroad having
sown the seeds of rheumatism, which made a journey undesirable on
inclement days, even in a carriage. He told her of this new difficulty,
as he did of everything.
'If you could live nearer,' suggested she.
Unluckily there was no house near. But Nicholas, though not a
millionaire, was a man of means; he obtained a small piece of ground on
lease at the nearest spot to her home that it could be so obtained,
which was on the opposite brink of the Froom, this river forming the
boundary of the Froom-Everard manor; and here he built a cottage large
enough for his wants. This took time, and when he got into it he found
its situation a great comfort to him. He was not more than five hundred
yards from her now, and gained a new pleasure in feeling that all sounds
which greeted his ears, in the day or in the night, also fell upon hers-
the caw of a particular rook, the voice of a neighbouring nightingale,
the whistle of a local breeze, or the purl of the fall in the meadows,
whose rush was a material rendering of Time's ceaseless scour over
themselves, wearing them away without uniting them.
Christine's missing husband was taking shape as a myth among the
surrounding residents; but he was still believed in as corporeally
imminent by Christine herself, and also, in a milder degree, by
Nicholas. For a curious unconsciousness of the long lapse of time since
his revelation of himself seemed to affect the pair. There had been no
passing events to serve as chronological milestones, and the evening on
which she had kept supper waiting for him still loomed out with
startling nearness in their retrospects.
In the seventeenth pensive year of this their parallel march towards the
common bourne, a labourer came in a hurry one day to Nicholas's house
and brought strange tidings. The present owner of Froom-Everard-a non-
resident-had been improving his property in sundry ways, and one of
these was by dredging the stream which, in the course of years, had
become choked with mud and weeds in its passage through the Sallows. The
process necessitated a reconstruction of the waterfall. When the river
had been pumped dry for this purpose, the skeleton of a man had been
found jammed among the piles supporting the edge of the fall. Every
particle of his flesh and clothing had been eaten by fishes or abraded
to nothing by the water, but the relics of a gold watch remained, and on
the inside of the case was engraved the name of the maker of her
husband's watch, which she well remembered.
Nicholas, deeply agitated, hastened down to the place and examined the
remains attentively, afterwards going across to Christine, and breaking
the discovery to her. She would not come to view the skeleton, which lay
extended on the grass, not a finger or toe-bone missing, so neatly had
the aquatic operators done their work. Conjecture was directed to the
question how Bellston had got there; and conjecture alone could give an
explanation.
It was supposed that, on his way to call upon her, he had taken a short
cut through the grounds, with which he was naturally very familiar, and
coming to the fall under the trees had expected to find there the plank
which, during his occupancy of the premises with Christine and her
father, he had placed there for crossing into the meads on the other
side instead of wading across as Nicholas had done. Before discovering
its removal he had probably overbalanced himself, and was thus
precipitated into the cascade, the piles beneath the descending current
wedging him between them like the prongs of a pitchfork, and effectually
preventing the rising of his body, over which the weeds grew. Such was
the reasonable supposition concerning the discovery; but proof was never
forthcoming.
'To think,' said Nicholas, when the remains had been decently interred,
and he was again sitting with Christine-though not beside the waterfall-
'to think how we visited him! How we sat over him, hours and hours,
gazing at him, bewailing our fate, when all the time he was ironically
hissing at us from the spot, in an unknown tongue, that we could marry
if we chose!'
She echoed the sentiment with a sigh.
'I have strange fancies,' she said. 'I suppose it must have been my
husband who came back, and not some other man.'
Nicholas felt that there was little doubt. 'Besides-the skeleton,' he
said.
'Yes . . . If it could not have been another person's-but no, of course
it was he.'
'You might have married me on the day we had fixed, and there would have
been no impediment. You would now have been seventeen years my wife, and
we might have had tall sons and daughters.'
'It might have been so,' she murmured.
'Well-is it still better late than never?'
The question was one which had become complicated by the increasing
years of each. Their wills were somewhat enfeebled now, their hearts
sickened of tender enterprise by hope too long deferred. Having
postponed the consideration of their course till a year after the
interment of Bellston, each seemed less disposed than formerly to take
it up again.
'Is it worth while, after so many years?' she said to him. 'We are
fairly happy as we are-perhaps happier than we should be in any other
relation, seeing what old people we have grown. The weight is gone from
our lives; the shadow no longer divides us: then let us be joyful
together as we are, dearest Nic, in the days of our vanity; and
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.'
He fell in with these views of hers to some extent. But occasionally he
ventured to urge her to reconsider the case, though he spoke not with
the fervour of his earlier years.
Autumn, 1887.
ALICIA'S DIARY
CHAPTER I.-SHE MISSES HER SISTER
July 7.-I wander about the house in a mood of unutterable sadness, for
my dear sister Caroline has left home to-day with my mother, and I shall
not see them again for several weeks. They have accepted a long-
standing invitation to visit some old friends of ours, the Marlets, who
live at Versailles for cheapness-my mother thinking that it will be for
the good of Caroline to see a little of France and Paris. But I don't
quite like her going. I fear she may lose some of that childlike
simplicity and gentleness which so characterize her, and have been
nourished by the seclusion of our life here. Her solicitude about her
pony before starting was quite touching, and she made me promise to
visit it daily, and see that it came to no harm.
Caroline gone abroad, and I left here! It is the reverse of an ordinary
situation, for good or ill-luck has mostly ordained that I should be the
absent one. Mother will be quite tired out by the young enthusiasm of
Caroline. She will demand to be taken everywhere-to Paris continually,
of course; to all the stock shrines of history's devotees; to palaces
and prisons; to kings' tombs and queens' tombs; to cemeteries and
picture-galleries, and royal hunting forests. My poor mother, having
gone over most of this ground many times before, will perhaps not find
the perambulation so exhilarating as will Caroline herself. I wish I
could have gone with them. I would not have minded having my legs walked
off to please Caroline. But this regret is absurd: I could not, of
course, leave my father with not a soul in the house to attend to the
calls of the parishioners or to pour out his tea.
July 15.-A letter from Caroline to-day. It is very strange that she
tells me nothing which I expected her to tell-only trivial details. She
seems dazzled by the brilliancy of Paris-which no doubt appears still
more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to obtain
occasional glimpses of it. She would see that Paris, too, has a seamy
side if you live there. I was not aware that the Marlets knew so many
people. If, as mother has said, they went to reside at Versailles for
reasons of economy, they will not effect much in that direction while
they make a practice of entertaining all the acquaintances who happen to
be in their neighbourhood. They do not confine their hospitalities to
English people, either. I wonder who this M. de la Feste is, in whom
Caroline says my mother is so much interested.
July 18.-Another letter from Caroline. I have learnt from this epistle,
that M. Charles de la Feste is 'only one of the many friends of the
Marlets'; that though a Frenchman by birth, and now again temporarily at
Versailles, he has lived in England many many years; that he is a
talented landscape and marine painter, and has exhibited at the Salon,
and I think in London. His style and subjects are considered somewhat
peculiar in Paris-rather English than Continental. I have not as yet
learnt his age, or his condition, married or single. From the tone and
nature of her remarks about him he sometimes seems to be a middle-aged
family man, sometimes quite the reverse. From his nomadic habits I
should say the latter is the most likely. He has travelled and seen a
great deal, she tells me, and knows more about English literature than
she knows herself.
July 21.-Letter from Caroline. Query: Is 'a friend of ours and the
Marlets,' of whom she now anonymously and mysteriously speaks, the same
personage as the 'M. de la Feste' of her former letters? He must be the
same, I think, from his pursuits. If so, whence this sudden change of
tone? . . . I have been lost in thought for at least a quarter of an
hour since writing the preceding sentence. Suppose my dear sister is
falling in love with this young man-there is no longer any doubt about
his age; what a very awkward, risky thing for her! I do hope that my
mother has an eye on these proceedings. But, then, poor mother never
sees the drift of anything: she is in truth less of a mother to Caroline
than I am. If I were there, how jealously I would watch him, and
ascertain his designs!
I am of a stronger nature than Caroline. How I have supported her in the
past through her little troubles and great griefs! Is she agitated at
the presence of this, to her, new and strange feeling? But I am assuming
her to be desperately in love, when I have no proof of anything of the
kind. He may be merely a casual friend, of whom I shall hear no more.
July 24.-Then he is a bachelor, as I suspected. 'If M. de la Feste ever
marries he will,' etc. So she writes. They are getting into close
quarters, obviously. Also, 'Something to keep my hair smooth, which M.
de la Feste told me he had found useful for the tips of his moustache.'
Very naively related this; and with how much unconsciousness of the
intimacy between them that the remark reveals! But my mother-what can
she be doing? Does she know of this? And if so, why does she not allude
to it in her letters to my father? . . . I have been to look at
Caroline's pony, in obedience to her reiterated request that I would not
miss a day in seeing that she was well cared for. Anxious as Caroline
was about this pony of hers before starting, she now never mentioned the
poor animal once in her letters. The image of her pet suffers from
displacement.
August 3.-Caroline's forgetfulness of her pony has naturally enough
extended to me, her sister. It is ten days since she last wrote, and but
for a note from my mother I should not know if she were dead or alive.
CHAPTER II.-NEWS INTERESTING AND SERIOUS
August 5.-A cloud of letters. A letter from Caroline, another from
mother; also one from each to my father.
The probability to which all the intelligence from my sister has pointed
of late turns out to be a fact. There is an engagement, or almost an
engagement, announced between my dear Caroline and M. de la Feste-to
Caroline's sublime happiness, and my mother's entire satisfaction; as
well as to that of the Marlets. They and my mother seem to know all
about the young man-which is more than I do, though a little extended
information about him, considering that I am Caroline's elder sister,
would not have been amiss. I half feel with my father, who is much
surprised, and, I am sure, not altogether satisfied, that he should not
have been consulted at all before matters reached such a definite stage,
though he is too amiable to say so openly. I don't quite say that a good
thing should have been hindered for the sake of our opinion, if it is a
good thing; but the announcement comes very suddenly. It must have been
foreseen by my mother for some time that this upshot was probable, and
Caroline might have told me more distinctly that M. de la Feste was her
lover, instead of alluding so mysteriously to him as only a friend of
the Marlets, and lately dropping his name altogether. My father, without
exactly objecting to him as a Frenchman, 'wishes he were of English or
some other reasonable nationality for one's son-in-law,' but I tell him
that the demarcations of races, kingdoms, and creeds, are wearing down
every day, that patriotism is a sort of vice, and that the character of
the individual is all we need think about in this case. I wonder if, in
the event of their marriage, he will continue to live at Versailles, or
if he will come to England.
August 7.-A supplemental letter from Caroline, answering, by
anticipation, some of the aforesaid queries. She tells me that
'Charles,' though he makes Versailles his present home, is by no means
bound by his profession to continue there; that he will live just where
she wishes, provided it be not too far from some centre of thought, art,
and civilization. My mother and herself both think that the marriage
should not take place till next year. He exhibits landscapes and canal
scenery every year, she says; so I suppose he is popular, and that his
income is sufficient to keep them in comfort. If not, I do not see why
my father could not settle something more on them than he had intended,
and diminish by a little what he had proposed for me, whilst it was
imagined that I should be the first to stand in need of such.
'Of engaging manner, attractive appearance, and virtuous character,' is
the reply I receive from her in answer to my request for a personal
description. That is vague enough, and I would rather have had one
definite fact of complexion, voice, deed, or opinion. But of course she
has no eye now for material qualities; she cannot see him as he is. She
sees him irradiated with glories such as never appertained and never
will appertain to any man, foreign, English, or Colonial. To think that
Caroline, two years my junior, and so childlike as to be five years my
junior in nature, should be engaged to be married before me. But that is
what happens in families more often than we are apt to remember.
August 16.-Interesting news to-day. Charles, she says, has pleaded that
their marriage may just as well be this year as next; and he seems to
have nearly converted my mother to the same way of thinking. I do not
myself see any reason for delay, beyond the standing one of my father
having as yet had no opportunity of forming an opinion upon the man, the
time, or anything. However, he takes his lot very quietly, and they are
coming home to talk the question over with us; Caroline having decided
not to make any positive arrangements for this change of state till she
has seen me. Subject to my own and my father's approval, she says, they
are inclined to settle the date of the wedding for November, three
months from the present time, that it shall take place here in the
village, that I, of course, shall be bridesmaid, and many other
particulars. She draws an artless picture of the probable effect upon
the minds of the villagers of this romantic performance in the chancel
of our old church, in which she is to be chief actor-the foreign
gentleman dropping down like a god from the skies, picking her up, and
triumphantly carrying her off. Her only grief will be separation from
me, but this is to be assuaged by my going and staying with her for long
months at a time. This simple prattle is very sweet to me, my dear
sister, but I cannot help feeling sad at the occasion of it. In the
nature of things it is obvious that I shall never be to you again what I
hitherto have been: your guide, counsellor, and most familiar friend.
M. de la Feste does certainly seem to be all that one could desire as
protector to a sensitive fragile child like Caroline, and for that I am
thankful. Still, I must remember that I see him as yet only through her
eyes. For her sake I am intensely anxious to meet him, and scrutinise
him through and through, and learn what the man is really made of who is
to have such a treasure in his keeping. The engagement has certainly
been formed a little precipitately; I quite agree with my father in
that: still, good and happy marriages have been made in a hurry before
now, and mother seems well satisfied.
August 20.-A terrible announcement came this morning; and we are in deep
trouble. I have been quite unable to steady my thoughts on anything to-
day till now-half-past eleven at night-and I only attempt writing these
notes because I am too restless to remain idle, and there is nothing but
waiting and waiting left for me to do. Mother has been taken dangerously
ill at Versailles: they were within a day or two of starting; but all
thought of leaving must now be postponed, for she cannot possibly be
moved in her present state. I don't like the sound of haemorrhage at all
in a woman of her full habit, and Caroline and the Marlets have not
exaggerated their accounts I am certain. On the receipt of the letter my
father instantly decided to go to her, and I have been occupied all day
in getting him off, for as he calculates on being absent several days,
there have been many matters for him to arrange before setting out-the
chief being to find some one who will do duty for him next Sunday-a
quest of no small difficulty at such short notice; but at last poor old
feeble Mr. Dugdale has agreed to attempt it, with Mr. Highman, the
Scripture reader, to assist him in the lessons.
I fain would have gone with my father to escape the irksome anxiety of
awaiting her; but somebody had to stay, and I could best be spared.
George has driven him to the station to meet the last train by which he
will catch the midnight boat, and reach Havre some time in the morning.
He hates the sea, and a night passage in particular. I hope he will get
there without mishap of any kind; but I feel anxious for him, stay-at-
home as he is, and unable to cope with any difficulty. Such an errand,
too; the journey will be sad enough at best. I almost think I ought to
have been the one to go to her.
August 21.-I nearly fell asleep of heaviness of spirit last night over
my writing. My father must have reached Paris by this time; and now here
comes a letter . . .
Later.-The letter was to express an earnest hope that my father had set
out. My poor mother is sinking, they fear. What will become of Caroline?
O, how I wish I could see mother; why could not both have gone?
Later.-I get up from my chair, and walk from window to window, and then
come and write a line. I cannot even divine how poor Caroline's marriage
is to be carried out if mother dies. I pray that father may have got
there in time to talk to her and receive some directions from her about
Caroline and M. de la Feste-a man whom neither my father nor I have
seen. I, who might be useful in this emergency, am doomed to stay here,
waiting in suspense.
August 23.-A letter from my father containing the sad news that my
mother's spirit has flown. Poor little Caroline is heart-broken-she was
always more my mother's pet than I was. It is some comfort to know that
my father arrived in time to hear from her own lips her strongly
expressed wish that Caroline's marriage should be solemnized as soon as
possible. M. de la Feste seems to have been a great favourite of my dear
mother's; and I suppose it now becomes almost a sacred duty of my father
to accept him as a son-in-law without criticism.
CHAPTER III.-HER GLOOM LIGHTENS A LITTLE
September 10.-I have inserted nothing in my diary for more than a
fortnight. Events have been altogether too sad for me to have the spirit
to put them on paper. And yet there comes a time when the act of
recording one's trouble is recognized as a welcome method of dwelling
upon it . . .
My dear mother has been brought home and buried here in the parish. It
was not so much her own wish that this should be done as my father's,
who particularly desired that she should lie in the family vault beside
his first wife. I saw them side by side before the vault was closed-two
women beloved by one man. As I stood, and Caroline by my side, I fell
into a sort of dream, and had an odd fancy that Caroline and I might be
also beloved of one, and lie like these together-an impossibility, of
course, being sisters. When I awoke from my reverie Caroline took my
hand and said it was time to leave.
September 14.-The wedding is indefinitely postponed. Caroline is like a
girl awakening in the middle of a somnambulistic experience, and does
not realize where she is, or how she stands. She walks about silently,
and I cannot tell her thoughts, as I used to do. It was her own doing to
write to M. de la Feste and tell him that the wedding could not possibly
take place this autumn as originally planned. There is something
depressing in this long postponement if she is to marry him at all; and
yet I do not see how it could be avoided.
October 20.-I have had so much to occupy me in consoling Caroline that I
have been continually overlooking my diary. Her life was much nearer to
my mother's than mine was. She has never, as I, lived away from home
long enough to become self-dependent, and hence in her first loss, and
all that it involved, she drooped like a rain-beaten lily. But she is of
a nature whose wounds soon heal, even though they may be deep, and the
supreme poignancy of her sorrow has already passed.
My father is of opinion that the wedding should not be delayed too long.
While at Versailles he made the acquaintance of M. de la Feste, and
though they had but a short and hurried communion with each other, he
was much impressed by M. de la Feste's disposition and conduct, and is
strongly in favour of his suit. It is odd that Caroline's betrothed
should influence in his favour all who come near him. His portrait,
which dear Caroline has shown me, exhibits him to be of a physique that
partly accounts for this: but there must be something more than mere
appearance, and it is probably some sort of glamour or fascinating
power-the quality which prevented Caroline from describing him to me
with any accuracy of detail. At the same time, I see from the photograph
that his face and head are remarkably well formed; and though the
contours of his mouth are hidden by his moustache, his arched brows show
well the romantic disposition of a true lover and painter of Nature. I
think that the owner of such a face as this must be tender and
sympathetic and true.
October 30.-As my sister's grief for her mother becomes more and more
calmed, her love for M. de la Feste begins to reassume its former
absorbing command of her. She thinks of him incessantly, and writes
whole treatises to him by way of letters. Her blank disappointment at
his announcement of his inability to pay us a visit quite so soon as he
had promised, was quite tragic. I, too, am disappointed, for I wanted to
see and estimate him. But having arranged to go to Holland to seize some
aerial effects for his pictures, which are only to be obtained at this
time of the autumn, he is obliged to postpone his journey this way,
which is now to be made early in the new year. I think myself that he
ought to have come at all sacrifices, considering Caroline's recent
loss, the sad postponement of what she was looking forward to, and her
single-minded affection for him. Still, who knows; his professional
success is important. Moreover, she is cheerful, and hopeful, and the
delay will soon be overpast.
CHAPTER IV.-SHE BEHOLDS THE ATTRACTIVE STRANGER
February 16.-We have had such a dull life here all the winter that I
have found nothing important enough to set down, and broke off my
journal accordingly. I resume it now to make an entry on the subject of
dear Caroline's future. It seems that she was too grieved, immediately
after the loss of our mother, to answer definitely the question of M. de
la Feste how long the postponement was to be; then, afterwards, it was
agreed that the matter should be discussed on his autumn visit; but as
he did not come, it has remained in abeyance till this week, when
Caroline, with the greatest simplicity and confidence, has written to
him without any further pressure on his part, and told him that she is
quite ready to fix the time, and will do so as soon as he arrives to see
her. She is a little frightened now, lest it should seem forward in her
to have revived the subject of her own accord; but she may assume that
his question has been waiting on for an answer ever since, and that she
has, therefore, acted only within her promise. In truth, the secret at
the bottom of it all is that she is somewhat saddened because he has not
latterly reminded her of the pause in their affairs-that, in short, his
original impatience to possess her is not now found to animate him so
obviously. I suppose that he loves her as much as ever; indeed, I am
sure he must do so, seeing how lovable she is. It is mostly thus with
all men when women are out of their sight; they grow negligent. Caroline
must have patience, and remember that a man of his genius has many and
important calls upon his time. In justice to her I must add that she
does remember it fairly well, and has as much patience as any girl ever
had in the circumstances. He hopes to come at the beginning of April at
latest. Well, when he comes we shall see him.
April 5.-I think that what M. de la Feste writes is reasonable enough,
though Caroline looks heart-sick about it. It is hardly worth while for
him to cross all the way to England and back just now, while the sea is
so turbulent, seeing that he will be obliged, in any event, to come in
May, when he has to be in London for professional purposes, at which
time he can take us easily on his way both coming and going. When
Caroline becomes his wife she will be more practical, no doubt; but she
is such a child as yet that there is no contenting her with reasons.
However, the time will pass quickly, there being so much to do in
preparing a trousseau for her, which must now be put in hand in order
that we may have plenty of leisure to get it ready. On no account must
Caroline be married in half-mourning; I am sure that mother, could she
know, would not wish it, and it is odd that Caroline should be so
intractably persistent on this point, when she is usually so yielding.
April 30.-This month has flown on swallow's wings. We are in a great
state of excitement-I as much as she-I cannot quite tell why. He is
really coming in ten days, he says.
May 9. Four p.m.-I am so agitated I can scarcely write, and yet am
particularly impelled to do so before leaving my room. It is the
unexpected shape of an expected event which has caused my absurd
excitement, which proves me almost as much a school-girl as Caroline.
M. de la Feste was not, as we understood, to have come till to-morrow;
but he is here-just arrived. All household directions have devolved upon
me, for my father, not thinking M. de la Feste would appear before us
for another four-and-twenty hours, left home before post time to attend
a distant consecration; and hence Caroline and I were in no small
excitement when Charles's letter was opened, and we read that he had
been unexpectedly favoured in the dispatch of his studio work, and would
follow his letter in a few hours. We sent the covered carriage to meet
the train indicated, and waited like two newly strung harps for the
first sound of the returning wheels. At last we heard them on the
gravel; and the question arose who was to receive him. It was, strictly
speaking, my duty; but I felt timid; I could not help shirking it, and
insisted that Caroline should go down. She did not, however, go near the
door as she usually does when anybody is expected, but waited
palpitating in the drawing-room. He little thought when he saw the
silent hall, and the apparently deserted house, how that house was at
the very same moment alive and throbbing with interest under the
surface. I stood at the back of the upper landing, where nobody could
see me from downstairs, and heard him walk across the hall-a lighter
step than my father's-and heard him then go into the drawing-room, and
the servant shut the door behind him and go away.
What a pretty lover's meeting they must have had in there all to
themselves! Caroline's sweet face looking up from her black gown-how it
must have touched him. I know she wept very much, for I heard her; and
her eyes will be red afterwards, and no wonder, poor dear, though she is
no doubt happy. I can imagine what she is telling him while I write
this-her fears lest anything should have happened to prevent his coming
after all-gentle, smiling reproaches for his long delay; and things of
that sort. His two portmanteaus are at this moment crossing the landing
on the way to his room. I wonder if I ought to go down.
A little later.-I have seen him! It was not at all in the way that I
intended to encounter him, and I am vexed. Just after his portmanteaus
were brought up I went out from my room to descend, when, at the moment
of stepping towards the first stair, my eyes were caught by an object in
the hall below, and I paused for an instant, till I saw that it was a
bundle of canvas and sticks, composing a sketching tent and easel. At
the same nick of time the drawing-room door opened and the affianced
pair came out. They were saying they would go into the garden; and he
waited a moment while she put on her hat. My idea was to let them pass
on without seeing me, since they seemed not to want my company, but I
had got too far on the landing to retreat; he looked up, and stood
staring at me-engrossed to a dream-like fixity. Thereupon I, too,
instead of advancing as I ought to have done, stood moonstruck and
awkward, and before I could gather my weak senses sufficiently to
descend, she had called him, and they went out by the garden door
together. I then thought of following them, but have changed my mind,
and come here to jot down these few lines. It is all I am fit for . . .
He is even more handsome than I expected. I was right in feeling he must
have an attraction beyond that of form: it appeared even in that
momentary glance. How happy Caroline ought to be. But I must, of course,
go down to be ready with tea in the drawing-room by the time they come
indoors.
11 p.m.-I have made the acquaintance of M. de la Feste; and I seem to be
another woman from the effect of it. I cannot describe why this should
be so, but conversation with him seems to expand the view, and open the
heart, and raise one as upon stilts to wider prospects. He has a good
intellectual forehead, perfect eyebrows, dark hair and eyes, an animated
manner, and a persuasive voice. His voice is soft in quality-too soft
for a man, perhaps; and yet on second thoughts I would not have it less
so. We have been talking of his art: I had no notion that art demanded
such sacrifices or such tender devotion; or that there were two roads
for choice within its precincts, the road of vulgar money-making, and
the road of high aims and consequent inappreciation for many long years
by the public. That he has adopted the latter need not be said to those
who understand him. It is a blessing for Caroline that she has been
chosen by such a man, and she ought not to lament at postponements and
delays, since they have arisen unavoidably. Whether he finds hers a
sufficiently rich nature, intellectually and emotionally, for his own, I
know not, but he seems occasionally to be disappointed at her simple
views of things. Does he really feel such love for her at this moment as
he no doubt believes himself to be feeling, and as he no doubt hopes to
feel for the remainder of his life towards her?
It was a curious thing he told me when we were left for a few minutes
alone; that Caroline had alluded so slightly to me in her conversation
and letters that he had not realized my presence in the house here at
all. But, of course, it was only natural that she should write and talk
most about herself. I suppose it was on account of the fact of his being
taken in some measure unawares, that I caught him on two or three
occasions regarding me fixedly in a way that disquieted me somewhat,
having been lately in so little society; till my glance aroused him from
his reverie, and he looked elsewhere in some confusion. It was fortunate
that he did so, and thus failed to notice my own. It shows that he, too,
is not particularly a society person.
May 10.-Have had another interesting conversation with M. de la Feste on
schools of landscape painting in the drawing-room after dinner this
evening-my father having fallen asleep, and left nobody but Caroline and
myself for Charles to talk to. I did not mean to say so much to him, and
had taken a volume of Modern Painters from the bookcase to occupy myself
with, while leaving the two lovers to themselves; but he would include
me in his audience, and I was obliged to lay the book aside. However, I
insisted on keeping Caroline in the conversation, though her views on
pictorial art were only too charmingly crude and primitive.
To-morrow, if fine, we are all three going to Wherryborne Wood, where
Charles will give us practical illustrations of the principles of
coloring that he has enumerated to-night. I am determined not to occupy
his attention to the exclusion of Caroline, and my plan is that when we
are in the dense part of the wood I will lag behind, and slip away, and
leave them to return by themselves. I suppose the reason of his
attentiveness to me lies in his simply wishing to win the good opinion
of one who is so closely united to Caroline, and so likely to influence
her good opinion of him.
May 11. Late.-I cannot sleep, and in desperation have lit my candle and
taken up my pen. My restlessness is occasioned by what has occurred to-
day, which at first I did not mean to write down, or trust to any heart
but my own. We went to Wherryborne Wood-Caroline, Charles and I, as we
had intended-and walked all three along the green track through the
midst, Charles in the middle between Caroline and myself. Presently I
found that, as usual, he and I were the only talkers, Caroline amusing
herself by observing birds and squirrels as she walked docilely
alongside her betrothed. Having noticed this I dropped behind at the
first opportunity and slipped among the trees, in a direction in which I
knew I should find another path that would take me home. Upon this track
I by and by emerged, and walked along it in silent thought till, at a
bend, I suddenly encountered M. de la Feste standing stock still and
smiling thoughtfully at me.
'Where is Caroline?' said I.
'Only a little way off,' says he. 'When we missed you from behind us we
thought you might have mistaken the direction we had followed, so she
has gone one way to find you and I have come this way.'
We then went back to find Caroline, but could not discover her anywhere,
and the upshot was that he and I were wandering about the woods alone
for more than an hour. On reaching home we found she had given us up
after searching a little while, and arrived there some time before. I
should not be so disturbed by the incident if I had not perceived that,
during her absence from us, he did not make any earnest effort to
rediscover her; and in answer to my repeated expressions of wonder as to
whither she could have wandered he only said, 'Oh, she's quite safe; she
told me she knew the way home from any part of this wood. Let us go on
with our talk. I assure you I value this privilege of being with one I
so much admire more than you imagine;' and other things of that kind. I
was so foolish as to show a little perturbation-I cannot tell why I did
not control myself; and I think he noticed that I was not cool. Caroline
has, with her simple good faith, thought nothing of the occurrence; yet
altogether I am not satisfied.
CHAPTER V.-HER SITUATION IS A TRYING ONE
May 15.-The more I think of it day after day, the more convinced I am
that my suspicions are true. He is too interested in me-well, in plain
words, loves me; or, not to degrade that phrase, has a wild passion for
me; and his affection for Caroline is that towards a sister only. That
is the distressing truth; how it has come about I cannot tell, and it
wears upon me.
A hundred little circumstances have revealed this to me, and the longer
I dwell upon it the more agitating does the consideration become. Heaven
only can help me out of the terrible difficulty in which this places me.
I have done nothing to encourage him to be faithless to her. I have
studiously kept out of his way; have persistently refused to be a third
in their interviews. Yet all to no purpose. Some fatality has seemed to
rule, ever since he came to the house, that this disastrous inversion of
things should arise. If I had only foreseen the possibility of it before
he arrived, how gladly would I have departed on some visit or other to
the meanest friend to hinder such an apparent treachery. But I blindly
welcomed him-indeed, made myself particularly agreeable to him for her
sake.
There is no possibility of my suspicions being wrong; not until they
have reached absolute certainty have I dared even to admit the truth to
myself. His conduct to-day would have proved them true had I entertained
no previous apprehensions. Some photographs of myself came for me by
post, and they were handed round at the breakfast table and criticised.
I put them temporarily on a side table, and did not remember them until
an hour afterwards when I was in my own room. On going to fetch them I
discovered him standing at the table with his back towards the door
bending over the photographs, one of which he raised to his lips.
The witnessing this act so frightened me that I crept away to escape
observation. It was the climax to a series of slight and significant
actions all tending to the same conclusion. The question for me now is,
what am I to do? To go away is what first occurs to me, but what reason
can I give Caroline and my father for such a step; besides, it might
precipitate some sort of catastrophe by driving Charles to desperation.
For the present, therefore, I have decided that I can only wait, though
his contiguity is strangely disturbing to me now, and I hardly retain
strength of mind to encounter him. How will the distressing complication
end?
May 19.-And so it has come! My mere avoidance of him has precipitated
the worst issue-a declaration. I had occasion to go into the kitchen
garden to gather some of the double ragged-robins which grew in a corner
there. Almost as soon as I had entered I heard footsteps without. The
door opened and shut, and I turned to behold him just inside it. As the
garden is closed by four walls and the gardener was absent, the spot
ensured absolute privacy. He came along the path by the asparagus-bed,
and overtook me.
'You know why I come, Alicia?' said he, in a tremulous voice.
I said nothing, and hung my head, for by his tone I did know.
'Yes,' he went on, 'it is you I love; my sentiment towards your sister
is one of affection too, but protective, tutelary affection-no more. Say
what you will I cannot help it. I mistook my feeling for her, and I know
how much I am to blame for my want of self-knowledge. I have fought
against this discovery night and day; but it cannot be concealed. Why
did I ever see you, since I could not see you till I had committed
myself? At the moment my eyes beheld you on that day of my arrival, I
said, "This is the woman for whom my manhood has waited." Ever since an
unaccountable fascination has riveted my heart to you. Answer one word!'
'O, M. de la Feste!' I burst out. What I said more I cannot remember,
but I suppose that the misery I was in showed pretty plainly, for he
said, 'Something must be done to let her know; perhaps I have mistaken
her affection, too; but all depends upon what you feel.'
'I cannot tell what I feel,' said I, 'except that this seems terrible
treachery; and every moment that I stay with you here makes it worse! .
. . Try to keep faith with her-her young heart is tender; believe me
there is no mistake in the quality of her love for you. Would there
were! This would kill her if she knew it!'
He sighed heavily. 'She ought never to be my wife,' he said. 'Leaving my
own happiness out of the question, it would be a cruelty to her to unite
her to me.'
I said I could not hear such words from him, and begged him in tears to
go away; he obeyed, and I heard the garden door shut behind him. What is
to be the end of the announcement, and the fate of Caroline?
May 20.-I put a good deal on paper yesterday, and yet not all. I was, in
truth, hoping against hope, against conviction, against too conscious
self-judgment. I scarcely dare own the truth now, yet it relieves my
aching heart to set it down. Yes, I love him-that is the dreadful fact,
and I can no longer parry, evade, or deny it to myself though to the
rest of the world it can never be owned. I love Caroline's betrothed,
and he loves me. It is no yesterday's passion, cultivated by our
converse; it came at first sight, independently of my will; and my talk
with him yesterday made rather against it than for it, but, alas, did
not quench it. God forgive us both for this terrible treachery.
May 25.-All is vague; our courses shapeless. He comes and goes, being
occupied, ostensibly at least, with sketching in his tent in the wood.
Whether he and she see each other privately I cannot tell, but I rather
think they do not; that she sadly awaits him, and he does not appear.
Not a sign from him that my repulse has done him any good, or that he
will endeavour to keep faith with her. O, if I only had the compulsion
of a god, and the self-sacrifice of a martyr!
May 31.-It has all ended-or rather this act of the sad drama has ended-
in nothing. He has left us. No day for the fulfilment of the engagement
with Caroline is named, my father not being the man to press any one on
such a matter, or, indeed, to interfere in any way. We two girls are, in
fact, quite defenceless in a case of this kind; lovers may come when
they choose, and desert when they choose; poor father is too urbane to
utter a word of remonstrance or inquiry. Moreover, as the approved of my
dead mother, M. de la Feste has a sort of autocratic power with my
father, who holds it unkind to her memory to have an opinion about him.
I, feeling it my duty, asked M. de la Feste at the last moment about the
engagement, in a voice I could not keep firm.
'Since the death of your mother all has been indefinite-all!' he said
gloomily. That was the whole. Possibly, Wherryborne Rectory may see him
no more.
June 7 .-M. de la Feste has written-one letter to her, one to me. Hers
could not have been very warm, for she did not brighten on reading it.
Mine was an ordinary note of friendship, filling an ordinary sheet of
paper, which I handed over to Caroline when I had finished looking it
through. But there was a scrap of paper in the bottom of the envelope,
which I dared not show any one. This scrap is his real letter: I scanned
it alone in my room, trembling, hot and cold by turns. He tells me he is
very wretched; that he deplores what has happened, but was helpless. Why
did I let him see me, if only to make him faithless. Alas, alas!
June 21 .-My dear Caroline has lost appetite, spirits, health. Hope
deferred maketh the heart sick. His letters to her grow colder-if indeed
he has written more than one. He has refrained from writing again to me-
he knows it is no use. Altogether the situation that he and she and I
are in is melancholy in the extreme. Why are human hearts so perverse?
CHAPTER VI.-HER INGENUITY INSTIGATES HER
September 19.-Three months of anxious care-till at length I have taken
the extreme step of writing to him. Our chief distress has been caused
by the state of poor Caroline, who, after sinking by degrees into such
extreme weakness as to make it doubtful if she can ever recover full
vigour, has to-day been taken much worse. Her position is very critical.
The doctor says plainly that she is dying of a broken heart-and that
even the removal of the cause may not now restore her. Ought I to have
written to Charles sooner? But how could I when she forbade me? It was
her pride only which instigated her, and I should not have obeyed.
Sept. 26.-Charles has arrived and has seen her. He is shocked,
conscience-stricken, remorseful. I have told him that he can do no good
beyond cheering her by his presence. I do not know what he thinks of
proposing to her if she gets better, but he says little to her at
present: indeed he dares not: his words agitate her dangerously.
Sept. 28.-After a struggle between duty and selfishness, such as I pray
to Heaven I may never have to undergo again, I have asked him for pity's
sake to make her his wife, here and now, as she lies. I said to him that
the poor child would not trouble him long; and such a solemnization
would soothe her last hours as nothing else could do. He said that he
would willingly do so, and had thought of it himself; but for one
forbidding reason: in the event of her death as his wife he can never
marry me, her sister, according to our laws. I started at his words. He
went on: 'On the other hand, if I were sure that immediate marriage with
me would save her life, I would not refuse, for possibly I might after a
while, and out of sight of you, make myself fairly content with one of
so sweet a disposition as hers; but if, as is probable, neither my
marrying her nor any other act can avail to save her life, by so doing I
lose both her and you.' I could not answer him.
Sept. 29.-He continued firm in his reasons for refusal till this
morning, and then I became possessed with an idea, which I at once
propounded to him. It was that he should at least consent to a form of
marriage with Caroline, in consideration of her love; a form which need
not be a legal union, but one which would satisfy her sick and enfeebled
soul. Such things have been done, and the sentiment of feeling herself
his would inexpressibly comfort her mind, I am sure. Then, if she is
taken from us, I should not have lost the power of becoming his lawful
wife at some future day, if it indeed should be deemed expedient; if, on
the other hand, she lives, he can on her recovery inform her of the
incompleteness of their marriage contract, the ceremony can be repeated,
and I can, and I am sure willingly would, avoid troubling them with my
presence till grey hairs and wrinkles make his unfortunate passion for
me a thing of the past. I put all this before him; but he demurred.
Sept. 30.-I have urged him again. He says he will consider. It is no
time to mince matters, and as a further inducement I have offered to
enter into a solemn engagement to marry him myself a year after her
death.
Sept. 30. Later.-An agitating interview. He says he will agree to
whatever I propose, the three possibilities and our contingent acts
being recorded as follows: First, in the event of dear Caroline being
taken from us, I marry him on the expiration of a year: Second, in the
forlorn chance of her recovery I take upon myself the responsibility of
explaining to Caroline the true nature of the ceremony he has gone
through with her, that it was done at my suggestion to make her happy at
once, before a special licence could be obtained, and that a public
ceremony at church is awaiting her: Third, in the unlikely event of her
cooling, and refusing to repeat the ceremony with him, I leave England,
join him abroad, and there wed him, agreeing not to live in England
again till Caroline has either married another or regards her attachment
to Charles as a bygone matter. I have thought over these conditions, and
have agreed to them all as they stand.
11 p.m.-I do not much like this scheme, after all. For one thing, I have
just sounded my father on it before parting with him for the night, my
impression having been that he would see no objection. But he says he
could on no account countenance any such unreal proceeding; however good
our intentions, and even though the poor girl were dying, it would not
be right. So I sadly seek my pillow.
October 1.-I am sure my father is wrong in his view. Why is it not
right, if it would be balm to Caroline's wounded soul, and if a real
ceremony is absolutely refused by Charles-moreover is hardly practicable
in the difficulty of getting a special licence, if he were agreed? My
father does not know, or will not believe, that Caroline's attachment
has been the cause of her hopeless condition. But that it is so, and
that the form of words would give her inexpressible happiness, I know
well; for I whispered tentatively in her ear on such marriages, and the
effect was great. Henceforth my father cannot be taken into confidence
on the subject of Caroline. He does not understand her.
12 o'clock noon.-I have taken advantage of my father's absence to-day to
confide my secret notion to a thoughtful young man, who called here this
morning to speak to my father. He is the Mr. Theophilus Higham, of whom
I have already had occasion to speak-a Scripture reader in the next
town, and is soon going to be ordained. I told him the pitiable case,
and my remedy. He says ardently that he will assist me-would do anything
for me (he is, in truth, an admirer of mine); he sees no wrong in such
an act of charity. He is coming again to the house this afternoon before
my father returns, to carry out the idea. I have spoken to Charles, who
promises to be ready. I must now break the news to Caroline.
11 o'clock p.m.-I have been in too much excitement till now to set down
the result. We have accomplished our plan; and though I feel like a
guilty sinner, I am glad. My father, of course, is not to be informed as
yet. Caroline has had a seraphic expression upon her wasted, transparent
face ever since. I should hardly be surprised if it really saved her
life even now, and rendered a legitimate union necessary between them.
In that case my father can be informed of the whole proceeding, and in
the face of such wonderful success cannot disapprove. Meanwhile poor
Charles has not lost the possibility of taking unworthy me to fill her
place should she-. But I cannot contemplate that alternative unmoved,
and will not write it. Charles left for the South of Europe immediately
after the ceremony. He was in a high-strung, throbbing, almost wild
state of mind at first, but grew calmer under my exhortations. I had to
pay the penalty of receiving a farewell kiss from him, which I much
regret, considering its meaning; but he took me so unexpectedly, and in
a moment was gone.
Oct. 6.-She certainly is better, and even when she found that Charles
had been suddenly obliged to leave, she received the news quite
cheerfully. The doctor says that her apparent improvement may be
delusive; but I think our impressing upon her the necessity of keeping
what has occurred a secret from papa, and everybody, helps to give her a
zest for life.
Oct. 8.-She is still mending. I am glad to have saved her-my only
sister-if I have done so; though I shall now never become Charles's
wife.
CHAPTER VII.-A SURPRISE AWAITS HER
Feb. 5.-Writing has been absolutely impossible for a long while; but I
now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line.
Caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very
engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid. But a fearful complication of
affairs attends it!
O what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive!
Charles has written reproachfully to me from Venice, where he is. He
says how can he fulfil in the real what he has enacted in the
counterfeit, while he still loves me? Yet how, on the other hand, can he
leave it unfulfilled? All this time I have not told her, and up to this
minute she believes that he has indeed taken her for better, for worse,
till death them do part. It is a harassing position for me, and all
three. In the awful approach of death, one's judgment loses its balance,
and we do anything to meet the exigencies of the moment, with a single
eye to the one who excites our sympathy, and from whom we seem on the
brink of being separated for ever.
Had he really married her at that time all would be settled now. But he
took too much thought; she might have died, and then he had his reason.
If indeed it had turned out so, I should now be perhaps a sad woman; but
not a tempest-tossed one . . . The possibility of his claiming me after
all is what lies at the root of my agitation. Everything hangs by a
thread. Suppose I tell her the marriage was a mockery; suppose she is
indignant with me and with him for the deception-and then? Otherwise,
suppose she is not indignant but forgives all; he is bound to marry her;
and honour constrains me to urge him thereto, in spite of what he
protests, and to smooth the way to this issue by my method of informing
her. I have meant to tell her the last month-ever since she has been
strong enough to bear such tidings; but I have been without the power-
the moral force. Surely I must write, and get him to come and assist me.
March 14.-She continually wonders why he does not come, the five months
of his enforced absence having expired; and still more she wonders why
he does not write oftener. His last letter was cold, she says, and she
fears he regrets his marriage, which he may only have celebrated with
her for pity's sake, thinking she was sure to die. It makes one's heart
bleed to hear her hovering thus so near the truth, and yet never
discerning its actual shape.
A minor trouble besets me, too, in the person of the young Scripture
reader, whose conscience pricks him for the part he played. Surely I am
punished, if ever woman were, for a too ingenious perversion of her
better judgment!
April 2.-She is practically well. The faint pink revives in her cheek,
though it is not quite so full as heretofore. But she still wonders what
she can have done to offend 'her dear husband,' and I have been obliged
to tell the smallest part of the truth-an unimportant fragment of the
whole, in fact, I said that I feared for the moment he might regret the
precipitancy of the act, which her illness caused, his affairs not
having been quite sufficiently advanced for marriage just then, though
he will doubtless come to her as soon as he has a home ready. Meanwhile
I have written to him, peremptorily, to come and relieve me in this
awful dilemma. He will find no note of love in that.
April 10.-To my alarm the letter I lately addressed to him at Venice,
where he is staying, as well as the last one she sent him, have received
no reply. She thinks he is ill. I do not quite think that, but I wish we
could hear from him. Perhaps the peremptoriness of my words had offended
him; it grieves me to think it possible. I offend him! But too much of
this. I must tell her the truth, or she may in her ignorance commit
herself to some course or other that may be ruinously compromising. She
said plaintively just now that if he could see her, and know how
occupied with him and him alone is her every waking hour, she is sure he
would forgive her the wicked presumption of becoming his wife. Very
sweet all that, and touching. I could not conceal my tears.
April 15.-The house is in confusion; my father is angry and distressed,
and I am distracted. Caroline has disappeared-gone away secretly. I
cannot help thinking that I know where she is gone to. How guilty I
seem, and how innocent she! O that I had told her before now!
1 o'clock.-No trace of her as yet. We find also that the little waiting-
maid we have here in training has disappeared with Caroline, and there
is not much doubt that Caroline, fearing to travel alone, has induced
this girl to go with her as companion. I am almost sure she has started
in desperation to find him, and that Venice is her goal. Why should she
run away, if not to join her husband, as she thinks him? Now that I
consider, there have been indications of this wish in her for days, as
in birds of passage there lurk signs of their incipient intention; and
yet I did not think she would have taken such an extreme step, unaided,
and without consulting me. I can only jot down the bare facts-I have no
time for reflections. But fancy Caroline travelling across the continent
of Europe with a chit of a girl, who will be more of a charge than an
assistance! They will be a mark for every marauder who encounters them.
Evening: 8 o'clock.-Yes, it is as I surmised. She has gone to join him.
A note posted by her in Budmouth Regis at daybreak has reached me this
afternoon-thanks to the fortunate chance of one of the servants calling
for letters in town to-day, or I should not have got it until to-morrow.
She merely asserts her determination of going to him, and has started
privately, that nothing may hinder her; stating nothing about her route.
That such a gentle thing should suddenly become so calmly resolute quite
surprises me. Alas, he may have left Venice-she may not find him for
weeks-may not at all.
My father, on learning the facts, bade me at once have everything ready
by nine this evening, in time to drive to the train that meets the night
steam-boat. This I have done, and there being an hour to spare before we
start, I relieve the suspense of waiting by taking up my pen. He says
overtake her we must, and calls Charles the hardest of names. He
believes, of course, that she is merely an infatuated girl rushing off
to meet her lover; and how can the wretched I tell him that she is more,
and in a sense better than that-yet not sufficiently more and better to
make this flight to Charles anything but a still greater danger to her
than a mere lover's impulse. We shall go by way of Paris, and we think
we may overtake her there. I hear my father walking restlessly up and
down the hall, and can write no more.
CHAPTER VIII.-SHE TRAVELS IN PURSUIT
April 16. Evening, Paris, H\xF4tel \x97-.-There is no overtaking her at this
place; but she has been here, as I thought, no other hotel in Paris
being known to her. We go on to-morrow morning.
April 18. Venice.-A morning of adventures and emotions which leave me
sick and weary, and yet unable to sleep, though I have lain down on the
sofa of my room for more than an hour in the attempt. I therefore make
up my diary to date in a hurried fashion, for the sake of the riddance
it affords to ideas which otherwise remain suspended hotly in the brain.
We arrived here this morning in broad sunlight, which lit up the sea-
girt buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork
floating raft-like on the smooth, blue deep. But I only glanced from the
carriage window at the lovely scene, and we were soon across the
intervening water and inside the railway station. When we got to the
front steps the row of black gondolas and the shouts of the gondoliers
so bewildered my father that he was understood to require two gondolas
instead of one with two oars, and so I found him in one and myself in
another. We got this righted after a while, and were rowed at once to
the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni where M. de la Feste had been
staying when we last heard from him, the way being down the Grand Canal
for some distance, under the Rialto, and then by narrow canals which
eventually brought us under the Bridge of Sighs-harmonious to our
moods!-and out again into open water. The scene was purity itself as to
colour, but it was cruel that I should behold it for the first time
under such circumstances.
As soon as I entered the hotel, which is an old-fashioned place, like
most places here, where people are taken en pension as well as the
ordinary way, I rushed to the framed list of visitors hanging in the
hall, and in a moment I saw Charles's name upon it among the rest. But
she was our chief thought. I turned to the hall porter, and-knowing that
she would have travelled as 'Madame de la Feste'-I asked for her under
that name, without my father hearing. (He, poor soul, was making
confused inquiries outside the door about 'an English lady,' as if there
were not a score of English ladies at hand.)
'She has just come,' said the porter. 'Madame came by the very early
train this morning, when Monsieur was asleep, and she requested us not
to disturb him. She is now in her room.'
Whether Caroline had seen us from the window, or overheard me, I do not
know, but at that moment I heard footsteps on the bare marble stairs,
and she appeared in person descending.
'Caroline!' I exclaimed, 'why have you done this?' and rushed up to her.
She did not answer; but looked down to hide her emotion, which she
conquered after the lapse of a few seconds, putting on a practical tone
that belied her.
'I am just going to my husband,' she said. 'I have not yet seen him. I
have not been here long.' She condescended to give no further reason for
her movements, and made as if to move on. I implored her to come into a
private room where I could speak to her in confidence, but she objected.
However, the dining-room, close at hand, was quite empty at this hour,
and I got her inside and closed the door. I do not know how I began my
explanation, or how I ended it, but I told her briefly and brokenly
enough that the marriage was not real.
'Not real?' she said vacantly.
'It is not,' said I. 'You will find that it is all as I say.'
She could not believe my meaning even then. 'Not his wife?' she cried.
'It is impossible. What am I, then?'
I added more details, and reiterated the reason for my conduct as well
as I could; but Heaven knows how very difficult I found it to feel a jot
more justification for it in my own mind than she did in hers.
The revulsion of feeling, as soon as she really comprehended all, was
most distressing. After her grief had in some measure spent itself she
turned against both him and me.
'Why should have I been deceived like this?' she demanded, with a bitter
haughtiness of which I had not deemed such a tractable creature capable.
'Do you suppose that anything could justify such an imposition? What, O
what a snare you have spread for me!'
I murmured, 'Your life seemed to require it,' but she did not hear me.
She sank down in a chair, covered her face, and then my father came in.
'O, here you are!' he said. 'I could not find you. And Caroline!'
'And were you, papa, a party to this strange deed of kindness?'
'To what?' said he.
Then out it all came, and for the first time he was made acquainted with
the fact that the scheme for soothing her illness, which I had sounded
him upon, had been really carried out. In a moment he sided with
Caroline. My repeated assurance that my motive was good availed less
than nothing. In a minute or two Caroline arose and went abruptly out of
the room, and my father followed her, leaving me alone to my
reflections.
I was so bent upon finding Charles immediately that I did not notice
whither they went. The servants told me that M. de la Feste was just
outside smoking, and one of them went to look for him, I following; but
before we had gone many steps he came out of the hotel behind me. I
expected him to be amazed; but he showed no surprise at seeing me,
though he showed another kind of feeling to an extent which dismayed me.
I may have revealed something similar; but I struggled hard against all
emotion, and as soon as I could I told him she had come. He simply said
'Yes' in a low voice.
'You know it, Charles?' said I.
'I have just learnt it,' he said.
'O, Charles,' I went on, 'having delayed completing your marriage with
her till now, I fear-it has become a serious position for us. Why did
you not reply to our letters?'
'I was purposing to reply in person: I did not know how to address her
on the point-how to address you. But what has become of her?'
'She has gone off with my father,' said I; 'indignant with you, and
scorning me.'
He was silent: and I suggested that we should follow them, pointing out
the direction which I fancied their gondola had taken. As the one we got
into was doubly manned we soon came in view of their two figures ahead
of us, while they were not likely to observe us, our boat having the
'felze' on, while theirs was uncovered. They shot into a narrow canal
just beyond the Giardino Reale, and by the time we were floating up
between its slimy walls we saw them getting out of their gondola at the
steps which lead up near the end of the Via 22 Marzo. When we reached
the same spot they were walking up and down the Via in consultation.
Getting out he stood on the lower steps watching them. I watched him. He
seemed to fall into a reverie.
'Will you not go and speak to her?' said I at length.
He assented, and went forward. Still he did not hasten to join them,
but, screened by a projecting window, observed their musing converse. At
last he looked back at me; whereupon I pointed forward, and he in
obedience stepped out, and met them face to face. Caroline flushed hot,
bowed haughtily to him, turned away, and taking my father's arm
violently, led him off before he had had time to use his own judgment.
They disappeared into a narrow calle, or alley, leading to the back of
the buildings on the Grand Canal.
M. de la Feste came slowly back; as he stepped in beside me I realized
my position so vividly that my heart might almost have been heard to
beat. The third condition had arisen-the least expected by either of us.
She had refused him; he was free to claim me.
We returned in the boat together. He seemed quite absorbed till we had
turned the angle into the Grand Canal, when he broke the silence. 'She
spoke very bitterly to you in the salle-\xE0-manger,' he said. 'I do not
think she was quite warranted in speaking so to you, who had nursed her
so tenderly.'
'O, but I think she was,' I answered. 'It was there I told her what had
been done; she did not know till then.'
'She was very dignified-very striking,' he murmured. 'You were more.'
'But how do you know what passed between us,' said I. He then told me
that he had seen and heard all. The dining-room was divided by folding-
doors from an inner portion, and he had been sitting in the latter part
when we entered the outer, so that our words were distinctly audible.
'But, dear Alicia,' he went on, 'I was more impressed by the affection
of your apology to her than by anything else. And do you know that now
the conditions have arisen which give me liberty to consider you my
affianced?' I had been expecting this, but yet was not prepared. I
stammered out that we would not discuss it then.
'Why not?' said he. 'Do you know that we may marry here and now? She has
cast off both you and me.'
'It cannot be,' said I, firmly. 'She has not been fairly asked to be
your wife in fact-to repeat the service lawfully; and until that has
been done it would be grievous sin in me to accept you.'
I had not noticed where the gondoliers were rowing us. I suppose he had
given them some direction unheard by me, for as I resigned myself in
despairing indolence to the motion of the gondola, I perceived that it
was taking us up the Canal, and, turning into a side opening near the
Palazzo Grimani, drew up at some steps near the end of a large church.
'Where are we?' said I.
'It is the Church of the Frari,' he replied. 'We might be married there.
At any rate, let us go inside, and grow calm, and decide what to do.'
When we had entered I found that whether a place to marry in or not, it
was one to depress. The word which Venice speaks most constantly-decay-
was in a sense accentuated here. The whole large fabric itself seemed
sinking into an earth which was not solid enough to bear it. Cobwebbed
cracks zigzagged the walls, and similar webs clouded the window-panes. A
sickly-sweet smell pervaded the aisles. After walking about with him a
little while in embarrassing silences, divided only by his cursory
explanations of the monuments and other objects, and almost fearing he
might produce a marriage licence, I went to a door in the south transept
which opened into the sacristy.
I glanced through it, towards the small altar at the upper end. The
place was empty save of one figure; and she was kneeling here in front
of the beautiful altarpiece by Bellini. Beautiful though it was she
seemed not to see it. She was weeping and praying as though her heart
was broken. She was my sister Caroline. I beckoned to Charles, and he
came to my side, and looked through the door with me.
'Speak to her,' said I. 'She will forgive you.'
I gently pushed him through the doorway, and went back into the
transept, down the nave, and onward to the west door. There I saw my
father, to whom I spoke. He answered severely that, having first
obtained comfortable quarters in a pension on the Grand Canal, he had
gone back to the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni to find me; but that
I was not there. He was now waiting for Caroline, to accompany her back
to the pension, at which she had requested to be left to herself as much
as possible till she could regain some composure.
I told him that it was useless to dwell on what was past, that I no
doubt had erred, that the remedy lay in the future and their marriage.
In this he quite agreed with me, and on my informing him that M. de la
Feste was at that moment with Caroline in the sacristy, he assented to
my proposal that we should leave them to themselves, and return together
to await them at the pension, where he had also engaged a room for me.
This we did, and going up to the chamber he had chosen for me, which
overlooked the Canal, I leant from the window to watch for the gondola
that should contain Charles and my sister.
They were not long in coming. I recognized them by the colour of her
sunshade as soon as they turned the bend on my right hand. They were
side by side of necessity, but there was no conversation between them,
and I thought that she looked flushed and he pale. When they were rowed
in to the steps of our house he handed her up. I fancied she might have
refused his assistance, but she did not. Soon I heard her pass my door,
and wishing to know the result of their interview I went downstairs,
seeing that the gondola had not put off with him. He was turning from
the door, but not towards the water, intending apparently to walk home
by way of the calle which led into the Via 22 Marzo.
'Has she forgiven you?' said I.
'I have not asked her,' he said.
'But you are bound to do so,' I told him.
He paused, and then said, 'Alicia, let us understand each other. Do you
mean to tell me, once for all, that if your sister is willing to become
my wife you absolutely make way for her, and will not entertain any
thought of what I suggested to you any more?'
'I do tell you so,' said I with dry lips. 'You belong to her-how can I
do otherwise?'
'Yes; it is so; it is purely a question of honour,' he returned. 'Very
well then, honour shall be my word, and not my love. I will put the
question to her frankly; if she says yes, the marriage shall be. But not
here. It shall be at your own house in England.'
'When?' said I.
'I will accompany her there,' he replied, 'and it shall be within a week
of her return. I have nothing to gain by delay. But I will not answer
for the consequences.'
'What do you mean?' said I. He made no reply, went away, and I came back
to my room.
CHAPTER IX.-SHE WITNESSES THE END
April 20. Milan, 10.30 p.m.-We are thus far on our way homeward. I,
being decidedly de trop, travel apart from the rest as much as I can.
Having dined at the hotel here, I went out by myself; regardless of the
proprieties, for I could not stay in. I walked at a leisurely pace along
the Via Allesandro Manzoni till my eye was caught by the grand Galleria
Vittorio Emanuele, and I entered under the high glass arcades till I
reached the central octagon, where I sat down on one of a group of
chairs placed there. Becoming accustomed to the stream of promenaders, I
soon observed, seated on the chairs opposite, Caroline and Charles. This
was the first occasion on which I had seen them en t\xEAte-\xE0-t\xEAte since my
conversation with him. She soon caught sight of me; averted her eyes;
then, apparently abandoning herself to an impulse, she jumped up from
her seat and came across to me. We had not spoken to each other since
the meeting in Venice.
'Alicia,' she said, sitting down by my side, 'Charles asks me to forgive
you, and I do forgive you.'
I pressed her hand, with tears in my eyes, and said, 'And do you forgive
him?'
'Yes,' said she, shyly.
'And what's the result?' said I.
'We are to be married directly we reach home.'
This was almost the whole of our conversation; she walked home with me,
Charles following a little way behind, though she kept turning her head,
as if anxious that he should overtake us. 'Honour and not love' seemed
to ring in my ears. So matters stand. Caroline is again happy.
April 25.-We have reached home, Charles with us. Events are now moving
in silent speed, almost with velocity, indeed; and I sometimes feel
oppressed by the strange and preternatural ease which seems to accompany
their flow. Charles is staying at the neighbouring town; he is only
waiting for the marriage licence; when obtained he is to come here, be
quietly married to her, and carry her off. It is rather resignation than
content which sits on his face; but he has not spoken a word more to me
on the burning subject, or deviated one hair's breadth from the course
he laid down. They may be happy in time to come: I hope so. But I cannot
shake off depression.
May 6.-Eve of the wedding. Caroline is serenely happy, though not
blithe. But there is nothing to excite anxiety about her. I wish I could
say the same of him. He comes and goes like a ghost, and yet nobody
seems to observe this strangeness in his mien.
I could not help being here for the ceremony; but my absence would have
resulted in less disquiet on his part, I believe. However, I may be
wrong in attributing causes: my father simply says that Charles and
Caroline have as good a chance of being happy as other people. Well, to-
morrow settles all.
May 7.-They are married: we have just returned from church. Charles
looked so pale this morning that my father asked him if he was ill. He
said, 'No: only a slight headache;' and we started for the church.
There was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done.
4 p.m.-They ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but
there is an unaccountable delay. Charles went out half-an-hour ago, and
has not yet returned. Caroline is waiting in the hall; but I am
dreadfully afraid they will miss the train. I suppose the trifling
hindrance is of no account; and yet I am full of misgivings . . .
Sept. 14.-Four months have passed; only four months! It seems like
years. Can it be that only seventeen weeks ago I set on this paper the
fact of their marriage? I am now an aged woman by comparison!
On that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and Charles did
not return. At six o'clock, when poor little Caroline had gone back to
her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked
in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father. He had
an interview with him in the study. My father then rang his bell, and
sent for me. I went down; and I then learnt the fatal news. Charles was
no more. The waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir
in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating
round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something
strange at the bottom. He knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches
so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body. It is
needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time.
Charles was brought to the house, but he was dead.
We all feared for Caroline; and she suffered much; but strange to say,
her suffering was purely of the nature of deep grief which found relief
in sobbing and tears. It came out at the inquest that Charles had been
accustomed to cross the meads to give an occasional half-crown to an old
man who lived on the opposite hill, who had once been a landscape
painter in an humble way till he lost his eyesight; and it was assumed
that he had gone thither for the same purpose to-day, and to bid him
farewell. On this information the coroner's jury found that his death
had been caused by misadventure; and everybody believes to this hour
that he was drowned while crossing the weir to relieve the old man.
Except one: she believes in no accident. After the stunning effect of
the first news, I thought it strange that he should have chosen to go on
such an errand at the last moment, and to go personally, when there was
so little time to spare, since any gift could have been so easily sent
by another hand. Further reflection has convinced me that this step out
of life was as much a part of the day's plan as was the wedding in the
church hard by. They were the two halves of his complete intention when
he gave me on the Grand Canal that assurance which I shall never forget:
'Very well, then; honour shall be my word, not love. If she says "Yes,"
the marriage shall be.'
I do not know why I should have made this entry at this particular time;
but it has occurred to me to do it-to complete, in a measure, that part
of my desultory chronicle which relates to the love-story of my sister
and Charles. She lives on meekly in her grief; and will probably outlive
it; while I-but never mind me.
CHAPTER X.-SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER
Five-years later.-I have lighted upon this old diary, which it has
interested me to look over, containing, as it does, records of the time
when life shone more warmly in my eye than it does now. I am impelled to
add one sentence to round off its record of the past. About a year ago
my sister Caroline, after a persistent wooing, accepted the hand and
heart of Theophilus Higham, once the blushing young Scripture reader who
assisted at the substitute for a marriage I planned, and now the fully-
ordained curate of the next parish. His penitence for the part he played
ended in love. We have all now made atonement for our sins against her:
may she be deceived no more. 1887.
THE GRAVE BY THE HANDPOST
I never pass through Chalk-Newton without turning to regard the
neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight
highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail
to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem
superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history,
the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.
It was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at Christmas-
time (according to the testimony of William Dewy of Mellstock, Michael
Mail, and others), that the choir of Chalk-Newton-a large parish situate
about half-way between the towns of Ivel and Casterbridge, and now a
railway station-left their homes just before midnight to repeat their
annual harmonies under the windows of the local population. The band of
instrumentalists and singers was one of the largest in the county; and,
unlike the smaller and finer Mellstock string-band, which eschewed all
but the catgut, it included brass and reed performers at full Sunday
services, and reached all across the west gallery.
On this night there were two or three violins, two 'cellos, a tenor
viol, double bass, hautboy, clarionets, serpent, and seven singers. It
was, however, not the choir's labours, but what its members chanced to
witness, that particularly marked the occasion.
They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any
incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions
of several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and
thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they
were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who
had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the
churchyard under flattening mounds-friends who had shown greater zest
for melody in their time than was shown in this; or that some past voice
of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its
acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting, instead of a familiar living
neighbour. Whether this were fact or fancy, the younger members of the
choir met together with their customary thoughtlessness and buoyancy.
When they had gathered by the stone stump of the cross in the middle of
the village, near the White Horse Inn, which they made their starting
point, some one observed that they were full early, that it was not yet
twelve o'clock. The local waits of those days mostly refrained from
sounding a note before Christmas morning had astronomically arrived, and
not caring to return to their beer, they decided to begin with some
outlying cottages in Sidlinch Lane, where the people had no clocks, and
would not know whether it were night or morning. In that direction they
accordingly went; and as they ascended to higher ground their attention
was attracted by a light beyond the houses, quite at the top of the
lane.
The road from Chalk-Newton to Broad Sidlinch is about two miles long and
in the middle of its course, where it passes over the ridge dividing the
two villages, it crosses at right angles, as has been stated, the lonely
monotonous old highway known as Long Ash Lane, which runs, straight as a
surveyor's line, many miles north and south of this spot, on the
foundation of a Roman road, and has often been mentioned in these
narratives. Though now quite deserted and grass-grown, at the beginning
of the century it was well kept and frequented by traffic. The
glimmering light appeared to come from the precise point where the roads
intersected.
'I think I know what that mid mean!' one of the group remarked.
They stood a few moments, discussing the probability of the light having
origin in an event of which rumours had reached them, and resolved to go
up the hill.
Approaching the high land their conjectures were strengthened. Long Ash
Lane cut athwart them, right and left; and they saw that at the junction
of the four ways, under the hand-post, a grave was dug, into which, as
the choir drew nigh, a corpse had just been thrown by the four Sidlinch
men employed for the purpose. The cart and horse which had brought the
body thither stood silently by.
The singers and musicians from Chalk-Newton halted, and looked on while
the gravediggers shovelled in and trod down the earth, till, the hole
being filled, the latter threw their spades into the cart, and prepared
to depart.
'Who mid ye be a-burying there?' asked Lot Swanhills in a raised voice.
'Not the sergeant?'
The Sidlinch men had been so deeply engrossed in their task that they
had not noticed the lanterns of the Chalk-Newton choir till now.
'What-be you the Newton carol-singers?' returned the representatives of
Sidlinch.
'Ay, sure. Can it be that it is old Sergeant Holway you've a-buried
there?'
''Tis so. You've heard about it, then?'
The choir knew no particulars-only that he had shot himself in his
apple-closet on the previous Sunday. 'Nobody seem'th to know what 'a did
it for, 'a b'lieve? Leastwise, we don't know at Chalk-Newton,' continued
Lot.
'O yes. It all came out at the inquest.'
The singers drew close, and the Sidlinch men, pausing to rest after
their labours, told the story. 'It was all owing to that son of his,
poor old man. It broke his heart.'
'But the son is a soldier, surely; now with his regiment in the East
Indies?'
'Ay. And it have been rough with the army over there lately. 'Twas a
pity his father persuaded him to go. But Luke shouldn't have twyted the
sergeant o't, since 'a did it for the best.'
The circumstances, in brief, were these: The sergeant who had come to
this lamentable end, father of the young soldier who had gone with his
regiment to the East, had been singularly comfortable in his military
experiences, these having ended long before the outbreak of the great
war with France. On his discharge, after duly serving his time, he had
returned to his native village, and married, and taken kindly to
domestic life. But the war in which England next involved herself had
cost him many frettings that age and infirmity prevented him from being
ever again an active unit of the army. When his only son grew to young
manhood, and the question arose of his going out in life, the lad
expressed his wish to be a mechanic. But his father advised
enthusiastically for the army.
'Trade is coming to nothing in these days,' he said. 'And if the war
with the French lasts, as it will, trade will be still worse. The army,
Luke-that's the thing for 'ee. 'Twas the making of me, and 'twill be the
making of you. I hadn't half such a chance as you'll have in these
splendid hotter times.'
Luke demurred, for he was a home-keeping, peace-loving youth. But,
putting respectful trust in his father's judgment, he at length gave
way, and enlisted in the \x97-d Foot. In the course of a few weeks he was
sent out to India to his regiment, which had distinguished itself in the
East under General Wellesley.
But Luke was unlucky. News came home indirectly that he lay sick out
there; and then on one recent day when his father was out walking, the
old man had received tidings that a letter awaited him at Casterbridge.
The sergeant sent a special messenger the whole nine miles, and the
letter was paid for and brought home; but though, as he had guessed, it
came from Luke, its contents were of an unexpected tenor.
The letter had been written during a time of deep depression. Luke said
that his life was a burden and a slavery, and bitterly reproached his
father for advising him to embark on a career for which he felt
unsuited. He found himself suffering fatigues and illnesses without
gaining glory, and engaged in a cause which he did not understand or
appreciate. If it had not been for his father's bad advice he, Luke,
would now have been working comfortably at a trade in the village that
he had never wished to leave.
After reading the letter the sergeant advanced a few steps till he was
quite out of sight of everybody, and then sat down on the bank by the
wayside.
When he arose half-an-hour later he looked withered and broken, and from
that day his natural spirits left him. Wounded to the quick by his son's
sarcastic stings, he indulged in liquor more and more frequently. His
wife had died some years before this date, and the sergeant lived alone
in the house which had been hers. One morning in the December under
notice the report of a gun had been heard on his premises, and on
entering the neighbours found him in a dying state. He had shot himself
with an old firelock that he used for scaring birds; and from what he
had said the day before, and the arrangements he had made for his
decease, there was no doubt that his end had been deliberately planned,
as a consequence of the despondency into which he had been thrown by his
son's letter. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of felo de se.
'Here's his son's letter,' said one of the Sidlinch men. ''Twas found in
his father's pocket. You can see by the state o't how many times he read
it over. Howsomever, the Lord's will be done, since it must, whether or
no.'
The grave was filled up and levelled, no mound being shaped over it. The
Sidlinch men then bade the Chalk-Newton choir good-night, and departed
with the cart in which they had brought the sergeant's body to the hill.
When their tread had died away from the ear, and the wind swept over the
isolated grave with its customary siffle of indifference, Lot Swanhills
turned and spoke to old Richard Toller, the hautboy player.
''Tis hard upon a man, and he a wold sojer, to serve en so, Richard. Not
that the sergeant was ever in a battle bigger than would go into a half-
acre paddock, that's true. Still, his soul ought to hae as good a chance
as another man's, all the same, hey?'
Richard replied that he was quite of the same opinion. 'What d'ye say to
lifting up a carrel over his grave, as 'tis Christmas, and no hurry to
begin down in parish, and 'twouldn't take up ten minutes, and not a soul
up here to say us nay, or know anything about it?'
Lot nodded assent. 'The man ought to hae his chances,' he repeated.
'Ye may as well spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by
what we lift up, now he's got so far,' said Notton, the clarionet man
and professed sceptic of the choir. 'But I'm agreed if the rest be.'
They thereupon placed themselves in a semicircle by the newly stirred
earth, and roused the dull air with the well-known Number Sixteen of
their collection, which Lot gave out as being the one he thought best
suited to the occasion and the mood
He comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease', In Sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'.
'Jown it-we've never played to a dead man afore,' said Ezra Cattstock,
when, having concluded the last verse, they stood reflecting for a
breath or two. 'But it do seem more merciful than to go away and leave
en, as they t'other fellers have done.'
'Now backalong to Newton, and by the time we get overright the pa'son's
'twill be half after twelve,' said the leader.
They had not, however, done more than gather up their instruments when
the wind brought to their notice the noise of a vehicle rapidly driven
up the same lane from Sidlinch which the gravediggers had lately
retraced. To avoid being run over when moving on, they waited till the
benighted traveller, whoever he might be, should pass them where they
stood in the wider area of the Cross.
In half a minute the light of the lanterns fell upon a hired fly, drawn
by a steaming and jaded horse. It reached the hand-post, when a voice
from the inside cried, 'Stop here!' The driver pulled rein. The carriage
door was opened from within, and there leapt out a private soldier in
the uniform of some line regiment. He looked around, and was apparently
surprised to see the musicians standing there.
'Have you buried a man here?' he asked.
'No. We bain't Sidlinch folk, thank God; we be Newton choir. Though a
man is just buried here, that's true; and we've raised a carrel over the
poor mortal's natomy. What-do my eyes see before me young Luke Holway,
that went wi' his regiment to the East Indies, or do I see his spirit
straight from the battlefield? Be you the son that wrote the letter-'
'Don't-don't ask me. The funeral is over, then?'
'There wer no funeral, in a Christen manner of speaking. But's buried,
sure enough. You must have met the men going back in the empty cart.'
'Like a dog in a ditch, and all through me!'
He remained silent, looking at the grave, and they could not help
pitying him. 'My friends,' he said, 'I understand better now. You have,
I suppose, in neighbourly charity, sung peace to his soul? I thank you,
from my heart, for your kind pity. Yes; I am Sergeant Holway's miserable
son-I'm the son who has brought about his father's death, as truly as if
I had done it with my own hand!'
'No, no. Don't ye take on so, young man. He'd been naturally low for a
good while, off and on, so we hear.'
'We were out in the East when I wrote to him. Everything had seemed to
go wrong with me. Just after my letter had gone we were ordered home.
That's how it is you see me here. As soon as we got into barracks at
Casterbridge I heard o' this . . . Damn me! I'll dare to follow my
father, and make away with myself, too. It is the only thing left to
do!'
'Don't ye be rash, Luke Holway, I say again; but try to make amends by
your future life. And maybe your father will smile a smile down from
heaven upon 'ee for 't.'
He shook his head. 'I don't know about that!' he answered bitterly.
'Try and be worthy of your father at his best. 'Tis not too late.'
'D'ye think not? I fancy it is! . . . Well, I'll turn it over. Thank you
for your good counsel. I'll live for one thing, at any rate. I'll move
father's body to a decent Christian churchyard, if I do it with my own
hands. I can't save his life, but I can give him an honourable grave. He
shan't lie in this accursed place!'
'Ay, as our pa'son says, 'tis a barbarous custom they keep up at
Sidlinch, and ought to be done away wi'. The man a' old soldier, too.
You see, our pa'son is not like yours at Sidlinch.'
'He says it is barbarous, does he? So it is!' cried the soldier. 'Now
hearken, my friends.' Then he proceeded to inquire if they would
increase his indebtedness to them by undertaking the removal, privately,
of the body of the suicide to the churchyard, not of Sidlinch, a parish
he now hated, but of Chalk-Newton. He would give them all he possessed
to do it.
Lot asked Ezra Cattstock what he thought of it.
Cattstock, the 'cello player, who was also the sexton, demurred, and
advised the young soldier to sound the rector about it first. 'Mid be he
would object, and yet 'a mid'nt. The pa'son o' Sidlinch is a hard man, I
own ye, and 'a said if folk will kill theirselves in hot blood they must
take the consequences. But ours don't think like that at all, and might
allow it.'
'What's his name?'
'The honourable and reverent Mr. Oldham, brother to Lord Wessex. But you
needn't be afeard o' en on that account. He'll talk to 'ee like a common
man, if so be you haven't had enough drink to gie 'ee bad breath.'
'O, the same as formerly. I'll ask him. Thank you. And that duty done-'
'What then?'
'There's war in Spain. I hear our next move is there. I'll try to show
myself to be what my father wished me. I don't suppose I shall-but I'll
try in my feeble way. That much I swear-here over his body. So help me
God.'
Luke smacked his palm against the white hand-post with such force that
it shook. 'Yes, there's war in Spain; and another chance for me to be
worthy of father.'
So the matter ended that night. That the private acted in one thing as
he had vowed to do soon became apparent, for during the Christmas week
the rector came into the churchyard when Cattstock was there, and asked
him to find a spot that would be suitable for the purpose of such an
interment, adding that he had slightly known the late sergeant, and was
not aware of any law which forbade him to assent to the removal, the
letter of the rule having been observed. But as he did not wish to seem
moved by opposition to his neighbour at Sidlinch, he had stipulated that
the act of charity should be carried out at night, and as privately as
possible, and that the grave should be in an obscure part of the
enclosure. 'You had better see the young man about it at once,' added
the rector.
But before Ezra had done anything Luke came down to his house. His
furlough had been cut short, owing to new developments of the war in the
Peninsula, and being obliged to go back to his regiment immediately, he
was compelled to leave the exhumation and reinterment to his friends.
Everything was paid for, and he implored them all to see it carried out
forthwith.
With this the soldier left. The next day Ezra, on thinking the matter
over, again went across to the rectory, struck with sudden misgiving. He
had remembered that the sergeant had been buried without a coffin, and
he was not sure that a stake had not been driven through him. The
business would be more troublesome than they had at first supposed.
'Yes, indeed!' murmured the rector. 'I am afraid it is not feasible
after all.'
The next event was the arrival of a headstone by carrier from the
nearest town; to be left at Mr. Ezra Cattstock's; all expenses paid. The
sexton and the carrier deposited the stone in the former's outhouse; and
Ezra, left alone, put on his spectacles and read the brief and simple
inscription:-
HERE LYETH THE BODY OF SAMUEL HOLWAY, LATE SERGEANT IN HIS MAJESTY'S \x97-
D REGIMENT OF FOOT, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE DECEMBER THE 20TH, 180-.
ERECTED BY L. H. 'I AM NOT WORTHY TO BE CALLED THY SON.'
Ezra again called at the riverside rectory. 'The stone is come, sir. But
I'm afeard we can't do it nohow.'
'I should like to oblige him,' said the gentlemanly old incumbent. 'And
I would forego all fees willingly. Still, if you and the others don't
think you can carry it out, I am in doubt what to say.'
Well, sir; I've made inquiry of a Sidlinch woman as to his burial, and
what I thought seems true. They buried en wi' a new six-foot hurdle-
saul drough's body, from the sheep-pen up in North Ewelease though they
won't own to it now. And the question is, Is the moving worth while,
considering the awkwardness?'
'Have you heard anything more of the young man?'
Ezra had only heard that he had embarked that week for Spain with the
rest of the regiment. 'And if he's as desperate as 'a seemed, we shall
never see him here in England again.'
'It is an awkward case,' said the rector.
Ezra talked it over with the choir; one of whom suggested that the stone
might be erected at the crossroads. This was regarded as impracticable.
Another said that it might be set up in the churchyard without removing
the body; but this was seen to be dishonest. So nothing was done.
The headstone remained in Ezra's outhouse till, growing tired of seeing
it there, he put it away among the bushes at the bottom of his garden.
The subject was sometimes revived among them, but it always ended with:
'Considering how 'a was buried, we can hardly make a job o't.'
There was always the consciousness that Luke would never come back, an
impression strengthened by the disasters which were rumoured to have
befallen the army in Spain. This tended to make their inertness
permanent. The headstone grew green as it lay on its back under Ezra's
bushes; then a tree by the river was blown down, and, falling across the
stone, cracked it in three pieces. Ultimately the pieces became buried
in the leaves and mould.
Luke had not been born a Chalk-Newton man, and he had no relations left
in Sidlinch, so that no tidings of him reached either village throughout
the war. But after Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon there arrived at
Sidlinch one day an English sergeant-major covered with stripes and, as
it turned out, rich in glory. Foreign service had so totally changed
Luke Holway that it was not until he told his name that the inhabitants
recognized him as the sergeant's only son.
He had served with unswerving effectiveness through the Peninsular
campaigns under Wellington; had fought at Busaco, Fuentes d'Onore,
Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo;
and had now returned to enjoy a more than earned pension and repose in
his native district.
He hardly stayed in Sidlinch longer than to take a meal on his arrival.
The same evening he started on foot over the hill to Chalk-Newton,
passing the hand-post, and saying as he glanced at the spot, 'Thank God:
he's not there!' Nightfall was approaching when he reached the latter
village; but he made straight for the churchyard. On his entering it
there remained light enough to discern the headstones by, and these he
narrowly scanned. But though he searched the front part by the road, and
the back part by the river, what he sought he could not find-the grave
of Sergeant Holway, and a memorial bearing the inscription: 'I AM NOT
WORTHY TO BE CALLED THY SON.'
He left the churchyard and made inquiries. The honourable and reverend
old rector was dead, and so were many of the choir; but by degrees the
sergeant-major learnt that his father still lay at the cross-roads in
Long Ash Lane.
Luke pursued his way moodily homewards, to do which, in the natural
course, he would be compelled to repass the spot, there being no other
road between the two villages. But he could not now go by that place,
vociferous with reproaches in his father's tones; and he got over the
hedge and wandered deviously through the ploughed fields to avoid the
scene. Through many a fight and fatigue Luke had been sustained by the
thought that he was restoring the family honour and making noble amends.
Yet his father lay still in degradation. It was rather a sentiment than
a fact that his father's body had been made to suffer for his own
misdeeds; but to his super-sensitiveness it seemed that his efforts to
retrieve his character and to propitiate the shade of the insulted one
had ended in failure.
He endeavoured, however, to shake off his lethargy, and, not liking the
associations of Sidlinch, hired a small cottage at Chalk-Newton which
had long been empty. Here he lived alone, becoming quite a hermit, and
allowing no woman to enter the house.
The Christmas after taking up his abode herein he was sitting in the
chimney corner by himself, when he heard faint notes in the distance,
and soon a melody burst forth immediately outside his own window, it
came from the carol-singers, as usual; and though many of the old hands,
Ezra and Lot included, had gone to their rest, the same old carols were
still played out of the same old books. There resounded through the
sergeant-major's window-shutters the familiar lines that the deceased
choir had rendered over his father's grave:-
He comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease', In Sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'.
When they had finished they went on to another house, leaving him to
silence and loneliness as before.
The candle wanted snuffing, but he did not snuff it, and he sat on till
it had burnt down into the socket and made waves of shadow on the
ceiling.
The Christmas cheerfulness of next morning was broken at breakfast-time
by tragic intelligence which went down the village like wind. Sergeant-
Major Holway had been found shot through the head by his own hand at the
cross-roads in Long Ash Lane where his father lay buried.
On the table in the cottage he had left a piece of paper, on which he
had written his wish that he might be buried at the Cross beside his
father. But the paper was accidentally swept to the floor, and
overlooked till after his funeral, which took place in the ordinary way
in the churchyard.
Christmas 1897.
ENTER A DRAGOON
I lately had a melancholy experience (said the gentleman who is
answerable for the truth of this story). It was that of going over a
doomed house with whose outside aspect I had long been familiar-a house,
that is, which by reason of age and dilapidation was to be pulled down
during the following week. Some of the thatch, brown and rotten as the
gills of old mushrooms, had, indeed, been removed before I walked over
the building. Seeing that it was only a very small house-which is
usually called a 'cottage-residence'-situated in a remote hamlet, and
that it was not more than a hundred years old, if so much, I was led to
think in my progress through the hollow rooms, with their cracked walls
and sloping floors, what an exceptional number of abrupt family
incidents had taken place therein-to reckon only those which had come to
my own knowledge. And no doubt there were many more of which I had never
heard.
It stood at the top of a garden stretching down to the lane or street
that ran through a hermit-group of dwellings in Mellstock parish. From a
green gate at the lower entrance, over which the thorn hedge had been
shaped to an arch by constant clippings, a gravel path ascended between
the box edges of once trim raspberry, strawberry, and vegetable plots,
towards the front door. This was in colour an ancient and bleached green
that could be rubbed off with the finger, and it bore a small long-
featured brass knocker covered with verdigris in its crevices. For some
years before this eve of demolition the homestead had degenerated, and
been divided into two tenements to serve as cottages for farm labourers;
but in its prime it had indisputable claim to be considered neat,
pretty, and genteel.
The variety of incidents above alluded to was mainly owing to the nature
of the tenure, whereby the place had been occupied by families not quite
of the kind customary in such spots-people whose circumstances,
position, or antecedents were more or less of a critical happy-go-lucky
cast. And of these residents the family whose term comprised the story I
wish to relate was that of Mr. Jacob Paddock the market-gardener, who
dwelt there for some years with his wife and grown-up daughter. I
An evident commotion was agitating the premises, which jerked busy
sounds across the front plot, resembling those of a disturbed hive. If a
member of the household appeared at the door it was with a countenance
of abstraction and concern.
Evening began to bend over the scene; and the other inhabitants of the
hamlet came out to draw water, their common well being in the public
road opposite the garden and house of the Paddocks. Having wound up
their bucketsfull respectively they lingered, and spoke significantly
together. From their words any casual listener might have gathered
information of what had occurred.
The woodman who lived nearest the site of the story told most of the
tale. Selina, the daughter of the Paddocks opposite, had been surprised
that afternoon by receiving a letter from her once intended husband,
then a corporal, but now a sergeant-major of dragoons, whom she had
hitherto supposed to be one of the slain in the Battle of the Alma two
or three years before.
'She picked up wi'en against her father's wish, as we know, and before
he got his stripes,' their informant continued. 'Not but that the man
was as hearty a feller as you'd meet this side o' London. But Jacob, you
see, wished her to do better, and one can understand it. However, she
was determined to stick to him at that time; and for what happened she
was not much to blame, so near as they were to matrimony when the war
broke out and spoiled all.'
'Even the very pig had been killed for the wedding,' said a woman, 'and
the barrel o' beer ordered in. O, the man meant honourable enough. But
to be off in two days to fight in a foreign country-'twas natural of her
father to say they should wait till he got back.'
'And he never came,' murmured one in the shade.
'The war ended but her man never turned up again. She was not sure he
was killed, but was too proud, or too timid, to go and hunt for him.'
'One reason why her father forgave her when he found out how matters
stood was, as he said plain at the time, that he liked the man, and
could see that he meant to act straight. So the old folks made the best
of what they couldn't mend, and kept her there with 'em, when some
wouldn't. Time has proved seemingly that he did mean to act straight,
now that he has writ to her that he's coming. She'd have stuck to him
all through the time, 'tis my belief; if t'other hadn't come along.'
'At the time of the courtship,' resumed the woodman, 'the regiment was
quartered in Casterbridge Barracks, and he and she got acquainted by his
calling to buy a penn'orth of rathe-ripes off that tree yonder in her
father's orchard-though 'twas said he seed her over hedge as well as the
apples. He declared 'twas a kind of apple he much fancied; and he called
for a penn'orth every day till the tree was cleared. It ended in his
calling for her.'
''Twas a thousand pities they didn't jine up at once and ha' done wi'
it.
'Well; better late than never, if so be he'll have her now. But, Lord,
she'd that faith in 'en that she'd no more belief that he was alive,
when a' didn't come, than that the undermost man in our churchyard was
alive. She'd never have thought of another but for that-O no!'
''Tis awkward, altogether, for her now.'
'Still she hadn't married wi' the new man. Though to be sure she would
have committed it next week, even the licence being got, they say, for
she'd have no banns this time, the first being so unfortunate.'
'Perhaps the sergeant-major will think he's released, and go as he
came.'
'O, not as I reckon. Soldiers bain't particular, and she's a tidy piece
o' furniture still. What will happen is that she'll have her soldier,
and break off with the master-wheelwright, licence or no-daze me if she
won't.'
In the progress of these desultory conjectures the form of another
neighbour arose in the gloom. She nodded to the people at the well, who
replied 'G'd night, Mrs. Stone,' as she passed through Mr. Paddock's
gate towards his door. She was an intimate friend of the latter's
household, and the group followed her with their eyes up the path and
past the windows, which were now lighted up by candles inside. II
Mrs. Stone paused at the door, knocked, and was admitted by Selina's
mother, who took her visitor at once into the parlour on the left hand,
where a table was partly spread for supper. On the 'beaufet' against the
wall stood probably the only object which would have attracted the eye
of a local stranger in an otherwise ordinarily furnished room, a great
plum-cake guarded as if it were a curiosity by a glass shade of the kind
seen in museums-square, with a wooden back like those enclosing stuffed
specimens of rare feather or fur. This was the mummy of the cake
intended in earlier days for the wedding-feast of Selina and the
soldier, which had been religiously and lovingly preserved by the former
as a testimony to her intentional respectability in spite of an untoward
subsequent circumstance, which will be mentioned. This relic was now as
dry as a brick, and seemed to belong to a pre-existent civilization.
Till quite recently, Selina had been in the habit of pausing before it
daily, and recalling the accident whose consequences had thrown a shadow
over her life ever since-that of which the water-drawers had spoken-the
sudden news one morning that the Route had come for the \x97-th Dragoons,
two days only being the interval before departure; the hurried
consultation as to what should be done, the second time of asking being
past but not the third; and the decision that it would be unwise to
solemnize matrimony in such haphazard circumstances, even if it were
possible, which was doubtful.
Before the fire the young woman in question was now seated on a low
stool, in the stillness of reverie, and a toddling boy played about the
floor around her.
'Ah, Mrs. Stone!' said Selina, rising slowly. 'How kind of you to come
in. You'll bide to supper? Mother has told you the strange news, of
course?'
'No. But I heard it outside, that is, that you'd had a letter from Mr.
Clark-Sergeant-Major Clark, as they say he is now-and that he's coming
to make it up with 'ee.'
'Yes; coming to-night-all the way from the north of England where he's
quartered. I don't know whether I'm happy or-frightened at it. Of course
I always believed that if he was alive he'd come and keep his solemn vow
to me. But when it is printed that a man is killed-what can you think?'
'It was printed?'
'Why, yes. After the Battle of the Alma the book of the names of the
killed and wounded was nailed up against Casterbridge Town Hall door.
'Twas on a Saturday, and I walked there o' purpose to read and see for
myself; for I'd heard that his name was down. There was a crowd of
people round the book, looking for the names of relations; and I can
mind that when they saw me they made way for me-knowing that we'd been
just going to be married-and that, as you may say, I belonged to him.
Well, I reached up my arm, and turned over the farrels of the book, and
under the "killed" I read his surname, but instead of "John" they'd
printed "James," and I thought 'twas a mistake, and that it must be he.
Who could have guessed there were two nearly of one name in one
regiment.'
'Well-he's coming to finish the wedding of 'ee as may be said; so never
mind, my dear. All's well that ends well.'
'That's what he seems to say. But then he has not heard yet about Mr.
Miller; and that's what rather terrifies me. Luckily my marriage with
him next week was to have been by licence, and not banns, as in John's
case; and it was not so well known on that account. Still, I don't know
what to think.'
'Everything seems to come just 'twixt cup and lip with 'ee, don't it
now, Miss Paddock. Two weddings broke off-'tis odd! How came you to
accept Mr. Miller, my dear?'
'He's been so good and faithful! Not minding about the child at all; for
he knew the rights of the story. He's dearly fond o' Johnny, you know-
just as if 'twere his own-isn't he, my duck? Do Mr. Miller love you or
don't he?'
'Iss! An' I love Mr. Miller,' said the toddler.
'Well, you see, Mrs. Stone, he said he'd make me a comfortable home; and
thinking 'twould be a good thing for Johnny, Mr. Miller being so much
better off than me, I agreed at last, just as a widow might-which is
what I have always felt myself; ever since I saw what I thought was
John's name printed there. I hope John will forgive me!'
'So he will forgive 'ee, since 'twas no manner of wrong to him. He ought
to have sent 'ee a line, saying 'twas another man.'
Selina's mother entered. 'We've not known of this an hour, Mrs. Stone,'
she said. 'The letter was brought up from Lower Mellstock Post-office by
one of the school children, only this afternoon. Mr. Miller was coming
here this very night to settle about the wedding doings. Hark! Is that
your father? Or is it Mr. Miller already come?'
The footsteps entered the porch; there was a brushing on the mat, and
the door of the room sprung back to disclose a rubicund man about thirty
years of age, of thriving master-mechanic appearance and obviously
comfortable temper. On seeing the child, and before taking any notice
whatever of the elders, the comer made a noise like the crowing of a
cock and flapped his arms as if they were wings, a method of entry which
had the unqualified admiration of Johnny.
'Yes-it is he,' said Selina constrainedly advancing.
'What-were you all talking about me, my dear?' said the genial young man
when he had finished his crowing and resumed human manners. 'Why what's
the matter,' he went on. 'You look struck all of a heap.' Mr. Miller
spread an aspect of concern over his own face, and drew a chair up to
the fire.
'O mother, would you tell Mr. Miller, if he don't know?'
'Mister Miller! and going to be married in six days!' he interposed.
'Ah-he don't know it yet!' murmured Mrs. Paddock.
'Know what?'
'Well-John Clark-now Sergeant-Major Clark-wasn't shot at Alma after all.
'Twas another of almost the same name.'
'Now that's interesting! There were several cases like that.'
'And he's home again; and he's coming here to-night to see her.'
'Whatever shall I say, that he may not be offended with what I've done?'
interposed Selina.
'But why should it matter if he be?'
'O! I must agree to be his wife if he forgives me-of course I must.'
'Must! But why not say nay, Selina, even if he do forgive 'ee?'
'O no! How can I without being wicked? You were very very kind, Mr.
Miller, to ask me to have you; no other man would have done it after
what had happened; and I agreed, even though I did not feel half so warm
as I ought. Yet it was entirely owing to my believing him in the grave,
as I knew that if he were not he would carry out his promise; and this
shows that I was right in trusting him.'
'Yes . . . He must be a goodish sort of fellow,' said Mr. Miller, for a
moment so impressed with the excellently faithful conduct of the
sergeant-major of dragoons that he disregarded its effect upon his own
position. He sighed slowly and added, 'Well, Selina, 'tis for you to
say. I love you, and I love the boy; and there's my chimney-corner and
sticks o' furniture ready for 'ee both.'
'Yes, I know! But I mustn't hear it any more now,' murmured Selina
quickly. 'John will be here soon. I hope he'll see how it all was when I
tell him. If so be I could have written it to him it would have been
better.'
'You think he doesn't know a single word about our having been on the
brink o't. But perhaps it's the other way-he's heard of it and that may
have brought him.
'Ah-perhaps he has!' she said brightening. 'And already forgives me.'
'If not, speak out straight and fair, and tell him exactly how it fell
out. If he's a man he'll see it.'
'O he's a man true enough. But I really do think I shan't have to tell
him at all, since you've put it to me that way!'
As it was now Johnny's bedtime he was carried upstairs, and when Selina
came down again her mother observed with some anxiety, 'I fancy Mr.
Clark must be here soon if he's coming; and that being so, perhaps Mr.
Miller wouldn't mind-wishing us good-night! since you are so determined
to stick to your sergeant-major.' A little bitterness bubbled amid the
closing words. 'It would be less awkward, Mr. Miller not being here-if
he will allow me to say it.'
'To be sure; to be sure,' the master-wheelwright exclaimed with instant
conviction, rising alertly from his chair. 'Lord bless my soul,' he
said, taking up his hat and stick, 'and we to have been married in six
days! But Selina-you're right. You do belong to the child's father since
he's alive. I'll try to make the best of it.'
Before the generous Miller had got further there came a knock to the
door accompanied by the noise of wheels.
'I thought I heard something driving up!' said Mrs Paddock.
They heard Mr. Paddock, who had been smoking in the room opposite, rise
and go to the door, and in a moment a voice familiar enough to Selina
was audibly saying, 'At last I am here again-not without many
interruptions! How is it with 'ee, Mr. Paddock? And how is she? Thought
never to see me again, I suppose?'
A step with a cCHANGElink of spurs in it struck upon the entry floor.
'Danged if I bain't catched!' murmured Mr. Miller, forgetting company-
speech. 'Never mind-I may as well meet him here as elsewhere; and I
should like to see the chap, and make friends with en, as he seems one
o' the right sort.' He returned to the fireplace just as the sergeant-
major was ushered in. III
He was a good specimen of the long-service soldier of those days; a not
unhandsome man, with a certain undemonstrative dignity, which some might
have said to be partly owing to the stiffness of his uniform about his
neck, the high stock being still worn. He was much stouter than when
Selina had parted from him. Although she had not meant to be
demonstrative she ran across to him directly she saw him, and he held
her in his arms and kissed her.
Then in much agitation she whispered something to him, at which he
seemed to be much surprised.
'He's just put to bed,' she continued. 'You can go up and see him. I
knew you'd come if you were alive! But I had quite gi'd you up for dead.
You've been home in England ever since the war ended?'
'Yes, dear.'
'Why didn't you come sooner?'
'That's just what I ask myself! Why was I such a sappy as not to hurry
here the first day I set foot on shore! Well, who'd have thought it-you
are as pretty as ever!'
He relinquished her to peep upstairs a little way, where, by looking
through the ballusters, he could see Johnny's cot just within an open
door. On his stepping down again Mr. Miller was preparing to depart.
'Now, what's this? I am sorry to see anybody going the moment I've
come,' expostulated the sergeant-major. 'I thought we might make an
evening of it. There's a nine gallon cask o' "Phoenix" beer outside in
the trap, and a ham, and half a rawmil' cheese; for I thought you might
be short o' forage in a lonely place like this; and it struck me we
might like to ask in a neighbour or two. But perhaps it would be taking
a liberty?'
'O no, not at all,' said Mr. Paddock, who was now in the room, in a
judicial measured manner. 'Very thoughtful of 'ee, only 'twas not
necessary, for we had just laid in an extry stock of eatables and
drinkables in preparation for the coming event.'
''Twas very kind, upon my heart,' said the soldier, 'to think me worth
such a jocund preparation, since you could only have got my letter this
morning.'
Selina gazed at her father to stop him, and exchanged embarrassed
glances with Miller. Contrary to her hopes Sergeant-Major Clark plainly
did not know that the preparations referred to were for something quite
other than his own visit.
The movement of the horse outside, and the impatient tapping of a whip-
handle upon the vehicle reminded them that Clark's driver was still in
waiting. The provisions were brought into the house, and the cart
dismissed. Miller, with very little pressure indeed, accepted an
invitation to supper, and a few neighbours were induced to come in to
make up a cheerful party.
During the laying of the meal, and throughout its continuance, Selina,
who sat beside her first intended husband, tried frequently to break the
news to him of her engagement to the other-now terminated so suddenly,
and so happily for her heart, and her sense of womanly virtue. But the
talk ran entirely upon the late war; and though fortified by half a horn
of the strong ale brought by the sergeant-major she decided that she
might have a better opportunity when supper was over of revealing the
situation to him in private.
Having supped, Clark leaned back at ease in his chair and looked around.
'We used sometimes to have a dance in that other room after supper,
Selina dear, I recollect. We used to clear out all the furniture into
this room before beginning. Have you kept up such goings on?'
'No, not at all!' said his sweetheart, sadly.
'We were not unlikely to revive it in a few days,' said Mr. Paddock.
'But, howsomever, there's seemingly many a slip, as the saying is.'
'Yes, I'll tell John all about that by and by!' interposed Selina; at
which, perceiving that the secret which he did not like keeping was to
be kept even yet, her father held his tongue with some show of
testiness.
The subject of a dance having been broached, to put the thought in
practice was the feeling of all. Soon after the tables and chairs were
borne from the opposite room to this by zealous hands, and two of the
villagers sent home for a fiddle and tambourine, when the majority began
to tread a measure well known in that secluded vale. Selina naturally
danced with the sergeant-major, not altogether to her father's
satisfaction, and to the real uneasiness of her mother, both of whom
would have preferred a postponement of festivities till the rashly
anticipated relationship between their daughter and Clark in the past
had been made fact by the church's ordinances. They did not, however,
express a positive objection, Mr. Paddock remembering, with self-
reproach, that it was owing to his original strongly expressed
disapproval of Selina's being a soldier's wife that the wedding had been
delayed, and finally hindered-with worse consequences than were
expected; and ever since the misadventure brought about by his
government he had allowed events to steer their own courses.
'My tails will surely catch in your spurs, John!' murmured the daughter
of the house, as she whirled around upon his arm with the rapt soul and
look of a somnambulist. 'I didn't know we should dance, or I would have
put on my other frock.'
'I'll take care, my love. We've danced here before. Do you think your
father objects to me now? I've risen in rank. I fancy he's still a
little against me.'
'He has repented, times enough.'
'And so have I! If I had married you then 'twould have saved many a
misfortune. I have sometimes thought it might have been possible to rush
the ceremony through somehow before I left; though we were only in the
second asking, were we? And even if I had come back straight here when
we returned from the Crimea, and married you then, how much happier I
should have been!'
'Dear John, to say that! Why didn't you?'
'O-dilatoriness and want of thought, and a fear of facing your father
after so long. I was in hospital a great while, you know. But how
familiar the place seems again! What's that I saw on the beaufet in the
other room? It never used to be there. A sort of withered corpse of a
cake-not an old bride-cake surely?'
'Yes, John, ours. 'Tis the very one that was made for our wedding three
years ago.'
'Sakes alive! Why, time shuts up together, and all between then and now
seems not to have been! What became of that wedding-gown that they were
making in this room, I remember-a bluish, whitish, frothy thing?'
'I have that too.'
'Really! . . . Why, Selina-'
'Yes!'
'Why not put it on now?'
'Wouldn't it seem-. And yet, O how I should like to! It would remind
them all, if we told them what it was, how we really meant to be married
on that bygone day!' Her eyes were again laden with wet.
'Yes . . . The pity that we didn't-the pity!' Moody mournfulness seemed
to hold silent awhile one not naturally taciturn. 'Well-will you?' he
said.
'I will-the next dance, if mother don't mind.'
Accordingly, just before the next figure was formed, Selina disappeared,
and speedily came downstairs in a creased and box-worn, but still airy
and pretty, muslin gown, which was indeed the very one that had been
meant to grace her as a bride three years before.
'It is dreadfully old-fashioned,' she apologized.
'Not at all. What a grand thought of mine! Now, let's to't again.'
She explained to some of them, as he led her to the second dance, what
the frock had been meant for, and that she had put it on at his request.
And again athwart and around the room they went.
'You seem the bride!' he said.
'But I couldn't wear this gown to be married in now!' she replied,
ecstatically, 'or I shouldn't have put it on and made it dusty. It is
really too old-fashioned, and so folded and fretted out, you can't
think. That was with my taking it out so many times to look at. I have
never put it on-never-till now!'
'Selina, I am thinking of giving up the army. Will you emigrate with me
to New Zealand? I've an uncle out there doing well, and he'd soon help
me to making a larger income. The English army is glorious, but it ain't
altogether enriching.'
'Of course, anywhere that you decide upon. Is it healthy there for
Johnny?'
'A lovely climate. And I shall never be happy in England . . . Aha!' he
concluded again, with a bitterness of unexpected strength, 'would to
Heaven I had come straight back here!'
As the dance brought round one neighbour after another the re-united
pair were thrown into juxtaposition with Bob Heartall among the rest who
had been called in; one whose chronic expression was that he carried
inside him a joke on the point of bursting with its own vastness. He
took occasion now to let out a little of its quality, shaking his head
at Selina as he addressed her in an undertone-
'This is a bit of a topper to the bridegroom, ho ho! 'Twill teach en the
liberty you'll expect when you've married en!'
'What does he mean by a "topper,"' the sergeant-major asked, who, not
being of local extraction, despised the venerable local language, and
also seemed to suppose 'bridegroom' to be an anticipatory name for
himself. 'I only hope I shall never be worse treated than you've treated
me to-night!'
Selina looked frightened. 'He didn't mean you, dear,' she said as they
moved on. 'We thought perhaps you knew what had happened, owing to your
coming just at this time. Had you-heard anything about-what I intended?'
'Not a breath-how should I-away up in Yorkshire? It was by the merest
accident that I came just at this date to make peace with you for my
delay.'
'I was engaged to be married to Mr. Bartholomew Miller. That's what it
is! I would have let 'ee know by letter, but there was no time, only
hearing from 'ee this afternoon . . . You won't desert me for it, will
you, John? Because, as you know, I quite supposed you dead, and-and-'
Her eyes were full of tears of trepidation, and he might have felt a sob
heaving within her. IV
The soldier was silent during two or three double bars of the tune.
'When were you to have been married to the said Mr. Bartholomew Miller?'
he inquired.
'Quite soon.'
'How soon?'
'Next week-O yes-just the same as it was with you and me. There's a
strange fate of interruption hanging over me, I sometimes think! He had
bought the licence, which I preferred so that it mightn't be like-ours.
But it made no difference to the fate of it.'
'Had bought the licence! The devil!'
'Don't be angry, dear John. I didn't know!'
'No, no, I'm not angry.'
'It was so kind of him, considering!'
'Yes . . . I see, of course, how natural your action was-never thinking
of seeing me any more! Is it the Mr. Miller who is in this dance?'
'Yes.'
Clark glanced round upon Bartholomew and was silent again, for some
little while, and she stole a look at him, to find that he seemed
changed. 'John, you look ill!' she almost sobbed. ''Tisn't me, is it?'
'O dear, no. Though I hadn't, somehow, expected it. I can't find fault
with you for a moment-and I don't . . . This is a deuce of a long dance,
don't you think? We've been at it twenty minutes if a second, and the
figure doesn't allow one much rest. I'm quite out of breath.'
'They like them so dreadfully long here. Shall we drop out? Or I'll stop
the fiddler.'
'O no, no, I think I can finish. But although I look healthy enough I
have never been so strong as I formerly was, since that long illness I
had in the hospital at Scutari.'
'And I knew nothing about it!'
'You couldn't, dear, as I didn't write. What a fool I have been
altogether!' He gave a twitch, as of one in pain. 'I won't dance again
when this one is over. The fact is I have travelled a long way to-day,
and it seems to have knocked me up a bit.'
There could be no doubt that the sergeant-major was unwell, and Selina
made herself miserable by still believing that her story was the cause
of his ailment. Suddenly he said in a changed voice, and she perceived
that he was paler than ever: 'I must sit down.'
Letting go her waist he went quickly to the other room. She followed,
and found him in the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands
and arms, which were resting on the table.
'What's the matter?' said her father, who sat there dozing by the fire.
'John isn't well . . . We are going to New Zealand when we are married,
father. A lovely country! John, would you like something to drink?'
'A drop o' that Schiedam of old Owlett's, that's under stairs, perhaps,'
suggested her father. 'Not that nowadays 'tis much better than licensed
liquor.'
'John,' she said, putting her face close to his and pressing his arm.
'Will you have a drop of spirits or something?'
He did not reply, and Selina observed that his ear and the side of his
face were quite white. Convinced that his illness was serious, a growing
dismay seized hold of her. The dance ended; her mother came in, and
learning what had happened, looked narrowly at the sergeant-major.
'We must not let him lie like that, lift him up,' she said. 'Let him
rest in the window-bench on some cushions.'
They unfolded his arms and hands as they lay clasped upon the table, and
on lifting his head found his features to bear the very impress of death
itself. Bartholomew Miller, who had now come in, assisted Mr. Paddock to
make a comfortable couch in the window-seat, where they stretched out
Clark upon his back.
Still he seemed unconscious. 'We must get a doctor,' said Selina. 'O, my
dear John, how is it you be taken like this?'
'My impression is that he's dead!' murmured Mr. Paddock. 'He don't
breathe enough to move a tomtit's feather.'
There were plenty to volunteer to go for a doctor, but as it would be at
least an hour before he could get there the case seemed somewhat
hopeless. The dancing-party ended as unceremoniously as it had begun;
but the guests lingered round the premises till the doctor should
arrive. When he did come the sergeant-major's extremities were already
cold, and there was no doubt that death had overtaken him almost at the
moment that he had sat down.
The medical practitioner quite refused to accept the unhappy Selina's
theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden
collapse. Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate
cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted
by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and
then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon a heart
enfeebled by fatty degeneration after the privations of a Crimean winter
and other trying experiences, the coincidence of the sad event with any
disclosure of hers being a pure accident.
This conclusion, however, did not dislodge Selina's opinion that the
shock of her statement had been the immediate stroke which had felled a
constitution so undermined. V
At this date the Casterbridge Barracks were cavalry quarters, their
adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later. It had
been owing to the fact that the \x97-th Dragoons, in which John Clark had
served, happened to be lying there that Selina made his acquaintance. At
the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the Scots Greys, but
when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known
in the town the officers of the Greys offered the services of their fine
reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military
honours. His body was accordingly removed to the barracks, and carried
thence to the churchyard in the Durnover quarter on the following
afternoon, one of the Greys' most ancient and docile chargers being
blacked up to represent Clark's horse on the occasion.
Everybody pitied Selina, whose story was well known. She followed the
corpse as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this
part of the country, and a communication with his regiment having
brought none from a distance. She sat in a little shabby brown-black
mourning carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as
possible out of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the
town to the tune from Saul. When the interment had taken place, the
volleys been fired, and the return journey begun, it was with something
like a shock that she found the military escort to be moving at a quick
march to the lively strains of 'Off she goes!' as if all care for the
sergeant-major was expected to be ended with the late discharge of the
carbines. It was, by chance, the very tune to which they had been
footing when he died, and unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her
driver to drop behind. The band and military party diminished up the
High Street, and Selina turned over Swan bridge and homeward to
Mellstock.
Then recommenced for her a life whose incidents were precisely of a suit
with those which had preceded the soldier's return; but how different in
her appreciation of them! Her narrow miss of the recovered
respectability they had hoped for from that tardy event worked upon her
parents as an irritant, and after the first week or two of her mourning
her life with them grew almost insupportable. She had impulsively taken
to herself the weeds of a widow, for such she seemed to herself to be,
and clothed little Johnny in sables likewise. This assumption of a moral
relationship to the deceased, which she asserted to be only not a legal
one by two most unexpected accidents, led the old people to indulge in
sarcasm at her expense whenever they beheld her attire, though all the
while it cost them more pain to utter than it gave her to hear it.
Having become accustomed by her residence at home to the business
carried on by her father, she surprised them one day by going off with
the child to Chalk-Newton, in the direction of the town of Ivell, and
opening a miniature fruit and vegetable shop, attending Ivell market
with her produce. Her business grew somewhat larger, and it was soon
sufficient to enable her to support herself and the boy in comfort. She
called herself 'Mrs. John Clark' from the day of leaving home, and
painted the name on her signboard-no man forbidding her.
By degrees the pain of her state was forgotten in her new circumstances,
and getting to be generally accepted as the widow of a sergeant-major of
dragoons-an assumption which her modest and mournful demeanour seemed to
substantiate-her life became a placid one, her mind being nourished by
the melancholy luxury of dreaming what might have been her future in New
Zealand with John, if he had only lived to take her there. Her only
travels now were a journey to Ivell on market-days, and once a fortnight
to the churchyard in which Clark lay, there to tend, with Johnny's
assistance, as widows are wont to do, the flowers she had planted upon
his grave.
On a day about eighteen months after his unexpected decease, Selina was
surprised in her lodging over her little shop by a visit from
Bartholomew Miller. He had called on her once or twice before, on which
occasions he had used without a word of comment the name by which she
was known.
'I've come this time,' he said, 'less because I was in this direction
than to ask you, Mrs. Clark, what you mid well guess. I've come o'
purpose, in short.'
She smiled.
''Tis to ask me again to marry you?'
'Yes, of course. You see, his coming back for 'ee proved what I always
believed of 'ee, though others didn't. There's nobody but would be glad
to welcome you to our parish again, now you've showed your independence
and acted up to your trust in his promise. Well, my dear, will you
come?'
'I'd rather bide as Mrs. Clark, I think,' she answered. 'I am not
ashamed of my position at all; for I am John's widow in the eyes of
Heaven.'
'I quite agree-that's why I've come. Still, you won't like to be always
straining at this shop-keeping and market-standing; and 'twould be
better for Johnny if you had nothing to do but tend him.'
He here touched the only weak spot in Selina's resistance to his
proposal-the good of the boy. To promote that there were other men she
might have married offhand without loving them if they had asked her to;
but though she had known the worthy speaker from her youth, she could
not for the moment fancy herself happy as Mrs. Miller.
He paused awhile. 'I ought to tell 'ee, Mrs. Clark,' he said by and by,
'that marrying is getting to be a pressing question with me. Not on my
own account at all. The truth is, that mother is growing old, and I am
away from home a good deal, so that it is almost necessary there should
be another person in the house with her besides me. That's the practical
consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my
wish to take you; and you know there's nobody in the world I care for so
much.'
She said something about there being far better women than she, and
other natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him
for feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was. However, Selina
would not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home-
at any rate just then. He went away, after taking tea with her, without
discerning much hope for him in her good-bye. VI
After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while.
Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued,
whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. Miller must have known,
she thought, of this custom of hers. But though the churchyard was not
nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at Chalk-Newton, he
never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use.
An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother,
who casually mentioned that Mr. Bartholomew Miller had gone away to the
other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a thriving dairyman's
daughter that he knew there. His chief motive, it was reported, had been
less one of love than a wish to provide a companion for his aged mother.
Selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and
possibly the only opportunity of settling in life after what had
happened, and for a moment she regretted her independence. But she
became calm on reflection, and to fortify herself in her course started
that afternoon to tend the sergeant-major's grave, in which she took the
same sober pleasure as at first.
On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as
usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a
respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over Clark's
turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some ivy-roots that
Selina had reverently planted there to form an evergreen mantle over the
mound.
'What are you digging up my ivy for!' cried Selina, rushing forward so
excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the tug she
gave his hand in her sudden start.
'Your ivy?' said the respectable woman.
'Why yes! I planted it there-on my husband's grave.'
'Your husband's!'
'Yes. The late Sergeant-Major Clark. Anyhow, as good as my husband, for
he was just going to be.'
'Indeed. But who may be my husband, if not he? I am the only Mrs. John
Clark, widow of the late Sergeant-Major of Dragoons, and this is his
only son and heir.'
'How can that be?' faltered Selina, her throat seeming to stick together
as she just began to perceive its possibility. 'He had been-going to
marry me twice-and we were going to New Zealand.'
'Ah!-I remember about you,' returned the legitimate widow calmly and not
unkindly. 'You must be Selina; he spoke of you now and then, and said
that his relations with you would always be a weight on his conscience.
Well; the history of my life with him is soon told. When he came back
from the Crimea he became acquainted with me at my home in the north,
and we were married within a month of first knowing each other.
Unfortunately, after living together a few months, we could not agree;
and after a particularly sharp quarrel, in which, perhaps, I was most in
the wrong-as I don't mind owning here by his graveside-he went away from
me, declaring he would buy his discharge and emigrate to New Zealand,
and never come back to me any more. The next thing I heard was that he
had died suddenly at Mellstock at some low carouse; and as he had left
me in such anger to live no more with me, I wouldn't come down to his
funeral, or do anything in relation to him. 'Twas temper, I know, but
that was the fact. Even if we had parted friends it would have been a
serious expense to travel three hundred miles to get there, for one who
wasn't left so very well off . . . I am sorry I pulled up your ivy-
roots; but that common sort of ivy is considered a weed in my part of
the country.'
December 1899.
A TRYST AT AN ANCIENT EARTH WORK
At one's every step forward it rises higher against the south sky, with
an obtrusive personality that compels the senses to regard it and
consider. The eyes may bend in another direction, but never without the
consciousness of its heavy, high-shouldered presence at its point of
vantage. Across the intervening levels the gale races in a straight line
from the fort, as if breathed out of it hitherward. With the shifting of
the clouds the faces of the steeps vary in colour and in shade, broad
lights appearing where mist and vagueness had prevailed, dissolving in
their turn into melancholy gray, which spreads over and eclipses the
luminous bluffs. In this so-thought immutable spectacle all is change.
Out of the invisible marine region on the other side birds soar suddenly
into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the
indifference of long familiarity. Their forms are white against the
tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating
signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from
expected stress of weather. As the birds rise behind the fort, so do the
clouds rise behind the birds, almost as it seems, stroking with their
bagging bosoms the uppermost flyers.
The profile of the whole stupendous ruin, as seen at a distance of a
mile eastward, is cleanly cut as that of a marble inlay. It is varied
with protuberances, which from hereabouts have the animal aspect of
warts, wens, knuckles, and hips. It may indeed be likened to an enormous
many-limbed organism of an antediluvian time-partaking of the cephalopod
in shape-lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which
hides its substance, while revealing its contour. This dull green mantle
of herbage stretches down towards the levels, where the ploughs have
essayed for centuries to creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the
castle, but have always stopped short before reaching it. The furrows of
these environing attempts show themselves distinctly, bending to the
incline as they trench upon it; mounting in steeper curves, till the
steepness baffles them, and their parallel threads show like the striae
of waves pausing on the curl. The peculiar place of which these are some
of the features is 'Mai-Dun,' 'The Castle of the Great Hill,' said to be
the Dunium of Ptolemy, the capital of the Durotriges, which eventually
came into Roman occupation, and was finally deserted on their withdrawal
from the island.
The evening is followed by a night on which an invisible moon bestows a
subdued, yet pervasive light-without radiance, as without blackness.
From the spot whereon I am ensconced in a cottage, a mile away, the fort
has now ceased to be visible; yet, as by day, to anybody whose thoughts
have been engaged with it and its barbarous grandeurs of past time the
form asserts its existence behind the night gauzes as persistently as if
it had a voice. Moreover, the south-west wind continues to feed the
intervening arable flats with vapours brought directly from its sides.
The midnight hour for which there has been occasion to wait at length
arrives, and I journey towards the stronghold in obedience to a request
urged earlier in the day. It concerns an appointment, which I rather
regret my decision to keep now that night is come. The route thither is
hedgeless and treeless-I need not add deserted. The moonlight is
sufficient to disclose the pale riband-like surface of the way as it
trails along between the expanses of darker fallow. Though the road
passes near the fortress it does not conduct directly to its fronts. As
the place is without an inhabitant, so it is without a trackway. So
presently leaving the macadamized road to pursue its course elsewhither,
I step off upon the fallow, and plod stumblingly across it. The castle
looms out off the shade by degrees, like a thing waking up and asking
what I want there. It is now so enlarged by nearness that its whole
shape cannot be taken in at one view. The ploughed ground ends as the
rise sharpens, the sloping basement of grass begins, and I climb upward
to invade Mai-Dun.
Impressive by day as this largest Ancient-British work in the kingdom
undoubtedly is, its impressiveness is increased now. After standing
still and spending a few minutes in adding its age to its size, and its
size to its solitude, it becomes appallingly mournful in its growing
closeness. A squally wind blows in the face with an impact which
proclaims that the vapours of the air sail low to-night. The slope that
I so laboriously clamber up the wind skips sportively down. Its track
can be discerned even in this light by the undulations of the withered
grass-bents-the only produce of this upland summit except moss. Four
minutes of ascent, and a vantage-ground of some sort is gained. It is
only the crest of the outer rampart. Immediately within this a chasm
gapes; its bottom is imperceptible, but the counterscarp slopes not too
steeply to admit of a sliding descent if cautiously performed. The shady
bottom, dank and chilly, is thus gained, and reveals itself as a kind of
winding lane, wide enough for a waggon to pass along, floored with rank
herbage, and trending away, right and left, into obscurity, between the
concentric walls of earth. The towering closeness of these on each hand,
their impenetrability, and their ponderousness, are felt as a physical
pressure. The way is now up the second of them, which stands steeper and
higher than the first. To turn aside, as did Christian's companion, from
such a Hill Difficulty, is the more natural tendency; but the way to the
interior is upward. There is, of course, an entrance to the fortress;
but that lies far off on the other side. It might possibly have been the
wiser course to seek for easier ingress there.
However, being here, I ascend the second acclivity. The grass stems-the
grey beard of the hill-sway in a mass close to my stooping face. The
dead heads of these various grasses-fescues, fox-tails, and ryes-bob and
twitch as if pulled by a string underground. From a few thistles a
whistling proceeds; and even the moss speaks, in its humble way, under
the stress of the blast.
That the summit of the second line of defence has been gained is
suddenly made known by a contrasting wind from a new quarter, coming
over with the curve of a cascade. These novel gusts raise a sound from
the whole camp or castle, playing upon it bodily as upon a harp. It is
with some difficulty that a foothold can be preserved under their sweep.
Looking aloft for a moment I perceive that the sky is much more overcast
than it has been hitherto, and in a few instants a dead lull in what is
now a gale ensues with almost preternatural abruptness. I take advantage
of this to sidle down the second counterscarp, but by the time the ditch
is reached the lull reveals itself to be but the precursor of a storm.
It begins with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary
strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as I stand
here in the second fosse. That which now radiates from the sky upon the
scene is not so much light as vaporous phosphorescence.
The wind, quickening, abandons the natural direction it has pursued on
the open upland, and takes the course of the gorge's length, rushing
along therein helter-skelter, and carrying thick rain upon its back. The
rain is followed by hailstones which fly through the defile in
battalions-rolling, hopping, ricochetting, snapping, clattering down the
shelving banks in an undefinable haze of confusion. The earthen sides of
the fosse seem to quiver under the drenching onset, though it is
practically no more to them than the blows of Thor upon the giant of
Jotun-land. It is impossible to proceed further till the storm somewhat
abates, and I draw up behind a spur of the inner scarp, where possibly a
barricade stood two thousand years ago; and thus await events.
The roar of the storm can be heard travelling the complete circuit of
the castle-a measured mile-coming round at intervals like a
circumambulating column of infantry. Doubtless such a column has passed
this way in its time, but the only columns which enter in these latter
days are the columns of sheep and oxen that are sometimes seen here now;
while the only semblance of heroic voices heard are the utterances of
such, and of the many winds which make their passage through the
ravines.
The expected lightning radiates round, and a rumbling as from its
subterranean vaults-if there are any-fills the castle. The lightning
repeats itself, and, coming after the aforesaid thoughts of martial men,
it bears a fanciful resemblance to swords moving in combat. It has the
very brassy hue of the ancient weapons that here were used. The so
sudden entry upon the scene of this metallic flame is as the entry of a
presiding exhibitor who unrolls the maps, uncurtains the pictures,
unlocks the cabinets, and effects a transformation by merely exposing
the materials of his science, unintelligibly cloaked till then. The
abrupt configuration of the bluffs and mounds is now for the first time
clearly revealed-mounds whereon, doubtless, spears and shields have
frequently lain while their owners loosened their sandals and yawned and
stretched their arms in the sun. For the first time, too, a glimpse is
obtainable of the true entrance used by its occupants of old, some way
ahead.
There, where all passage has seemed to be inviolably barred by an almost
vertical fa\xE7ade, the ramparts are found to overlap each other like
loosely clasped fingers, between which a zigzag path may be followed-a
cunning construction that puzzles the uninformed eye. But its cunning,
even where not obscured by dilapidation, is now wasted on the solitary
forms of a few wild badgers, rabbits, and hares. Men must have often
gone out by those gates in the morning to battle with the Roman legions
under Vespasian; some to return no more, others to come back at evening,
bringing with them the noise of their heroic deeds. But not a page, not
a stone, has preserved their fame.
Acoustic perceptions multiply to-night. We can almost hear the stream of
years that have borne those deeds away from us. Strange articulations
seem to float on the air from that point, the gateway, where the
animation in past times must frequently have concentrated itself at
hours of coming and going, and general excitement. There arises an
ineradicable fancy that they are human voices; if so, they must be the
lingering air-borne vibrations of conversations uttered at least fifteen
hundred years ago. The attention is attracted from mere nebulous
imaginings about yonder spot by a real moving of something close at
hand.
I recognize by the now moderate flashes of lightning, which are sheet-
like and nearly continuous, that it is the gradual elevation of a small
mound of earth. At first no larger than a man's fist it reaches the
dimensions of a hat, then sinks a little and is still. It is but the
heaving of a mole who chooses such weather as this to work in from some
instinct that there will be nobody abroad to molest him. As the fine
earth lifts and lifts and falls loosely aside fragments of burnt clay
roll out of it-clay that once formed part of cups or other vessels used
by the inhabitants of the fortress.
The violence of the storm has been counterbalanced by its
transitoriness. From being immersed in well-nigh solid media of cloud
and hail shot with lightning, I find myself uncovered of the humid
investiture and left bare to the mild gaze of the moon, which sparkles
now on every wet grass-blade and frond of moss.
But I am not yet inside the fort, and the delayed ascent of the third
and last escarpment is now made. It is steeper than either. The first
was a surface to walk up, the second to stagger up, the third can only
be ascended on the hands and toes. On the summit obtrudes the first
evidence which has been met with in these precincts that the time is
really the nineteenth century; it is in the form of a white notice-board
on a post, and the wording can just be discerned by the rays of the
setting moon:
CAUTION.-Any Person found removing Relics, Skeletons, Stones, Pottery,
Tiles, or other Material from this Earthwork, or cutting up the Ground,
will be Prosecuted as the Law directs.
Here one observes a difference underfoot from what has gone before:
scraps of Roman tile and stone chippings protrude through the grass in
meagre quantity, but sufficient to suggest that masonry stood on the
spot. Before the eye stretches under the moonlight the interior of the
fort. So open and so large is it as to be practically an upland plateau,
and yet its area lies wholly within the walls of what may be designated
as one building. It is a long-violated retreat; all its corner-stones,
plinths, and architraves were carried away to build neighbouring
villages even before mediaeval or modern history began. Many a block
which once may have helped to form a bastion here rests now in broken
and diminished shape as part of the chimney-corner of some shepherd's
cottage within the distant horizon, and the corner-stones of this
heathen altar may form the base-course of some adjoining village church.
Yet the very bareness of these inner courts and wards, their condition
of mere pasturage, protects what remains of them as no defences could
do. Nothing is left visible that the hands can seize on or the weather
overturn, and a permanence of general outline at least results, which no
other condition could ensure.
The position of the castle on this isolated hill bespeaks deliberate and
strategic choice exercised by some remote mind capable of prospective
reasoning to a far extent. The natural configuration of the surrounding
country and its bearing upon such a stronghold were obviously long
considered and viewed mentally before its extensive design was carried
into execution. Who was the man that said, 'Let it be built here!'-not
on that hill yonder, or on that ridge behind, but on this best spot of
all? Whether he were some great one of the Belgae, or of the Durotriges,
or the travelling engineer of Britain's united tribes, must for ever
remain time's secret; his form cannot be realized, nor his countenance,
nor the tongue that he spoke, when he set down his foot with a thud and
said, 'Let it be here!'
Within the innermost enclosure, though it is so wide that at a
superficial glance the beholder has only a sense of standing on a breezy
down, the solitude is rendered yet more solitary by the knowledge that
between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are
those three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of
scaling on such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic
cries issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. I
reach a central mound or platform-the crown and axis of the whole
structure. The view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent.
On this raised floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more
or less tuneful notes in celebration of daring, strength, or cruelty; of
worship, superstition, love, birth, and death; of simple loving-kindness
perhaps never. Many a time must the king or leader have directed his
keen eyes hence across the open lands towards the ancient road, the
Icening Way, still visible in the distance, on the watch for armed
companies approaching either to succour or to attack.
I am startled by a voice pronouncing my name. Past and present have
become so confusedly mingled under the associations of the spot that for
a time it has escaped my memory that this mound was the place agreed on
for the aforesaid appointment. I turn and behold my friend. He stands
with a dark lantern in his hand and a spade and light pickaxe over his
shoulder. He expresses both delight and surprise that I have come. I
tell him I had set out before the bad weather began.
He, to whom neither weather, darkness, nor difficulty seems to have any
relation or significance, so entirely is his soul wrapped up in his own
deep intentions, asks me to take the lantern and accompany him. I take
it and walk by his side. He is a man about sixty, small in figure, with
grey old-fashioned whiskers cut to the shape of a pair of crumb-brushes.
He is entirely in black broadcloth-or rather, at present, black and
brown, for he is bespattered with mud from his heels to the crown of his
low hat. He has no consciousness of this-no sense of anything but his
purpose, his ardour for which causes his eyes to shine like those of a
lynx, and gives his motions, all the elasticity of an athlete's.
'Nobody to interrupt us at this time of night!' he chuckles with fierce
enjoyment.
We retreat a little way and find a sort of angle, an elevation in the
sod, a suggested squareness amid the mass of irregularities around.
Here, he tells me, if anywhere, the king's house stood. Three months of
measurement and calculation have confirmed him in this conclusion.
He requests me now to open the lantern, which I do, and the light
streams out upon the wet sod. At last divining his proceedings I say
that I had no idea, in keeping the tryst, that he was going to do more
at such an unusual time than meet me for a meditative ramble through the
stronghold. I ask him why, having a practicable object, he should have
minded interruptions and not have chosen the day? He informs me, quietly
pointing to his spade, that it was because his purpose is to dig, then
signifying with a grim nod the gaunt notice-post against the sky beyond.
I inquire why, as a professed and well-known antiquary with capital
letters at the tail of his name, he did not obtain the necessary
authority, considering the stringent penalties for this sort of thing;
and he chuckles fiercely again with suppressed delight, and says,
'Because they wouldn't have given it!'
He at once begins cutting up the sod, and, as he takes the pickaxe to
follow on with, assures me that, penalty or no penalty, honest men or
marauders, he is sure of one thing, that we shall not be disturbed at
our work till after dawn.
I remember to have heard of men who, in their enthusiasm for some
special science, art, or hobby, have quite lost the moral sense which
would restrain them from indulging it illegitimately; and I conjecture
that here, at last, is an instance of such an one. He probably guesses
the way my thoughts travel, for he stands up and solemnly asserts that
he has a distinctly justifiable intention in this matter; namely, to
uncover, to search, to verify a theory or displace it, and to cover up
again. He means to take away nothing-not a grain of sand. In this he
says he sees no such monstrous sin. I inquire if this is really a
promise to me? He repeats that it is a promise, and resumes digging. My
contribution to the labour is that of directing the light constantly
upon the hole. When he has reached something more than a foot deep he
digs more cautiously, saying that, be it much or little there, it will
not lie far below the surface; such things never are deep. A few minutes
later the point of the pickaxe clicks upon a stony substance. He draws
the implement out as feelingly as if it had entered a man's body. Taking
up the spade he shovels with care, and a surface, level as an altar, is
presently disclosed. His eyes flash anew; he pulls handfuls of grass and
mops the surface clean, finally rubbing it with his handkerchief.
Grasping the lantern from my hand he holds it close to the ground, when
the rays reveal a complete mosaic-a pavement of minute tesserae of many
colours, of intricate pattern, a work of much art, of much time, and of
much industry. He exclaims in a shout that he knew it always-that it is
not a Celtic stronghold exclusively, but also a Roman; the former people
having probably contributed little more than the original framework
which the latter took and adapted till it became the present imposing
structure.
I ask, What if it is Roman?
A great deal, according to him. That it proves all the world to be wrong
in this great argument, and himself alone to be right! Can I wait while
he digs further?
I agree-reluctantly; but he does not notice my reluctance. At an
adjoining spot he begins flourishing the tools anew with the skill of a
navvy, this venerable scholar with letters after his name. Sometimes he
falls on his knees, burrowing with his hands in the manner of a hare,
and where his old-fashioned broadcloth touches the sides of the hole it
gets plastered with the damp earth. He continually murmurs to himself
how important, how very important, this discovery is! He draws out an
object; we wash it in the same primitive way by rubbing it with the wet
grass, and it proves to be a semi-transparent bottle of iridescent
beauty, the sight of which draws groans of luxurious sensibility from
the digger. Further and further search brings out a piece of a weapon.
It is strange indeed that by merely peeling off a wrapper of modern
accumulations we have lowered ourselves into an ancient world. Finally a
skeleton is uncovered, fairly perfect. He lays it out on the grass, bone
to its bone.
My friend says the man must have fallen fighting here, as this is no
place of burial. He turns again to the trench, scrapes, feels, till from
a corner he draws out a heavy lump-a small image four or five inches
high. We clean it as before. It is a statuette, apparently of gold, or,
more probably, of bronze-gilt-a figure of Mercury, obviously, its head
being surmounted with the petasus or winged hat, the usual accessory of
that deity. Further inspection reveals the workmanship to be of good
finish and detail, and, preserved by the limy earth, to be as fresh in
every line as on the day it left the hands of its artificer.
We seem to be standing in the Roman Forum and not on a hill in Wessex.
Intent upon this truly valuable relic of the old empire of which even
this remote spot was a component part, we do not notice what is going on
in the present world till reminded of it by the sudden renewal of the
storm. Looking up I perceive that the wide extinguisher of cloud has
again settled down upon the fortress-town, as if resting upon the edge
of the inner rampart, and shutting out the moon. I turn my back to the
tempest, still directing the light across the hole. My companion digs on
unconcernedly; he is living two thousand years ago, and despises things
of the moment as dreams. But at last he is fairly beaten, and standing
up beside me looks round on what he has done. The rays of the lantern
pass over the trench to the tall skeleton stretched upon the grass on
the other side. The beating rain has washed the bones clean and smooth,
and the forehead, cheek-bones, and two-and-thirty teeth of the skull
glisten in the candle-shine as they lie.
This storm, like the first, is of the nature of a squall, and it ends as
abruptly as the other. We dig no further. My friend says that it is
enough-he has proved his point. He turns to replace the bones in the
trench and covers them. But they fall to pieces under his touch: the air
has disintegrated them, and he can only sweep in the fragments. The next
act of his plan is more than difficult, but is carried out. The
treasures are inhumed again in their respective holes: they are not
ours. Each deposition seems to cost him a twinge; and at one moment I
fancied I saw him slip his hand into his coat pocket.
'We must re-bury them all,' say I.
'O yes,' he answers with integrity. 'I was wiping my hand.'
The beauties of the tesselated floor of the governor's house are once
again consigned to darkness; the trench is filled up; the sod laid
smoothly down; he wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the same
handkerchief he had used to mop the skeleton and tesserae clean; and we
make for the eastern gate of the fortress.
Dawn bursts upon us suddenly as we reach the opening. It comes by the
lifting and thinning of the clouds that way till we are bathed in a pink
light. The direction of his homeward journey is not the same as mine,
and we part under the outer slope.
Walking along quickly to restore warmth I muse upon my eccentric friend,
and cannot help asking myself this question: Did he really replace the
gilded image of the god Mercurius with the rest of the treasures? He
seemed to do so; and yet I could not testify to the fact. Probably,
however, he was as good as his word. * * *
It was thus I spoke to myself, and so the adventure ended. But one thing
remains to be told, and that is concerned with seven years after. Among
the effects of my friend, at that time just deceased, was found,
carefully preserved, a gilt statuette representing Mercury, labelled
'Debased Roman.' No record was attached to explain how it came into his
possession. The figure was bequeathed to the Casterbridge Museum.
Detroit Post,
March 1885.
WHAT THE SHEPHERD SAW A TALE OF FOUR MOONLIGHT NIGHTS
The genial Justice of the Peace-now, alas, no more-who made himself
responsible for the facts of this story, used to begin in the good old-
fashioned way with a bright moonlight night and a mysterious figure, an
excellent stroke for an opening, even to this day, if well followed up.
The Christmas moon (he would say) was showing her cold face to the
upland, the upland reflecting the radiance in frost-sparkles so minute
as only to be discernible by an eye near at hand. This eye, he said, was
the eye of a shepherd lad, young for his occupation, who stood within a
wheeled hut of the kind commonly in use among sheep-keepers during the
early lambing season, and was abstractedly looking through the loophole
at the scene without.
The spot was called Lambing Corner, and it was a sheltered portion of
that wide expanse of rough pastureland known as the Marlbury Downs,
which you directly traverse when following the turnpike-road across Mid-
Wessex from London, through Aldbrickham, in the direction of Bath and
Bristol. Here, where the hut stood, the land was high and dry, open,
except to the north, and commanding an undulating view for miles. On the
north side grew a tall belt of coarse furze, with enormous stalks, a
clump of the same standing detached in front of the general mass. The
clump was hollow, and the interior had been ingeniously taken advantage
of as a position for the before-mentioned hut, which was thus completely
screened from winds, and almost invisible, except through the narrow
approach. But the furze twigs had been cut away from the two little
windows of the hut, that the occupier might keep his eye on his sheep.
In the rear, the shelter afforded by the belt of furze bushes was
artificially improved by an inclosure of upright stakes, interwoven with
boughs of the same prickly vegetation, and within the inclosure lay a
renowned Marlbury-Down breeding flock of eight hundred ewes.
To the south, in the direction of the young shepherd's idle gaze, there
rose one conspicuous object above the uniform moonlit plateau, and only
one. It was a Druidical trilithon, consisting of three oblong stones in
the form of a doorway, two on end, and one across as a lintel. Each
stone had been worn, scratched, washed, nibbled, split, and otherwise
attacked by ten thousand different weathers; but now the blocks looked
shapely and little the worse for wear, so beautifully were they silvered
over by the light of the moon. The ruin was locally called the Devil's
Door.
An old shepherd presently entered the hut from the direction of the
ewes, and looked around in the gloom. 'Be ye sleepy?' he asked in cross
accents of the boy.
The lad replied rather timidly in the negative.
'Then,' said the shepherd, 'I'll get me home-along, and rest for a few
hours. There's nothing to be done here now as I can see. The ewes can
want no more tending till daybreak-'tis beyond the bounds of reason that
they can. But as the order is that one of us must bide, I'll leave 'ee,
d'ye hear. You can sleep by day, and I can't. And you can be down to my
house in ten minutes if anything should happen. I can't afford 'ee
candle; but, as 'tis Christmas week, and the time that folks have
hollerdays, you can enjoy yerself by falling asleep a bit in the chair
instead of biding awake all the time. But mind, not longer at once than
while the shade of the Devil's Door moves a couple of spans, for you
must keep an eye upon the ewes.'
The boy made no definite reply, and the old man, stirring the fire in
the stove with his crook-stem, closed the door upon his companion and
vanished.
As this had been more or less the course of events every night since the
season's lambing had set in, the boy was not at all surprised at the
charge, and amused himself for some time by lighting straws at the
stove. He then went out to the ewes and new-born lambs, re-entered, sat
down, and finally fell asleep. This was his customary manner of
performing his watch, for though special permission for naps had this
week been accorded, he had, as a matter of fact, done the same thing on
every preceding night, sleeping often till awakened by a smack on the
shoulder at three or four in the morning from the crook-stem of the old
man.
It might have been about eleven o'clock when he awoke. He was so
surprised at awaking without, apparently, being called or struck, that
on second thoughts he assumed that somebody must have called him in
spite of appearances, and looked out of the hut window towards the
sheep. They all lay as quiet as when he had visited them, very little
bleating being audible, and no human soul disturbing the scene. He next
looked from the opposite window, and here the case was different. The
frost-facets glistened under the moon as before; an occasional furze
bush showed as a dark spot on the same; and in the foreground stood the
ghostly form of the trilithon. But in front of the trilithon stood a
man.
That he was not the shepherd or any one of the farm labourers was
apparent in a moment's observation,-his dress being a dark suit, and his
figure of slender build and graceful carriage. He walked backwards and
forwards in front of the trilithon.
The shepherd lad had hardly done speculating on the strangeness of the
unknown's presence here at such an hour, when he saw a second figure
crossing the open sward towards the locality of the trilithon and furze-
clump that screened the hut. This second personage was a woman; and
immediately on sight of her the male stranger hastened forward, meeting
her just in front of the hut window. Before she seemed to be aware of
his intention he clasped her in his arms.
The lady released herself and drew back with some dignity.
'You have come, Harriet-bless you for it!' he exclaimed, fervently.
'But not for this,' she answered, in offended accents. And then, more
good-naturedly, 'I have come, Fred, because you entreated me so! What
can have been the object of your writing such a letter? I feared I might
be doing you grievous ill by staying away. How did you come here?'
'I walked all the way from my father's.'
'Well, what is it? How have you lived since we last met?'
'But roughly; you might have known that without asking. I have seen many
lands and many faces since I last walked these downs, but I have only
thought of you.'
'Is it only to tell me this that you have summoned me so strangely?'
A passing breeze blew away the murmur of the reply and several
succeeding sentences, till the man's voice again became audible in the
words, 'Harriet-truth between us two! I have heard that the Duke does
not treat you too well.'
'He is warm-tempered, but he is a good husband.'
'He speaks roughly to you, and sometimes even threatens to lock you out
of doors.'
'Only once, Fred! On my honour, only once. The Duke is a fairly good
husband, I repeat. But you deserve punishment for this night's trick of
drawing me out. What does it mean?'
'Harriet, dearest, is this fair or honest? Is it not notorious that your
life with him is a sad one-that, in spite of the sweetness of your
temper, the sourness of his embitters your days. I have come to know if
I can help you. You are a Duchess, and I am Fred Ogbourne; but it is not
impossible that I may be able to help you . . . By God! the sweetness of
that tongue ought to keep him civil, especially when there is added to
it the sweetness of that face!'
'Captain Ogbourne!' she exclaimed, with an emphasis of playful fear.
'How can such a comrade of my youth behave to me as you do? Don't speak
so, and stare at me so! Is this really all you have to say? I see I
ought not to have come. 'Twas thoughtlessly done.'
Another breeze broke the thread of discourse for a time.
'Very well. I perceive you are dead and lost to me,' he could next be
heard to say, '"Captain Ogbourne" proves that. As I once loved you I
love you now, Harriet, without one jot of abatement; but you are not the
woman you were-you once were honest towards me; and now you conceal your
heart in made-up speeches. Let it be: I can never see you again.'
'You need not say that in such a tragedy tone, you silly. You may see me
in an ordinary way-why should you not? But, of course, not in such a way
as this. I should not have come now, if it had not happened that the
Duke is away from home, so that there is nobody to check my erratic
impulses.'
'When does he return?'
'The day after to-morrow, or the day after that.'
'Then meet me again to-morrow night.'
'No, Fred, I cannot.'
'If you cannot to-morrow night, you can the night after; one of the two
before he comes please bestow on me. Now, your hand upon it! To-morrow
or next night you will see me to bid me farewell!' He seized the
Duchess's hand.
'No, but Fred-let go my hand! What do you mean by holding me so? If it
be love to forget all respect to a woman's present position in thinking
of her past, then yours may be so, Frederick. It is not kind and gentle
of you to induce me to come to this place for pity of you, and then to
hold me tight here.'
'But see me once more! I have come two thousand miles to ask it.'
'O, I must not! There will be slanders-Heaven knows what! I cannot meet
you. For the sake of old times don't ask it.'
'Then own two things to me; that you did love me once, and that your
husband is unkind to you often enough now to make you think of the time
when you cared for me.'
'Yes-I own them both,' she answered faintly. 'But owning such as that
tells against me; and I swear the inference is not true.'
'Don't say that; for you have come-let me think the reason of your
coming what I like to think it. It can do you no harm. Come once more!'
He still held her hand and waist. 'Very well, then,' she said. 'Thus far
you shall persuade me. I will meet you to-morrow night or the night
after. Now, let me go.'
He released her, and they parted. The Duchess ran rapidly down the hill
towards the outlying mansion of Shakeforest Towers, and when he had
watched her out of sight, he turned and strode off in the opposite
direction. All then was silent and empty as before.
Yet it was only for a moment. When they had quite departed, another
shape appeared upon the scene. He came from behind the trilithon. He was
a man of stouter build than the first, and wore the boots and spurs of a
horseman. Two things were at once obvious from this phenomenon: that he
had watched the interview between the Captain and the Duchess; and that,
though he probably had seen every movement of the couple, including the
embrace, he had been too remote to hear the reluctant words of the
lady's conversation-or, indeed, any words at all-so that the meeting
must have exhibited itself to his eye as the assignation of a pair of
well-agreed lovers. But it was necessary that several years should
elapse before the shepherd-boy was old enough to reason out this.
The third individual stood still for a moment, as if deep in meditation.
He crossed over to where the lady and gentleman had stood, and looked at
the ground; then he too turned and went away in a third direction, as
widely divergent as possible from those taken by the two interlocutors.
His course was towards the highway; and a few minutes afterwards the
trot of a horse might have been heard upon its frosty surface, lessening
till it died away upon the ear.
The boy remained in the hut, confronting the trilithon as if he expected
yet more actors on the scene, but nobody else appeared. How long he
stood with his little face against the loophole he hardly knew; but he
was rudely awakened from his reverie by a punch in his back, and in the
feel of it he familiarly recognized the stem of the old shepherd's
crook.
'Blame thy young eyes and limbs, Bill Mills-now you have let the fire
out, and you know I want it kept in! I thought something would go wrong
with 'ee up here, and I couldn't bide in bed no more than thistledown on
the wind, that I could not! Well, what's happened, fie upon 'ee?'
'Nothing.'
'Ewes all as I left 'em?'
'Yes.'
'Any lambs want bringing in?'
'No.'
The shepherd relit the fire, and went out among the sheep with a
lantern, for the moon was getting low. Soon he came in again.
'Blame it all-thou'st say that nothing have happened; when one ewe have
twinned and is like to go off, and another is dying for want of half an
eye of looking to! I told 'ee, Bill Mills, if anything went wrong to
come down and call me; and this is how you have done it.'
'You said I could go to sleep for a hollerday, and I did.'
'Don't you speak to your betters like that, young man, or you'll come to
the gallows-tree! You didn't sleep all the time, or you wouldn't have
been peeping out of that there hole! Now you can go home, and be up here
again by breakfast-time. I be an old man, and there's old men that
deserve well of the world; but no I-must rest how I can!'
The elder shepherd then lay down inside the hut, and the boy went down
the hill to the hamlet where he dwelt. SECOND NIGHT
When the next night drew on the actions of the boy were almost enough to
show that he was thinking of the meeting he had witnessed, and of the
promise wrung from the lady that she would come there again. As far as
the sheep-tending arrangements were concerned, to-night was but a
repetition of the foregoing one. Between ten and eleven o'clock the old
shepherd withdrew as usual for what sleep at home he might chance to get
without interruption, making up the other necessary hours of rest at
some time during the day; the boy was left alone.
The frost was the same as on the night before, except perhaps that it
was a little more severe. The moon shone as usual, except that it was
three-quarters of an hour later in its course; and the boy's condition
was much the same, except that he felt no sleepiness whatever. He felt,
too, rather afraid; but upon the whole he preferred witnessing an
assignation of strangers to running the risk of being discovered absent
by the old shepherd.
It was before the distant clock of Shakeforest Towers had struck eleven
that he observed the opening of the second act of this midnight drama.
It consisted in the appearance of neither lover nor Duchess, but of the
third figure-the stout man, booted and spurred-who came up from the
easterly direction in which he had retreated the night before. He walked
once round the trilithon, and next advanced towards the clump concealing
the hut, the moonlight shining full upon his face and revealing him to
be the Duke. Fear seized upon the shepherd-boy: the Duke was Jove
himself to the rural population, whom to offend was starvation,
homelessness, and death, and whom to look at was to be mentally scathed
and dumbfoundered. He closed the stove, so that not a spark of light
appeared, and hastily buried himself in the straw that lay in a corner.
The Duke came close to the clump of furze and stood by the spot where
his wife and the Captain had held their dialogue; he examined the furze
as if searching for a hiding-place, and in doing so discovered the hut.
The latter he walked round and then looked inside; finding it to all
seeming empty, he entered, closing the door behind him and taking his
place at the little circular window against which the boy's face had
been pressed just before.
The Duke had not adopted his measures too rapidly, if his object were
concealment. Almost as soon as he had stationed himself there eleven
o'clock struck, and the slender young man who had previously graced the
scene promptly reappeared from the north quarter of the down. The spot
of assignation having, by the accident of his running forward on the
foregoing night, removed itself from the Devil's Door to the clump of
furze, he instinctively came thither, and waited for the Duchess where
he had met her before.
But a fearful surprise was in store for him to-night, as well as for the
trembling juvenile. At his appearance the Duke breathed more and more
quickly, his breathings being distinctly audible to the crouching boy.
The young man had hardly paused when the alert nobleman softly opened
the door of the hut, and, stepping round the furze, came full upon
Captain Fred.
'You have dishonoured her, and you shall die the death you deserve!'
came to the shepherd's ears, in a harsh, hollow whisper through the
boarding of the hut.
The apathetic and taciturn boy was excited enough to run the risk of
rising and looking from the window, but he could see nothing for the
intervening furze boughs, both the men having gone round to the side.
What took place in the few following moments he never exactly knew. He
discerned portion of a shadow in quick muscular movement; then there was
the fall of something on the grass; then there was stillness.
Two or three minutes later the Duke became visible round the corner of
the hut, dragging by the collar the now inert body of the second man.
The Duke dragged him across the open space towards the trilithon. Behind
this ruin was a hollow, irregular spot, overgrown with furze and stunted
thorns, and riddled by the old holes of badgers, its former inhabitants,
who had now died out or departed. The Duke vanished into this depression
with his burden, reappearing after the lapse of a few seconds. When he
came forth he dragged nothing behind him.
He returned to the side of the hut, cleansed something on the grass, and
again put himself on the watch, though not as before, inside the hut,
but without, on the shady side. 'Now for the second!' he said.
It was plain, even to the unsophisticated boy, that he now awaited the
other person of the appointment-his wife, the Duchess-for what purpose
it was terrible to think. He seemed to be a man of such determined
temper that he would scarcely hesitate in carrying out a course of
revenge to the bitter end. Moreover-though it was what the shepherd did
not perceive-this was all the more probable, in that the moody Duke was
labouring under the exaggerated impression which the sight of the
meeting in dumb show had conveyed.
The jealous watcher waited long, but he waited in vain. From within the
hut the boy could hear his occasional exclamations of surprise, as if he
were almost disappointed at the failure of his assumption that his
guilty Duchess would surely keep the tryst. Sometimes he stepped from
the shade of the furze into the moonlight, and held up his watch to
learn the time.
About half-past eleven he seemed to give up expecting her. He then went
a second time to the hollow behind the trilithon, remaining there nearly
a quarter of an hour. From this place he proceeded quickly over a
shoulder of the declivity, a little to the left, presently returning on
horseback, which proved that his horse had been tethered in some secret
place down there. Crossing anew the down between the hut and the
trilithon, and scanning the precincts as if finally to assure himself
that she had not come, he rode slowly downwards in the direction of
Shakeforest Towers.
The juvenile shepherd thought of what lay in the hollow yonder; and no
fear of the crook-stem of his superior officer was potent enough to
detain him longer on that hill alone. Any live company, even the most
terrible, was better than the company of the dead; so, running with the
speed of a hare in the direction pursued by the horseman, he overtook
the revengeful Duke at the second descent (where the great western road
crossed before you came to the old park entrance on that side-now closed
up and the lodge cleared away, though at the time it was wondered why,
being considered the most convenient gate of all).
Once within the sound of the horse's footsteps, Bill Mills felt
comparatively comfortable; for, though in awe of the Duke because of his
position, he had no moral repugnance to his companionship on account of
the grisly deed he had committed, considering that powerful nobleman to
have a right to do what he chose on his own lands. The Duke rode
steadily on beneath his ancestral trees, the hoofs of his horse sending
up a smart sound now that he had reached the hard road of the drive, and
soon drew near the front door of his house, surmounted by parapets with
square-cut battlements that cast a notched shade upon the gravelled
terrace. These outlines were quite familiar to little Bill Mills, though
nothing within their boundary had ever been seen by him.
When the rider approached the mansion a small turret door was quickly
opened and a woman came out. As soon as she saw the horseman's outlines
she ran forward into the moonlight to meet him.
'Ah dear-and are you come?' she said. 'I heard Hero's tread just when
you rode over the hill, and I knew it in a moment. I would have come
further if I had been aware-'
'Glad to see me, eh?'
'How can you ask that?'
'Well; it is a lovely night for meetings.'
'Yes, it is a lovely night.'
The Duke dismounted and stood by her side. 'Why should you have been
listening at this time of night, and yet not expecting me?' he asked.
'Why, indeed! There is a strange story attached to that, which I must
tell you at once. But why did you come a night sooner than you said you
would come? I am rather sorry-I really am!' (shaking her head playfully)
'for as a surprise to you I had ordered a bonfire to be built, which was
to be lighted on your arrival to-morrow; and now it is wasted. You can
see the outline of it just out there.'
The Duke looked across to a spot of rising glade, and saw the faggots in
a heap. He then bent his eyes with a bland and puzzled air on the
ground, 'What is this strange story you have to tell me that kept you
awake?' he murmured.
'It is this-and it is really rather serious. My cousin Fred Ogbourne-
Captain Ogbourne as he is now-was in his boyhood a great admirer of
mine, as I think I have told you, though I was six years his senior. In
strict truth, he was absurdly fond of me.'
'You have never told me of that before.'
'Then it was your sister I told-yes, it was. Well, you know I have not
seen him for many years, and naturally I had quite forgotten his
admiration of me in old times. But guess my surprise when the day before
yesterday, I received a mysterious note bearing no address, and found on
opening it that it came from him. The contents frightened me out of my
wits. He had returned from Canada to his father's house, and conjured me
by all he could think of to meet him at once. But I think I can repeat
the exact words, though I will show it to you when we get indoors.
"MY DEAR COUSIN HARRIET," the note said, "After this long absence you
will be surprised at my sudden reappearance, and more by what I am going
to ask. But if my life and future are of any concern to you at all, I
beg that you will grant my request. What I require of you, is, dear
Harriet, that you meet me about eleven to-night by the Druid stones on
Marlbury Downs, about a mile or more from your house. I cannot say more,
except to entreat you to come. I will explain all when you are there.
The one thing is, I want to see you. Come alone. Believe me, I would not
ask this if my happiness did not hang upon it-God knows how entirely! I
am too agitated to say more-Yours. FRED."
'That was all of it. Now, of course I ought have gone, as it turned out,
but that I did not think of then. I remembered his impetuous temper, and
feared that something grievous was impending over his head, while he had
not a friend in the world to help him, or any one except myself to whom
he would care to make his trouble known. So I wrapped myself up and went
to Marlbury Downs at the time he had named. Don't you think I was
courageous?'
'Very.'
'When I got there-but shall we not walk on; it is getting cold?' The
Duke, however, did not move. 'When I got there he came, of course, as a
full grown man and officer, and not as the lad that I had known him.
When I saw him I was sorry I had come. I can hardly tell you how he
behaved. What he wanted I don't know even now; it seemed to be no more
than the mere meeting with me. He held me by the hand and waist-O so
tight-and would not let me go till I had promised to meet him again. His
manner was so strange and passionate that I was afraid of him in such a
lonely place, and I promised to come. Then I escaped-then I ran home-and
that's all. When the time drew on this evening for the appointment-
which, of course, I never intended to keep, I felt uneasy, lest when he
found I meant to disappoint him he would come on to the house; and
that's why I could not sleep. But you are so silent!'
'I have had a long journey.'
'Then let us get into the house. Why did you come alone and unattended
like this?'
'It was my humour.'
After a moment's silence, during which they moved on, she said, 'I have
thought of something which I hardly like to suggest to you. He said that
if I failed to come to-night he would wait again to-morrow night. Now,
shall we to-morrow night go to the hill together-just to see if he is
there; and if he is, read him a lesson on his foolishness in nourishing
this old passion, and sending for me so oddly, instead of coming to the
house?'
'Why should we see if he's there?' said her husband moodily.
'Because I think we ought to do something in it. Poor Fred! He would
listen to you if you reasoned with him, and set our positions in their
true light before him. It would be no more than Christian kindness to a
man who unquestionably is very miserable from some cause or other. His
head seems quite turned.'
By this time they had reached the door, rung the bell, and waited. All
the house seemed to be asleep; but soon a man came to them, the horse
was taken away, and the Duke and Duchess went in. THIRD NIGHT
There was no help for it. Bill Mills was obliged to stay on duty, in the
old shepherd's absence, this evening as before, or give up his post and
living. He thought as bravely as he could of what lay behind the Devil's
Door, but with no great success, and was therefore in a measure
relieved, even if awe-stricken, when he saw the forms of the Duke and
Duchess strolling across the frosted greensward. The Duchess was a few
yards in front of her husband and tripped on lightly.
'I tell you he has not thought it worth while to come again!' the Duke
insisted, as he stood still, reluctant to walk further.
'He is more likely to come and wait all night; and it would be harsh
treatment to let him do it a second time.'
'He is not here; so turn and come home.'
'He seems not to be here, certainly; I wonder if anything has happened
to him. If it has, I shall never forgive myself!'
The Duke, uneasily, 'O, no. He has some other engagement.'
'That is very unlikely.'
'Or perhaps he has found the distance too far.'
'Nor is that probable.'
'Then he may have thought better of it.'
'Yes, he may have thought better of it; if, indeed, he is not here all
the time-somewhere in the hollow behind the Devil's Door. Let us go and
see; it will serve him right to surprise him.'
'O, he's not there.'
'He may be lying very quiet because of you,' she said archly.
'O, no-not because of me!'
'Come, then. I declare, dearest, you lag like an unwilling schoolboy to-
night, and there's no responsiveness in you! You are jealous of that
poor lad, and it is quite absurd of you.'
'I'll come! I'll come! Say no more, Harriet!' And they crossed over the
green.
Wondering what they would do, the young shepherd left the hut, and
doubled behind the belt of furze, intending to stand near the trilithon
unperceived. But, in crossing the few yards of open ground he was for a
moment exposed to view.
'Ah, I see him at last!' said the Duchess.
'See him!' said the Duke. 'Where?'
'By the Devil's Door; don't you notice a figure there? Ah, my poor
lover-cousin, won't you catch it now?' And she laughed half-pityingly.
'But what's the matter?' she asked, turning to her husband.
'It is not he!' said the Duke hoarsely. 'It can't be he!'
'No, it is not he. It is too small for him. It is a boy.'
'Ah, I thought so! Boy, come here.'
The youthful shepherd advanced with apprehension.
'What are you doing here?'
'Keeping sheep, your Grace.'
'Ah, you know me! Do you keep sheep here every night?'
'Off and on, my Lord Duke.'
'And what have you seen here to-night or last night?' inquired the
Duchess. 'Any person waiting or walking about?'
The boy was silent.
'He has seen nothing,' interrupted her husband, his eyes so forbiddingly
fixed on the boy that they seemed to shine like points of fire. 'Come,
let us go. The air is too keen to stand in long.'
When they were gone the boy retreated to the hut and sheep, less fearful
now than at first-familiarity with the situation having gradually
overpowered his thoughts of the buried man. But he was not to be left
alone long. When an interval had elapsed of about sufficient length for
walking to and from Shakeforest Towers, there appeared from that
direction the heavy form of the Duke. He now came alone.
The nobleman, on his part, seemed to have eyes no less sharp than the
boy's, for he instantly recognized the latter among the ewes, and came
straight towards him.
'Are you the shepherd lad I spoke to a short time ago?'
'I be, my Lord Duke.'
'Now listen to me. Her Grace asked you what you had seen this last night
or two up here, and you made no reply. I now ask the same thing, and you
need not be afraid to answer. Have you seen anything strange these
nights you have been watching here?'
'My Lord Duke, I be a poor heedless boy, and what I see I don't bear in
mind.'
'I ask you again,' said the Duke, coming nearer, 'have you seen anything
strange these nights you have been watching here?'
'O, my Lord Duke! I be but the under-shepherd boy, and my father he was
but your humble Grace's hedger, and my mother only the cinder-woman in
the back-yard! I fall asleep when left alone, and I see nothing at all!'
The Duke grasped the boy by the shoulder, and, directly impending over
him, stared down into his face, 'Did you see anything strange done here
last night, I say?'
'O, my Lord Duke, have mercy, and don't stab me!' cried the shepherd,
falling on his knees. 'I have never seen you walking here, or riding
here, or lying-in-wait for a man, or dragging a heavy load!'
'H'm!' said his interrogator, grimly, relaxing his hold. 'It is well to
know that you have never seen those things. Now, which would you rather-
see me do those things now, or keep a secret all your life?'
'Keep a secret, my Lord Duke!'
'Sure you are able?'
'O, your Grace, try me!'
'Very well. And now, how do you like sheep-keeping?'
'Not at all. 'Tis lonely work for them that think of spirits, and I'm
badly used.'
'I believe you. You are too young for it. I must do something to make
you more comfortable. You shall change this smock-frock for a real cloth
jacket, and your thick boots for polished shoes. And you shall be taught
what you have never yet heard of; and be put to school, and have bats
and balls for the holidays, and be made a man of. But you must never say
you have been a shepherd boy, and watched on the hills at night, for
shepherd boys are not liked in good company.
'Trust me, my Lord Duke.'
'The very moment you forget yourself, and speak of your shepherd days-
this year, next year, in school, out of school, or riding in your
carriage twenty years hence-at that moment my help will be withdrawn,
and smash down you come to shepherding forthwith. You have parents, I
think you say?'
'A widowed mother only, my Lord Duke.'
'I'll provide for her, and make a comfortable woman of her, until you
speak of-what?'
'Of my shepherd days, and what I saw here.'
'Good. If you do speak of it?'
'Smash down she comes to widowing forthwith!'
'That's well-very well. But it's not enough. Come here.' He took the boy
across to the trilithon, and made him kneel down.
'Now, this was once a holy place,' resumed the Duke. 'An altar stood
here, erected to a venerable family of gods, who were known and talked
of long before the God we know now. So that an oath sworn here is doubly
an oath. Say this after me: "May all the host above-angels and
archangels, and principalities and powers-punish me; may I be tormented
wherever I am-in the house or in the garden, in the fields or in the
roads, in church or in chapel, at home or abroad, on land or at sea; may
I be afflicted in eating and in drinking, in growing up and in growing
old, in living and dying, inwardly and outwardly, and for always, if I
ever speak of my life as a shepherd boy, or of what I have seen done on
this Marlbury Down. So be it, and so let it be. Amen and amen." Now kiss
the stone.'
The trembling boy repeated the words, and kissed the stone, as desired.
The Duke led him off by the hand. That night the junior shepherd slept
in Shakeforest Towers, and the next day he was sent away for tuition to
a remote village. Thence he went to a preparatory establishment, and in
due course to a public school. FOURTH NIGHT
On a winter evening many years subsequent to the above-mentioned
occurrences, the ci-devant shepherd sat in a well-furnished office in
the north wing of Shakeforest Towers in the guise of an ordinary
educated man of business. He appeared at this time as a person of
thirty-eight or forty, though actually he was several years younger. A
worn and restless glance of the eye now and then, when he lifted his
head to search for some letter or paper which had been mislaid, seemed
to denote that his was not a mind so thoroughly at ease as his
surroundings might have led an observer to expect.
His pallor, too, was remarkable for a countryman. He was professedly
engaged in writing, but he shaped not word. He had sat there only a few
minutes, when, laying down his pen and pushing back his chair, he rested
a hand uneasily on each of the chair-arms and looked on the floor.
Soon he arose and left the room. His course was along a passage which
ended in a central octagonal hall; crossing this he knocked at a door. A
faint, though deep, voice told him to come in. The room he entered was
the library, and it was tenanted by a single person only-his patron the
Duke.
During this long interval of years the Duke had lost all his heaviness
of build. He was, indeed, almost a skeleton; his white hair was thin,
and his hands were nearly transparent. 'Oh-Mills?' he murmured. 'Sit
down. What is it?'
'Nothing new, your Grace. Nobody to speak of has written, and nobody has
called.'
'Ah-what then? You look concerned.'
'Old times have come to life, owing to something waking them.'
'Old times be cursed-which old times are they?'
'That Christmas week twenty-two years ago, when the late Duchess's
cousin Frederick implored her to meet him on Marlbury Downs. I saw the
meeting-it was just such a night as this-and I, as you know, saw more.
She met him once, but not the second time.'
'Mills, shall I recall some words to you-the words of an oath taken on
that hill by a shepherd-boy?'
'It is unnecessary. He has strenuously kept that oath and promise. Since
that night no sound of his shepherd life has crossed his lips-even to
yourself. But do you wish to hear more, or do you not, your Grace?'
'I wish to hear no more,' said the Duke sullenly.
'Very well; let it be so. But a time seems coming-may be quite near at
hand-when, in spite of my lips, that episode will allow itself to go
undivulged no longer.'
'I wish to hear no more!' repeated the Duke.
'You need be under no fear of treachery from me,' said the steward,
somewhat bitterly. 'I am a man to whom you have been kind-no patron
could have been kinder. You have clothed and educated me; have installed
me here; and I am not unmindful. But what of it-has your Grace gained
much by my stanchness? I think not. There was great excitement about
Captain Ogbourne's disappearance, but I spoke not a word. And his body
has never been found. For twenty-two years I have wondered what you did
with him. Now I know. A circumstance that occurred this afternoon
recalled the time to me most forcibly. To make it certain to myself that
all was not a dream, I went up there with a spade; I searched, and saw
enough to know that something decays there in a closed badger's hole.'
'Mills, do you think the Duchess guessed?'
'She never did, I am sure, to the day of her death.'
'Did you leave all as you found it on the hill?'
'I did.'
'What made you think of going up there this particular afternoon?'
'What your Grace says you don't wish to be told.'
The Duke was silent; and the stillness of the evening was so marked that
there reached their ears from the outer air the sound of a tolling bell.
'What is that bell tolling for?' asked the nobleman.
'For what I came to tell you of, your Grace.'
'You torment me it is your way!' said the Duke querulously. 'Who's dead
in the village?'
'The oldest man-the old shepherd.'
'Dead at last-how old is he?'
'Ninety-four.'
'And I am only seventy. I have four-and-twenty years to the good!'
'I served under that old man when I kept sheep on Marlbury Downs. And he
was on the hill that second night, when I first exchanged words with
your Grace. He was on the hill all the time; but I did not know he was
there-nor did you.'
'Ah!' said the Duke, starting up. 'Go on-I yield the point-you may
tell!'
'I heard this afternoon that he was at the point of death. It was that
which set me thinking of that past time-and induced me to search on the
hill for what I have told you. Coming back I heard that he wished to see
the Vicar to confess to him a secret he had kept for more than twenty
years-"out of respect to my Lord the Duke"-something that he had seen
committed on Marlbury Downs when returning to the flock on a December
night twenty-two years ago. I have thought it over. He had left me in
charge that evening; but he was in the habit of coming back suddenly,
lest I should have fallen asleep. That night I saw nothing of him,
though he had promised to return. He must have returned, and-found
reason to keep in hiding. It is all plain. The next thing is that the
Vicar went to him two hours ago. Further than that I have not heard.'
'It is quite enough. I will see the Vicar at daybreak to-morrow.'
'What to do?'
'Stop his tongue for four-and-twenty years-till I am dead at ninety-
four, like the shepherd.'
'Your Grace-while you impose silence on me, I will not speak, even
though nay neck should pay the penalty. I promised to be yours, and I am
yours. But is this persistence of any avail?'
'I'll stop his tongue, I say!' cried the Duke with some of his old
rugged force. 'Now, you go home to bed, Mills, and leave me to manage
him.'
The interview ended, and the steward withdrew. The night, as he had
said, was just such an one as the night of twenty-two years before, and
the events of the evening destroyed in him all regard for the season as
one of cheerfulness and goodwill. He went off to his own house on the
further verge of the park, where he led a lonely life, scarcely calling
any man friend. At eleven he prepared to retire to bed-but did not
retire. He sat down and reflected. Twelve o'clock struck; he looked out
at the colourless moon, and, prompted by he knew not what, put on his
hat and emerged into the air. Here William Mills strolled on and on,
till he reached the top of Marlbury Downs, a spot he had not visited at
this hour of the night during the whole score-and-odd years.
He placed himself, as nearly as he could guess, on the spot where the
shepherd's hut had stood. No lambing was in progress there now, and the
old shepherd who had used him so roughly had ceased from his labours
that very day. But the trilithon stood up white as ever; and, crossing
the intervening sward, the steward fancifully placed his mouth against
the stone. Restless and self-reproachful as he was, he could not resist
a smile as he thought of the terrifying oath of compact, sealed by a
kiss upon the stones of a Pagan temple. But he had kept his word, rather
as a promise than as a formal vow, with much worldly advantage to
himself, though not much happiness; till increase of years had bred
reactionary feelings which led him to receive the news of to-night with
emotions akin to relief.
While leaning against the Devil's Door and thinking on these things, he
became conscious that he was not the only inhabitant of the down. A
figure in white was moving across his front with long, noiseless
strides. Mills stood motionless, and when the form drew quite near he
perceived it to be that of the Duke himself in his nightshirt-apparently
walking in his sleep. Not to alarm the old man, Mills clung close to the
shadow of the stone. The Duke went straight on into the hollow. There he
knelt down, and began scratching the earth with his hands like a badger.
After a few minutes he arose, sighed heavily, and retraced his steps as
he had come.
Fearing that he might harm himself, yet unwilling to arouse him, the
steward followed noiselessly. The Duke kept on his path unerringly,
entered the park, and made for the house, where he let himself in by a
window that stood open-the one probably by which he had come out. Mills
softly closed the window behind his patron, and then retired homeward to
await the revelations of the morning, deeming it unnecessary to alarm
the house.
However, he felt uneasy during the remainder of the night, no less on
account of the Duke's personal condition than because of that which was
imminent next day. Early in the morning he called at Shakeforest Towers.
The blinds were down, and there was something singular upon the porter's
face when he opened the door. The steward inquired for the Duke.
The man's voice was subdued as he replied: 'Sir, I am sorry to say that
his Grace is dead! He left his room some time in the night, and wandered
about nobody knows where. On returning to the upper floor he lost his
balance and fell downstairs.'
The steward told the tale of the Down before the Vicar had spoken. Mills
had always intended to do so after the death of the Duke. The
consequences to himself he underwent cheerfully; but his life was not
prolonged. He died, a farmer at the Cape, when still somewhat under
forty-nine years of age.
The splendid Marlbury breeding flock is as renowned as ever, and, to the
eye, seems the same in every particular that it was in earlier times;
but the animals which composed it on the occasion of the events gathered
from the Justice are divided by many ovine generations from its members
now. Lambing Corner has long since ceased to be used for lambing
purposes, though the name still lingers on as the appellation of the
spot. This abandonment of site may be partly owing to the removal of the
high furze bushes which lent such convenient shelter at that date.
Partly, too, it may be due to another circumstance. For it is said by
present shepherds in that district that during the nights of Christmas
week flitting shapes are seen in the open space around the trilithon,
together with the gleam of a weapon, and the shadow of a man dragging a
burden into the hollow. But of these things there is no certain
testimony.
Christmas 1881.
A COMMITTEE-MAN OF 'THE TERROR'
We had been talking of the Georgian glories of our old-fashioned
watering-place, which now, with its substantial russet-red and dun brick
buildings in the style of the year eighteen hundred, looks like one side
of a Soho or Bloomsbury Street transported to the shore, and draws a
smile from the modern tourist who has no eye for solidity of build. The
writer, quite a youth, was present merely as a listener. The
conversation proceeded from general subjects to particular, until old
Mrs. H\x97, whose memory was as perfect at eighty as it had ever been in
her life, interested us all by the obvious fidelity with which she
repeated a story many times related to her by her mother when our aged
friend was a girl-a domestic drama much affecting the life of an
acquaintance of her said parent, one Mademoiselle V\x97, a teacher of
French. The incidents occurred in the town during the heyday of its
fortunes, at the time of our brief peace with France in 1802-3.
'I wrote it down in the shape of a story some years ago, just after my
mother's death,' said Mrs. H\x97. 'It is locked up in my desk there now.'
'Read it!' said we.
'No,' said she; 'the light is bad, and I can remember it well enough,
word for word, flourishes and all.' We could not be choosers in the
circumstances, and she began.
'There are two in it, of course, the man and the woman, and it was on an
evening in September that she first got to know him. There had not been
such a grand gathering on the Esplanade all the season. His Majesty King
George the Third was present, with all the princesses and royal dukes,
while upwards of three hundred of the general nobility and other persons
of distinction were also in the town at the time. Carriages and other
conveyances were arriving every minute from London and elsewhere; and
when among the rest a shabby stage-coach came in by a by-route along the
coast from Havenpool, and drew up at a second-rate tavern, it attracted
comparatively little notice.
'From this dusty vehicle a man alighted, left his small quantity of
luggage temporarily at the office, and walked along the street as if to
look for lodgings.
'He was about forty-five-possibly fifty-and wore a long coat of faded
superfine cloth, with a heavy collar, and a hunched-up neckcloth. He
seemed to desire obscurity.
'But the display appeared presently to strike him, and he asked of a
rustic he met in the street what was going on; his accent being that of
one to whom English pronunciation was difficult.
'The countryman looked at him with a slight surprise, and said, "King
Jarge is here and his royal Cwort."
'The stranger inquired if they were going to stay long.
'"Don't know, Sir. Same as they always do, I suppose."
'"How long is that?"
'"Till some time in October. They've come here every summer since
eighty-nine."
'The stranger moved onward down St. Thomas Street, and approached the
bridge over the harbour backwater, that then, as now, connected the old
town with the more modern portion. The spot was swept with the rays of a
low sun, which lit up the harbour lengthwise, and shone under the brim
of the man's hat and into his eyes as he looked westward. Against the
radiance figures were crossing in the opposite direction to his own;
among them this lady of my mother's later acquaintance, Mademoiselle V\x97
. She was the daughter of a good old French family, and at that date a
pale woman, twenty-eight or thirty years of age, tall and elegant in
figure, but plainly dressed and wearing that evening (she said) a small
muslin shawl crossed over the bosom in the fashion of the time, and tied
behind.
'At sight of his face, which, as she used to tell us, was unusually
distinct in the peering sunlight, she could not help giving a little
shriek of horror, for a terrible reason connected with her history, and
after walking a few steps further, she sank down against the parapet of
the bridge in a fainting fit.
'In his preoccupation the foreign gentleman had hardly noticed her, but
her strange collapse immediately attracted his attention. He quickly
crossed the carriageway, picked her up, and carried her into the first
shop adjoining the bridge, explaining that she was a lady who had been
taken ill outside.
'She soon revived; but, clearly much puzzled, her helper perceived that
she still had a dread of him which was sufficient to hinder her complete
recovery of self-command. She spoke in a quick and nervous way to the
shopkeeper, asking him to call a coach.
'This the shopkeeper did, Mademoiselle V\x97- and the stranger remaining in
constrained silence while he was gone. The coach came up, and giving the
man the address, she entered it and drove away.
'"Who is that lady?" said the newly arrived gentleman.
'"She's of your nation, as I should make bold to suppose," said the
shopkeeper. And he told the other that she was Mademoiselle V\x97,
governess at General Newbold's, in the same town.
'"You have many foreigners here?" the stranger inquired.
'"Yes, though mostly Hanoverians. But since the peace they are learning
French a good deal in genteel society, and French instructors are rather
in demand."
'"Yes, I teach it," said the visitor. "I am looking for a tutorship in
an academy."
'The information given by the burgess to the Frenchman seemed to explain
to the latter nothing of his countrywoman's conduct-which, indeed, was
the case-and he left the shop, taking his course again over the bridge
and along the south quay to the Old Rooms Inn, where he engaged a
bedchamber.
'Thoughts of the woman who had betrayed such agitation at sight of him
lingered naturally enough with the newcomer. Though, as I stated, not
much less than thirty years of age, Mademoiselle V\x97, one of his own
nation, and of highly refined and delicate appearance, had kindled a
singular interest in the middle-aged gentleman's breast, and her large
dark eyes, as they had opened and shrunk from him, exhibited a pathetic
beauty to which hardly any man could have been insensible.
'The next day, having written some letters, he went out and made known
at the office of the town "Guide" and of the newspaper, that a teacher
of French and calligraphy had arrived, leaving a card at the
bookseller's to the same effect. He then walked on aimlessly, but at
length inquired the way to General Newbold's. At the door, without
giving his name, he asked to see Mademoiselle V\x97, and was shown into a
little back parlour, where she came to him with a gaze of surprise.
'"My God! Why do you intrude here, Monsieur?" she gasped in French as
soon as she saw his face.
'"You were taken ill yesterday. I helped you. You might have been run
over if I had not picked you up. It was an act of simple humanity
certainly; but I thought I might come to ask if you had recovered?"
'She had turned aside, and had scarcely heard a word of his speech. "I
hate you, infamous man!" she said. "I cannot bear your helping me. Go
away!"
'"But you are a stranger to me."
'"I know you too well!"
'"You have the advantage then, Mademoiselle. I am a newcomer here. I
never have seen you before to my knowledge; and I certainly do not,
could not, hate you."
'"Are you not Monsieur B\x97?"
'He flinched. "I am-in Paris," he said. "But here I am Monsieur G\x97."
'"That is trivial. You are the man I say you are."
'"How did you know my real name, Mademoiselle?"
'"I saw you in years gone by, when you did not see me. You were formerly
Member of the Committee of Public Safety, under the Convention."
"I was."
'"You guillotined my father, my brother, my uncle-all my family, nearly,
and broke my mother's heart. They had done nothing but keep silence.
Their sentiments were only guessed. Their headless corpses were thrown
indiscriminately into the ditch of the Mousseaux Cemetery, and destroyed
with lime."
'He nodded.
'"You left me without a friend, and here I am now, alone in a foreign
land."
'"I am sorry for you," said be. "Sorry for the consequence, not for the
intent. What I did was a matter of conscience, and, from a point of view
indiscernible by you, I did right. I profited not a farthing. But I
shall not argue this. You have the satisfaction of seeing me here an
exile also, in poverty, betrayed by comrades, as friendless as
yourself."
'"It is no satisfaction to me, Monsieur."
'"Well, things done cannot be altered. Now the question: are you quite
recovered?"
'"Not from dislike and dread of you-otherwise, yes."
'"Good morning, Mademoiselle."
'"Good morning."
'They did not meet again till one evening at the theatre (which my
mother's friend was with great difficulty induced to frequent, to
perfect herself in English pronunciation, the idea she entertained at
that time being to become a teacher of English in her own country later
on). She found him sitting next to her, and it made her pale and
restless.
'"You are still afraid of me?"
'"I am. O cannot you understand!"
'He signified the affirmative.
'"I follow the play with difficulty," he said, presently.
'"So do I-now," said she.
'He regarded her long, and she was conscious of his look; and while she
kept her eyes on the stage they filled with tears. Still she would not
move, and the tears ran visibly down her cheek, though the play was a
merry one, being no other than Mr. Sheridan's comedy of "The Rivals,"
with Mr. S. Kemble as Captain Absolute. He saw her distress, and that
her mind was elsewhere; and abruptly rising from his seat at candle-
snuffing time he left the theatre.
'Though he lived in the old town, and she in the new, they frequently
saw each other at a distance. One of these occasions was when she was on
the north side of the harbour, by the ferry, waiting for the boat to
take her across. He was standing by Cove Row, on the quay opposite.
Instead of entering the boat when it arrived she stepped back from the
quay; but looking to see if he remained she beheld him pointing with his
finger to the ferry-boat.
'"Enter!" he said, in a voice loud enough to reach her.
'Mademoiselle V\x97- stood still.
'"Enter!" he said, and, as she did not move, he repeated the word a
third time.
'She had really been going to cross, and now approached and stepped down
into the boat. Though she did not raise her eyes she knew that he was
watching her over. At the landing steps she saw from under the brim of
her hat a hand stretched down. The steps were steep and slippery.
'"No, Monsieur," she said. "Unless, indeed, you believe in God, and
repent of your evil past!"
'"I am sorry you were made to suffer. But I only believe in the god
called Reason, and I do not repent. I was the instrument of a national
principle. Your friends were not sacrificed for any ends of mine."
'She thereupon withheld her hand, and clambered up unassisted. He went
on, ascending the Look-out Hill, and disappearing over the brow. Her way
was in the same direction, her errand being to bring home the two young
girls under her charge, who had gone to the cliff for an airing. When
she joined them at the top she saw his solitary figure at the further
edge, standing motionless against the sea. All the while that she
remained with her pupils he stood without turning, as if looking at the
frigates in the roadstead, but more probably in meditation, unconscious
where he was. In leaving the spot one of the children threw away half a
sponge-biscuit that she had been eating. Passing near it he stooped,
picked it up carefully, and put it in his pocket.
'Mademoiselle V\x97- came homeward, asking herself, "Can he be starving?"
'From that day he was invisible for so long a time that she thought he
had gone away altogether. But one evening a note came to her, and she
opened it trembling.
'"I am here ill," it said, "and, as you know, alone. There are one or
two little things I want done, in case my death should occur,-and I
should prefer not to ask the people here, if it could be avoided. Have
you enough of the gift of charity to come and carry out my wishes before
it is too late?"
'Now so it was that, since seeing him possess himself of the broken
cake, she had insensibly begun to feel something that was more than
curiosity, though perhaps less than anxiety, about this fellow-
countryman of hers; and it was not in her nervous and sensitive heart to
resist his appeal. She found his lodging (to which he had removed from
the Old Rooms inn for economy) to be a room over a shop, half-way up the
steep and narrow street of the old town, to which the fashionable
visitors seldom penetrated. With some misgiving she entered the house,
and was admitted to the chamber where he lay.
'"You are too good, too good," he murmured. And presently, "You need not
shut the door. You will feel safer, and they will not understand what we
say."
'"Are you in want, Monsieur? Can I give you-"
'"No, no. I merely want you to do a trifling thing or two that I have
not strength enough to do myself. Nobody in the town but you knows who I
really am-unless you have told?"
'"I have not told . . . I thought you might have acted from principle in
those sad days, even-"
'"You are kind to concede that much. However, to the present. I was able
to destroy my few papers before I became so weak . . . But in the drawer
there you will find some pieces of linen clothing-only two or three-
marked with initials that may be recognized. Will you rip them out with
a penknife?"
'She searched as bidden, found the garments, cut out the stitches of the
lettering, and replaced the linen as before. A promise to post, in the
event of his death, a letter he put in her hand, completed all that he
required of her.
'He thanked her. "I think you seem sorry for me," he murmured. "And I am
surprised. You are sorry?"
'She evaded the question. "Do you repent and believe?" she asked.
'"No."
'Contrary to her expectations and his own he recovered, though very
slowly; and her manner grew more distant thenceforward, though his
influence upon her was deeper than she knew. Weeks passed away, and the
month of May arrived. One day at this time she met him walking slowly
along the beach to the northward.
'"You know the news?" he said.
'"You mean of the rupture between France and England again?"
'"Yes; and the feeling of antagonism is stronger than it was in the last
war, owing to Bonaparte's high-handed arrest of the innocent English who
were travelling in our country for pleasure. I feel that the war will be
long and bitter; and that my wish to live unknown in England will be
frustrated. See here."
'He took from his pocket a piece of the single newspaper which
circulated in the county in those days, and she read-
"The magistrates acting under the Alien Act have been requested to
direct a very scrutinizing eye to the Academies in our towns and other
places, in which French tutors are employed, and to all of that
nationality who profess to be teachers in this country. Many of them are
known to be inveterate Enemies and Traitors to the nation among whose
people they have found a livelihood and a home."
'He continued: "I have observed since the declaration of war a marked
difference in the conduct of the rougher class of people here towards
me. If a great battle were to occur-as it soon will, no doubt-feeling
would grow to a pitch that would make it impossible for me, a disguised
man of no known occupation, to stay here. With you, whose duties and
antecedents are known, it may be less difficult, but still unpleasant.
Now I propose this. You have probably seen how my deep sympathy with you
has quickened to a warm feeling; and what I say is, will you agree to
give me a title to protect you by honouring me with your hand? I am
older than you, it is true, but as husband and wife we can leave England
together, and make the whole world our country. Though I would propose
Quebec, in Canada, as the place which offers the best promise of a
home."
'"My God! You surprise me!" said she.
'"But you accept my proposal?"
'"No, no!"
'"And yet I think you will, Mademoiselle, some day!"
'"I think not."
'"I won't distress you further now."
'"Much thanks . . . I am glad to see you looking better, Monsieur; I
mean you are looking better."
'"Ah, yes. I am improving. I walk in the sun every day."
'And almost every day she saw him-sometimes nodding stiffly only,
sometimes exchanging formal civilities. "You are not gone yet," she said
on one of these occasions.
'"No. At present I don't think of going without you."
'"But you find it uncomfortable here?"
'"Somewhat. So when will you have pity on me?"
'She shook her head and went on her way. Yet she was a little moved. "He
did it on principle," she would murmur. "He had no animosity towards
them, and profited nothing!"
'She wondered how he lived. It was evident that he could not be so poor
as she had thought; his pretended poverty might be to escape notice. She
could not tell, but she knew that she was dangerously interested in him.
'And he still mended, till his thin, pale face became more full and
firm. As he mended she had to meet that request of his, advanced with
even stronger insistency.
'The arrival of the King and Court for the season as usual brought
matters to a climax for these two lonely exiles and fellow country-
people. The King's awkward preference for a part of the coast in such
dangerous proximity to France made it necessary that a strict military
vigilance should be exercised to guard the royal residents. Half-a-
dozen frigates were every night posted in a line across the bay, and two
lines of sentinels, one at the water's edge and another behind the
Esplanade, occupied the whole sea-front after eight every night. The
watering-place was growing an inconvenient residence even for
Mademoiselle V\x97- herself, her friendship for this strange French tutor
and writing-master who never had any pupils having been observed by many
who slightly knew her. The General's wife, whose dependent she was,
repeatedly warned her against the acquaintance; while the Hanoverian and
other soldiers of the Foreign Legion, who had discovered the nationality
of her friend, were more aggressive than the English military gallants
who made it their business to notice her.
'In this tense state of affairs her answers became more agitated. "O
Heaven, how can I marry you!" she would say.
'"You will; surely you will!" he answered again. "I don't leave without
you. And I shall soon be interrogated before the magistrates if I stay
here; probably imprisoned. You will come?"
'She felt her defences breaking down. Contrary to all reason and sense
of family honour she was, by some abnormal craving, inclining to a
tenderness for him that was founded on its opposite. Sometimes her warm
sentiments burnt lower than at others, and then the enormity of her
conduct showed itself in more staring hues.
'Shortly after this he came with a resigned look on his face. "It is as
I expected," he said. "I have received a hint to go. In good sooth, I am
no Bonapartist-I am no enemy to England; but the presence of the King
made it impossible for a foreigner with no visible occupation, and who
may be a spy, to remain at large in the town. The authorities are civil,
but firm. They are no more than reasonable. Good. I must go. You must
come also."
'She did not speak. But she nodded assent, her eyes drooping.
'On her way back to the house on the Esplanade she said to herself, "I
am glad, I am glad! I could not do otherwise. It is rendering good for
evil!" But she knew how she mocked herself in this, and that the moral
principle had not operated one jot in her acceptance of him. In truth
she had not realized till now the full presence of the emotion which had
unconsciously grown up in her for this lonely and severe man, who, in
her tradition, was vengeance and irreligion personified. He seemed to
absorb her whole nature, and, absorbing, to control it.
'A day or two before the one fixed for the wedding there chanced to come
to her a letter from the only acquaintance of her own sex and country
she possessed in England, one to whom she had sent intelligence of her
approaching marriage, without mentioning with whom. This friend's
misfortunes had been somewhat similar to her own, which fact had been
one cause of their intimacy; her friend's sister, a nun of the Abbey of
Montmartre, having perished on the scaffold at the hands of the same
Comit\xE9 de Salut Public which had numbered Mademoiselle V\x97's affianced
among its members. The writer had felt her position much again of late,
since the renewal of the war, she said; and the letter wound up with a
fresh denunciation of the authors of their mutual bereavement and
subsequent troubles.
'Coming just then, its contents produced upon Mademoiselle V\x97- the
effect of a pail of water upon a somnambulist. What had she been doing
in betrothing herself to this man! Was she not making herself a
parricide after the event? At this crisis in her feelings her lover
called. He beheld her trembling, and, in reply to his question, she told
him of her scruples with impulsive candour.
'She had not intended to do this, but his attitude of tender command
coerced her into frankness. Thereupon he exhibited an agitation never
before apparent in him. He said, "But all that is past. You are the
symbol of Charity, and we are pledged to let bygones be."
'His words soothed her for the moment, but she was sadly silent, and he
went away.
'That night she saw (as she firmly believed to the end of her life) a
divinely sent vision. A procession of her lost relatives-father,
brother, uncle, cousin-seemed to cross her chamber between her bed and
the window, and when she endeavoured to trace their features she
perceived them to be headless, and that she had recognized them by their
familiar clothes only. In the morning she could not shake off the
effects of this appearance on her nerves. All that day she saw nothing
of her wooer, he being occupied in making arrangements for their
departure. It grew towards evening-the marriage eve; but, in spite of
his re-assuring visit, her sense of family duty waxed stronger now that
she was left alone. Yet, she asked herself, how could she, alone and
unprotected, go at this eleventh hour and reassert to an affianced
husband that she could not and would not marry him while admitting at
the same time that she loved him? The situation dismayed her. She had
relinquished her post as governess, and was staying temporarily in a
room near the coach-office, where she expected him to call in the
morning to carry out the business of their union and departure.
'Wisely or foolishly, Mademoiselle V\x97- came to a resolution: that her
only safety lay in flight. His contiguity influenced her too sensibly;
she could not reason. So packing up her few possessions and placing on
the table the small sum she owed, she went out privately, secured a last
available seat in the London coach, and, almost before she had fully
weighed her action, she was rolling out of the town in the dusk of the
September evening.
'Having taken this startling step she began to reflect upon her reasons.
He had been one of that tragic Committee the sound of whose name was a
horror to the civilized world; yet he had been only one of several
members, and, it seemed, not the most active. He had marked down names
on principle, had felt no personal enmity against his victims, and had
enriched himself not a sou out of the office he had held. Nothing could
change the past. Meanwhile he loved her, and her heart inclined to as
much of him as she could detach from that past. Why not, as he had
suggested, bury memories, and inaugurate a new era by this union? In
other words, why not indulge her tenderness, since its nullification
could do no good.
'Thus she held self-communion in her seat in the coach, passing through
Casterbridge, and Shottsford, and on to the White Hart at Melchester, at
which place the whole fabric of her recent intentions crumbled down.
Better be staunch having got so far; let things take their course, and
marry boldly the man who had so impressed her. How great he was; how
small was she! And she had presumed to judge him! Abandoning her place
in the coach with the precipitancy that had characterized her taking it,
she waited till the vehicle had driven off, something in the departing
shapes of the outside passengers against the starlit sky giving her a
start, as she afterwards remembered. Presently the down coach, "The
Morning Herald," entered the city, and she hastily obtained a place on
the top.
'"I'll be firm-I'll be his-if it cost me my immortal soul!" she said.
And with troubled breathings she journeyed back over the road she had
just traced.
'She reached our royal watering-place by the time the day broke, and her
first aim was to get back to the hired room in which her last few days
had been spent. When the landlady appeared at the door in response to
Mademoiselle V\x97's nervous summons, she explained her sudden departure
and return as best she could; and no objection being offered to her re-
engagement of the room for one day longer she ascended to the chamber
and sat down panting. She was back once more, and her wild
tergiversations were a secret from him whom alone they concerned.
'A sealed letter was on the mantelpiece. "Yes, it is directed to you,
Mademoiselle," said the woman who had followed her. "But we were
wondering what to do with it. A town messenger brought it after you had
gone last night."
'When the landlady had left, Mademoiselle V\x97- opened the letter and
read-
"MY DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND.-You have been throughout our acquaintance
absolutely candid concerning your misgivings. But I have been reserved
concerning mine. That is the difference between us. You probably have
not guessed that every qualm you have felt on the subject of our
marriage has been paralleled in my heart to the full. Thus it happened
that your involuntary outburst of remorse yesterday, though mechanically
deprecated by me in your presence, was a last item in my own doubts on
the wisdom of our union, giving them a force that I could no longer
withstand. I came home; and, on reflection, much as I honour and adore
you, I decide to set you free.
"As one whose life has been devoted, and I may say sacrificed, to the
cause of Liberty, I cannot allow your judgment (probably a permanent
one) to be fettered beyond release by a feeling which may be transient
only.
"It would be no less than excruciating to both that I should announce
this decision to you by word of mouth. I have therefore taken the less
painful course of writing. Before you receive this I shall have left the
town by the evening coach for London, on reaching which city my
movements will be revealed to none.
"Regard me, Mademoiselle, as dead, and accept my renewed assurances of
respect, remembrance, and affection."
'When she had recovered from her shock of surprise and grief, she
remembered that at the starting of the coach out of Melchester before
dawn, the shape of a figure among the outside passengers against the
starlit sky had caused her a momentary start, from its resemblance to
that of her friend. Knowing nothing of each other's intentions, and
screened from each other by the darkness, they had left the town by the
same conveyance. "He, the greater, persevered; I, the smaller,
returned!" she said.
'Recovering from her stupor, Mademoiselle V\x97- bethought herself again of
her employer, Mrs. Newbold, whom recent events had estranged. To that
lady she went with a full heart, and explained everything. Mrs. Newbold
kept to herself her opinion of the episode, and reinstalled the deserted
bride in her old position as governess to the family.
'A governess she remained to the end of her days. After the final peace
with France she became acquainted with my mother, to whom by degrees she
imparted these experiences of hers. As her hair grew white, and her
features pinched, Mademoiselle V\x97- would wonder what nook of the world
contained her lover, if he lived, and if by any chance she might see him
again. But when, some time in the 'twenties, death came to her, at no
great age, that outline against the stars of the morning remained as the
last glimpse she ever obtained of her family's foe and her once
affianced husband.' 1895.
MASTER JOHN HORSELEIGH, KNIGHT
In the earliest and mustiest volume of the Havenpool marriage registers
(said the thin-faced gentleman) this entry may still be read by any one
curious enough to decipher the crabbed handwriting of the date. I took a
copy of it when I was last there; and it runs thus (he had opened his
pocket-book, and now read aloud the extract; afterwards handing round
the book to us, wherein we saw transcribed the following)-
Mastr John Horseleigh, Knyght, of the p'ysshe of Clyffton was maryd to
Edith the wyffe late off John Stocker, m'chawnte of Havenpool the xiiij
daje of December be p'vylegge gevyn by our sup'me hedd of the chyrche of
Ingelonde Kynge Henry the viii th 1539.
Now, if you turn to the long and elaborate pedigree of the ancient
family of the Horseleighs of Clyfton Horseleigh, you will find no
mention whatever of this alliance, notwithstanding the privilege given
by the Sovereign and head of the Church; the said Sir John being therein
chronicled as marrying, at a date apparently earlier than the above, the
daughter and heiress of Richard Phelipson, of Montislope, in Nether
Wessex, a lady who outlived him, of which marriage there were issue two
daughters and a son, who succeeded him in his estates. How are we to
account for these, as it would seem, contemporaneous wives? A strange
local tradition only can help us, and this can be briefly told.
One evening in the autumn of the year 1540 or 1541, a young sailor,
whose Christian name was Roger, but whose surname is not known, landed
at his native place of Havenpool, on the South Wessex coast, after a
voyage in the Newfoundland trade, then newly sprung into existence. He
returned in the ship Primrose with a cargo of 'trayne oyle brought home
from the New Founde Lande,' to quote from the town records of the date.
During his absence of two summers and a winter, which made up the term
of a Newfoundland 'spell,' many unlooked-for changes had occurred within
the quiet little seaport, some of which closely affected Roger the
sailor. At the time of his departure his only sister Edith had become
the bride of one Stocker, a respectable townsman, and part owner of the
brig in which Roger had sailed; and it was to the house of this couple,
his only relatives, that the young man directed his steps. On trying the
door in Quay Street he found it locked, and then observed that the
windows were boarded up. Inquiring of a bystander, he learnt for the
first time of the death of his brother-in-law, though that event had
taken place nearly eighteen months before.
'And my sister Edith?' asked Roger.
'She's married again-as they do say, and hath been so these twelve
months. I don't vouch for the truth o't, though if she isn't she ought
to be.'
Roger's face grew dark. He was a man with a considerable reserve of
strong passion, and he asked his informant what he meant by speaking
thus.
The man explained that shortly after the young woman's bereavement a
stranger had come to the port. He had seen her moping on the quay, had
been attracted by her youth and loneliness, and in an extraordinarily
brief wooing had completely fascinated her-had carried her off, and, as
was reported, had married her. Though he had come by water, he was
supposed to live no very great distance off by land. They were last
heard of at Oozewood, in Upper Wessex, at the house of one Wall, a
timber-merchant, where, he believed, she still had a lodging, though her
husband, if he were lawfully that much, was but an occasional visitor to
the place.
'The stranger?' asked Roger. 'Did you see him? What manner of man was
he?'
'I liked him not,' said the other. 'He seemed of that kind that hath
something to conceal, and as he walked with her he ever and anon turned
his head and gazed behind him, as if he much feared an unwelcome
pursuer. But, faith,' continued he, 'it may have been the man's anxiety
only. Yet did I not like him.'
'Was he older than my sister?' Roger asked.
'Ay-much older; from a dozen to a score of years older. A man of some
position, maybe, playing an amorous game for the pleasure of the hour.
Who knoweth but that he have a wife already? Many have done the thing
hereabouts of late.'
Having paid a visit to the graves of his relatives, the sailor next day
went along the straight road which, then a lane, now a highway,
conducted to the curious little inland town named by the Havenpool man.
It is unnecessary to describe Oozewood on the South-Avon. It has a
railway at the present day; but thirty years of steam traffic past its
precincts have hardly modified its original features. Surrounded by a
sort of fresh-water lagoon, dividing it from meadows and coppice, its
ancient thatch and timber houses have barely made way even in the front
street for the ubiquitous modern brick and slate. It neither increases
nor diminishes in size; it is difficult to say what the inhabitants find
to do, for, though trades in woodware are still carried on, there cannot
be enough of this class of work nowadays to maintain all the
householders, the forests around having been so greatly thinned and
curtailed. At the time of this tradition the forests were dense,
artificers in wood abounded, and the timber trade was brisk. Every house
in the town, without exception, was of oak framework, filled in with
plaster, and covered with thatch, the chimney being the only brick
portion of the structure. Inquiry soon brought Roger the sailor to the
door of Wall, the timber-dealer referred to, but it was some time before
he was able to gain admission to the lodging of his sister, the people
having plainly received directions not to welcome strangers.
She was sitting in an upper room on one of the lath-backed, willow-
bottomed 'shepherd's' chairs, made on the spot then as to this day, and
as they were probably made there in the days of the Heptarchy. In her
lap was an infant, which she had been suckling, though now it had fallen
asleep; so had the young mother herself for a few minutes, under the
drowsing effects of solitude. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she
awoke, started up with a glad cry, and ran to the door, opening which
she met her brother on the threshold.
'O, this is merry; I didn't expect 'ee!' she said. 'Ah, Roger-I thought
it was John.' Her tones fell to disappointment.
The sailor kissed her, looked at her sternly for a few moments, and
pointing to the infant, said, 'You mean the father of this?'
'Yes, my husband,' said Edith.
'I hope so,' he answered.
'Why, Roger, I'm married-of a truth am I!' she cried.
'Shame upon 'ee, if true! If not true, worse. Master Stocker was an
honest man, and ye should have respected his memory longer. Where is thy
husband?'
'He comes often. I thought it was he now. Our marriage has to be kept
secret for a while-it was done privily for certain reasons; but we was
married at church like honest folk-afore God we were, Roger, six months
after poor Stocker's death.'
''Twas too soon,' said Roger.
'I was living in a house alone; I had nowhere to go to. You were far
over sea in the New Found Land, and John took me and brought me here.'
'How often doth he come?' says Roger again.
'Once or twice weekly,' says she.
'I wish th' 'dst waited till I returned, dear Edy,' he said. 'It mid be
you are a wife-I hope so. But, if so, why this mystery? Why this mean
and cramped lodging in this lonely copse-circled town? Of what standing
is your husband, and of where?'
'He is of gentle breeding-his name is John. I am not free to tell his
family-name. He is said to be of London, for safety' sake; but he really
lives in the county next adjoining this.'
'Where in the next county?'
'I do not know. He has preferred not to tell me, that I may not have the
secret forced from me, to his and my hurt, by bringing the marriage to
the ears of his kinsfolk and friends.'
Her brother's face flushed. 'Our people have been honest townsmen, well-
reputed for long; why should you readily take such humbling from a
sojourner of whom th' 'st know nothing?'
They remained in constrained converse till her quick ear caught a sound,
for which she might have been waiting-a horse's footfall. 'It is John!'
said she. 'This is his night-Saturday.'
'Don't be frightened lest he should find me here!' said Roger. 'I am on
the point of leaving. I wish not to be a third party. Say nothing at all
about my visit, if it will incommode you so to do. I will see thee
before I go afloat again.'
Speaking thus he left the room, and descending the staircase let himself
out by the front door, thinking he might obtain a glimpse of the
approaching horseman. But that traveller had in the meantime gone
stealthily round to the back of the homestead, and peering along the
pinion-end of the house Roger discerned him unbridling and haltering his
horse with his own hands in the shed there.
Roger retired to the neighbouring inn called the Black Lamb, and
meditated. This mysterious method of approach determined him, after all,
not to leave the place till he had ascertained more definite facts of
his sister's position-whether she were the deluded victim of the
stranger or the wife she obviously believed herself to be. Having eaten
some supper, he left the inn, it being now about eleven o'clock. He
first looked into the shed, and, finding the horse still standing there,
waited irresolutely near the door of his sister's lodging. Half an hour
elapsed, and, while thinking he would climb into a loft hard by for a
night's rest, there seemed to be a movement within the shutters of the
sitting-room that his sister occupied. Roger hid himself behind a
faggot-stack near the back door, rightly divining that his sister's
visitor would emerge by the way he had entered. The door opened, and the
candle she held in her hand lighted for a moment the stranger's form,
showing it to be that of a tall and handsome personage, about forty
years of age, and apparently of a superior position in life. Edith was
assisting him to cloak himself, which being done he took leave of her
with a kiss and left the house. From the door she watched him bridle and
saddle his horse, and having mounted and waved an adieu to her as she
stood candle in hand, he turned out of the yard and rode away.
The horse which bore him was, or seemed to be, a little lame, and Roger
fancied from this that the rider's journey was not likely to be a long
one. Being light of foot he followed apace, having no great difficulty
on such a still night in keeping within earshot some few miles, the
horseman pausing more than once. In this pursuit Roger discovered the
rider to choose bridle-tracks and open commons in preference to any high
road. The distance soon began to prove a more trying one than he had
bargained for; and when out of breath and in some despair of being able
to ascertain the man's identity, he perceived an ass standing in the
starlight under a hayrick, from which the animal was helping itself to
periodic mouthfuls.
The story goes that Roger caught the ass, mounted, and again resumed the
trail of the unconscious horseman, which feat may have been possible to
a nautical young fellow, though one can hardly understand how a sailor
would ride such an animal without bridle or saddle, and strange to his
hands, unless the creature were extraordinarily docile. This question,
however, is immaterial. Suffice it to say that at dawn the following
morning Roger beheld his sister's lover or husband entering the gates of
a large and well-timbered park on the south-western verge of the White
Hart Forest (as it was then called), now known to everybody as the Vale
of Blackmoor. Thereupon the sailor discarded his steed, and finding for
himself an obscurer entrance to the same park a little further on, he
crossed the grass to reconnoitre.
He presently perceived amid the trees before him a mansion which, new to
himself, was one of the best known in the county at that time. Of this
fine manorial residence hardly a trace now remains; but a manuscript
dated some years later than the events we are regarding describes it in
terms from which the imagination may construct a singularly clear and
vivid picture. This record presents it as consisting of 'a faire yellow
freestone building, partly two and partly three storeys; a faire halle
and parlour, both waynscotted; a faire dyning roome and withdrawing
roome, and many good lodgings; a kitchen adjoyninge backwarde to one end
of the dwelling-house, with a faire passage from it into the halle,
parlour, and dyninge roome, and sellars adjoyninge.
'In the front of the house a square greene court, and a curious
gatehouse with lodgings in it, standing with the front of the house to
the south; in a large outer court three stables, a coach-house, a large
barne, and a stable for oxen and kyne, and all houses necessary.
'Without the gatehouse, paled in, a large square greene, in which
standeth a faire chappell; of the south-east side of the greene court,
towards the river, a large garden.
'Of the south-west side of the greene court is a large bowling greene,
with fower mounted walks about it, all walled about with a batteled
wall, and sett with all sorts of fruit; and out of it into the feildes
there are large walks under many tall elmes orderly planted.'
Then follows a description of the orchards and gardens; the servants'
offices, brewhouse, bakehouse, dairy, pigeon-houses, and corn-mill; the
river and its abundance of fish; the warren, the coppices, the walks;
ending thus-
'And all the country north of the house, open champaign, sandy feildes,
very dry and pleasant for all kindes of recreation, huntinge, and
hawkinge, and profitble for tillage . . . The house hath a large
prospect east, south, and west, over a very large and pleasant vale . .
. is seated from the good markett towns of Sherton Abbas three miles,
and Ivel a mile, that plentifully yield all manner of provision; and
within twelve miles of the south sea.'
It was on the grass before this seductive and picturesque structure that
the sailor stood at gaze under the elms in the dim dawn of Sunday
morning, and saw to his surprise his sister's lover and horse vanish
within the court of the building.
Perplexed and weary, Roger slowly retreated, more than ever convinced
that something was wrong in his sister's position. He crossed the
bowling green to the avenue of elms, and, bent on further research, was
about to climb into one of these, when, looking below, he saw a heap of
hay apparently for horses or deer. Into this he crept, and, having eaten
a crust of bread which he had hastily thrust into his pocket at the inn,
he curled up and fell asleep, the hay forming a comfortable bed, and
quite covering him over.
He slept soundly and long, and was awakened by the sound of a bell. On
peering from the hay he found the time had advanced to full day; the sun
was shining brightly. The bell was that of the 'faire chappell' on the
green outside the gatehouse, and it was calling to matins. Presently the
priest crossed the green to a little side-door in the chancel, and then
from the gateway of the mansion emerged the household, the tall man whom
Roger had seen with his sister on the previous night, on his arm being a
portly dame, and, running beside the pair, two little girls and a boy.
These all entered the chapel, and the bell having ceased and the
environs become clear, the sailor crept out from his hiding.
He sauntered towards the chapel, the opening words of the service being
audible within. While standing by the porch he saw a belated servitor
approaching from the kitchen-court to attend the service also. Roger
carelessly accosted him, and asked, as an idle wanderer, the name of the
family he had just seen cross over from the mansion.
'Od zounds! if ye modden be a stranger here in very truth, goodman. That
wer Sir John and his dame, and his children Elizabeth, Mary, and John.'
'I be from foreign parts. Sir John what d'ye call'n?'
'Master John Horseleigh, Knight, who had a'most as much lond by
inheritance of his mother as 'a had by his father, and likewise some by
his wife. Why, bain't his arms dree goolden horses' heads, and idden his
lady the daughter of Master Richard Phelipson, of Montislope, in Nether
Wessex, known to us all?'
'It mid be so, and yet it mid not. However, th' 'lt miss thy prayers for
such an honest knight's welfare, and I have to traipse seaward many
miles.'
He went onward, and as he walked continued saying to himself, 'Now to
that poor wronged fool Edy. The fond thing! I thought it; 'twas too
quick-she was ever amorous. What's to become of her! God wot! How be I
going to face her with the news, and how be I to hold it from her? To
bring this disgrace on my father's honoured name, a double-tongued
knave!' He turned and shook his fist at the chapel and all in it, and
resumed his way.
Perhaps it was owing to the perplexity of his mind that, instead of
returning by the direct road towards his sister's obscure lodging in the
next county, he followed the highway to Casterbridge, some fifteen miles
off, where he remained drinking hard all that afternoon and evening, and
where he lay that and two or three succeeding nights, wandering thence
along the Anglebury road to some village that way, and lying the Friday
night after at his native place of Havenpool. The sight of the familiar
objects there seems to have stirred him anew to action, and the next
morning he was observed pursuing the way to Oozewood that he had
followed on the Saturday previous, reckoning, no doubt, that Saturday
night would, as before, be a time for finding Sir John with his sister
again.
He delayed to reach the place till just before sunset. His sister was
walking in the meadows at the foot of the garden, with a nursemaid who
carried the baby, and she looked up pensively when he approached.
Anxiety as to her position had already told upon her once rosy cheeks
and lucid eyes. But concern for herself and child was displaced for the
moment by her regard of Roger's worn and haggard face.
'Why-you are sick, Roger-you are tired! Where have you been these many
days? Why not keep me company a bit-my husband is much away? And we have
hardly spoke at all of dear father and of your voyage to the New Land.
Why did you go away so suddenly? There is a spare chamber at my
lodging.'
'Come indoors,' he said. 'We'll talk now-talk a good deal. As for him
[nodding to the child], better heave him into the river; better for him
and you!'
She forced a laugh, as if she tried to see a good joke in the remark,
and they went silently indoors.
'A miserable hole!' said Roger, looking round the room.
'Nay, but 'tis very pretty!'
'Not after what I've seen. Did he marry 'ee at church in orderly
fashion?'
'He did sure-at our church at Havenpool.'
'But in a privy way?'
'Ay-because of his friends-it was at night-time.'
'Ede, ye fond one-for all that he's not thy husband! Th' 'rt not his
wife; and the child is a bastard. He hath a wife and children of his own
rank, and bearing his name; and that's Sir John Horseleigh, of Clyfton
Horseleigh, and not plain Jack, as you think him, and your lawful
husband. The sacrament of marriage is no safeguard nowadays. The King's
new-made headship of the Church hath led men to practise these tricks
lightly.'
She had turned white. 'That's not true, Roger!' she said. 'You are in
liquor, my brother, and you know not what you say! Your seafaring years
have taught 'ee bad things!'
'Edith-I've seen them; wife and family-all. How canst-'
They were sitting in the gathered darkness, and at that moment steps
were heard without. 'Go out this way,' she said. 'It is my husband. He
must not see thee in this mood. Get away till to-morrow, Roger, as you
care for me.'
She pushed her brother through a door leading to the back stairs, and
almost as soon as it was closed her visitor entered. Roger, however, did
not retreat down the stairs; he stood and looked through the bobbin-
hole. If the visitor turned out to be Sir John, he had determined to
confront him.
It was the knight. She had struck a light on his entry, and he kissed
the child, and took Edith tenderly by the shoulders, looking into her
face.
'Something's gone awry wi' my dear!' he said. 'What is it? What's the
matter?'
'O, Jack!' she cried. 'I have heard such a fearsome rumour-what doth it
mean? He who told me is my best friend. He must be deceived! But who
deceived him, and why? Jack, I was just told that you had a wife living
when you married me, and have her still!'
'A wife?-H'm.'
'Yes, and children. Say no, say no!'
'By God! I have no lawful wife but you; and as for children, many or
few, they are all bastards, save this one alone!'
'And that you be Sir John Horseleigh of Clyfton?'
'I mid be. I have never said so to 'ee.'
'But Sir John is known to have a lady, and issue of her!'
The knight looked down. 'How did thy mind get filled with such as this?'
he asked.
'One of my kindred came.'
'A traitor! Why should he mar our life? Ah! you said you had a brother
at sea-where is he now?'
'Here!' came from close behind him. And flinging open the door, Roger
faced the intruder. 'Liar!' he said, 'to call thyself her husband!'
Sir John fired up, and made a rush at the sailor, who seized him by the
collar, and in the wrestle they both fell, Roger under. But in a few
seconds he contrived to extricate his right arm, and drawing from his
belt a knife which he wore attached to a cord round his neck he opened
it with his teeth, and struck it into the breast of Sir John stretched
above him. Edith had during these moments run into the next room to
place the child in safety, and when she came back the knight was
relaxing his hold on Roger's throat. He rolled over upon his back and
groaned.
The only witness of the scene save the three concerned was the
nursemaid, who had brought in the child on its father's arrival. She
stated afterwards that nobody suspected Sir John had received his death
wound; yet it was so, though he did not die for a long while, meaning
thereby an hour or two; that Mistress Edith continually endeavoured to
staunch the blood, calling her brother Roger a wretch, and ordering him
to get himself gone; on which order he acted, after a gloomy pause, by
opening the window, and letting himself down by the sill to the ground.
It was then that Sir John, in difficult accents, made his dying
declaration to the nurse and Edith, and, later, the apothecary; which
was to this purport, that the Dame Horseleigh who passed as his wife at
Clyfton, and who had borne him three children, was in truth and deed,
though unconsciously, the wife of another man. Sir John had married her
several years before, in the face of the whole county, as the widow of
one Decimus Strong, who had disappeared shortly after her union with
him, having adventured to the North to join the revolt of the Nobles,
and on that revolt being quelled retreated across the sea. Two years
ago, having discovered this man to be still living in France, and not
wishing to disturb the mind and happiness of her who believed herself
his wife, yet wishing for legitimate issue, Sir John had informed the
King of the facts, who had encouraged him to wed honestly, though
secretly, the young merchant's widow at Havenpool; she being, therefore,
his lawful wife, and she only. That to avoid all scandal and hubbub he
had purposed to let things remain as they were till fair opportunity
should arise of making the true case known with least pain to all
parties concerned, but that, having been thus suspected and attacked by
his own brother-in-law, his zest for such schemes and for all things had
died out in him, and he only wished to commend his soul to God.
That night, while the owls were hooting from the forest that encircled
the sleeping townlet, and the South-Avon was gurgling through the wooden
piles of the bridge, Sir John died there in the arms of his wife. She
concealed nothing of the cause of her husband's death save the subject
of the quarrel, which she felt it would be premature to announce just
then, and until proof of her status should be forthcoming. But before a
month had passed, it happened, to her inexpressible sorrow, that the
child of this clandestine union fell sick and died. From that hour all
interest in the name and fame of the Horseleighs forsook the younger of
the twain who called themselves wives of Sir John, and, being careless
about her own fame, she took no steps to assert her claims, her legal
position having, indeed, grown hateful to her in her horror at the
tragedy. And Sir William Byrt, the curate who had married her to her
husband, being an old man and feeble, was not disinclined to leave the
embers unstirred of such a fiery matter as this, and to assist her in
letting established things stand. Therefore, Edith retired with the
nurse, her only companion and friend, to her native town, where she
lived in absolute obscurity till her death in middle age. Her brother
was never seen again in England.
A strangely corroborative sequel to the story remains to be told.
Shortly after the death of Sir John Horseleigh, a soldier of fortune
returned from the Continent, called on Dame Horseleigh the fictitious,
living in widowed state at Clyfton Horseleigh, and, after a singularly
brief courtship, married her. The tradition at Havenpool and elsewhere
has ever been that this man was already her husband, Decimus Strong, who
remarried her for appearance' sake only.
The illegitimate son of this lady by Sir John succeeded to the estates
and honours, and his son after him, there being nobody on the alert to
investigate their pretensions. Little difference would it have made to
the present generation, however, had there been such a one, for the
family in all its branches, lawful and unlawful, has been extinct these
many score years, the last representative but one being killed at the
siege of Sherton Castle, while attacking in the service of the
Parliament, and the other being outlawed later in the same century for a
debt of ten pounds, and dying in the county jail. The mansion house and
its appurtenances were, as I have previously stated, destroyed,
excepting one small wing, which now forms part of a farmhouse, and is
visible as you pass along the railway from Casterbridge to Ivel. The
outline of the old bowling-green is also distinctly to be seen.
This, then, is the reason why the only lawful marriage of Sir John, as
recorded in the obscure register at Havenpool, does not appear in the
pedigree of the house of Horseleigh.
Spring 1893.
THE DUKE'S REAPPEARANCE-A FAMILY TRADITION
According to the kinsman who told me the story, Christopher Swetman's
house, on the outskirts of King's-Hintock village, was in those days
larger and better kept than when, many years later, it was sold to the
lord of the manor adjoining; after having been in the Swetman family, as
one may say, since the Conquest.
Some people would have it to be that the thing happened at the house
opposite, belonging to one Childs, with whose family the Swetmans
afterwards intermarried. But that it was at the original homestead of
the Swetmans can be shown in various ways; chiefly by the unbroken
traditions of the family, and indirectly by the evidence of the walls
themselves, which are the only ones thereabout with windows mullioned in
the Elizabethan manner, and plainly of a date anterior to the event;
while those of the other house might well have been erected fifty or
eighty years later, and probably were; since the choice of Swetman's
house by the fugitive was doubtless dictated by no other circumstance
than its then suitable loneliness.
It was a cloudy July morning just before dawn, the hour of two having
been struck by Swetman's one-handed clock on the stairs, that is still
preserved in the family. Christopher heard the strokes from his chamber,
immediately at the top of the staircase, and overlooking the front of
the house. He did not wonder that he was sleepless. The rumours and
excitements which had latterly stirred the neighbourhood, to the effect
that the rightful King of England had landed from Holland, at a port
only eighteen miles to the south-west of Swetman's house, were enough to
make wakeful and anxious even a contented yeoman like him. Some of the
villagers, intoxicated by the news, had thrown down their scythes, and
rushed to the ranks of the invader. Christopher Swetman had weighed both
sides of the question, and had remained at home.
Now as he lay thinking of these and other things he fancied that he
could hear the footfall of a man on the road leading up to his house-a
byway, which led scarce anywhere else; and therefore a tread was at any
time more apt to startle the inmates of the homestead than if it had
stood in a thoroughfare. The footfall came opposite the gate, and
stopped there. One minute, two minutes passed, and the pedestrian did
not proceed. Christopher Swetman got out of bed, and opened the
casement. 'Hoi! who's there?' cries he.
'A friend,' came from the darkness.
'And what mid ye want at this time o' night?' says Swetman.
'Shelter. I've lost my way.'
'What's thy name?'
There came no answer.
'Be ye one of King Monmouth's men?'
'He that asks no questions will hear no lies from me. I am a stranger;
and I am spent, and hungered. Can you let me lie with you to-night?'
Swetman was generous to people in trouble, and his house was roomy.
'Wait a bit,' he said, 'and I'll come down and have a look at thee,
anyhow.'
He struck a light, put on his clothes, and descended, taking his horn-
lantern from a nail in the passage, and lighting it before opening the
door. The rays fell on the form of a tall, dark man in cavalry
accoutrements and wearing a sword. He was pale with fatigue and covered
with mud, though the weather was dry.
'Prithee take no heed of my appearance,' said the stranger. 'But let me
in.'
That his visitor was in sore distress admitted of no doubt, and the
yeoman's natural humanity assisted the other's sad importunity and
gentle voice. Swetman took him in, not without a suspicion that this man
represented in some way Monmouth's cause, to which he was not unfriendly
in his secret heart. At his earnest request the new-comer was given a
suit of the yeoman's old clothes in exchange for his own, which, with
his sword, were hidden in a closet in Swetman's chamber; food was then
put before him and a lodging provided for him in a room at the back.
Here he slept till quite late in the morning, which was Sunday, the
sixth of July, and when he came down in the garments that he had
borrowed he met the household with a melancholy smile. Besides Swetman
himself, there were only his two daughters, Grace and Leonard (the
latter was, oddly enough, a woman's name here), and both had been
enjoined to secrecy. They asked no questions and received no
information; though the stranger regarded their fair countenances with
an interest almost too deep. Having partaken of their usual breakfast of
ham and cider he professed weariness and retired to the chamber whence
he had come.
In a couple of hours or thereabout he came down again, the two young
women having now gone off to morning service. Seeing Christopher
bustling about the house without assistance, he asked if he could do
anything to aid his host.
As he seemed anxious to hide all differences and appear as one of
themselves, Swetman set him to get vegetables from the garden and fetch
water from Buttock's Spring in the dip near the house (though the spring
was not called by that name till years after, by the way).
'And what can I do next?' says the stranger when these services had been
performed.
His meekness and docility struck Christopher much, and won upon him.
'Since you be minded to,' says the latter, 'you can take down the dishes
and spread the table for dinner. Take a pewter plate for thyself, but
the trenchers will do for we.'
But the other would not, and took a trencher likewise, in doing which he
spoke of the two girls and remarked how comely they were.
This quietude was put an end to by a stir out of doors, which was
sufficient to draw Swetman's attention to it, and he went out. Farm
hands who had gone off and joined the Duke on his arrival had begun to
come in with news that a midnight battle had been fought on the moors to
the north, the Duke's men, who had attacked, being entirely worsted; the
Duke himself, with one or two lords and other friends, had fled, no one
knew whither.
'There has been a battle,' says Swetman, on coming indoors after these
tidings, and looking earnestly at the stranger.
'May the victory be to the rightful in the end, whatever the issue now,'
says the other, with a sorrowful sigh.
'Dost really know nothing about it?' said Christopher. 'I could have
sworn you was one from that very battle!'
'I was here before three o' the clock this morning; and these men have
only arrived now.'
'True,' said the yeoman. 'But still, I think-'
'Do not press your question,' the stranger urged. 'I am in a strait, and
can refuse a helper nothing; such inquiry is, therefore, unfair.'
'True again,' said Swetman, and held his tongue.
The daughters of the house returned from church, where the service had
been hurried by reason of the excitement. To their father's questioning
if they had spoken of him who sojourned there they replied that they had
said never a word; which, indeed, was true, as events proved.
He bade them serve the dinner; and, as the visitor had withdrawn since
the news of the battle, prepared to take a platter to him upstairs. But
he preferred to come down and dine with the family.
During the afternoon more fugitives passed through the village, but
Christopher Swetman, his visitor, and his family kept indoors. In the
evening, however, Swetman came out from his gate, and, harkening in
silence to these tidings and more, wondered what might be in store for
him for his last night's work.
He returned homeward by a path across the mead that skirted his own
orchard. Passing here, he heard the voice of his daughter Leonard
expostulating inside the hedge, her words being: 'Don't ye, sir; don't!
I prithee let me go!'
'Why, sweetheart?'
'Because I've a-promised another!'
Peeping through, as he could not help doing, he saw the girl struggling
in the arms of the stranger, who was attempting to kiss her; but finding
her resistance to be genuine, and her distress unfeigned, he reluctantly
let her go.
Swetman's face grew dark, for his girls were more to him than himself.
He hastened on, meditating moodily all the way. He entered the gate, and
made straight for the orchard. When he reached it his daughter had
disappeared, but the stranger was still standing there.
'Sir!' said the yeoman, his anger having in no wise abated, 'I've seen
what has happened! I have taken 'ee into my house, at some jeopardy to
myself; and, whoever you be, the least I expected of 'ee was to treat
the maidens with a seemly respect. You have not done it, and I no longer
trust you. I am the more watchful over them in that they are motherless;
and I must ask 'ee to go after dark this night!'
The stranger seemed dazed at discovering what his impulse had brought
down upon his head, and his pale face grew paler. He did not reply for a
time. When he did speak his soft voice was thick with feeling.
'Sir,' says he, 'I own that I am in the wrong, if you take the matter
gravely. We do not what we would but what we must. Though I have not
injured your daughter as a woman, I have been treacherous to her as a
hostess and friend in need. I'll go, as you say; I can do no less. I
shall doubtless find a refuge elsewhere.'
They walked towards the house in silence, where Swetman insisted that
his guest should have supper before departing. By the time this was
eaten it was dusk and the stranger announced that he was ready.
They went upstairs to where the garments and sword lay hidden, till the
departing one said that on further thought he would ask another favour:
that he should be allowed to retain the clothes he wore, and that his
host would keep the others and the sword till he, the speaker, should
come or send for them.
'As you will,' said Swetman. 'The gain is on my side; for those clouts
were but kept to dress a scarecrow next fall.'
'They suit my case,' said the stranger sadly. 'However much they may
misfit me, they do not misfit my sorry fortune now!'
'Nay, then,' said Christopher relenting, 'I was too hasty. Sh'lt bide!'
But the other would not, saying that it was better that things should
take their course. Notwithstanding that Swetman importuned him, he only
added, 'If I never come again, do with my belongings as you list. In the
pocket you will find a gold snuff-box, and in the snuff-box fifty gold
pieces.'
'But keep 'em for thy use, man!' said the yeoman.
'No,' says the parting guest; 'they are foreign pieces and would harm me
if I were taken. Do as I bid thee. Put away these things again and take
especial charge of the sword. It belonged to my father's father and I
value it much. But something more common becomes me now.'
Saying which, he took, as he went downstairs, one of the ash sticks used
by Swetman himself for walking with. The yeoman lighted him out to the
garden hatch, where he disappeared through Clammers Gate by the road
that crosses King's-Hintock Park to Evershead.
Christopher returned to the upstairs chamber, and sat down on his bed
reflecting. Then he examined the things left behind, and surely enough
in one of the pockets the gold snuff-box was revealed, containing the
fifty gold pieces as stated by the fugitive. The yeoman next looked at
the sword which its owner had stated to have belonged to his
grandfather. It was two-edged, so that he almost feared to handle it. On
the blade was inscribed the words 'ANDREA FERARA,' and among the many
fine chasings were a rose and crown, the plume of the Prince of Wales,
and two portraits; portraits of a man and a woman, the man's having the
face of the first King Charles, and the woman's, apparently, that of his
Queen.
Swetman, much awed and surprised, returned the articles to the closet,
and went downstairs pondering. Of his surmise he said nothing to his
daughters, merely declaring to them that the gentleman was gone; and
never revealing that he had been an eye-witness of the unpleasant scene
in the orchard that was the immediate cause of the departure.
Nothing occurred in Hintock during the week that followed, beyond the
fitful arrival of more decided tidings concerning the utter defeat of
the Duke's army and his own disappearance at an early stage of the
battle. Then it was told that Monmouth was taken, not in his own clothes
but in the disguise of a countryman. He had been sent to London, and was
confined in the Tower.
The possibility that his guest had been no other than the Duke made
Swetman unspeakably sorry now; his heart smote him at the thought that,
acting so harshly for such a small breach of good faith, he might have
been the means of forwarding the unhappy fugitive's capture. On the
girls coming up to him he said, 'Get away with ye, wenches: I fear you
have been the ruin of an unfortunate man!'
On the Tuesday night following, when the yeoman was sleeping as usual in
his chamber, he was, he said, conscious of the entry of some one.
Opening his eyes, he beheld by the light of the moon, which shone upon
the front of his house, the figure of a man who seemed to be the
stranger moving from the door towards the closet. He was dressed
somewhat differently now, but the face was quite that of his late guest
in its tragical pensiveness, as was also the tallness of his figure. He
neared the closet; and, feeling his visitor to be within his rights,
Christopher refrained from stirring. The personage turned his large
haggard eyes upon the bed where Swetman lay, and then withdrew from
their hiding the articles that belonged to him, again giving a hard gaze
at Christopher as he went noiselessly out of the chamber with his
properties on his arm. His retreat down the stairs was just audible, and
also his departure by the side door, through which entrance or exit was
easy to those who knew the place.
Nothing further happened, and towards morning Swetman slept. To avoid
all risk he said not a word to the girls of the visit of the night, and
certainly not to any one outside the house; for it was dangerous at that
time to avow anything.
Among the killed in opposing the recent rising had been a younger
brother of the lord of the manor, who lived at King's-Hintock Court hard
by. Seeing the latter ride past in mourning clothes next day, Swetman
ventured to condole with him.
'He'd no business there!' answered the other. His words and manner
showed the bitterness that was mingled with his regret. 'But say no more
of him. You know what has happened since, I suppose?'
'I know that they say Monmouth is taken, Sir Thomas, but I can't think
it true,' answered Swetman.
'O zounds! 'tis true enough,' cried the knight, 'and that's not all. The
Duke was executed on Tower Hill two days ago.'
'D'ye say it verily?' says Swetman.
'And a very hard death he had, worse luck for 'n,' said Sir Thomas.
'Well, 'tis over for him and over for my brother. But not for the rest.
There'll be searchings and siftings down here anon; and happy is the man
who has had nothing to do with this matter!'
Now Swetman had hardly heard the latter words, so much was he confounded
by the strangeness of the tidings that the Duke had come to his death on
the previous Tuesday. For it had been only the night before this present
day of Friday that he had seen his former guest, whom he had ceased to
doubt could be other than the Duke, come into his chamber and fetch away
his accoutrements as he had promised.
'It couldn't have been a vision,' said Christopher to himself when the
knight had ridden on. 'But I'll go straight and see if the things be in
the closet still; and thus I shall surely learn if 'twere a vision or
no.'
To the closet he went, which he had not looked into since the stranger's
departure. And searching behind the articles placed to conceal the
things hidden, he found that, as he had never doubted, they were gone.
When the rumour spread abroad in the West that the man beheaded in the
Tower was not indeed the Duke, but one of his officers taken after the
battle, and that the Duke had been assisted to escape out of the
country, Swetman found in it an explanation of what so deeply mystified
him. That his visitor might have been a friend of the Duke's, whom the
Duke had asked to fetch the things in a last request, Swetman would
never admit. His belief in the rumour that Monmouth lived, like that of
thousands of others, continued to the end of his days.
Such, briefly, concluded my kinsman, is the tradition which has been
handed down in Christopher Swetman's family for the last two hundred
years.
A MERE INTERLUDE
CHAPTER I
The traveller in school-books, who vouched in dryest tones for the
fidelity to fact of the following narrative, used to add a ring of truth
to it by opening with a nicety of criticism on the heroine's
personality. People were wrong, he declared, when they surmised that
Baptista Trewthen was a young woman with scarcely emotions or character.
There was nothing in her to love, and nothing to hate-so ran the general
opinion. That she showed few positive qualities was true. The colours
and tones which changing events paint on the faces of active womankind
were looked for in vain upon hers. But still waters run deep; and no
crisis had come in the years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what
lay hidden within her, like metal in a mine.
She was the daughter of a small farmer in St. Maria's, one of the Isles
of Lyonesse beyond Off-Wessex, who had spent a large sum, as there
understood, on her education, by sending her to the mainland for two
years. At nineteen she was entered at the Training College for Teachers,
and at twenty-one nominated to a school in the country, near Tor-upon-
Sea, whither she proceeded after the Christmas examination and holidays.
The months passed by from winter to spring and summer, and Baptista
applied herself to her new duties as best she could, till an uneventful
year had elapsed. Then an air of abstraction pervaded her bearing as she
walked to and fro, twice a day, and she showed the traits of a person
who had something on her mind. A widow, by name Mrs. Wace, in whose
house Baptista Trewthen had been provided with a sitting-room and
bedroom till the school-house should be built, noticed this change in
her youthful tenant's manner, and at last ventured to press her with a
few questions.
'It has nothing to do with the place, nor with you,' said Miss Trewthen.
'Then it is the salary?'
'No, nor the salary.'
'Then it is something you have heard from home, my dear.'
Baptista was silent for a few moments. 'It is Mr. Heddegan,' she
murmured. 'Him they used to call David Heddegan before he got his
money.'
'And who is the Mr. Heddegan they used to call David?'
'An old bachelor at Giant's Town, St. Maria's, with no relations
whatever, who lives about a stone's throw from father's. When I was a
child he used to take me on his knee and say he'd marry me some day. Now
I am a woman the jest has turned earnest, and he is anxious to do it.
And father and mother says I can't do better than have him.'
'He's well off?'
'Yes-he's the richest man we know-as a friend and neighbour.'
'How much older did you say he was than yourself?'
'I didn't say. Twenty years at least.'
'And an unpleasant man in the bargain perhaps?'
'No-he's not unpleasant.'
'Well, child, all I can say is that I'd resist any such engagement if
it's not palatable to 'ee. You are comfortable here, in my little house,
I hope. All the parish like 'ee: and I've never been so cheerful, since
my poor husband left me to wear his wings, as I've been with 'ee as my
lodger.'
The schoolmistress assured her landlady that she could return the
sentiment. 'But here comes my perplexity,' she said. 'I don't like
keeping school. Ah, you are surprised-you didn't suspect it. That's
because I've concealed my feeling. Well, I simply hate school. I don't
care for children-they are unpleasant, troublesome little things, whom
nothing would delight so much as to hear that you had fallen down dead.
Yet I would even put up with them if it was not for the inspector. For
three months before his visit I didn't sleep soundly. And the Committee
of Council are always changing the Code, so that you don't know what to
teach, and what to leave untaught. I think father and mother are right.
They say I shall never excel as a schoolmistress if I dislike the work
so, and that therefore I ought to get settled by marrying Mr. Heddegan.
Between us two, I like him better than school; but I don't like him
quite so much as to wish to marry him.'
These conversations, once begun, were continued from day to day; till at
length the young girl's elderly friend and landlady threw in her opinion
on the side of Miss Trewthen's parents. All things considered, she
declared, the uncertainty of the school, the labour, Baptista's natural
dislike for teaching, it would be as well to take what fate offered, and
make the best of matters by wedding her father's old neighbour and
prosperous friend.
The Easter holidays came round, and Baptista went to spend them as usual
in her native isle, going by train into Off-Wessex and crossing by
packet from Pen-zephyr. When she returned in the middle of April her
face wore a more settled aspect.
'Well?' said the expectant Mrs. Wace.
'I have agreed to have him as my husband,' said Baptista, in an off-hand
way. 'Heaven knows if it will be for the best or not. But I have agreed
to do it, and so the matter is settled.'
Mrs. Wace commended her; but Baptista did not care to dwell on the
subject; so that allusion to it was very infrequent between them.
Nevertheless, among other things, she repeated to the widow from time to
time in monosyllabic remarks that the wedding was really impending; that
it was arranged for the summer, and that she had given notice of leaving
the school at the August holidays. Later on she announced more
specifically that her marriage was to take place immediately after her
return home at the beginning of the month aforesaid.
She now corresponded regularly with Mr. Heddegan. Her letters from him
were seen, at least on the outside, and in part within, by Mrs. Wace.
Had she read more of their interiors than the occasional sentences shown
her by Baptista she would have perceived that the scratchy, rusty
handwriting of Miss Trewthen's betrothed conveyed little more matter
than details of their future housekeeping, and his preparations for the
same, with innumerable 'my dears' sprinkled in disconnectedly, to show
the depth of his affection without the inconveniences of syntax.
CHAPTER II
It was the end of July-dry, too dry, even for the season, the delicate
green herbs and vegetables that grew in this favoured end of the kingdom
tasting rather of the watering-pot than of the pure fresh moisture from
the skies. Baptista's boxes were packed, and one Saturday morning she
departed by a waggonette to the station, and thence by train to Pen-
zephyr, from which port she was, as usual, to cross the water
immediately to her home, and become Mr. Heddegan's wife on the Wednesday
of the week following.
She might have returned a week sooner. But though the wedding day had
loomed so near, and the banns were out, she delayed her departure till
this last moment, saying it was not necessary for her to be at home long
beforehand. As Mr. Heddegan was older than herself, she said, she was to
be married in her ordinary summer bonnet and grey silk frock, and there
were no preparations to make that had not been amply made by her parents
and intended husband.
In due time, after a hot and tedious journey, she reached Pen-zephyr.
She here obtained some refreshment, and then went towards the pier,
where she learnt to her surprise that the little steamboat plying
between the town and the islands had left at eleven o'clock; the usual
hour of departure in the afternoon having been forestalled in
consequence of the fogs which had for a few days prevailed towards
evening, making twilight navigation dangerous.
This being Saturday, there was now no other boat till Tuesday, and it
became obvious that here she would have to remain for the three days,
unless her friends should think fit to rig out one of the island'
sailing-boats and come to fetch her-a not very likely contingency, the
sea distance being nearly forty miles.
Baptista, however, had been detained in Pen-zephyr on more than one
occasion before, either on account of bad weather or some such reason as
the present, and she was therefore not in any personal alarm. But, as
she was to be married on the following Wednesday, the delay was
certainly inconvenient to a more than ordinary degree, since it would
leave less than a day's interval between her arrival and the wedding
ceremony.
Apart from this awkwardness she did not much mind the accident. It was
indeed curious to see how little she minded. Perhaps it would not be too
much to say that, although she was going to do the critical deed of her
life quite willingly, she experienced an indefinable relief at the
postponement of her meeting with Heddegan. But her manner after making
discovery of the hindrance was quiet and subdued, even to passivity
itself; as was instanced by her having, at the moment of receiving
information that the steamer had sailed, replied 'Oh,' so coolly to the
porter with her luggage, that he was almost disappointed at her lack of
disappointment.
The question now was, should she return again to Mrs. Wace, in the
village of Lower Wessex, or wait in the town at which she had arrived.
She would have preferred to go back, but the distance was too great;
moreover, having left the place for good, and somewhat dramatically, to
become a bride, a return, even for so short a space, would have been a
trifle humiliating.
Leaving, then, her boxes at the station, her next anxiety was to secure
a respectable, or rather genteel, lodging in the popular seaside resort
confronting her. To this end she looked about the town, in which, though
she had passed through it half-a-dozen times, she was practically a
stranger.
Baptista found a room to suit her over a fruiterer's shop; where she
made herself at home, and set herself in order after her journey. An
early cup of tea having revived her spirits she walked out to
reconnoitre.
Being a schoolmistress she avoided looking at the schools, and having a
sort of trade connection with books, she avoided looking at the
booksellers; but wearying of the other shops she inspected the churches;
not that for her own part she cared much about ecclesiastical edifices;
but tourists looked at them, and so would she-a proceeding for which no
one would have credited her with any great originality, such, for
instance, as that she subsequently showed herself to possess. The
churches soon oppressed her. She tried the Museum, but came out because
it seemed lonely and tedious.
Yet the town and the walks in this land of strawberries, these
headquarters of early English flowers and fruit, were then, as always,
attractive. From the more picturesque streets she went to the town
gardens, and the Pier, and the Harbour, and looked at the men at work
there, loading and unloading as in the time of the Phoenicians.
'Not Baptista? Yes, Baptista it is!'
The words were uttered behind her. Turning round she gave a start, and
became confused, even agitated, for a moment. Then she said in her usual
undemonstrative manner, 'O-is it really you, Charles?'
Without speaking again at once, and with a half-smile, the new-comer
glanced her over. There was much criticism, and some resentment-even
temper-in his eye.
'I am going home,' continued she. 'But I have missed the boat.'
He scarcely seemed to take in the meaning of this explanation, in the
intensity of his critical survey. 'Teaching still? What a fine
schoolmistress you make, Baptista, I warrant!' he said with a slight
flavour of sarcasm, which was not lost upon her.
'I know I am nothing to brag of,' she replied. 'That's why I have given
up.'
'O-given up? You astonish me.'
'I hate the profession.'
'Perhaps that's because I am in it.'
'O no, it isn't. But I am going to enter on another life altogether. I
am going to be married next week to Mr. David Heddegan.'
The young man-fortified as he was by a natural cynical pride and
passionateness-winced at this unexpected reply, notwithstanding.
'Who is Mr. David Heddegan?' he asked, as indifferently as lay in his
power.
She informed him the bearer of the name was a general merchant of
Giant's Town, St. Maria's island-her father's nearest neighbour and
oldest friend.
'Then we shan't see anything more of you on the mainland?' inquired the
schoolmaster.
'O, I don't know about that,' said Miss Trewthen.
'Here endeth the career of the belle of the boarding-school your father
was foolish enough to send you to. A "general merchant's" wife in the
Lyonesse Isles. Will you sell pounds of soap and pennyworths of tin
tacks, or whole bars of saponaceous matter, and great tenpenny nails?'
'He's not in such a small way as that!' she almost pleaded. 'He owns
ships, though they are rather little ones!'
'O, well, it is much the same. Come, let us walk on; it is tedious to
stand still. I thought you would be a failure in education,' he
continued, when she obeyed him and strolled ahead. 'You never showed
power that way. You remind me much of some of those women who think they
are sure to be great actresses if they go on the stage, because they
have a pretty face, and forget that what we require is acting. But you
found your mistake, didn't you?'
'Don't taunt me, Charles.' It was noticeable that the young
schoolmaster's tone caused her no anger or retaliatory passion; far
otherwise: there was a tear in her eye. 'How is it you are at Pen-
zephyr?' she inquired.
'I don't taunt you. I speak the truth, purely in a friendly way, as I
should to any one I wished well. Though for that matter I might have
some excuse even for taunting you. Such a terrible hurry as you've been
in. I hate a woman who is in such a hurry.'
'How do you mean that?'
'Why-to be somebody's wife or other-anything's wife rather than
nobody's. You couldn't wait for me, O, no. Well, thank God, I'm cured of
all that!'
'How merciless you are!' she said bitterly. 'Wait for you? What does
that mean, Charley? You never showed-anything to wait for-anything
special towards me.'
'O come, Baptista dear; come!'
'What I mean is, nothing definite,' she expostulated. 'I suppose you
liked me a little; but it seemed to me to be only a pastime on your
part, and that you never meant to make an honourable engagement of it.'
'There, that's just it! You girls expect a man to mean business at the
first look. No man when he first becomes interested in a woman has any
definite scheme of engagement to marry her in his mind, unless he is
meaning a vulgar mercenary marriage. However, I did at last mean an
honourable engagement, as you call it, come to that.'
'But you never said so, and an indefinite courtship soon injures a
woman's position and credit, sooner than you think.'
'Baptista, I solemnly declare that in six months I should have asked you
to marry me.'
She walked along in silence, looking on the ground, and appearing very
uncomfortable. Presently he said, 'Would you have waited for me if you
had known?' To this she whispered in a sorrowful whisper, 'Yes!'
They went still farther in silence-passing along one of the beautiful
walks on the outskirts of the town, yet not observant of scene or
situation. Her shoulder and his were close together, and he clasped his
fingers round the small of her arm-quite lightly, and without any
attempt at impetus; yet the act seemed to say, 'Now I hold you, and my
will must be yours.'
Recurring to a previous question of hers he said, 'I have merely run
down here for a day or two from school near Trufal, before going off to
the north for the rest of my holiday. I have seen my relations at
Redrutin quite lately, so I am not going there this time. How little I
thought of meeting you! How very different the circumstances would have
been if, instead of parting again as we must in half-an-hour or so,
possibly for ever, you had been now just going off with me, as my wife,
on our honeymoon trip. Ha-ha-well-so humorous is life!'
She stopped suddenly. 'I must go back now-this is altogether too
painful, Charley! It is not at all a kind mood you are in to-day.'
'I don't want to pain you-you know I do not,' he said more gently. 'Only
it just exasperates me-this you are going to do. I wish you would not.'
'What?'
'Marry him. There, now I have showed you my true sentiments.'
'I must do it now,' said she.
'Why?' he asked, dropping the off-hand masterful tone he had hitherto
spoken in, and becoming earnest; still holding her arm, however, as if
she were his chattel to be taken up or put down at will. 'It is never
too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you. Now I'll say
one thing; and it is truth: I wish you would marry me instead of him,
even now, at the last moment, though you have served me so badly.'
'O, it is not possible to think of that!' she answered hastily, shaking
her head. 'When I get home all will be prepared-it is ready even now-the
things for the party, the furniture, Mr. Heddegan's new suit, and
everything. I should require the courage of a tropical lion to go home
there and say I wouldn't carry out my promise!'
'Then go, in Heaven's name! But there would be no necessity for you to
go home and face them in that way. If we were to marry, it would have to
be at once, instantly; or not at all. I should think your affection not
worth the having unless you agreed to come back with me to Trufal this
evening, where we could be married by licence on Monday morning. And
then no Mr. David Heddegan or anybody else could get you away from me.'
'I must go home by the Tuesday boat,' she faltered. 'What would they
think if I did not come?'
'You could go home by that boat just the same. All the difference would
be that I should go with you. You could leave me on the quay, where I'd
have a smoke, while you went and saw your father and mother privately;
you could then tell them what you had done, and that I was waiting not
far off; that I was a school-master in a fairly good position, and a
young man you had known when you were at the Training College. Then I
would come boldly forward; and they would see that it could not be
altered, and so you wouldn't suffer a lifelong misery by being the wife
of a wretched old gaffer you don't like at all. Now, honestly; you do
like me best, don't you, Baptista?'
'Yes.'
'Then we will do as I say.'
She did not pronounce a clear affirmative. But that she consented to the
novel proposition at some moment or other of that walk was apparent by
what occurred a little later.
CHAPTER III
An enterprise of such pith required, indeed, less talking than
consideration. The first thing they did in carrying it out was to return
to the railway station, where Baptista took from her luggage a small
trunk of immediate necessaries which she would in any case have required
after missing the boat. That same afternoon they travelled up the line
to Trufal.
Charles Stow (as his name was), despite his disdainful indifference to
things, was very careful of appearances, and made the journey
independently of her though in the same train. He told her where she
could get board and lodgings in the city; and with merely a distant nod
to her of a provisional kind, went off to his own quarters, and to see
about the licence.
On Sunday she saw him in the morning across the nave of the pro-
cathedral. In the afternoon they walked together in the fields, where he
told her that the licence would be ready next day, and would be
available the day after, when the ceremony could be performed as early
after eight o'clock as they should choose.
His courtship, thus renewed after an interval of two years, was as
impetuous, violent even, as it was short. The next day came and passed,
and the final arrangements were made. Their agreement was to get the
ceremony over as soon as they possibly could the next morning, so as to
go on to Pen-zephyr at once, and reach that place in time for the boat's
departure the same day. It was in obedience to Baptista's earnest
request that Stow consented thus to make the whole journey to Lyonesse
by land and water at one heat, and not break it at Pen-zephyr; she
seemed to be oppressed with a dread of lingering anywhere, this great
first act of disobedience to her parents once accomplished, with the
weight on her mind that her home had to be convulsed by the disclosure
of it. To face her difficulties over the water immediately she had
created them was, however, a course more desired by Baptista than by her
lover; though for once he gave way.
The next morning was bright and warm as those which had preceded it. By
six o'clock it seemed nearly noon, as is often the case in that part of
England in the summer season. By nine they were husband and wife. They
packed up and departed by the earliest train after the service; and on
the way discussed at length what she should say on meeting her parents,
Charley dictating the turn of each phrase. In her anxiety they had
travelled so early that when they reached Pen-zephyr they found there
were nearly two hours on their hands before the steamer's time of
sailing.
Baptista was extremely reluctant to be seen promenading the streets of
the watering-place with her husband till, as above stated, the household
at Giant's Town should know the unexpected course of events from her own
lips; and it was just possible, if not likely, that some Lyonessian
might be prowling about there, or even have come across the sea to look
for her. To meet any one to whom she was known, and to have to reply to
awkward questions about the strange young man at her side before her
well-framed announcement had been delivered at proper time and place,
was a thing she could not contemplate with equanimity. So, instead of
looking at the shops and harbour, they went along the coast a little
way.
The heat of the morning was by this time intense. They clambered up on
some cliffs, and while sitting there, looking around at St. Michael's
Mount and other objects, Charles said to her that he thought he would
run down to the beach at their feet, and take just one plunge into the
sea.
Baptista did not much like the idea of being left alone; it was gloomy,
she said. But he assured her he would not be gone more than a quarter of
an hour at the outside, and she passively assented.
Down he went, disappeared, appeared again, and looked back. Then he
again proceeded, and vanished, till, as a small waxen object, she saw
him emerge from the nook that had screened him, cross the white fringe
of foam, and walk into the undulating mass of blue. Once in the water he
seemed less inclined to hurry than before; he remained a long time; and,
unable either to appreciate his skill or criticize his want of it at
that distance, she withdrew her eyes from the spot, and gazed at the
still outline of St. Michael's-now beautifully toned in grey.
Her anxiety for the hour of departure, and to cope at once with the
approaching incidents that she would have to manipulate as best she
could, sent her into a reverie. It was now Tuesday; she would reach home
in the evening-a very late time they would say; but, as the delay was a
pure accident, they would deem her marriage to Mr. Heddegan to- morrow
still practicable. Then Charles would have to be produced from the
background. It was a terrible undertaking to think of, and she almost
regretted her temerity in wedding so hastily that morning. The rage of
her father would be so crushing; the reproaches of her mother so bitter;
and perhaps Charles would answer hotly, and perhaps cause estrangement
till death. There had obviously been no alarm about her at St. Maria's,
or somebody would have sailed across to inquire for her. She had, in a
letter written at the beginning of the week, spoken of the hour at which
she intended to leave her country schoolhouse; and from this her friends
had probably perceived that by such timing she would run a risk of
losing the Saturday boat. She had missed it, and as a consequence sat
here on the shore as Mrs. Charles Stow.
This brought her to the present, and she turned from the outline of St.
Michael's Mount to look about for her husband's form. He was, as far as
she could discover, no longer in the sea. Then he was dressing. By
moving a few steps she could see where his clothes lay. But Charles was
not beside them.
Baptista looked back again at the water in bewilderment, as if her
senses were the victim of some sleight of hand. Not a speck or spot
resembling a man's head or face showed anywhere. By this time she was
alarmed, and her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond
the scene of her husband's bathing a small area of water, the quality of
whose surface differed from that of the surrounding expanse as the
coarse vegetation of some foul patch in a mead differs from the fine
green of the remainder. Elsewhere it looked flexuous, here it looked
vermiculated and lumpy, and her marine experiences suggested to her in a
moment that two currents met and caused a turmoil at this place.
She descended as hastily as her trembling limbs would allow. The way
down was terribly long, and before reaching the heap of clothes it
occurred to her that, after all, it would be best to run first for help.
Hastening along in a lateral direction she proceeded inland till she met
a man, and soon afterwards two others. To them she exclaimed, 'I think a
gentleman who was bathing is in some danger. I cannot see him as I
could. Will you please run and help him, at once, if you will be so
kind?'
She did not think of turning to show them the exact spot, indicating it
vaguely by the direction of her hand, and still going on her way with
the idea of gaining more assistance. When she deemed, in her faintness,
that she had carried the alarm far enough, she faced about and dragged
herself back again. Before reaching the now dreaded spot she met one of
the men.
'We can see nothing at all, Miss,' he declared.
Having gained the beach, she found the tide in, and no sign of Charley's
clothes. The other men whom she had besought to come had disappeared, it
must have been in some other direction, for she had not met them going
away. They, finding nothing, had probably thought her alarm a mere
conjecture, and given up the quest.
Baptista sank down upon the stones near at hand. Where Charley had
undressed was now sea. There could not be the least doubt that he was
drowned, and his body sucked under by the current; while his clothes,
lying within high-water mark, had probably been carried away by the
rising tide.
She remained in a stupor for some minutes, till a strange sensation
succeeded the aforesaid perceptions, mystifying her intelligence, and
leaving her physically almost inert. With his personal disappearance,
the last three days of her life with him seemed to be swallowed up, also
his image, in her mind's eye, waned curiously, receded far away, grew
stranger and stranger, less and less real. Their meeting and marriage
had been so sudden, unpremeditated, adventurous, that she could hardly
believe that she had played her part in such a reckless drama. Of all
the few hours of her life with Charles, the portion that most insisted
in coming back to memory was their fortuitous encounter on the previous
Saturday, and those bitter reprimands with which he had begun the
attack, as it might be called, which had piqued her to an unexpected
consummation.
A sort of cruelty, an imperiousness, even in his warmth, had
characterized Charles Stow. As a lover he had ever been a bit of a
tyrant; and it might pretty truly have been said that he had stung her
into marriage with him at last. Still more alien from her life did these
reflections operate to make him; and then they would be chased away by
an interval of passionate weeping and mad regret. Finally, there
returned upon the confused mind of the young wife the recollection that
she was on her way homeward, and that the packet would sail in three-
quarters of an hour.
Except the parasol in her hand, all she possessed was at the station
awaiting her onward journey.
She looked in that direction; and, entering one of those undemonstrative
phases so common with her, walked quietly on.
At first she made straight for the railway; but suddenly turning she
went to a shop and wrote an anonymous line announcing his death by
drowning to the only person she had ever heard Charles mention as a
relative. Posting this stealthily, and with a fearful look around her,
she seemed to acquire a terror of the late events, pursuing her way to
the station as if followed by a spectre.
When she got to the office she asked for the luggage that she had left
there on the Saturday as well as the trunk left on the morning just
lapsed. All were put in the boat, and she herself followed. Quickly as
these things had been done, the whole proceeding, nevertheless, had been
almost automatic on Baptista's part, ere she had come to any definite
conclusion on her course.
Just before the bell rang she heard a conversation on the pier, which
removed the last shade of doubt from her mind, if any had existed, that
she was Charles Stow's widow. The sentences were but fragmentary, but
she could easily piece them out.
'A man drowned-swam out too far-was a stranger to the place-people in
boat-saw him go down-couldn't get there in time.'
The news was little more definite than this as yet; though it may as
well be stated once for all that the statement was true. Charley, with
the over-confidence of his nature, had ventured out too far for his
strength, and succumbed in the absence of assistance, his lifeless body
being at that moment suspended in the transparent mid-depths of the bay.
His clothes, however, had merely been gently lifted by the rising tide,
and floated into a nook hard by, where they lay out of sight of the
passers-by till a day or two after.
CHAPTER IV
In ten minutes they were steaming out of the harbour for their voyage of
four or five hours, at whose ending she would have to tell her strange
story.
As Pen-zephyr and all its environing scenes disappeared behind Mousehole
and St. Clement's Isle, Baptista's ephemeral, meteor-like husband
impressed her yet more as a fantasy. She was still in such a trance-
like state that she had been an hour on the little packet-boat before
she became aware of the agitating fact that Mr. Heddegan was on board
with her. Involuntarily she slipped from her left hand the symbol of her
wifehood.
'Hee-hee! Well, the truth is, I wouldn't interrupt 'ee. "I reckon she
don't see me, or won't see me," I said, "and what's the hurry? She'll
see enough o' me soon!" I hope ye be well, mee deer?'
He was a hale, well-conditioned man of about five and fifty, of the
complexion common to those whose lives are passed on the bluffs and
beaches of an ocean isle. He extended the four quarters of his face in a
genial smile, and his hand for a grasp of the same magnitude. She gave
her own in surprised docility, and he continued: 'I couldn't help coming
across to meet 'ee. What an unfortunate thing you missing the boat and
not coming Saturday! They meant to have warned 'ee that the time was
changed, but forgot it at the last moment. The truth is that I should
have informed 'ee myself; but I was that busy finishing up a job last
week, so as to have this week free, that I trusted to your father for
attending to these little things. However, so plain and quiet as it is
all to be, it really do not matter so much as it might otherwise have
done, and I hope ye haven't been greatly put out. Now, if you'd sooner
that I should not be seen talking to 'ee-if 'ee feel shy at all before
strangers-just say. I'll leave 'ee to yourself till we get home.'
'Thank you much. I am indeed a little tired, Mr. Heddegan.'
He nodded urbane acquiescence, strolled away immediately, and minutely
inspected the surface of the funnel, till some female passengers of
Giant's Town tittered at what they must have thought a rebuff-for the
approaching wedding was known to many on St. Maria's Island, though to
nobody elsewhere. Baptista coloured at their satire, and called him
back, and forced herself to commune with him in at least a mechanically
friendly manner.
The opening event had been thus different from her expectation, and she
had adumbrated no act to meet it. Taken aback she passively allowed
circumstances to pilot her along; and so the voyage was made.
It was near dusk when they touched the pier of Giant's Town, where
several friends and neighbours stood awaiting them. Her father had a
lantern in his hand. Her mother, too, was there, reproachfully glad that
the delay had at last ended so simply. Mrs. Trewthen and her daughter
went together along the Giant's Walk, or promenade, to the house, rather
in advance of her husband and Mr. Heddegan, who talked in loud tones
which reached the women over their shoulders.
Some would have called Mrs. Trewthen a good mother; but though well
meaning she was maladroit, and her intentions missed their mark. This
might have been partly attributable to the slight deafness from which
she suffered. Now, as usual, the chief utterances came from her lips.
'Ah, yes, I'm so glad, my child, that you've got over safe. It is all
ready, and everything so well arranged, that nothing but misfortune
could hinder you settling as, with God's grace, becomes 'ee. Close to
your mother's door a'most, 'twill be a great blessing, I'm sure; and I
was very glad to find from your letters that you'd held your word
sacred. That's right-make your word your bond always. Mrs. Wace seems to
be a sensible woman. I hope the Lord will do for her as he's doing for
you no long time hence. And how did 'ee get over the terrible journey
from Tor-upon-Sea to Pen-zephyr? Once you'd done with the railway, of
course, you seemed quite at home. Well, Baptista, conduct yourself
seemly, and all will be well.'
Thus admonished, Baptista entered the house, her father and Mr. Heddegan
immediately at her back. Her mother had been so didactic that she had
felt herself absolutely unable to broach the subjects in the centre of
her mind.
The familiar room, with the dark ceiling, the well-spread table, the old
chairs, had never before spoken so eloquently of the times ere she knew
or had heard of Charley Stow. She went upstairs to take off her things,
her mother remaining below to complete the disposition of the supper,
and attend to the preparation of to-morrow's meal, altogether composing
such an array of pies, from pies of fish to pies of turnips, as was
never heard of outside the Western Duchy. Baptista, once alone, sat down
and did nothing; and was called before she had taken off her bonnet.
'I'm coming,' she cried, jumping up, and speedily disapparelling
herself, brushed her hair with a few touches and went down.
Two or three of Mr. Heddegan's and her father's friends had dropped in,
and expressed their sympathy for the delay she had been subjected to.
The meal was a most merry one except to Baptista. She had desired
privacy, and there was none; and to break the news was already a greater
difficulty than it had been at first. Everything around her, animate and
inanimate, great and small, insisted that she had come home to be
married; and she could not get a chance to say nay.
One or two people sang songs, as overtures to the melody of the morrow,
till at length bedtime came, and they all withdrew, her mother having
retired a little earlier. When Baptista found herself again alone in her
bedroom the case stood as before: she had come home with much to say,
and she had said nothing.
It was now growing clear even to herself that Charles being dead, she
had not determination sufficient within her to break tidings which, had
he been alive, would have imperatively announced themselves. And thus
with the stroke of midnight came the turning of the scale; her story
should remain untold. It was not that upon the whole she thought it best
not to attempt to tell it; but that she could not undertake so explosive
a matter. To stop the wedding now would cause a convulsion in Giant's
Town little short of volcanic. Weakened, tired, and terrified as she had
been by the day's adventures, she could not make herself the author of
such a catastrophe. But how refuse Heddegan without telling? It really
seemed to her as if her marriage with Mr. Heddegan were about to take
place as if nothing had intervened.
Morning came. The events of the previous days were cut off from her
present existence by scene and sentiment more completely than ever.
Charles Stow had grown to be a special being of whom, owing to his
character, she entertained rather fearful than loving memory. Baptista
could hear when she awoke that her parents were already moving about
downstairs. But she did not rise till her mother's rather rough voice
resounded up the staircase as it had done on the preceding evening.
'Baptista! Come, time to be stirring! The man will be here, by heaven's
blessing, in three-quarters of an hour. He has looked in already for a
minute or two-and says he's going to the church to see if things be well
forward.'
Baptista arose, looked out of the window, and took the easy course. When
she emerged from the regions above she was arrayed in her new silk frock
and best stockings, wearing a linen jacket over the former for
breakfasting, and her common slippers over the latter, not to spoil the
new ones on the rough precincts of the dwelling.
It is unnecessary to dwell at any great length on this part of the
morning's proceedings. She revealed nothing; and married Heddegan, as
she had given her word to do, on that appointed August day.
CHAPTER V
Mr. Heddegan forgave the coldness of his bride's manner during and after
the wedding ceremony, full well aware that there had been considerable
reluctance on her part to acquiesce in this neighbourly arrangement,
and, as a philosopher of long standing, holding that whatever Baptista's
attitude now, the conditions would probably be much the same six months
hence as those which ruled among other married couples.
An absolutely unexpected shock was given to Baptista's listless mind
about an hour after the wedding service. They had nearly finished the
mid-day dinner when the now husband said to her father, 'We think of
starting about two. And the breeze being so fair we shall bring up
inside Pen-zephyr new pier about six at least.'
'What-are we going to Pen-zephyr?' said Baptista. 'I don't know anything
of it.'
'Didn't you tell her?' asked her father of Heddegan.
It transpired that, owing to the delay in her arrival, this proposal
too, among other things, had in the hurry not been mentioned to her,
except some time ago as a general suggestion that they would go
somewhere. Heddegan had imagined that any trip would be pleasant, and
one to the mainland the pleasantest of all.
She looked so distressed at the announcement that her husband willingly
offered to give it up, though he had not had a holiday off the island
for a whole year. Then she pondered on the inconvenience of staying at
Giant's Town, where all the inhabitants were bonded, by the
circumstances of their situation, into a sort of family party, which
permitted and encouraged on such occasions as these oral criticism that
was apt to disturb the equanimity of newly married girls, and would
especially worry Baptista in her strange situation. Hence, unexpectedly,
she agreed not to disorganize her husband's plans for the wedding jaunt,
and it was settled that, as originally intended, they should proceed in
a neighbour's sailing boat to the metropolis of the district.
In this way they arrived at Pen-zephyr without difficulty or mishap.
Bidding adieu to Jenkin and his man, who had sailed them over, they
strolled arm in arm off the pier, Baptista silent, cold, and obedient.
Heddegan had arranged to take her as far as Plymouth before their
return, but to go no further than where they had landed that day. Their
first business was to find an inn; and in this they had unexpected
difficulty, since for some reason or other-possibly the fine weather-
many of the nearest at hand were full of tourists and commercial
travellers. He led her on till he reached a tavern which, though
comparatively unpretending, stood in as attractive a spot as any in the
town; and this, somewhat to their surprise after their previous
experience, they found apparently empty. The considerate old man,
thinking that Baptista was educated to artistic notions, though he
himself was deficient in them, had decided that it was most desirable to
have, on such an occasion as the present, an apartment with 'a good
view' (the expression being one he had often heard in use among
tourists); and he therefore asked for a favourite room on the first
floor, from which a bow-window protruded, for the express purpose of
affording such an outlook.
The landlady, after some hesitation, said she was sorry that particular
apartment was engaged; the next one, however, or any other in the house,
was unoccupied.
'The gentleman who has the best one will give it up to-morrow, and then
you can change into it,' she added, as Mr. Heddegan hesitated about
taking the adjoining and less commanding one.
'We shall be gone to-morrow, and shan't want it,' he said.
Wishing not to lose customers, the landlady earnestly continued that
since he was bent on having the best room, perhaps the other gentleman
would not object to move at once into the one they despised, since,
though nothing could be seen from the window, the room was equally
large.
'Well, if he doesn't care for a view,' said Mr. Heddegan, with the air
of a highly artistic man who did.
'O no-I am sure he doesn't,' she said. 'I can promise that you shall
have the room you want. If you would not object to go for a walk for
half an hour, I could have it ready, and your things in it, and a nice
tea laid in the bow-window by the time you come back?'
This proposal was deemed satisfactory by the fussy old tradesman, and
they went out. Baptista nervously conducted him in an opposite direction
to her walk of the former day in other company, showing on her wan face,
had he observed it, how much she was beginning to regret her sacrificial
step for mending matters that morning.
She took advantage of a moment when her husband's back was turned to
inquire casually in a shop if anything had been heard of the gentleman
who was sucked down in the eddy while bathing.
The shopman said, 'Yes, his body has been washed ashore,' and had just
handed Baptista a newspaper on which she discerned the heading, 'A
Schoolmaster drowned while bathing,' when her husband turned to join
her. She might have pursued the subject without raising suspicion; but
it was more than flesh and blood could do, and completing a small
purchase almost ran out of the shop.
'What is your terrible hurry, mee deer?' said Heddegan, hastening after.
'I don't know-I don't want to stay in shops,' she gasped.
'And we won't,' he said. 'They are suffocating this weather. Let's go
back and have some tay!'
They found the much desired apartment awaiting their entry. It was a
sort of combination bed and sitting-room, and the table was prettily
spread with high tea in the bow-window, a bunch of flowers in the midst,
and a best-parlour chair on each side. Here they shared the meal by the
ruddy light of the vanishing sun. But though the view had been engaged,
regardless of expense, exclusively for Baptista's pleasure, she did not
direct any keen attention out of the window. Her gaze as often fell on
the floor and walls of the room as elsewhere, and on the table as much
as on either, beholding nothing at all.
But there was a change. Opposite her seat was the door, upon which her
eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a snake.
For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such a hat-
surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat-that had been worn by
Charles. Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway ticket
sticking up from the band. Charles had put the ticket there-she had
noticed the act.
Her teeth almost chattered; she murmured something incoherent. Her
husband jumped up and said, 'You are not well! What is it? What shall I
get 'ee?'
'Smelling salts!' she said, quickly and desperately; 'at that chemist's
shop you were in just now.'
He jumped up like the anxious old man that he was, caught up his own hat
from a back table, and without observing the other hastened out and
downstairs.
Left alone she gazed and gazed at the back of the door, then
spasmodically rang the bell. An honest-looking country maid-servant
appeared in response.
'A hat!' murmured Baptista, pointing with her finger. 'It does not
belong to us.'
'O yes, I'll take it away,' said the young woman with some hurry. 'It
belongs to the other gentleman.'
She spoke with a certain awkwardness, and took the hat out of the room.
Baptista had recovered her outward composure. 'The other gentleman?' she
said. 'Where is the other gentleman?'
'He's in the next room, ma'am. He removed out of this to oblige 'ee.'
'How can you say so? I should hear him if he were there,' said Baptista,
sufficiently recovered to argue down an apparent untruth.
'He's there,' said the girl, hardily.
'Then it is strange that he makes no noise,' said Mrs. Heddegan,
convicting the girl of falsity by a look.
'He makes no noise; but it is not strange,' said the servant.
All at once a dread took possession of the bride's heart, like a cold
hand laid thereon; for it flashed upon her that there was a possibility
of reconciling the girl's statement with her own knowledge of facts.
'Why does he make no noise?' she weakly said.
The waiting-maid was silent, and looked at her questioner. 'If I tell
you, ma'am, you won't tell missis?' she whispered.
Baptista promised.
'Because he's a-lying dead!' said the girl. 'He's the schoolmaster that
was drownded yesterday.'
'O!' said the bride, covering her eyes. 'Then he was in this room till
just now?'
'Yes,' said the maid, thinking the young lady's agitation natural
enough. 'And I told missis that I thought she oughtn't to have done it,
because I don't hold it right to keep visitors so much in the dark where
death's concerned; but she said the gentleman didn't die of anything
infectious; she was a poor, honest, innkeeper's wife, she says, who had
to get her living by making hay while the sun sheened. And owing to the
drownded gentleman being brought here, she said, it kept so many people
away that we were empty, though all the other houses were full. So when
your good man set his mind upon the room, and she would have lost good
paying folk if he'd not had it, it wasn't to be supposed, she said, that
she'd let anything stand in the way. Ye won't say that I've told ye,
please, m'm? All the linen has been changed, and as the inquest won't be
till to-morrow, after you are gone, she thought you wouldn't know a word
of it, being strangers here.'
The returning footsteps of her husband broke off further narration.
Baptista waved her hand, for she could not speak. The waiting-maid
quickly withdrew, and Mr. Heddegan entered with the smelling salts and
other nostrums.
'Any better?' he questioned.
'I don't like the hotel,' she exclaimed, almost simultaneously. 'I can't
bear it-it doesn't suit me!'
'Is that all that's the matter?' he returned pettishly (this being the
first time of his showing such a mood). 'Upon my heart and life such
trifling is trying to any man's temper, Baptista! Sending me about from
here to yond, and then when I come back saying 'ee don't like the place
that I have sunk so much money and words to get for 'ee. 'Od dang it
all, 'tis enough to-But I won't say any more at present, mee deer,
though it is just too much to expect to turn out of the house now. We
shan't get another quiet place at this time of the evening-every other
inn in the town is bustling with rackety folk of one sort and t'other,
while here 'tis as quiet as the grave-the country, I would say. So bide
still, d'ye hear, and to-morrow we shall be out of the town altogether-
as early as you like.'
The obstinacy of age had, in short, overmastered its complaisance, and
the young woman said no more. The simple course of telling him that in
the adjoining room lay a corpse which had lately occupied their own
might, it would have seemed, have been an effectual one without further
disclosure, but to allude to that subject, however it was disguised, was
more than Heddegan's young wife had strength for. Horror broke her down.
In the contingency one thing only presented itself to her paralyzed
regard-that here she was doomed to abide, in a hideous contiguity to the
dead husband and the living, and her conjecture did, in fact, bear
itself out. That night she lay between the two men she had married-
Heddegan on the one hand, and on the other through the partition against
which the bed stood, Charles Stow.
CHAPTER VI
Kindly time had withdrawn the foregoing event three days from the
present of Baptista Heddegan. It was ten o'clock in the morning; she had
been ill, not in an ordinary or definite sense, but in a state of cold
stupefaction, from which it was difficult to arouse her so much as to
say a few sentences. When questioned she had replied that she was pretty
well.
Their trip, as such, had been something of a failure. They had gone on
as far as Falmouth, but here he had given way to her entreaties to
return home. This they could not very well do without repassing through
Pen-zephyr, at which place they had now again arrived.
In the train she had seen a weekly local paper, and read there a
paragraph detailing the inquest on Charles. It was added that the
funeral was to take place at his native town of Redrutin on Friday.
After reading this she had shown no reluctance to enter the fatal
neighbourhood of the tragedy, only stipulating that they should take
their rest at a different lodging from the first; and now comparatively
braced up and calm-indeed a cooler creature altogether than when last in
the town, she said to David that she wanted to walk out for a while, as
they had plenty of time on their hands.
'To a shop as usual, I suppose, mee deer?'
'Partly for shopping,' she said. 'And it will be best for you, dear, to
stay in after trotting about so much, and have a good rest while I am
gone.'
He assented; and Baptista sallied forth. As she had stated, her first
visit was made to a shop, a draper's. Without the exercise of much
choice she purchased a black bonnet and veil, also a black stuff gown; a
black mantle she already wore. These articles were made up into a parcel
which, in spite of the saleswoman's offers, her customer said she would
take with her. Bearing it on her arm she turned to the railway, and at
the station got a ticket for Redrutin.
Thus it appeared that, on her recovery from the paralyzed mood of the
former day, while she had resolved not to blast utterly the happiness of
her present husband by revealing the history of the departed one, she
had also determined to indulge a certain odd, inconsequent, feminine
sentiment of decency, to the small extent to which it could do no harm
to any person. At Redrutin she emerged from the railway carriage in the
black attire purchased at the shop, having during the transit made the
change in the empty compartment she had chosen. The other clothes were
now in the bandbox and parcel. Leaving these at the cloak-room she
proceeded onward, and after a wary survey reached the side of a hill
whence a view of the burial ground could be obtained.
It was now a little before two o'clock. While Baptista waited a funeral
procession ascended the road. Baptista hastened across, and by the time
the procession entered the cemetery gates she had unobtrusively joined
it.
In addition to the schoolmaster's own relatives (not a few), the
paragraph in the newspapers of his death by drowning had drawn together
many neighbours, acquaintances, and onlookers. Among them she passed
unnoticed, and with a quiet step pursued the winding path to the chapel,
and afterwards thence to the grave. When all was over, and the relatives
and idlers had withdrawn, she stepped to the edge of the chasm. From
beneath her mantle she drew a little bunch of forget-me- nots, and
dropped them in upon the coffin. In a few minutes she also turned and
went away from the cemetery. By five o'clock she was again in Pen-
zephyr.
'You have been a mortal long time!' said her husband, crossly. 'I
allowed you an hour at most, mee deer.'
'It occupied me longer,' said she.
'Well-I reckon it is wasting words to complain. Hang it, ye look so
tired and wisht that I can't find heart to say what I would!'
'I am-weary and wisht, David; I am. We can get home to-morrow for
certain, I hope?'
'We can. And please God we will!' said Mr. Heddegan heartily, as if he
too were weary of his brief honeymoon. 'I must be into business again on
Monday morning at latest.'
They left by the next morning steamer, and in the afternoon took up
their residence in their own house at Giant's Town.
The hour that she reached the island it was as if a material weight had
been removed from Baptista's shoulders. Her husband attributed the
change to the influence of the local breezes after the hot-house
atmosphere of the mainland. However that might be, settled here, a few
doors from her mother's dwelling, she recovered in no very long time
much of her customary bearing, which was never very demonstrative. She
accepted her position calmly, and faintly smiled when her neighbours
learned to call her Mrs. Heddegan, and said she seemed likely to become
the leader of fashion in Giant's Town.
Her husband was a man who had made considerably more money by trade than
her father had done: and perhaps the greater profusion of surroundings
at her command than she had heretofore been mistress of, was not without
an effect upon her. One week, two weeks, three weeks passed; and, being
pre-eminently a young woman who allowed things to drift, she did nothing
whatever either to disclose or conceal traces of her first marriage; or
to learn if there existed possibilities-which there undoubtedly did-by
which that hasty contract might become revealed to those about her at
any unexpected moment.
While yet within the first month of her marriage, and on an evening just
before sunset, Baptista was standing within her garden adjoining the
house, when she saw passing along the road a personage clad in a greasy
black coat and battered tall hat, which, common enough in the slums of a
city, had an odd appearance in St. Maria's. The tramp, as he seemed to
be, marked her at once-bonnetless and unwrapped as she was her features
were plainly recognizable-and with an air of friendly surprise came and
leant over the wall.
'What! don't you know me?' said he.
She had some dim recollection of his face, but said that she was not
acquainted with him.
'Why, your witness to be sure, ma'am. Don't you mind the man that was
mending the church-window when you and your intended husband walked up
to be made one; and the clerk called me down from the ladder, and I came
and did my part by writing my name and occupation?'
Baptista glanced quickly around; her husband was out of earshot. That
would have been of less importance but for the fact that the wedding
witnessed by this personage had not been the wedding with Mr. Heddegan,
but the one on the day previous.
'I've had a misfortune since then, that's pulled me under,' continued
her friend. 'But don't let me damp yer wedded joy by naming the
particulars. Yes, I've seen changes since; though 'tis but a short time
ago-let me see, only a month next week, I think; for 'twere the first or
second day in August.'
'Yes-that's when it was,' said another man, a sailor, who had come up
with a pipe in his mouth, and felt it necessary to join in (Baptista
having receded to escape further speech). 'For that was the first time I
set foot in Giant's Town; and her husband took her to him the same day.'
A dialogue then proceeded between the two men outside the wall, which
Baptista could not help hearing.
'Ay, I signed the book that made her one flesh,' repeated the decayed
glazier. 'Where's her goodman?'
'About the premises somewhere; but you don't see 'em together much,'
replied the sailor in an undertone. 'You see, he's older than she.'
'Older? I should never have thought it from my own observation,' said
the glazier. 'He was a remarkably handsome man.'
'Handsome? Well, there he is-we can see for ourselves.'
David Heddegan had, indeed, just shown himself at the upper end of the
garden; and the glazier, looking in bewilderment from the husband to the
wife, saw the latter turn pale.
Now that decayed glazier was a far-seeing and cunning man-too far-seeing
and cunning to allow himself to thrive by simple and straightforward
means-and he held his peace, till he could read more plainly the meaning
of this riddle, merely adding carelessly, 'Well-marriage do alter a man,
'tis true. I should never ha' knowed him!'
He then stared oddly at the disconcerted Baptista, and moving on to
where he could again address her, asked her to do him a good turn, since
he once had done the same for her. Understanding that he meant money,
she handed him some, at which he thanked her, and instantly went away.
CHAPTER VII
She had escaped exposure on this occasion; but the incident had been an
awkward one, and should have suggested to Baptista that sooner or later
the secret must leak out. As it was, she suspected that at any rate she
had not heard the last of the glazier.
In a day or two, when her husband had gone to the old town on the other
side of the island, there came a gentle tap at the door, and the worthy
witness of her first marriage made his appearance a second time.
'It took me hours to get to the bottom of the mystery-hours!' he said
with a gaze of deep confederacy which offended her pride very deeply.
'But thanks to a good intellect I've done it. Now, ma'am, I'm not a man
to tell tales, even when a tale would be so good as this. But I'm going
back to the mainland again, and a little assistance would be as rain on
thirsty ground.'
'I helped you two days ago,' began Baptista.
'Yes-but what was that, my good lady? Not enough to pay my passage to
Pen-zephyr. I came over on your account, for I thought there was a
mystery somewhere. Now I must go back on my own. Mind this-'twould be
very awkward for you if your old man were to know. He's a queer temper,
though he may be fond.'
She knew as well as her visitor how awkward it would be; and the hush-
money she paid was heavy that day. She had, however, the satisfaction of
watching the man to the steamer, and seeing him diminish out of sight.
But Baptista perceived that the system into which she had been led of
purchasing silence thus was one fatal to her peace of mind, particularly
if it had to be continued.
Hearing no more from the glazier she hoped the difficulty was past. But
another week only had gone by, when, as she was pacing the Giant's Walk
(the name given to the promenade), she met the same personage in the
company of a fat woman carrying a bundle.
'This is the lady, my dear,' he said to his companion. 'This, ma'am, is
my wife. We've come to settle in the town for a time, if so be we can
find room.'
'That you won't do,' said she. 'Nobody can live here who is not
privileged.'
'I am privileged,' said the glazier, 'by my trade.'
Baptista went on, but in the afternoon she received a visit from the
man's wife. This honest woman began to depict, in forcible colours, the
necessity for keeping up the concealment.
'I will intercede with my husband, ma'am,' she said. 'He's a true man if
rightly managed; and I'll beg him to consider your position. 'Tis a very
nice house you've got here,' she added, glancing round, 'and well worth
a little sacrifice to keep it.'
The unlucky Baptista staved off the danger on this third occasion as she
had done on the previous two. But she formed a resolve that, if the
attack were once more to be repeated she would face a revelation-worse
though that must now be than before she had attempted to purchase
silence by bribes. Her tormentors, never believing her capable of acting
upon such an intention, came again; but she shut the door in their
faces. They retreated, muttering something; but she went to the back of
the house, where David Heddegan was.
She looked at him, unconscious of all. The case was serious; she knew
that well; and all the more serious in that she liked him better now
than she had done at first. Yet, as she herself began to see, the secret
was one that was sure to disclose itself. Her name and Charles's stood
indelibly written in the registers; and though a month only had passed
as yet it was a wonder that his clandestine union with her had not
already been discovered by his friends. Thus spurring herself to the
inevitable, she spoke to Heddegan.
'David, come indoors. I have something to tell you.'
He hardly regarded her at first. She had discerned that during the last
week or two he had seemed preoccupied, as if some private business
harassed him. She repeated her request. He replied with a sigh, 'Yes,
certainly, mee deer.'
When they had reached the sitting-room and shut the door she repeated,
faintly, 'David, I have something to tell you-a sort of tragedy I have
concealed. You will hate me for having so far deceived you; but perhaps
my telling you voluntarily will make you think a little better of me
than you would do otherwise.'
'Tragedy?' he said, awakening to interest. 'Much you can know about
tragedies, mee deer, that have been in the world so short a time!'
She saw that he suspected nothing, and it made her task the harder. But
on she went steadily. 'It is about something that happened before we
were married,' she said.
'Indeed!'
'Not a very long time before-a short time. And it is about a lover,' she
faltered.
'I don't much mind that,' he said mildly. 'In truth, I was in hopes
'twas more.'
'In hopes!'
'Well, yes.'
This screwed her up to the necessary effort. 'I met my old sweetheart.
He scorned me, chid me, dared me, and I went and married him. We were
coming straight here to tell you all what we had done; but he was
drowned; and I thought I would say nothing about him: and I married you,
David, for the sake of peace and quietness. I've tried to keep it from
you, but have found I cannot. There-that's the substance of it, and you
can never, never forgive me, I am sure!'
She spoke desperately. But the old man, instead of turning black or
blue, or slaying her in his indignation, jumped up from his chair, and
began to caper around the room in quite an ecstatic emotion.
'O, happy thing! How well it falls out!' he exclaimed, snapping his,
fingers over his head. 'Ha-ha-the knot is cut-I see a way out of my
trouble-ha-ha!' She looked at him without uttering a sound, till, as he
still continued smiling joyfully, she said, 'O-what do you mean! Is it
done to torment me?'
'No-no! O, mee deer, your story helps me out of the most heart-aching
quandary a poor man ever found himself in! You see, it is this-I've got
a tragedy, too; and unless you had had one to tell, I could never have
seen my way to tell mine!'
'What is yours-what is it?' she asked, with altogether a new view of
things.
'Well-it is a bouncer; mine is a bouncer!' said he, looking on the
ground and wiping his eyes.
'Not worse than mine?'
'Well-that depends upon how you look at it. Yours had to do with the
past alone; and I don't mind it. You see, we've been married a month,
and it don't jar upon me as it would if we'd only been married a day or
two. Now mine refers to past, present, and future; so that-'
'Past, present, and future!' she murmured. 'It never occurred to me that
you had a tragedy, too.'
'But I have!' he said, shaking his head. 'In fact, four.'
'Then tell 'em!' cried the young woman.
'I will-I will. But be considerate, I beg 'ee, mee deer. Well-I wasn't a
bachelor when I married 'ee, any more than you were a spinster. Just as
you was a widow-woman, I was a widow-man.
'Ah!' said she, with some surprise. 'But is that all?-then we are nicely
balanced,' she added, relieved.
'No-it is not all. There's the point. I am not only a widower.'
'O, David!'
'I am a widower with four tragedies-that is to say, four strapping
girls-the eldest taller than you. Don't 'ee look so struck-dumb-like! It
fell out in this way. I knew the poor woman, their mother, in Pen-
zephyr for some years; and-to cut a long story short-I privately married
her at last, just before she died. I kept the matter secret, but it is
getting known among the people here by degrees. I've long felt for the
children-that it is my duty to have them here, and do something for
them. I have not had courage to break it to 'ee, but I've seen lately
that it would soon come to your ears, and that hev worried me.'
'Are they educated?' said the ex-schoolmistress.
'No. I am sorry to say they have been much neglected; in truth, they can
hardly read. And so I thought that by marrying a young schoolmistress I
should get some one in the house who could teach 'em, and bring 'em into
genteel condition, all for nothing. You see, they are growed up too tall
to be sent to school.'
'O, mercy!' she almost moaned. 'Four great girls to teach the rudiments
to, and have always in the house with me spelling over their books; and
I hate teaching, it kills me. I am bitterly punished-I am, I am!'
'You'll get used to 'em, mee deer, and the balance of secrets-mine
against yours-will comfort your heart with a sense of justice. I could
send for 'em this week very well-and I will! In faith, I could send this
very day. Baptista, you have relieved me of all my difficulty!'
Thus the interview ended, so far as this matter was concerned. Baptista
was too stupefied to say more, and when she went away to her room she
wept from very mortification at Mr. Heddegan's duplicity. Education, the
one thing she abhorred; the shame of it to delude a young wife so!
The next meal came round. As they sat, Baptista would not suffer her
eyes to turn towards him. He did not attempt to intrude upon her
reserve, but every now and then looked under the table and chuckled with
satisfaction at the aspect of affairs. 'How very well matched we be!' he
said, comfortably.
Next day, when the steamer came in, Baptista saw her husband rush down
to meet it; and soon after there appeared at her door four tall,
hipless, shoulderless girls, dwindling in height and size from the
eldest to the youngest, like a row of Pan pipes; at the head of them
standing Heddegan. He smiled pleasantly through the grey fringe of his
whiskers and beard, and turning to the girls said, 'Now come forrard,
and shake hands properly with your stepmother.'
Thus she made their acquaintance, and he went out, leaving them
together. On examination the poor girls turned out to be not only plain-
looking, which she could have forgiven, but to have such a lamentably
meagre intellectual equipment as to be hopelessly inadequate as
companions. Even the eldest, almost her own age, could only read with
difficulty words of two syllables; and taste in dress was beyond their
comprehension. In the long vista of future years she saw nothing but
dreary drudgery at her detested old trade without prospect of reward.
She went about quite despairing during the next few days-an unpromising,
unfortunate mood for a woman who had not been married six weeks. From
her parents she concealed everything. They had been amongst the few
acquaintances of Heddegan who knew nothing of his secret, and were
indignant enough when they saw such a ready-made household foisted upon
their only child. But she would not support them in their remonstrances.
'No, you don't yet know all,' she said.
Thus Baptista had sense enough to see the retributive fairness of this
issue. For some time, whenever conversation arose between her and
Heddegan, which was not often, she always said, 'I am miserable, and you
know it. Yet I don't wish things to be otherwise.'
But one day when he asked, 'How do you like 'em now?' her answer was
unexpected. 'Much better than I did,' she said, quietly. 'I may like
them very much some day.'
This was the beginning of a serener season for the chastened spirit of
Baptista Heddegan. She had, in truth, discovered, underneath the crust
of uncouthness and meagre articulation which was due to their
Troglodytean existence, that her unwelcomed daughters had natures that
were unselfish almost to sublimity. The harsh discipline accorded to
their young lives before their mother's wrong had been righted, had
operated less to crush them than to lift them above all personal
ambition. They considered the world and its contents in a purely
objective way, and their own lot seemed only to affect them as that of
certain human beings among the rest, whose troubles they knew rather
than suffered.
This was such an entirely new way of regarding life to a woman of
Baptista's nature, that her attention, from being first arrested by it,
became deeply interested. By imperceptible pulses her heart expanded in
sympathy with theirs. The sentences of her tragi-comedy, her life,
confused till now, became clearer daily. That in humanity, as
exemplified by these girls, there was nothing to dislike, but infinitely
much to pity, she learnt with the lapse of each week in their company.
She grew to like the girls of unpromising exterior, and from liking she
got to love them; till they formed an unexpected point of junction
between her own and her husband's interests, generating a sterling
friendship at least, between a pair in whose existence there had
threatened to be neither friendship nor love.
October, 1885. October, 1885.
THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA-A COMEDY IN CHAPTERS By Thomas Hardy
"Vitae post-scenia celant."-Lucretius.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY-A HEATH NEAR IT-INSIDE THE 'RED LION' INN
2. CHRISTOPHER'S HOUSE-SANDBOURNE TOWN-SANDBOURNE MOOR
3. SANDBOURNE MOOR (continued)
4. SANDBOURNE PIER-ROAD TO WYNDWAY-BALL-ROOM IN WYNDWAY HOUSE
5. AT THE WINDOW-THE ROAD HOME
6. THE SHORE BY WYNDWAY
7. THE DINING-ROOM OF A TOWN HOUSE-THE BUTLER'S PANTRY
8. CHRISTOPHER'S LODGINGS-THE GROUNDS ABOUT ROOKINGTON
9. A LADY'S DRAWING-ROOMS-ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM
10. LADY PETHERWIN'S HOUSE
11. SANDBOURNE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD-SOME LONDON STREETS
12. ARROWTHORNE PARK AND LODGE
13. THE LODGE (continued)-THE COPSE BEHIND
14. A TURNPIKE ROAD
15. AN INNER ROOM AT THE LODGE
16. A LARGE PUBLIC HALL
17. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
18. NEAR SANDBOURNE-LONDON STREETS-ETHELBERTA'S
19. ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM
20. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE HALL-THE ROAD HOME
21. A STREET-NEIGH'S ROOMS-CHRISTOPHER'S ROOMS
22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
23. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued)
24. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued)-THE BRITISH MUSEUM
25. THE ROYAL ACADEMY-THE FARNFIELD ESTATE
26. ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM
27. MRS. BELMAINE'S-CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH
28. ETHELBERTA'S-MR. CHICKEREL'S ROOM
29. ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM-MR. DONCASTLE'S HOUSE
30. ON THE HOUSETOP
31. KNOLLSEA-A LOFTY DOWN-A RUINED CASTLE
32. A ROOM IN ENCKWORTH COURT
33. THE ENGLISH CHANNEL-NORMANDY
34. THE H\xD4TEL BEAU S\xC9JOUR AND SPOTS NEAR IT
35. THE HOTEL (continued), AND THE QUAY IN FRONT
36. THE HOUSE IN TOWN
37. KNOLLSEA-AN ORNAMENTAL VILLA
38. ENCKWORTH COURT
39. KNOLLSEA-MELCHESTER
40. MELCHESTER (continued)
41. WORKSHOPS-AN INN-THE STREET
42. THE DONCASTLES' RESIDENCE, AND OUTSIDE THE SAME
43. THE RAILWAY-THE SEA-THE SHORE BEYOND
44. SANDBOURNE-A LONELY HEATH-THE 'RED LION'-THE HIGHWAY
45. KNOLLSEA-THE ROAD THENCE-ENCKWORTH
46. ENCKWORTH (continued)-THE ANGLEBURY HIGHWAY
47. ENCKWORTH AND ITS PRECINCTS-MELCHESTER
SEQUEL. ANGLEBURY-ENCKWORTH-SANDBOURNE
PREFACE
This somewhat frivolous narrative was produced as an interlude between
stories of a more sober design, and it was given the sub-title of a
comedy to indicate-though not quite accurately-the aim of the
performance. A high degree of probability was not attempted in the
arrangement of the incidents, and there was expected of the reader a
certain lightness of mood, which should inform him with a good-natured
willingness to accept the production in the spirit in which it was
offered. The characters themselves, however, were meant to be consistent
and human.
On its first appearance the novel suffered, perhaps deservedly, for what
was involved in these intentions-for its quality of unexpectedness in
particular-that unforgivable sin in the critic's sight-the immediate
precursor of 'Ethelberta' having been a purely rural tale. Moreover, in
its choice of medium, and line of perspective, it undertook a delicate
task: to excite interest in a drama-if such a dignified word may be used
in the connection-wherein servants were as important as, or more
important than, their masters; wherein the drawing-room was sketched in
many cases from the point of view of the servants' hall. Such a reversal
of the social foreground has, perhaps, since grown more welcome, and
readers even of the finer crusted kind may now be disposed to pardon a
writer for presenting the sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Chickerel
as beings who come within the scope of a congenial regard. T. H.
December 1895.
1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY-A HEATH NEAR IT-INSIDE THE 'RED LION' INN
Young Mrs. Petherwin stepped from the door of an old and well-appointed
inn in a Wessex town to take a country walk. By her look and carriage
she appeared to belong to that gentle order of society which has no
worldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets stolen; but, as a fact not
generally known, her claim to distinction was rather one of brains than
of blood. She was the daughter of a gentleman who lived in a large house
not his own, and began life as a baby christened Ethelberta after an
infant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merely
furnished Ethelberta's mother with a subject of contemplation. She
became teacher in a school, was praised by examiners, admired by
gentlemen, not admired by gentlewomen, was touched up with
accomplishments by masters who were coaxed into painstaking by her many
graces, and, entering a mansion as governess to the daughter thereof,
was stealthily married by the son. He, a minor like herself, died from a
chill caught during the wedding tour, and a few weeks later was followed
into the grave by Sir Ralph Petherwin, his unforgiving father, who had
bequeathed his wealth to his wife absolutely.
These calamities were a sufficient reason to Lady Petherwin for
pardoning all concerned. She took by the hand the forlorn Ethelberta-who
seemed rather a detached bride than a widow-and finished her education
by placing her for two or three years in a boarding-school at Bonn.
Latterly she had brought the girl to England to live under her roof as
daughter and companion, the condition attached being that Ethelberta was
never openly to recognize her relations, for reasons which will
hereafter appear.
The elegant young lady, as she had a full right to be called if she
cared for the definition, arrested all the local attention when she
emerged into the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre
bearing-many people for reasons of heredity discovering such graces only
in those whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail, forgetting that
a bear may be taught to dance. While this air of hers lasted, even the
inanimate objects in the street appeared to know that she was there; but
from a way she had of carelessly overthrowing her dignity by versatile
moods, one could not calculate upon its presence to a certainty when she
was round corners or in little lanes which demanded no repression of
animal spirits.
'Well to be sure!' exclaimed a milkman, regarding her. 'We should freeze
in our beds if 'twere not for the sun, and, dang me! if she isn't a
pretty piece. A man could make a meal between them eyes and chin-eh,
hostler? Odd nation dang my old sides if he couldn't!'
The speaker, who had been carrying a pair of pails on a yoke, deposited
them upon the edge of the pavement in front of the inn, and straightened
his back to an excruciating perpendicular. His remarks had been
addressed to a rickety person, wearing a waistcoat of that preternatural
length from the top to the bottom button which prevails among men who
have to do with horses. He was sweeping straws from the carriage-way
beneath the stone arch that formed a passage to the stables behind.
'Never mind the cursing and swearing, or somebody who's never out of
hearing may clap yer name down in his black book,' said the hostler,
also pausing, and lifting his eyes to the mullioned and transomed
windows and moulded parapet above him-not to study them as features of
ancient architecture, but just to give as healthful a stretch to the
eyes as his acquaintance had done to his back. 'Michael, a old man like
you ought to think about other things, and not be looking two ways at
your time of life. Pouncing upon young flesh like a carrion crow-'tis a
vile thing in a old man.'
''Tis; and yet 'tis not, for 'tis a naterel taste,' said the milkman,
again surveying Ethelberta, who had now paused upon a bridge in full
view, to look down the river. 'Now, if a poor needy feller like myself
could only catch her alone when she's dressed up to the nines for some
grand party, and carry her off to some lonely place-sakes, what a pot of
jewels and goold things I warrant he'd find about her! 'Twould pay en
for his trouble.'
'I don't dispute the picter; but 'tis sly and untimely to think such
roguery. Though I've had thoughts like it, 'tis true, about high women-
Lord forgive me for't.'
'And that figure of fashion standing there is a widow woman, so I hear?'
'Lady-not a penny less than lady. Ay, a thing of twenty-one or
thereabouts.'
'A widow lady and twenty-one. 'Tis a backward age for a body who's so
forward in her state of life.'
'Well, be that as 'twill, here's my showings for her age. She was about
the figure of two or three-and-twenty when a' got off the carriage last
night, tired out wi' boaming about the country; and nineteen this
morning when she came downstairs after a sleep round the clock and a
clane-washed face: so I thought to myself, twenty-one, I thought.'
'And what's the young woman's name, make so bold, hostler?'
'Ay, and the house were all in a stoor with her and the old woman, and
their boxes and camp-kettles, that they carry to wash in because hand-
basons bain't big enough, and I don't know what all; and t'other folk
stopping here were no more than dirt thencefor'ard.'
'I suppose they've come out of some noble city a long way herefrom?'
'And there was her hair up in buckle as if she'd never seen a clay-cold
man at all. However, to cut a long story short, all I know besides about
'em is that the name upon their luggage is Lady Petherwin, and she's the
widow of a city gentleman, who was a man of valour in the Lord Mayor's
Show.'
'Who's that chap in the gaiters and pack at his back, come out of the
door but now?' said the milkman, nodding towards a figure of that
description who had just emerged from the inn and trudged off in the
direction taken by the lady-now out of sight.
'Chap in the gaiters? Chok' it all-why, the father of that nobleman that
you call chap in the gaiters used to be hand in glove with half the
Queen's court.'
'What d'ye tell o'?'
'That man's father was one of the mayor and corporation of Sandbourne,
and was that familiar with men of money, that he'd slap 'em upon the
shoulder as you or I or any other poor fool would the clerk of the
parish.'
'O, what's my lordlin's name, make so bold, then?'
'Ay, the toppermost class nowadays have left off the use of wheels for
the good of their constitutions, so they traipse and walk for many years
up foreign hills, where you can see nothing but snow and fog, till
there's no more left to walk up; and if they reach home alive, and
ha'n't got too old and weared out, they walk and see a little of their
own parishes. So they tower about with a pack and a stick and a clane
white pocket-handkerchief over their hats just as you see he's got on
his. He's been staying here a night, and is off now again. "Young man,
young man," I think to myself, "if your shoulders were bent like a bandy
and your knees bowed out as mine be, till there is not an inch of
straight bone or gristle in 'ee, th' wouldstn't go doing hard work for
play 'a b'lieve."'
'True, true, upon my song. Such a pain as I have had in my lynes all
this day to be sure; words don't know what shipwreck I suffer in these
lynes o' mine-that they do not! And what was this young widow lady's
maiden name, then, hostler? Folk have been peeping after her, that's
true; but they don't seem to know much about her family.'
'And while I've tended horses fifty year that other folk might straddle
'em, here I be now not a penny the better! Often-times, when I see so
many good things about, I feel inclined to help myself in common justice
to my pocket.
"Work hard and be poor, Do nothing and get more."
But I draw in the horns of my mind and think to myself, "Forbear, John
Hostler, forbear!"-Her maiden name? Faith, I don't know the woman's
maiden name, though she said to me, "Good evening, John;" but I had no
memory of ever seeing her afore-no, no more than the dead inside church-
hatch-where I shall soon be likewise-I had not. "Ay, my nabs," I think
to myself, "more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows."'
'More know Tom Fool-what rambling old canticle is it you say, hostler?'
inquired the milkman, lifting his ear. 'Let's have it again-a good
saying well spit out is a Christmas fire to my withered heart. More know
Tom Fool-'
'Than Tom Fool knows,' said the hostler.
'Ah! That's the very feeling I've feeled over and over again, hostler,
but not in such gifted language. 'Tis a thought I've had in me for
years, and never could lick into shape!-O-ho-ho-ho! Splendid! Say it
again, hostler, say it again! To hear my own poor notion that had no
name brought into form like that-I wouldn't ha' lost it for the world!
More know Tom Fool than-than-h-ho-ho-ho-ho!'
'Don't let your sense o' vitness break out in such uproar, for heaven's
sake, or folk will surely think you've been laughing at the lady and
gentleman. Well, here's at it again-Night t'ee, Michael.' And the
hostler went on with his sweeping.
'Night t'ee, hostler, I must move too,' said the milkman, shouldering
his yoke, and walking off; and there reached the inn in a gradual
diminuendo, as he receded up the street, shaking his head convulsively,
'More know-Tom Fool-than Tom Fool-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!'
The 'Red Lion,' as the inn or hotel was called which of late years had
become the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from its
precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle of
the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled and
assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along the
streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for such
quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautiful
natural features of the country round.
The lady whose appearance had asserted a difference between herself and
the Anglebury people, without too clearly showing what that difference
was, passed out of the town in a few moments and, following the highway
across meadows fed by the Froom, she crossed the railway and soon got
into a lonely heath. She had been watching the base of a cloud as it
closed down upon the line of a distant ridge, like an upper upon a lower
eyelid, shutting in the gaze of the evening sun. She was about to return
before dusk came on, when she heard a commotion in the air immediately
behind and above her head. The saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duck
flying along with the greatest violence, just in its rear being another
large bird, which a countryman would have pronounced to be one of the
biggest duck-hawks that he had ever beheld. The hawk neared its intended
victim, and the duck screamed and redoubled its efforts.
Ethelberta impulsively started off in a rapid run that would have made a
little dog bark with delight and run after, her object being, if
possible, to see the end of this desperate struggle for a life so small
and unheard-of. Her stateliness went away, and it could be forgiven for
not remaining; for her feet suddenly became as quick as fingers, and she
raced along over the uneven ground with such force of tread that, being
a woman slightly heavier than gossamer, her patent heels punched little
D's in the soil with unerring accuracy wherever it was bare, crippled
the heather-twigs where it was not, and sucked the swampy places with a
sound of quick kisses.
Her rate of advance was not to be compared with that of the two birds,
though she went swiftly enough to keep them well in sight in such an
open place as that around her, having at one point in the journey been
so near that she could hear the whisk of the duck's feathers against the
wind as it lifted and lowered its wings. When the bird seemed to be but
a few yards from its enemy she saw it strike downwards, and after a
level flight of a quarter of a minute, vanish. The hawk swooped after,
and Ethelberta now perceived a whitely shining oval of still water,
looking amid the swarthy level of the heath like a hole through to a
nether sky.
Into this large pond, which the duck had been making towards from the
beginning of its precipitate flight, it had dived out of sight. The
excited and breathless runner was in a few moments close enough to see
the disappointed hawk hovering and floating in the air as if waiting for
the reappearance of its prey, upon which grim pastime it was so intent
that by creeping along softly she was enabled to get very near the edge
of the pool and witness the conclusion of the episode. Whenever the duck
was under the necessity of showing its head to breathe, the other bird
would dart towards it, invariably too late, however; for the diver was
far too experienced in the rough humour of the buzzard family at this
game to come up twice near the same spot, unaccountably emerging from
opposite sides of the pool in succession, and bobbing again by the time
its adversary reached each place, so that at length the hawk gave up the
contest and flew away, a satanic moodiness being almost perceptible in
the motion of its wings.
The young lady now looked around her for the first time, and began to
perceive that she had run a long distance-very much further than she had
originally intended to come. Her eyes had been so long fixed upon the
hawk, as it soared against the bright and mottled field of sky, that on
regarding the heather and plain again it was as if she had returned to a
half-forgotten region after an absence, and the whole prospect was
darkened to one uniform shade of approaching night. She began at once to
retrace her steps, but having been indiscriminately wheeling round the
pond to get a good view of the performance, and having followed no path
thither, she found the proper direction of her journey to be a matter of
some uncertainty.
'Surely,' she said to herself, 'I faced the north at starting:' and yet
on walking now with her back where her face had been set, she did not
approach any marks on the horizon which might seem to signify the town.
Thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she walked on till the
evening light began to turn to dusk, and the shadows to darkness.
Presently in front of her Ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade, and
it proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who was coming
towards her out of a slight depression in the ground. It was as yet too
early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to be altogether
courageous; and with balanced sensations Ethelberta kept her eye sharply
upon him as he rose by degrees into view. The peculiar arrangement of
his hat and pugree soon struck her as being that she had casually
noticed on a peg in one of the rooms of the 'Red Lion,' and when he came
close she saw that his arms diminished to a peculiar smallness at their
junction with his shoulders, like those of a doll, which was explained
by their being girt round at that point with the straps of a knapsack
that he carried behind him. Encouraged by the probability that he, like
herself, was staying or had been staying at the 'Red Lion,' she said,
'Can you tell me if this is the way back to Anglebury?'
'It is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,' said the tourist-
the same who had been criticized by the two old men.
At hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady's
person stood still: she stopped like a clock. When she could again fence
with the perception which had caused all this, she breathed.
'Mr. Julian!' she exclaimed. The words were uttered in a way which would
have told anybody in a moment that here lay something connected with the
light of other days.
'Ah, Mrs. Petherwin!-Yes, I am Mr. Julian-though that can matter very
little, I should think, after all these years, and what has passed.'
No remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continued
unconcernedly, 'Shall I put you in the path-it is just here?'
'If you please.'
'Come with me, then.'
She walked in silence at his heels, not a word passing between them all
the way: the only noises which came from the two were the brushing of
her dress and his gaiters against the heather, or the smart rap of a
stray flint against his boot.
They had now reached a little knoll, and he turned abruptly: 'That is
Anglebury-just where you see those lights. The path down there is the
one you must follow; it leads round the hill yonder and directly into
the town.'
'Thank you,' she murmured, and found that he had never removed his eyes
from her since speaking, keeping them fixed with mathematical exactness
upon one point in her face. She moved a little to go on her way; he
moved a little less-to go on his.
'Good-night,' said Mr. Julian.
The moment, upon the very face of it, was critical; and yet it was one
of those which have to wait for a future before they acquire a definite
character as good or bad.
Thus much would have been obvious to any outsider; it may have been
doubly so to Ethelberta, for she gave back more than she had got,
replying, 'Good-bye-if you are going to say no more.'
Then in struck Mr. Julian: 'What can I say? You are nothing to me. . . .
I could forgive a woman doing anything for spite, except marrying for
spite.'
'The connection of that with our present meeting does not appear, unless
it refers to what you have done. It does not refer to me.'
'I am not married: you are.'
She did not contradict him, as she might have done. 'Christopher,' she
said at last, 'this is how it is: you knew too much of me to respect me,
and too little to pity me. A half knowledge of another's life mostly
does injustice to the life half known.'
'Then since circumstances forbid my knowing you more, I must do my best
to know you less, and elevate my opinion of your nature by forgetting
what it consists in,' he said in a voice from which all feeling was
polished away.
'If I did not know that bitterness had more to do with those words than
judgment, I-should be-bitter too! You never knew half about me; you only
knew me as a governess; you little think what my beginnings were.'
'I have guessed. I have many times told myself that your early life was
superior to your position when I first met you. I think I may say
without presumption that I recognize a lady by birth when I see her,
even under reverses of an extreme kind. And certainly there is this to
be said, that the fact of having been bred in a wealthy home does
slightly redeem an attempt to attain to such a one again.'
Ethelberta smiled a smile of many meanings.
'However, we are wasting words,' he resumed cheerfully. 'It is better
for us to part as we met, and continue to be the strangers that we have
become to each other. I owe you an apology for having been betrayed into
more feeling than I had a right to show, and let us part friends. Good
night, Mrs. Petherwin, and success to you. We may meet again, some day,
I hope.'
'Good night,' she said, extending her hand. He touched it, turned about,
and in a short time nothing remained of him but quick regular brushings
against the heather in the deep broad shadow of the moor.
Ethelberta slowly moved on in the direction that he had pointed out.
This meeting had surprised her in several ways. First, there was the
conjuncture itself; but more than that was the fact that he had not
parted from her with any of the tragic resentment that she had from time
to time imagined for that scene if it ever occurred. Yet there was
really nothing wonderful in this: it is part of the generous nature of a
bachelor to be not indisposed to forgive a portionless sweetheart who,
by marrying elsewhere, has deprived him of the bliss of being obliged to
marry her himself. Ethelberta would have been disappointed quite had
there not been a comforting development of exasperation in the middle
part of his talk; but after all it formed a poor substitute for the
loving hatred she had expected.
When she reached the hotel the lamp over the door showed a face a little
flushed, but the agitation which at first had possessed her was gone to
a mere nothing. In the hall she met a slender woman wearing a silk dress
of that peculiar black which in sunlight proclaims itself to have once
seen better days as a brown, and days even better than those as a
lavender, green, or blue.
'Menlove,' said the lady, 'did you notice if any gentleman observed and
followed me when I left the hotel to go for a walk this evening?'
The lady's-maid, thus suddenly pulled up in a night forage after lovers,
put a hand to her forehead to show that there was no mistake about her
having begun to meditate on receiving orders to that effect, and said at
last, 'You once told me, ma'am, if you recollect, that when you were
dressed, I was not to go staring out of the window after you as if you
were a doll I had just manufactured and sent round for sale.'
'Yes, so I did.'
'So I didn't see if anybody followed you this evening.'
'Then did you hear any gentleman arrive here by the late train last
night?'
'O no, ma'am-how could I?' said Mrs. Menlove-an exclamation which was
more apposite than her mistress suspected, considering that the speaker,
after retiring from duty, had slipped down her dark skirt to reveal a
light, puffed, and festooned one, put on a hat and feather, together
with several pennyweights of metal in the form of rings, brooches, and
earrings-all in a time whilst one could count a hundred-and enjoyed
half-an-hour of prime courtship by an honourable young waiter of the
town, who had proved constant as the magnet to the pole for the space of
the day and a half that she had known him.
Going at once upstairs, Ethelberta ran down the passage, and after some
hesitation softly opened the door of the sitting-room in the best suite
of apartments that the inn could boast of.
In this room sat an elderly lady writing by the light of two candles
with green shades. Well knowing, as it seemed, who the intruder was, she
continued her occupation, and her visitor advanced and stood beside the
table. The old lady wore her spectacles low down her cheek, her glance
being depressed to about the slope of her straight white nose in order
to look through them. Her mouth was pursed up to almost a youthful shape
as she formed the letters with her pen, and a slight move of the lip
accompanied every downstroke. There were two large antique rings on her
forefinger, against which the quill rubbed in moving backwards and
forwards, thereby causing a secondary noise rivalling the primary one of
the nib upon the paper.
'Mamma,' said the younger lady, 'here I am at last.'
A writer's mind in the midst of a sentence being like a ship at sea,
knowing no rest or comfort till safely piloted into the harbour of a
full stop, Lady Petherwin just replied with 'What,' in an occupied tone,
not rising to interrogation. After signing her name to the letter, she
raised her eyes.
'Why, how late you are, Ethelberta, and how heated you look!' she said.
'I have been quite alarmed about you. What do you say has happened?'
The great, chief, and altogether eclipsing thing that had happened was
the accidental meeting with an old lover whom she had once quarrelled
with; and Ethelberta's honesty would have delivered the tidings at once,
had not, unfortunately, all the rest of her attributes been dead against
that act, for the old lady's sake even more than for her own.
'I saw a great cruel bird chasing a harmless duck!' she exclaimed
innocently. 'And I ran after to see what the end of it would be-much
further than I had any idea of going. However, the duck came to a pond,
and in running round it to see the end of the fight, I could not
remember which way I had come.'
'Mercy!' said her mother-in-law, lifting her large eyelids, heavy as
window-shutters, and spreading out her fingers like the horns of a
snail. 'You might have sunk up to your knees and got lost in that swampy
place-such a time of night, too. What a tomboy you are! And how did you
find your way home after all!'
'O, some man showed me the way, and then I had no difficulty, and after
that I came along leisurely.'
'I thought you had been running all the way; you look so warm.'
'It is a warm evening. . . . Yes, and I have been thinking of old times
as I walked along,' she said, 'and how people's positions in life alter.
Have I not heard you say that while I was at Bonn, at school, some
family that we had known had their household broken up when the father
died, and that the children went away you didn't know where?'
'Do you mean the Julians?'
'Yes, that was the name.'
'Why, of course you know it was the Julians. Young Julian had a day or
two's fancy for you one summer, had he not?-just after you came to us,
at the same time, or just before it, that my poor boy and you were so
desperately attached to each other.'
'O yes, I recollect,' said Ethelberta. 'And he had a sister, I think. I
wonder where they went to live after the family collapse.'
'I do not know,' said Lady Petherwin, taking up another sheet of paper.
'I have a dim notion that the son, who had been brought up to no
profession, became a teacher of music in some country town-music having
always been his hobby. But the facts are not very distinct in my
memory.' And she dipped her pen for another letter.
Ethelberta, with a rather fallen countenance, then left her mother-in-
law, and went where all ladies are supposed to go when they want to
torment their minds in comfort-to her own room. Here she thoughtfully
sat down awhile, and some time later she rang for her maid.
'Menlove,' she said, without looking towards a rustle and half a
footstep that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her
chair and speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you go
down and find out if any gentleman named Julian has been staying in this
house? Get to know it, I mean, Menlove, not by directly inquiring; you
have ways of getting to know things, have you not? If the devoted George
were here now, he would help-'
'George was nothing to me, ma'am.'
'James, then.'
'And I only had James for a week or ten days: when I found he was a
married man, I encouraged his addresses very little indeed.'
'If you had encouraged him heart and soul, you couldn't have fumed more
at the loss of him. But please to go and make that inquiry, will you,
Menlove?'
In a few minutes Ethelberta's woman was back again. 'A gentleman of that
name stayed here last night, and left this afternoon.'
'Will you find out his address?'
Now the lady's-maid had already been quick-witted enough to find out
that, and indeed all about him; but it chanced that a fashionable
illustrated weekly paper had just been sent from the bookseller's, and
being in want of a little time to look it over before it reached her
mistress's hands, Mrs. Menlove retired, as if to go and ask the
question-to stand meanwhile under the gas-lamp in the passage,
inspecting the fascinating engravings. But as time will not wait for
tire-women, a natural length of absence soon elapsed, and she returned
again and said,
'His address is, Upper Street, Sandbourne.'
'Thank you, that will do,' replied her mistress.
The hour grew later, and that dreamy period came round when ladies'
fancies, that have lain shut up close as their fans during the day,
begin to assert themselves anew. At this time a good guess at
Ethelberta's thoughts might have been made from her manner of passing
the minutes away. Instead of reading, entering notes in her diary, or
doing any ordinary thing, she walked to and fro, curled her pretty
nether lip within her pretty upper one a great many times, made a cradle
of her locked fingers, and paused with fixed eyes where the walls of the
room set limits upon her walk to look at nothing but a picture within
her mind.
2. CHRISTOPHER'S HOUSE-SANDBOURNE TOWN-SANDBOURNE MOOR
During the wet autumn of the same year, the postman passed one morning
as usual into a plain street that ran through the less fashionable
portion of Sandbourne, a modern coast town and watering-place not many
miles from the ancient Anglebury. He knocked at the door of a flat-faced
brick house, and it was opened by a slight, thoughtful young man, with
his hat on, just then coming out. The postman put into his hands a book
packet, addressed, 'Christopher Julian, Esq.'
Christopher took the package upstairs, opened it with curiosity, and
discovered within a green volume of poems, by an anonymous writer, the
title-page bearing the inscription, 'Metres by E.' The book was new,
though it was cut, and it appeared to have been looked into. The young
man, after turning it over and wondering where it came from, laid it on
the table and went his way, being in haste to fulfil his engagements for
the day.
In the evening, on returning home from his occupations, he sat himself
down cosily to read the newly-arrived volume. The winds of this
uncertain season were snarling in the chimneys, and drops of rain spat
themselves into the fire, revealing plainly that the young man's room
was not far enough from the top of the house to admit of a twist in the
flue, and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three
inverse, the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable
here. However, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a
somewhat contradictory group of furniture suggesting that the collection
consisted of waifs and strays from a former home, the grimy faces of the
old articles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the bright
faces of the new. An oval mirror of rococo workmanship, and a heavy
cabinet-piano with a cornice like that of an Egyptian temple, adjoined a
harmonium of yesterday, and a harp that was almost as new. Printed music
of the last century, and manuscript music of the previous evening, lay
there in such quantity as to endanger the tidiness of a retreat which
was indeed only saved from a chronic state of litter by a pair of hands
that sometimes played, with the lightness of breezes, about the sewing-
machine standing in a remote corner-if any corner could be called remote
in a room so small.
Fire lights and shades from the shaking flames struck in a butterfly
flutter on the underparts of the mantelshelf, and upon the reader's
cheek as he sat. Presently, and all at once, a much greater intentness
pervaded his face: he turned back again, and read anew the subject that
had arrested his eyes. He was a man whose countenance varied with his
mood, though it kept somewhat in the rear of that mood. He looked sad
when he felt almost serene, and only serene when he felt quite cheerful.
It is a habit people acquire who have had repressing experiences.
A faint smile and flush now lightened his face, and jumping up he opened
the door and exclaimed, 'Faith! will you come here for a moment?'
A prompt step was heard on the stairs, and the young person addressed as
Faith entered the room. She was small in figure, and bore less in the
form of her features than in their shades when changing from expression
to expression the evidence that she was his sister.
'Faith-I want your opinion. But, stop, read this first.' He laid his
finger upon a page in the book, and placed it in her hand.
The girl drew from her pocket a little green-leather sheath, worn at the
edges to whity-brown, and out of that a pair of spectacles,
unconsciously looking round the room for a moment as she did so, as if
to ensure that no stranger saw her in the act of using them. Here a
weakness was uncovered at once; it was a small, pretty, and natural one;
indeed, as weaknesses go in the great world, it might almost have been
called a commendable trait. She then began to read, without sitting
down.
These 'Metres by E.' composed a collection of soft and marvellously
musical rhymes, of a nature known as the vers de soci\xE9t\xE9. The lines
presented a series of playful defences of the supposed strategy of
womankind in fascination, courtship, and marriage-the whole teeming with
ideas bright as mirrors and just as unsubstantial, yet forming a
brilliant argument to justify the ways of girls to men. The pervading
characteristic of the mass was the means of forcing into notice, by
strangeness of contrast, the single mournful poem that the book
contained. It was placed at the very end, and under the title of
'Cancelled Words,' formed a whimsical and rather affecting love-lament,
somewhat in the tone of many of Sir Thomas Wyatt's poems. This was the
piece which had arrested Christopher's attention, and had been pointed
out by him to his sister Faith.
'It is very touching,' she said, looking up.
'What do you think I suspect about it-that the poem is addressed to me!
Do you remember, when father was alive and we were at Solentsea that
season, about a governess who came there with a Sir Ralph Petherwin and
his wife, people with a sickly little daughter and a grown-up son?'
'I never saw any of them. I think I remember your knowing something
about a young man of that name.'
'Yes, that was the family. Well, the governess there was a very
attractive woman, and somehow or other I got more interested in her than
I ought to have done (this is necessary to the history), and we used to
meet in romantic places-and-and that kind of thing, you know. The end of
it was, she jilted me and married the son.'
'You were anxious to get away from Solentsea.'
'Was I? Then that was chiefly the reason. Well, I decided to think no
more of her, and I was helped to do it by the troubles that came upon us
shortly afterwards; it is a blessed arrangement that one does not feel a
sentimental grief at all when additional grief comes in the shape of
practical misfortune. However, on the first afternoon of the little
holiday I took for my walking tour last summer, I came to Anglebury, and
stayed about the neighbourhood for a day or two to see what it was like,
thinking we might settle there if this place failed us. The next evening
I left, and walked across the heath to Flychett-that's a village about
five miles further on-so as to be that distance on my way for next
morning; and while I was crossing the heath there I met this very woman.
We talked a little, because we couldn't help it-you may imagine the kind
of talk it was-and parted as coolly as we had met. Now this strange book
comes to me; and I have a strong conviction that she is the writer of
it, for that poem sketches a similar scene-or rather suggests it; and
the tone generally seems the kind of thing she would write-not that she
was a sad woman, either.'
'She seems to be a warm-hearted, impulsive woman, to judge from these
tender verses.'
'People who print very warm words have sometimes very cold manners. I
wonder if it is really her writing, and if she has sent it to me!'
'Would it not be a singular thing for a married woman to do? Though of
course'-(she removed her spectacles as if they hindered her from
thinking, and hid them under the timepiece till she should go on
reading)-'of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and
custom is no argument with them. I am sure I would not have sent it to a
man for the world!'
'I do not see any absolute harm in her sending it. Perhaps she thinks
that, since it is all over, we may as well die friends.'
'If I were her husband I should have doubts about the dying. And "all
over" may not be so plain to other people as it is to you.'
'Perhaps not. And when a man checks all a woman's finer sentiments
towards him by marrying her, it is only natural that it should find a
vent somewhere. However, she probably does not know of my downfall since
father's death. I hardly think she would have cared to do it had she
known that. (I am assuming that it is Ethelberta-Mrs. Petherwin-who
sends it: of course I am not sure.) We must remember that when I knew
her I was a gentleman at ease, who had not the least notion that I
should have to work for a living, and not only so, but should have first
to invent a profession to work at out of my old tastes.'
'Kit, you have made two mistakes in your thoughts of that lady. Even
though I don't know her, I can show you that. Now I'll tell you! the
first is in thinking that a married lady would send the book with that
poem in it without at any rate a slight doubt as to its propriety: the
second is in supposing that, had she wished to do it, she would have
given the thing up because of our misfortunes. With a true woman the
second reason would have had no effect had she once got over the first.
I'm a woman, and that's why I know.'
Christopher said nothing, and turned over the poems.
He lived by teaching music, and, in comparison with starving, thrived;
though the wealthy might possibly have said that in comparison with
thriving he starved. During this night he hummed airs in bed, thought he
would do for the ballad of the fair poetess what other musicians had
done for the ballads of other fair poetesses, and dreamed that she
smiled on him as her prototype Sappho smiled on Phaon.
The next morning before starting on his rounds a new circumstance
induced him to direct his steps to the bookseller's, and ask a question.
He had found on examining the wrapper of the volume that it was posted
in his own town.
'No copy of the book has been sold by me,' the bookseller's voice
replied from far up the Alpine height of the shop-ladder, where he stood
dusting stale volumes, as was his habit of a morning before customers
came. 'I have never heard of it-probably never shall;' and he shook out
the duster, so as to hit the delicate mean between stifling Christopher
and not stifling him.
'Surely you don't live by your shop?' said Christopher, drawing back.
The bookseller's eyes rested on the speaker's; his face changed; he came
down and placed his hand on the lapel of Christopher's coat. 'Sir,' he
said, 'country bookselling is a miserable, impoverishing, exasperating
thing in these days. Can you understand the rest?'
'I can; I forgive a starving man anything,' said Christopher.
'You go a long way very suddenly,' said the book seller. 'Half as much
pity would have seemed better. However, wait a moment.' He looked into a
list of new books, and added: 'The work you allude to was only published
last week; though, mind you, if it had been published last century I
might not have sold a copy.'
Although his time was precious, Christopher had now become so interested
in the circumstance that the unseen sender was somebody breathing his
own atmosphere, possibly the very writer herself-the book being too new
to be known-that he again passed through the blue shadow of the spire
which stretched across the street to-day, and went towards the post-
office, animated by a bright intention-to ask the postmaster if he knew
the handwriting in which the packet was addressed.
Now the postmaster was an acquaintance of Christopher's, but, as
regarded putting that question to him, there was a difficulty.
Everything turned upon whether the postmaster at the moment of asking
would be in his under-government manner, or in the manner with which
mere nature had endowed him. In the latter case his reply would be all
that could be wished; in the former, a man who had sunk in society might
as well put his tongue into a mousetrap as make an inquiry so obviously
outside the pale of legality as was this.
So he postponed his business for the present, and refrained from
entering till he passed by after dinner, when pleasant malt liquor, of
that capacity for cheering which is expressed by four large letter X's
marching in a row, had refilled the globular trunk of the postmaster and
neutralized some of the effects of officiality. The time was well
chosen, but the inquiry threatened to prove fruitless: the postmaster
had never, to his knowledge, seen the writing before. Christopher was
turning away when a clerk in the background looked up and stated that
some young lady had brought a packet with such an address upon it into
the office two days earlier to get it stamped.
'Do you know her?' said Christopher.
'I have seen her about the neighbourhood. She goes by every morning; I
think she comes into the town from beyond the common, and returns again
between four and five in the afternoon.'
'What does she wear?'
'A white wool jacket with zigzags of black braid.'
Christopher left the post-office and went his way. Among his other
pupils there were two who lived at some distance from Sandbourne-one of
them in the direction indicated as that habitually taken by the young
person; and in the afternoon, as he returned homeward, Christopher
loitered and looked around. At first he could see nobody; but when about
a mile from the outskirts of the town he discerned a light spot ahead of
him, which actually turned out to be the jacket alluded to. In due time
he met the wearer face to face; she was not Ethelberta Petherwin-quite a
different sort of individual. He had long made up his mind that this
would be the case, yet he was in some indescribable way disappointed.
Of the two classes into which gentle young women naturally divide, those
who grow red at their weddings, and those who grow pale, the present one
belonged to the former class. She was an April-natured, pink-cheeked
girl, with eyes that would have made any jeweller in England think of
his trade-one who evidently took her day in the daytime, frequently
caught the early worm, and had little to do with yawns or candlelight.
She came and passed him; he fancied that her countenance changed. But
one may fancy anything, and the pair receded each from each without
turning their heads. He could not speak to her, plain and simple as she
seemed.
It is rarely that a man who can be entered and made to throb by the
channel of his ears is not open to a similar attack through the channel
of his eyes-for many doors will admit to one mansion-allowance being
made for the readier capacity of chosen and practised organs. Hence the
beauties, concords, and eloquences of the female form were never without
their effect upon Christopher, a born musician, artist, poet, seer,
mouthpiece-whichever a translator of Nature's oracles into simple speech
may be called. The young girl who had gone by was fresh and pleasant;
moreover, she was a sort of mysterious HANDlink between himself and the
past, which these things were vividly reviving in him.
The following week Christopher met her again. She had not much dignity,
he had not much reserve, and the sudden resolution to have a holiday
which sometimes impels a plump heart to rise up against a brain that
overweights it was not to be resisted. He just lifted his hat, and put
the only question he could think of as a beginning: 'Have I the pleasure
of addressing the author of a book of very melodious poems that was sent
me the other day?'
The girl's forefinger twirled rapidly the loop of braid that it had
previously been twirling slowly, and drawing in her breath, she said,
'No, sir.'
'The sender, then?'
'Yes.'
She somehow presented herself as so insignificant by the combined effect
of the manner and the words that Christopher lowered his method of
address to her level at once. 'Ah,' he said, 'such an atmosphere as the
writer of "Metres by E." seems to breathe would soon spoil cheeks that
are fresh and round as lady-apples-eh, little girl? But are you disposed
to tell me that writer's name?'
By applying a general idea to a particular case a person with the best
of intentions may find himself immediately landed in a quandary. In
saying to the country girl before him what would have suited the mass of
country lasses well enough, Christopher had offended her beyond the cure
of compliment.
'I am not disposed to tell the writer's name,' she replied, with a
dudgeon that was very great for one whose whole stock of it was a
trifle. And she passed on and left him standing alone.
Thus further conversation was checked; but, through having rearranged
the hours of his country lessons, Christopher met her the next
Wednesday, and the next Friday, and throughout the following week-no
further words passing between them. For a while she went by very
demurely, apparently mindful of his offence. But effrontery is not
proved to be part of a man's nature till he has been guilty of a second
act: the best of men may commit a first through accident or ignorance-
may even be betrayed into it by over-zeal for experiment. Some such
conclusion may or may not have been arrived at by the girl with the
lady-apple cheeks; at any rate, after the lapse of another week a new
spectacle presented itself; her redness deepened whenever Christopher
passed her by, and embarrassment pervaded her from the lowest stitch to
the tip of her feather. She had little chance of escaping him by
diverging from the road, for a figure could be seen across the open
ground to the distance of half a mile on either side. One day as he drew
near as usual, she met him as women meet a cloud of dust-she turned and
looked backwards till he had passed.
This would have been disconcerting but for one reason: Christopher was
ceasing to notice her. He was a man who often, when walking abroad, and
looking as it were at the scene before his eyes, discerned successes and
failures, friends and relations, episodes of childhood, wedding feasts
and funerals, the landscape suffering greatly by these visions, until it
became no more than the patterned wall-tints about the paintings in a
gallery; something necessary to the tone, yet not regarded. Nothing but
a special concentration of himself on externals could interrupt this
habit, and now that her appearance along the way had changed from a
chance to a custom he began to lapse again into the old trick. He gazed
once or twice at her form without seeing it: he did not notice that she
trembled.
He sometimes read as he walked, and book in hand he frequently
approached her now. This went on till six weeks had passed from the time
of their first encounter. Latterly might have been once or twice heard,
when he had moved out of earshot, a sound like a small gasping sigh; but
no arrangements were disturbed, and Christopher continued to keep down
his eyes as persistently as a saint in a church window.
The last day of his engagement had arrived, and with it the last of his
walks that way. On his final return he carried in his hand a bunch of
flowers which had been presented to him at the country-house where his
lessons were given. He was taking them home to his sister Faith, who
prized the lingering blossoms of the seeding season. Soon appeared as
usual his fellow-traveller; whereupon Christopher looked down upon his
nosegay. 'Sweet simple girl,' he thought, 'I'll endeavour to make peace
with her by means of these flowers before we part for good.'
When she came up he held them out to her and said, 'Will you allow me to
present you with these?'
The bright colours of the nosegay instantly attracted the girl's hand-
perhaps before there had been time for thought to thoroughly construe
the position; for it happened that when her arm was stretched into the
air she steadied it quickly, and stood with the pose of a statue-rigid
with uncertainty. But it was too late to refuse: Christopher had put the
nosegay within her fingers. Whatever pleasant expression of thanks may
have appeared in her eyes fell only on the bunch of flowers, for during
the whole transaction they reached to no higher level than that. To say
that he was coming no more seemed scarcely necessary under the
circumstances, and wishing her 'Good afternoon' very heartily, he passed
on.
He had learnt by this time her occupation, which was that of pupil-
teacher at one of the schools in the town, whither she walked daily from
a village near. If he had not been poor and the little teacher humble,
Christopher might possibly have been tempted to inquire more briskly
about her, and who knows how such a pursuit might have ended? But hard
externals rule volatile sentiment, and under these untoward influences
the girl and the book and the truth about its author were matters upon
which he could not afford to expend much time. All Christopher did was
to think now and then of the pretty innocent face and round deep eyes,
not once wondering if the mind which enlivened them ever thought of him.
3. SANDBOURNE MOOR (continued)
It was one of those hostile days of the year when chatterbox ladies
remain miserably in their homes to save the carriage and harness, when
clerks' wives hate living in lodgings, when vehicles and people appear
in the street with duplicates of themselves underfoot, when bricklayers,
slaters, and other out-door journeymen sit in a shed and drink beer,
when ducks and drakes play with hilarious delight at their own family
game, or spread out one wing after another in the slower enjoyment of
letting the delicious moisture penetrate to their innermost down. The
smoke from the flues of Sandbourne had barely strength enough to emerge
into the drizzling rain, and hung down the sides of each chimney-pot
like the streamer of a becalmed ship; and a troop of rats might have
rattled down the pipes from roof to basement with less noise than did
the water that day.
On the broad moor beyond the town, where Christopher's meetings with the
teacher had so regularly occurred, were a stream and some large pools;
and beside one of these, near some hatches and a weir, stood a little
square building, not much larger inside than the Lord Mayor's coach. It
was known simply as 'The Weir House.' On this wet afternoon, which was
the one following the day of Christopher's last lesson over the plain, a
nearly invisible smoke came from the puny chimney of the hut. Though the
door was closed, sounds of chatting and mirth fizzed from the interior,
and would have told anybody who had come near-which nobody did-that the
usually empty shell was tenanted to-day.
The scene within was a large fire in a fireplace to which the whole
floor of the house was no more than a hearthstone. The occupants were
two gentlemanly persons, in shooting costume, who had been traversing
the moor for miles in search of wild duck and teal, a waterman, and a
small spaniel. In the corner stood their guns, and two or three wild
mallards, which represented the scanty product of their morning's
labour, the iridescent necks of the dead birds replying to every flicker
of the fire. The two sportsmen were smoking, and their man was mostly
occupying himself in poking and stirring the fire with a stick: all
three appeared to be pretty well wetted.
One of the gentlemen, by way of varying the not very exhilarating study
of four brick walls within microscopic distance of his eye, turned to a
small square hole which admitted light and air to the hut, and looked
out upon the dreary prospect before him. The wide concave of cloud, of
the monotonous hue of dull pewter, formed an unbroken hood over the
level from horizon to horizon; beneath it, reflecting its wan lustre,
was the glazed high-road which stretched, hedgeless and ditchless, past
a directing-post where another road joined it, and on to the less
regular ground beyond, lying like a riband unrolled across the scene,
till it vanished over the furthermost undulation. Beside the pools were
occasional tall sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a few
bushes, these forming the only obstructions to a view otherwise
unbroken.
The sportsman's attention was attracted by a figure in a state of
gradual enlargement as it approached along the road.
'I should think that if pleasure can't tempt a native out of doors to-
day, business will never force him out,' he observed. 'There is, for the
first time, somebody coming along the road.'
'If business don't drag him out pleasure'll never tempt en, is more like
our nater in these parts, sir,' said the man, who was looking into the
fire.
The conversation showed no vitality, and down it dropped dead as before,
the man who was standing up continuing to gaze into the moisture. What
had at first appeared as an epicene shape the decreasing space resolved
into a cloaked female under an umbrella: she now relaxed her pace, till,
reaching the directing-post where the road branched into two, she paused
and looked about her. Instead of coming further she slowly retraced her
steps for about a hundred yards.
'That's an appointment,' said the first speaker, as he removed the cigar
from his lips; 'and by the lords, what a day and place for an
appointment with a woman!'
'What's an appointment?' inquired his friend, a town young man, with a
Tussaud complexion and well-pencilled brows half way up his forehead, so
that his upper eyelids appeared to possess the uncommon quality of
tallness.
'Look out here, and you'll see. By that directing-post, where the two
roads meet. As a man devoted to art, Ladywell, who has had the honour of
being hung higher up on the Academy walls than any other living painter,
you should take out your sketch-book and dash off the scene.'
Where nothing particular is going on, one incident makes a drama; and,
interested in that proportion, the art-sportsman puts up his eyeglass (a
form he adhered to before firing at game that had risen, by which
merciful arrangement the bird got safe off), placed his face beside his
companion's, and also peered through the opening. The young pupil-
teacher-for she was the object of their scrutiny-re-approached the spot
whereon she had been accustomed for the last many weeks of her journey
home to meet Christopher, now for the first time missing, and again she
seemed reluctant to pass the hand-post, for that marked the point where
the chance of seeing him ended. She glided backwards as before, this
time keeping her face still to the front, as if trying to persuade the
world at large, and her own shamefacedness, that she had not yet
approached the place at all.
'Query, how long will she wait for him (for it is a man to a
certainty)?' resumed the elder of the smokers, at the end of several
minutes of silence, when, full of vacillation and doubt, she became lost
to view behind some bushes. 'Will she reappear?' The smoking went on,
and up she came into open ground as before, and walked by.
'I wonder who the girl is, to come to such a place in this weather?
There she is again,' said the young man called Ladywell.
'Some cottage lass, not yet old enough to make the most of the value set
on her by her follower, small as that appears to be. Now we may get an
idea of the hour named by the fellow for the appointment, for, depend
upon it, the time when she first came-about five minutes ago-was the
time he should have been there. It is now getting on towards five-half-
past four was doubtless the time mentioned.'
'She's not come o' purpose: 'tis her way home from school every day,'
said the waterman.
'An experiment on woman's endurance and patience under neglect. Two to
one against her staying a quarter of an hour.'
'The same odds against her not staying till five would be nearer
probability. What's half-an-hour to a girl in love?'
'On a moorland in wet weather it is thirty perceptible minutes to any
fireside man, woman, or beast in Christendom-minutes that can be felt,
like the Egyptian plague of darkness. Now, little girl, go home: he is
not worth it.'
Twenty minutes passed, and the girl returned miserably to the hand-post,
still to wander back to her retreat behind the sedge, and lead any
chance comer from the opposite quarter to believe that she had not yet
reached this ultimate point beyond which a meeting with Christopher was
impossible.
'Now you'll find that she means to wait the complete half-hour, and then
off she goes with a broken heart.'
All three now looked through the hole to test the truth of the
prognostication. The hour of five completed itself on their watches; the
girl again came forward. And then the three in ambuscade could see her
pull out her handkerchief and place it to her eyes.
'She's grieving now because he has not come. Poor little woman, what a
brute he must be; for a broken heart in a woman means a broken vow in a
man, as I infer from a thousand instances in experience, romance, and
history. Don't open the door till she is gone, Ladywell; it will only
disturb her.'
As they had guessed, the pupil-teacher, hearing the distant town-clock
strike the hour, gave way to her fancy no longer, and launched into the
diverging path. This lingering for Christopher's arrival had, as is
known, been founded on nothing more of the nature of an assignation than
lay in his regular walk along the plain at that time every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday of the six previous weeks. It must be said that he
was very far indeed from divining that his injudicious peace-offering of
the flowers had stirred into life such a wearing, anxious, hopeful,
despairing solicitude as this, which had been latent for some time
during his constant meetings with the little stranger.
She vanished in the mist towards the left, and the loiterers in the hut
began to move and open the door, remarking, 'Now then for Wyndway House,
a change of clothes, and a dinner.'
4. SANDBOURNE PIER-ROAD TO WYNDWAY-BALL-ROOM IN WYNDWAY HOUSE
The last light of a winter day had gone down behind the houses of
Sandbourne, and night was shut close over all. Christopher, about eight
o'clock, was standing at the end of the pier with his back towards the
open sea, whence the waves were pushing to the shore in frills and coils
that were just rendered visible in all their bleak instability by the
row of lights along the sides of the jetty, the rapid motion landward of
the wavetips producing upon his eye an apparent progress of the pier out
to sea. This pier-head was a spot which Christopher enjoyed visiting on
such moaning and sighing nights as the present, when the sportive and
variegated throng that haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer
there, and he seemed alone with weather and the invincible sea.
Somebody came towards him along the deserted footway, and rays from the
nearest lamp streaked the face of his sister Faith.
'O Christopher, I knew you were here,' she said eagerly. 'You are
wanted; there's a servant come from Wyndway House for you. He is sent to
ask if you can come immediately to play at a little dance they have
resolved upon this evening-quite suddenly it seems. If you can come, you
must bring with you any assistant you can lay your hands upon at a
moment's notice, he says.'
'Wyndway House; why should the people send for me above all other
musicians in the town?'
Faith did not know. 'If you really decide to go,' she said, as they
walked homeward, 'you might take me as your assistant. I should answer
the purpose, should I not, Kit? since it is only a dance or two they
seem to want.'
'And your harp I suppose you mean. Yes; you might be competent to take a
part. It cannot be a regular ball; they would have had the quadrille
band for anything of that sort. Faith-we'll go. However, let us see the
man first, and inquire particulars.'
Reaching home, Christopher found at his door a horse and wagonette in
charge of a man-servant in livery, who repeated what Faith had told her
brother. Wyndway House was a well-known country-seat three or four miles
out of the town, and the coachman mentioned that if they were going it
would be well that they should get ready to start as soon as they
conveniently could, since he had been told to return by ten if possible.
Christopher quickly prepared himself, and put a new string or two into
Faith's harp, by which time she also was dressed; and, wrapping up
herself and her instrument safe from the night air, away they drove at
half-past nine.
'Is it a large party?' said Christopher, as they whizzed along.
'No, sir; it is what we call a dance-that is, 'tis like a ball, you
know, on a small scale-a ball on a spurt, that you never thought of till
you had it. In short, it grew out of a talk at dinner, I believe; and
some of the young people present wanted a jig, and didn't care to play
themselves, you know, young ladies being an idle class of society at the
best of times. We've a house full of sleeping company, you understand-
been there a week some of 'em-most of 'em being mistress's relations.'
'They probably found it a little dull.'
'Well, yes-it is rather dull for 'em-Christmas-time and all. As soon as
it was proposed they were wild for sending post-haste for somebody or
other to play to them.'
'Did they name me particularly?' said Christopher.
'Yes; "Mr. Christopher Julian," she says. "The gent who's turned music-
man?" I said. "Yes, that's him," says she.'
'There were music-men living nearer to your end of the town than I.'
'Yes, but I know it was you particular: though I don't think mistress
thought anything about you at first. Mr. Joyce-that's the butler-said
that your name was mentioned to our old party, when he was in the room,
by a young lady staying with us, and mistress says then, "The Julians
have had a downfall, and the son has taken to music." Then when dancing
was talked of, they said, "O, let's have him by all means."'
'Was the young lady who first inquired for my family the same one who
said, "Let's have him by all means?"'
'O no; but it was on account of her asking that the rest said they would
like you to play-at least that's as I had it from Joyce.'
'Do you know that lady's name?'
'Mrs. Petherwin.'
'Ah!'
'Cold, sir?'
'O no.'
Christopher did not like to question the man any further, though what he
had heard added new life to his previous curiosity; and they drove along
the way in silence, Faith's figure, wrapped up to the top of her head,
cutting into the sky behind them like a sugar-loaf. Such gates as
crossed the roads had been left open by the forethought of the coachman,
and, passing the lodge, they proceeded about half-a-mile along a private
drive, then ascended a rise, and came in view of the front of the
mansion, punctured with windows that were now mostly lighted up.
'What is that?' said Faith, catching a glimpse of something that the
carriage-lamp showed on the face of one wall as they passed, a marble
bas-relief of some battle-piece, built into the stonework.
'That's the scene of the death of one of the squire's forefathers-
Colonel Sir Martin Jones, who was killed at the moment of victory in the
battle of Salamanca-but I haven't been here long enough to know the
rights of it. When I am in one of my meditations, as I wait here with
the carriage sometimes, I think how many more get killed at the moment
of victory than at the moment of defeat. This is the entrance for you,
sir.' And he turned the corner and pulled up before a side door.
They alighted and went in, Christopher shouldering Faith's harp, and she
marching modestly behind, with curly-eared music-books under her arm.
They were shown into the house-steward's room, and ushered thence along
a badly-lit passage and past a door within which a hum and laughter were
audible. The door next to this was then opened for them, and they
entered.
Scarcely had Faith, or Christopher either, ever beheld a more shining
scene than was presented by the saloon in which they now found
themselves. Coming direct from the gloomy park, and led to the room by
that back passage from the servants' quarter, the light from the
chandelier and branches against the walls, striking on gilding at all
points, quite dazzled their sight for a minute or two; it caused Faith
to move forward with her eyes on the floor, and filled Christopher with
an impulse to turn back again into some dusky corner where every thread
of his not over-new dress suit-rather moth-eaten through lack of feasts
for airing it-could be counted less easily.
He was soon seated before a grand piano, and Faith sat down under the
shadow of her harp, both being arranged on a dais within an alcove at
one end of the room. A screen of ivy and holly had been constructed
across the front of this recess for the games of the children on
Christmas Eve, and it still remained there, a small creep-hole being
left for entrance and exit.
Then the merry guests tumbled through doors at the further end, and
dancing began. The mingling of black-coated men and bright ladies gave a
charming appearance to the groups as seen by Faith and her brother, the
whole spectacle deriving an unexpected novelty from the accident of
reaching their eyes through interstices in the tracery of green leaves,
which added to the picture a softness that it would not otherwise have
possessed. On the other hand, the musicians, having a much weaker light,
could hardly be discerned by the performers in the dance.
The music was now rattling on, and the ladies in their foam-like dresses
were busily threading and spinning about the floor, when Faith, casually
looking up into her brother's face, was surprised to see that a change
had come over it. At the end of the quadrille he leant across to her
before she had time to speak, and said quietly, 'She's here!'
'Who?' said Faith, for she had not heard the words of the coachman.
'Ethelberta.'
'Which is she?' asked Faith, peeping through with the keenest interest.
'The one who has the skirts of her dress looped up with convolvulus
flowers-the one with her hair fastened in a sort of Venus knot behind;
she has just been dancing with that perfumed piece of a man they call
Mr. Ladywell-it is he with the high eyebrows arched like a girl's.' He
added, with a wrinkled smile, 'I cannot for my life see anybody
answering to the character of husband to her, for every man takes notice
of her.'
They were interrupted by another dance being called for, and then, his
fingers tapping about upon the keys as mechanically as fowls pecking at
barleycorns, Christopher gave himself up with a curious and far from
unalloyed pleasure to the occupation of watching Ethelberta, now again
crossing the field of his vision like a returned comet whose
characteristics were becoming purely historical. She was a plump-armed
creature, with a white round neck as firm as a fort-altogether a
vigorous shape, as refreshing to the eye as the green leaves through
which he beheld her. She danced freely, and with a zest that was
apparently irrespective of partners. He had been waiting long to hear
her speak, and when at length her voice did reach his ears, it was the
revelation of a strange matter to find how great a thing that small
event had become to him. He knew the old utterance-rapid but not
frequent, an obstructive thought causing sometimes a sudden halt in the
midst of a stream of words. But the features by which a cool observer
would have singled her out from others in his memory when asking himself
what she was like, was a peculiar gaze into imaginary far-away distance
when making a quiet remark to a partner-not with contracted eyes like a
seafaring man, but with an open full look-a remark in which little words
in a low tone were made to express a great deal, as several single
gentlemen afterwards found.
The production of dance-music when the criticizing stage among the
dancers has passed, and they have grown full of excitement and animal
spirits, does not require much concentration of thought in the producers
thereof; and desultory conversation accordingly went on between Faith
and her brother from time to time.
'Kit,' she said on one occasion, 'are you looking at the way in which
the flowers are fastened to the leaves?-taking a mean advantage of being
at the back of the tapestry? You cannot think how you stare at them.'
'I was looking through them-certainly not at them. I have a feeling of
being moved about like a puppet in the hands of a person who legally can
be nothing to me.'
'That charming woman with the shining bunch of hair and convolvuluses?'
'Yes: it is through her that we are brought here, and through her
writing that poem, "Cancelled Words," that the book was sent me, and
through the accidental renewal of acquaintance between us on Anglebury
Heath, that she wrote the poem. I was, however, at the moment you spoke,
thinking more particularly of the little teacher whom Ethelberta must
have commissioned to send the book to me; and why that girl was chosen
to do it.'
'There may be a hundred reasons. Kit, I have never yet seen her look
once this way.'
Christopher had certainly not yet received look or gesture from her; but
his time came. It was while he was for a moment outside the recess, and
he caught her in the act. She became slightly confused, turned aside,
and entered into conversation with a neighbour.
It was only a look, and yet what a look it was! One may say of a look
that it is capable of division into as many species, genera, orders, and
classes, as the animal world itself. Christopher saw Ethelberta
Petherwin's performance in this kind-the well-known spark of light upon
the well-known depths of mystery-and felt something going out of him
which had gone out of him once before.
Thus continually beholding her and her companions in the giddy whirl,
the night wore on with the musicians, last dances and more last dances
being added, till the intentions of the old on the matter were thrice
exceeded in the interests of the young. Watching the couples whirl and
turn, advance and recede as gently as spirits, knot themselves like
house-flies and part again, and lullabied by the faint regular beat of
their footsteps to the tune, the players sank into the peculiar mesmeric
quiet which comes over impressionable people who play for a great length
of time in the midst of such scenes; and at last the only noises that
Christopher took cognizance of were those of the exceptional kind,
breaking above the general sea of sound-a casual smart rustle of silk, a
laugh, a stumble, the monosyllabic talk of those who happened to linger
for a moment close to the leafy screen-all coming to his ears like
voices from those old times when he had mingled in similar scenes, not
as servant but as guest.
5. AT THE WINDOW-THE ROAD HOME
The dancing was over at last, and the radiant company had left the room.
A long and weary night it had been for the two players, though a
stimulated interest had hindered physical exhaustion in one of them for
a while. With tingling fingers and aching arms they came out of the
alcove into the long and deserted apartment, now pervaded by a dry haze.
The lights had burnt low, and Faith and her brother were waiting by
request till the wagonette was ready to take them home, a breakfast
being in course of preparation for them meanwhile.
Christopher had crossed the room to relieve his cramped limbs, and now,
peeping through a crevice in the window curtains, he said suddenly,
'Who's for a transformation scene? Faith, look here!'
He touched the blind, up it flew, and a gorgeous scene presented itself
to her eyes. A huge inflamed sun was breasting the horizon of a wide
sheet of sea which, to her surprise and delight, the mansion overlooked.
The brilliant disc fired all the waves that lay between it and the shore
at the bottom of the grounds, where the water tossed the ruddy light
from one undulation to another in glares as large and clear as mirrors,
incessantly altering them, destroying them, and creating them again;
while further off they multiplied, thickened, and ran into one another
like struggling armies, till they met the fiery source of them all.
'O, how wonderful it is!' said Faith, putting her hand on Christopher's
arm. 'Who knew that whilst we were all shut in here with our puny
illumination such an exhibition as this was going on outside! How sorry
and mean the grand and stately room looks now!'
Christopher turned his back upon the window, and there were the hitherto
beaming candle-flames shining no more radiantly than tarnished javelin-
heads, while the snow-white lengths of wax showed themselves clammy and
cadaverous as the fingers of a corpse. The leaves and flowers which had
appeared so very green and blooming by the artificial light were now
seen to be faded and dusty. Only the gilding of the room in some degree
brought itself into keeping with the splendours outside, stray darts of
light seizing upon it and lengthening themselves out along fillet,
quirk, arris, and moulding, till wasted away.
'It seems,' said Faith, 'as if all the people who were lately so merry
here had died: we ourselves look no more than ghosts.' She turned up her
weary face to her brother's, which the incoming rays smote aslant,
making little furrows of every wrinkle thereon, and shady ravines of
every little furrow.
'You are very tired, Faith,' he said. 'Such a heavy night's work has
been almost too much for you.'
'O, I don't mind that,' said Faith. 'But I could not have played so long
by myself.'
'We filled up one another's gaps; and there were plenty of them towards
the morning; but, luckily, people don't notice those things when the
small hours draw on.'
'What troubles me most,' said Faith, 'is not that I have worked, but
that you should be so situated as to need such miserable assistance as
mine. We are poor, are we not, Kit?'
'Yes, we know a little about poverty,' he replied.
While thus lingering
'In shadowy thoroughfares of thought,'
Faith interrupted with, 'I believe there is one of the dancers now!-why,
I should have thought they had all gone to bed, and wouldn't get up
again for days.' She indicated to him a figure on the lawn towards the
left, looking upon the same flashing scene as that they themselves
beheld.
'It is your own particular one,' continued Faith. 'Yes, I see the blue
flowers under the edge of her cloak.'
'And I see her squirrel-coloured hair,' said Christopher.
Both stood looking at this apparition, who once, and only once, thought
fit to turn her head towards the front of the house they were gazing
from. Faith was one in whom the meditative somewhat overpowered the
active faculties; she went on, with no abundance of love, to theorize
upon this gratuitously charming woman, who, striking freakishly into her
brother's path, seemed likely to do him no good in her sisterly
estimation. Ethelberta's bright and shapely form stood before her critic
now, smartened by the motes of sunlight from head to heel: what Faith
would have given to see her so clearly within!
'Without doubt she is already a lady of many romantic experiences,' she
said dubiously.
'And on the way to many more,' said Christopher. The tone was just of
the kind which may be imagined of a sombre man who had been up all night
piping that others might dance.
Faith parted her lips as if in consternation at possibilities.
Ethelberta, having already become an influence in Christopher's system,
might soon become more-an indestructible fascination-to drag him about,
turn his soul inside out, harrow him, twist him, and otherwise torment
him, according to the stereotyped form of such processes.
They were interrupted by the opening of a door. A servant entered and
came up to them.
'This is for you, I believe, sir,' he said. 'Two guineas;' and he placed
the money in Christopher's hand. 'Some breakfast will be ready for you
in a moment if you like to have it. Would you wish it brought in here;
or will you come to the steward's room?'
'Yes, we will come.' And the man then began to extinguish the lights one
by one. Christopher dropped the two pounds and two shillings singly into
his pocket, and looking listlessly at the footman said, 'Can you tell me
the address of that lady on the lawn? Ah, she has disappeared!'
'She wore a dress with blue flowers,' said Faith.
'And remarkable bright in her manner? O, that's the young widow, Mrs-
what's that name-I forget for the moment.'
'Widow?' said Christopher, the eyes of his understanding getting
wonderfully clear, and Faith uttering a private ejaculation of thanks
that after all no commandments were likely to be broken in this matter.
'The lady I mean is quite a girlish sort of woman.'
'Yes, yes, so she is-that's the one. Coachman says she must have been
born a widow, for there is not time for her ever to have been made one.
However, she's not quite such a chicken as all that. Mrs. Petherwin,
that's the party's name.'
'Does she live here?'
'No, she is staying in the house visiting for a few days with her
mother-in-law. They are a London family, I don't know her address.'
'Is she a poetess?'
'That I cannot say. She is very clever at verses; but she don't lean
over gates to see the sun, and goes to church as regular as you or I, so
I should hardly be inclined to say that she's the complete thing. When
she's up in one of her vagaries she'll sit with the ladies and make up
pretty things out of her head as fast as sticks a-breaking. They will
run off her tongue like cotton from a reel, and if she can ever be got
in the mind of telling a story she will bring it out that serious and
awful that it makes your flesh creep upon your bones; if she's only got
to say that she walked out of one door into another, she'll tell it so
that there seems something wonderful in it. 'Tis a bother to start her,
so our people say behind her back, but, once set going, the house is all
alive with her. However, it will soon be dull enough; she and Lady
Petherwin are off to-morrow for Rookington, where I believe they are
going to stay over New Year's Day.'
'Where do you say they are going?' inquired Christopher, as they
followed the footman.
'Rookington Park-about three miles out of Sandbourne, in the opposite
direction to this.'
'A widow,' Christopher murmured.
Faith overheard him. 'That makes no difference to us, does it?' she said
wistfully.
Forty minutes later they were driving along an open road over a ridge
which commanded a view of a small inlet below them, the sands of this
nook being sheltered by crumbling cliffs. Here at once they saw, in the
full light of the sun, two women standing side by side, their faces
directed over the sea.
'There she is again!' said Faith. 'She has walked along the shore from
the lawn where we saw her before.'
'Yes,' said the coachman, 'she's a curious woman seemingly. She'll talk
to any poor body she meets. You see she had been out for a morning walk
instead of going to bed, and that is some queer mortal or other she has
picked up with on her way.'
'I wonder she does not prefer some rest,' Faith observed.
The road then dropped into a hollow, and the women by the sea were no
longer within view from the carriage, which rapidly neared Sandbourne
with the two musicians.
6. THE SHORE BY WYNDWAY
The east gleamed upon Ethelberta's squirrel-coloured hair as she said to
her companion, 'I have come, Picotee; but not, as you imagine, from a
night's sleep. We have actually been dancing till daylight at Wyndway.'
'Then you should not have troubled to come! I could have borne the
disappointment under such circumstances,' said the pupil-teacher, who,
wearing a dress not so familiar to Christopher's eyes as had been the
little white jacket, had not been recognized by him from the hill. 'You
look so tired, Berta. I could not stay up all night for the world!'
'One gets used to these things,' said Ethelberta quietly. 'I should have
been in bed certainly, had I not particularly wished to use this
opportunity of meeting you before you go home to-morrow. I could not
have come to Sandbourne to-day, because we are leaving to return again
to Rookington. This is all that I wish you to take to mother-only a few
little things which may be useful to her; but you will see what it
contains when you open it.' She handed to Picotee a small parcel. 'This
is for yourself,' she went on, giving a small packet besides. 'It will
pay your fare home and back, and leave you something to spare.'
'Thank you,' said Picotee docilely.
'Now, Picotee,' continued the elder, 'let us talk for a few minutes
before I go back: we may not meet again for some time.' She put her arm
round the waist of Picotee, who did the same by Ethelberta; and thus
interlaced they walked backwards and forwards upon the firm flat sand
with the motion of one body animated by one will.
'Well, what did you think of my poems?'
'I liked them; but naturally, I did not understand all the experience
you describe. It is so different from mine. Yet that made them more
interesting to me. I thought I should so much like to mix in the same
scenes; but that of course is impossible.'
'I am afraid it is. And you posted the book as I said?'
'Yes.' She added hurriedly, as if to change the subject, 'I have told
nobody that we are sisters, or that you are known in any way to me or to
mother or to any of us. I thought that would be best, from what you
said.'
'Yes, perhaps it is best for the present.'
'The box of clothes came safely, and I find very little alteration will
be necessary to make the dress do beautifully for me on Sundays. It is
quite new-fashioned to me, though I suppose it was old-fashioned to you.
O, and Berta, will the title of Lady Petherwin descend to you when your
mother-in-law dies?'
'No, of course not. She is only a knight's widow, and that's nothing.'
'The lady of a knight looks as good on paper as the lady of a lord.'
'Yes. And in other places too sometimes. However, about your journey
home. Be very careful; and don't make any inquiries at the stations of
anybody but officials. If any man wants to be friendly with you, try to
find out if it is from a genuine wish to assist you, or from admiration
of your fresh face.'
'How shall I know which?' said Picotee.
Ethelberta laughed. 'If Heaven does not tell you at the moment I
cannot,' she said. 'But humanity looks with a different eye from love,
and upon the whole it is most to be prized by all of us. I believe it
ends oftener in marriage than do a lover's flying smiles. So that for
this and other reasons love from a stranger is mostly worthless as a
speculation; and it is certainly dangerous as a game. Well, Picotee, has
any one paid you real attentions yet?'
'No-that is-'
'There is something going on.'
'Only a wee bit.'
'I thought so. There was a dishonesty about your dear eyes which has
never been there before, and love-making and dishonesty are inseparable
as coupled hounds. Up comes man, and away goes innocence. Are you going
to tell me anything about him?'
'I would rather not, Ethelberta; because it is hardly anything.'
'Well, be careful. And mind this, never tell him what you feel.'
'But then he will never know it.'
'Nor must he. He must think it only. The difference between his thinking
and knowing is often the difference between your winning and losing. But
general advice is not of much use, and I cannot give more unless you
tell more. What is his name?'
Picotee did not reply.
'Never mind: keep your secret. However, listen to this: not a kiss-not
so much as the shadow, hint, or merest seedling of a kiss!'
'There is no fear of it,' murmured Picotee; 'though not because of me!'
'You see, my dear Picotee, a lover is not a relative; and he isn't quite
a stranger; but he may end in being either, and the way to reduce him to
whichever of the two you wish him to be is to treat him like the other.
Men who come courting are just like bad cooks: if you are kind to them,
instead of ascribing it to an exceptional courtesy on your part, they
instantly set it down to their own marvellous worth.'
'But I ought to favour him just a little, poor thing? Just the smallest
glimmer of a gleam!'
'Only a very little indeed-so that it comes as a relief to his misery,
not as adding to his happiness.'
'It is being too clever, all this; and we ought to be harmless as
doves.'
'Ah, Picotee! to continue harmless as a dove you must be wise as a
serpent, you'll find-ay, ten serpents, for that matter.'
'But if I cannot get at him, how can I manage him in these ways you
speak of?'
'Get at him? I suppose he gets at you in some way, does he not?-tries to
see you, or to be near you?'
'No-that's just the point-he doesn't do any such thing, and there's the
worry of it!'
'Well, what a silly girl! Then he is not your lover at all?'
'Perhaps he's not. But I am his, at any rate-twice over.'
'That's no use. Supply the love for both sides? Why, it's worse than
furnishing money for both. You don't suppose a man will give his heart
in exchange for a woman's when he has already got hers for nothing?
That's not the way old Adam does business at all.'
Picotee sighed. 'Have you got a young man, too, Berta?'
'A young man?'
'A lover I mean-that's what we call 'em down here.'
'It is difficult to explain,' said Ethelberta evasively. 'I knew one
many years ago, and I have seen him again, and-that is all.'
'According to my idea you have one, but according to your own you have
not; he does not love you, but you love him-is that how it is?'
'I have not quite considered how it is.'
'Do you love him?'
'I have never seen a man I hate less.'
'A great deal lies covered up there, I expect!'
'He was in that carriage which drove over the hill at the moment we met
here.'
'Ah-ah-some great lord or another who has his day by candlelight, and so
on. I guess the style. Somebody who no more knows how much bread is a
loaf than I do the price of diamonds and pearls.'
'I am afraid he's only a commoner as yet, and not a very great one
either. But surely you guess, Picotee? But I'll set you an example of
frankness by telling his name. My friend, Mr. Julian, to whom you posted
the book. Such changes as he has seen!-from affluence to poverty. He and
his sister have been playing dances all night at Wyndway-What is the
matter?'
'Only a pain!'
'My dear Picotee-'
'I think I'll sit down for a moment, Berta.'
'What-have you over-walked yourself, dear?'
'Yes-and I got up very early, you see.'
'I hope you are not going to be ill, child. You look as if you ought not
to be here.'
'O, it is quite trifling. Does not getting up in a hurry cause a sense
of faintness sometimes?'
'Yes, in people who are not strong.'
'If we don't talk about being faint it will go off. Faintness is such a
queer thing that to think of it is to have it. Let us talk as we were
talking before-about your young man and other indifferent matters, so as
to divert my thoughts from fainting, dear Berta. I have always thought
the book was to be forwarded to that gentleman because he was a
connection of yours by marriage, and he had asked for it. And so you
have met this-this Mr. Julian, and gone for walks with him in evenings,
I suppose, just as young men and women do who are courting?'
'No, indeed-what an absurd child you are!' said Ethelberta. 'I knew him
once, and he is interesting; a few little things like that make it all
up.'
'The love is all on one side, as with me.'
'O no, no: there is nothing like that. I am not attached to any one,
strictly speaking-though, more strictly speaking, I am not unattached.'
''Tis a delightful middle mind to be in. I know it, for I was like it
once; but I had scarcely been so long enough to know where I was before
I was gone past.'
'You should have commanded yourself, or drawn back entirely; for let me
tell you that at the beginning of caring for a man-just when you are
suspended between thinking and feeling-there is a hair's-breadth of time
at which the question of getting into love or not getting in is a matter
of will-quite a thing of choice. At the same time, drawing back is a
tame dance, and the best of all is to stay balanced awhile.'
'You do that well, I'll warrant.'
'Well, no; for what between continually wanting to love, to escape the
blank lives of those who do not, and wanting not to love, to keep out of
the miseries of those who do, I get foolishly warm and foolishly cold by
turns.'
'Yes-and I am like you as far as the "foolishly" goes. I wish we poor
girls could contrive to bring a little wisdom into our love by way of a
change!'
'That's the very thing that leading minds in town have begun to do, but
there are difficulties. It is easy to love wisely, but the rich man may
not marry you; and it is not very hard to reject wisely, but the poor
man doesn't care. Altogether it is a precious problem. But shall we
clamber out upon those shining blocks of rock, and find some of the
little yellow shells that are in the crevices? I have ten minutes
longer, and then I must go.'
7. THE DINING-ROOM OF A TOWN HOUSE-THE BUTLER'S PANTRY
A few weeks later there was a friendly dinner-party at the house of a
gentleman called Doncastle, who lived in a moderately fashionable square
of west London. All the friends and relatives present were nice people,
who exhibited becoming signs of pleasure and gaiety at being there; but
as regards the vigour with which these emotions were expressed, it may
be stated that a slight laugh from far down the throat and a slight
narrowing of the eye were equivalent as indices of the degree of mirth
felt to a Ha-ha-ha! and a shaking of the shoulders among the minor
traders of the kingdom; and to a Ho-ho-ho! contorted features, purple
face, and stamping foot among the gentlemen in corduroy and fustian who
adorn the remoter provinces.
The conversation was chiefly about a volume of musical, tender, and
humorous rhapsodies lately issued to the world in the guise of verse,
which had been reviewed and talked about everywhere. This topic,
beginning as a private dialogue between a young painter named Ladywell
and the lady on his right hand, had enlarged its ground by degrees, as a
subject will extend on those rare occasions when it happens to be one
about which each person has thought something beforehand, instead of, as
in the natural order of things, one to which the oblivious listener
replies mechanically, with earnest features, but with thoughts far away.
And so the whole table made the matter a thing to inquire or reply upon
at once, and isolated rills of other chat died out like a river in the
sands.
'Witty things, and occasionally Anacreontic: and they have the
originality which such a style must naturally possess when carried out
by a feminine hand,' said Ladywell.
'If it is a feminine hand,' said a man near.
Ladywell looked as if he sometimes knew secrets, though he did not wish
to boast.
'Written, I presume you mean, in the Anacreontic measure of three feet
and a half-spondees and iambics?' said a gentleman in spectacles,
glancing round, and giving emphasis to his inquiry by causing bland
glares of a circular shape to proceed from his glasses towards the
person interrogated.
The company appeared willing to give consideration to the words of a man
who knew such things as that, and hung forward to listen. But Ladywell
stopped the whole current of affairs in that direction by saying-
'O no; I was speaking rather of the matter and tone. In fact, the Seven
Days' Review said they were Anacreontic, you know; and so they are-any
one may feel they are.'
The general look then implied a false encouragement, and the man in
spectacles looked down again, being a nervous person, who never had time
to show his merits because he was so much occupied in hiding his faults.
'Do you know the authoress, Mr. Neigh?' continued Ladywell.
'Can't say that I do,' he replied.
Neigh was a man who never disturbed the flesh upon his face except when
he was obliged to do so, and paused ten seconds where other people only
paused one; as he moved his chin in speaking, motes of light from under
the candle-shade caught, lost, and caught again the outlying threads of
his burnished beard.
'She will be famous some day; and you ought at any rate to read her
book.'
'Yes, I ought, I know. In fact, some years ago I should have done it
immediately, because I had a reason for pushing on that way just then.'
'Ah, what was that?'
'Well, I thought of going in for Westminster Abbey myself at that time;
but a fellow has so much to do, and-'
'What a pity that you didn't follow it up. A man of your powers, Mr.
Neigh-'
'Afterwards I found I was too steady for it, and had too much of the
respectable householder in me. Besides, so many other men are on the
same tack; and then I didn't care about it, somehow.'
'I don't understand high art, and am utterly in the dark on what are the
true laws of criticism,' a plain married lady, who wore archaeological
jewellery, was saying at this time. 'But I know that I have derived an
unusual amount of amusement from those verses, and I am heartily
thankful to "E." for them.'
'I am afraid,' said a gentleman who was suffering from a bad shirt-
front, 'that an estimate which depends upon feeling in that way is not
to be trusted as permanent opinion.'
The subject now flitted to the other end.
'Somebody has it that when the heart flies out before the understanding,
it saves the judgment a world of pains,' came from a voice in that
quarter.
'I, for my part, like something merry,' said an elderly woman, whose
face was bisected by the edge of a shadow, which toned her forehead and
eyelids to a livid neutral tint, and left her cheeks and mouth like
metal at a white heat in the uninterrupted light. 'I think the
liveliness of those ballads as great a recommendation as any. After all,
enough misery is known to us by our experiences and those of our
friends, and what we see in the newspapers, for all purposes of
chastening, without having gratuitous grief inflicted upon us.'
'But you would not have wished that "Romeo and Juliet" should have ended
happily, or that Othello should have discovered the perfidy of his
Ancient in time to prevent all fatal consequences?'
'I am not afraid to go so far as that,' said the old lady. 'Shakespeare
is not everybody, and I am sure that thousands of people who have seen
those plays would have driven home more cheerfully afterwards if by some
contrivance the characters could all have been joined together
respectively. I uphold our anonymous author on the general ground of her
levity.'
'Well, it is an old and worn argument-that about the inexpedience of
tragedy-and much may be said on both sides. It is not to be denied that
the anonymous Sappho's verses-for it seems that she is really a woman-
are clever.'
'Clever!' said Ladywell-the young man who had been one of the shooting-
party at Sandbourne-'they are marvellously brilliant.'
'She is rather warm in her assumed character.'
'That's a sign of her actual coldness; she lets off her feeling in
theoretic grooves, and there is sure to be none left for practical ones.
Whatever seems to be the most prominent vice, or the most prominent
virtue in anybody's writing is the one thing you are safest from in
personal dealings with the writer.'
'O, I don't mean to call her warmth of feeling a vice or virtue exactly-
'
'I agree with you,' said Neigh to the last speaker but one, in tones as
emphatic as they possibly could be without losing their proper character
of indifference to the whole matter. 'Warm sentiment of any sort,
whenever we have it, disturbs us too much to leave us repose enough for
writing it down.'
'I am sure, when I was at the ardent age,' said the mistress of the
house, in a tone of pleasantly agreeing with every one, particularly
those who were diametrically opposed to each other, 'I could no more
have printed such emotions and made them public than I-could have helped
privately feeling them.'
'I wonder if she has gone through half she says? If so, what an
experience!'
'O no-not at all likely,' said Mr. Neigh. 'It is as risky to calculate
people's ways of living from their writings as their incomes from their
way of living.'
'She is as true to nature as fashion is false,' said the painter, in his
warmth becoming scarcely complimentary, as sometimes happens with young
persons. 'I don't think that she has written a word more than what every
woman would deny feeling in a society where no woman says what she means
or does what she says. And can any praise be greater than that?'
'Ha-ha! Capital!'
'All her verses seem to me,' said a rather stupid person, 'to be simply-
"Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-la', Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-lu', Tral'-la-la-
lal'-la-la-lalla', Tral'-la-la-lu'."
When you take away the music there is nothing left. Yet she is plainly a
woman of great culture.'
'Have you seen what the London Light says about them-one of the finest
things I have ever read in the way of admiration?' continued Ladywell,
paying no attention to the previous speaker. He lingered for a reply,
and then impulsively quoted several lines from the periodical he had
named, without aid or hesitation. 'Good, is it not?' added Ladywell.
They assented, but in such an unqualified manner that half as much
readiness would have meant more. But Ladywell, though not experienced
enough to be quite free from enthusiasm, was too experienced to mind
indifference for more than a minute or two. When the ladies had
withdrawn, the young man went on-
'Colonel Staff said a funny thing to me yesterday about these very
poems. He asked me if I knew her, and-'
'Her? Why, he knows that it is a lady all the time, and we were only
just now doubting whether the sex of the writer could be really what it
seems. Shame, Ladywell!' said his friend Neigh.
'Ah, Mr. Ladywell,' said another, 'now we have found you out. You know
her!'
'Now-I say-ha-ha!' continued the painter, with a face expressing that he
had not at all tried to be found out as the man possessing incomparably
superior knowledge of the poetess. 'I beg pardon really, but don't press
me on the matter. Upon my word the secret is not my own. As I was
saying, the Colonel said, "Do you know her?"-but you don't care to
hear?'
'We shall be delighted!'
'So the Colonel said, "Do you know her?" adding, in a most comic way,
"Between U. and E., Ladywell, I believe there is a close affinity"-
meaning me, you know, by U. Just like the Colonel-ha-ha-ha!'
The older men did not oblige Ladywell a second time with any attempt at
appreciation; but a weird silence ensued, during which the smile upon
Ladywell's face became frozen to painful permanence.
'Meaning by E., you know, the "E" of the poems-heh-heh!' he added.
'It was a very humorous incident certainly,' said his friend Neigh, at
which there was a laugh-not from anything connected with what he said,
but simply because it was the right thing to laugh when Neigh meant you
to do so.
'Now don't, Neigh-you are too hard upon me. But, seriously, two or three
fellows were there when I said it, and they all began laughing-but,
then, the Colonel said it in such a queer way, you know. But you were
asking me about her? Well, the fact is, between ourselves, I do know
that she is a lady; and I don't mind telling a word-'
'But we would not for the world be the means of making you betray her
confidence-would we, Jones?'
'No, indeed; we would not.'
'No, no; it is not that at all-this is really too bad!-you must listen
just for a moment-'
'Ladywell, don't betray anybody on our account.'
'Whoever the illustrious young lady may be she has seen a great deal of
the world,' said Mr. Doncastle blandly, 'and puts her experience of the
comedy of its emotions, and of its method of showing them, in a very
vivid light.'
'I heard a man say that the novelty with which the ideas are presented
is more noticeable than the originality of the ideas themselves,'
observed Neigh. 'The woman has made a great talk about herself; and I am
quite weary of people asking of her condition, place of abode, has she a
father, has she a mother, or dearer one yet than all other.'
'I would have burlesque quotation put down by Act of Parliament, and all
who dabble in it placed with him who can cite Scripture for his
purposes,' said Ladywell, in retaliation.
After a pause Neigh remarked half-privately to their host, who was his
uncle: 'Your butler Chickerel is a very intelligent man, as I have
heard.'
'Yes, he does very well,' said Mr. Doncastle.
'But is he not a-very extraordinary man?'
'Not to my knowledge,' said Doncastle, looking up surprised. 'Why do you
think that, Alfred?'
'Well, perhaps it was not a matter to mention. He reads a great deal, I
dare say?'
'I don't think so.'
'I noticed how wonderfully his face kindled when we began talking about
the poems during dinner. Perhaps he is a poet himself in disguise. Did
you observe it?'
'No. To the best of my belief he is a very trustworthy and honourable
man. He has been with us-let me see, how long?-five months, I think, and
he was fifteen years in his last place. It certainly is a new side to
his character if he publicly showed any interest in the conversation,
whatever he might have felt.'
'Since the matter has been mentioned,' said Mr. Jones, 'I may say that I
too noticed the singularity of it.'
'If you had not said otherwise,' replied Doncastle somewhat warmly, 'I
should have asserted him to be the last man-servant in London to
infringe such an elementary rule. If he did so this evening, it is
certainly for the first time, and I sincerely hope that no annoyance was
caused-'
'O no, no-not at all-it might have been a mistake of mine,' said Jones.
'I should quite have forgotten the circumstance if Mr. Neigh's words had
not brought it to my mind. It was really nothing to notice, and I beg
that you will not say a word to him about it on my account.'
'He has a taste that way, my dear uncle, nothing more, depend upon it,'
said Neigh. 'If I had such a man belonging to me I should only be too
proud. Certainly do not mention it.'
'Of course Chickerel is Chickerel,' Mr. Doncastle rejoined. 'We all know
what that means. And really, on reflecting, I do remember that he is of
a literary turn of mind-not further by an inch than is commendable, you
know. I am quite aware as I glance down the papers and prints any
morning that Chickerel's eyes have been over the ground before mine, and
that he generally forestalls the rest of us by a chapter or so in the
last new book sent home; but in these vicious days that particular
weakness is really virtue, just because it is not quite a vice.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Jones, the reflective man in spectacles, 'positive
virtues are getting moved off the stage: negative ones are moved on to
the place of positives; we thank bare justice as we used only to thank
generosity; call a man honest who steals only by law, and consider him a
benefactor if he does not steal at all.'
'Hear, hear!' said Neigh. 'We will decide that Chickerel is even a
better trained fellow than if he had shown no interest at all in his
face.'
'The action being like those trifling irregularities in art at its
vigorous periods, which seemed designed to hide the unpleasant monotony
of absolute symmetry,' said Ladywell.
'On the other hand, an affected want of training of that sort would be
even a better disguise for an artful man than a perfectly impassible
demeanour. He is two removes from discovery in a hidden scheme, whilst a
neutral face is only one.'
'You quite alarm me by these subtle theories,' said Mr. Doncastle,
laughing; and the subject then became compounded with other matters,
till the speakers rose to rejoin the charming flock upstairs.
In the basement story at this hour Mr. Chickerel the butler, who had
formed the subject of discussion on the floor above, was busily engaged
in looking after his two subordinates as they bustled about in the
operations of clearing away. He was a man of whom, if the shape of
certain bones and muscles of the face is ever to be taken as a guide to
the character, one might safely have predicated conscientiousness in the
performance of duties, a thorough knowledge of all that appertained to
them, a general desire to live on without troubling his mind about
anything which did not concern him. Any person interested in the matter
would have assumed without hesitation that the estimate his employer had
given of Chickerel was a true one-more, that not only would the butler
under all ordinary circumstances resolutely prevent his face from
showing curiosity in an unbecoming way, but that, with the soul of a
true gentleman, he would, if necessary, equivocate as readily as the
noblest of his betters to remove any stain upon his honour in such
trifles. Hence it is apparent that if Chickerel's countenance really
appeared, as Neigh had asserted, full of curiosity with regard to the
gossip that was going on, the feelings which led to the exhibition must
have been of a very unusual and irrepressible kind.
His hair was of that peculiar bluish-white which is to be observed when
the oncoming years, instead of singling out special locks of a man's
head for operating against, advance uniformly over the whole field, and
enfeeble the colour at all points before absolutely extinguishing it
anywhere; his nose was of the knotty shape in the gristle and earthward
tendency in the flesh which is commonly said to carry sound judgment
above it, his eyes were thoughtful, and his face was thin-a contour
which, if it at once abstracted from his features that cheerful
assurance of single-minded honesty which adorns the exteriors of so many
of his brethren, might have raised a presumption in the minds of some
beholders that perhaps in this case the quality might not be altogether
wanting within.
The coffee having been served to the people upstairs, one of the footmen
rushed into his bedroom on the lower floor, and in a few minutes emerged
again in the dress of a respectable clerk who had been born for better
things, with the trifling exceptions that he wore a low-crowned hat, and
instead of knocking his heels on the pavement walked with a gait as
delicate as a lady's. Going out of the area-door with a cigar in his
mouth, he mounted the steps hastily to keep an appointment round the
corner-the keeping of which as a private gentleman necessitated the
change of the greater part of his clothes twice within a quarter of an
hour-the limit of his time of absence. The other footman was upstairs,
and the butler, finding that he had a few minutes to himself, sat down
at the table and wrote:-
'MY DEAR ETHELBERTA,-I did not intend to write to you for some few days
to come, but the way in which you have been talked about here this
evening makes me anxious to send a line or two at once, though I have
very little time to spare, as usual. We have just had a dinner-party-
indeed the carriages have not yet been brought round-and the talk at
dinner was about your verses, of course. The thing was brought up by a
young fellow named Ladywell-do you know him? He is a painter by
profession, but he has a pretty good private income beyond what he gets
by practising his line of business among the nobility, and that I expect
is not little, for he is well known, and encouraged because he is young,
and good-looking, and so forth. His family own a good bit of land
somewhere out Aldbrickham way. However, I am before my story. From what
they all said it is pretty clear that you are thought a great deal of in
fashionable society as a poetess-but perhaps you know this as well as I-
moving in it as you do yourself, my dear.
'The ladies afterwards got very curious about your age, so curious, in
fact, and so full of certainty that you were thirty-five and a blighted
existence, if an hour, that I felt inclined to rap out there and then,
and hang what came of it: "My daughter, ladies, was to my own and her
mother's certain knowledge only twenty-one last birthday, and has as
bright a heart as anybody in London." One of them actually said that
you must be fifty to have got such an experience. Her guess was a very
shrewd one in the bottom of it, however, for it was grounded upon the
way you use those strange experiences of mine in the society that I tell
you of, and dress them up as if they were yours; and, as you see, she
hit off my own age to a year. I thought it was very sharp of her to be
so right, although so wrong.
'I do not want to influence your plans in any way about things which
your school learning fits you to understand much better than I, who
never had such opportunities, but I think that if I were in your place,
Berta, I would not let my name be known just yet, for people always want
what's kept from them, and don't value what's given. I am not sure, but
I think that after the women had gone upstairs the others turned their
thoughts upon you again; what they said about you I don't know, for if
there's one thing I hate 'tis hanging about the doors when the men begin
to get moved by their wine, which they did to a large extent to-night,
and spoke very loud. They always do here, for old Don is a hearty giver
in his way. However, as you see these people from their own level now,
it is not much that I can tell you in seeing them only from the under
side, though I see strange things sometimes, and of course-
"What great ones do the less will prattle of,"
as it says in that book of select pieces that you gave me.
'Well, my dear girl, I hope you will prosper. One thing above all
others you'll have to mind, and it is that folk must continually strain
to advance in order to remain where they are: and you particularly. But
as for trying too hard, I wouldn't do it. Much lies in minding this,
that your best plan for lightness of heart is to raise yourself a little
higher than your old mates, but not so high as to be quite out of their
reach. All human beings enjoy themselves from the outside, and so
getting on a little has this good in it, you still keep in your old
class where your feelings are, and are thoughtfully treated by this
class: while by getting on too much you are sneered at by your new
acquaintance, who don't know the skill of your rise, and you are parted
from and forgot by the old ones who do. Whatever happens, don't be too
quick to feel. You will surely get some hard blows when you are found
out, for if the great can find no excuse for hitting with a mind,
they'll do it and say 'twas in fun. But you are young and healthy, and
youth and health are power. I wish I could have a decent footman here
with me, but I suppose it is no use trying. It is such men as these
that provoke the contempt we get. Well, thank God a few years will see
the end of me, for I am growing ashamed of my company-so different as
they are to the servants of old times.-Your affectionate father,
R. CHICKEREL.
'P.S.-Do not press Lady Petherwin any further to remove the rules on
which you live with her. She is quite right: she cannot keep us, and to
recognize us would do you no good, nor us either. We are content to see
you secretly, since it is best for you.'
8. CHRISTOPHER'S LODGINGS-THE GROUNDS ABOUT ROOKINGTON
Meanwhile, in the distant town of Sandbourne, Christopher Julian had
recovered from the weariness produced by his labours at the Wyndway
evening-party where Ethelberta had been a star. Instead of engaging his
energies to clear encumbrances from the tangled way of his life, he now
set about reading the popular 'Metres by E.' with more interest and
assiduity than ever; for though Julian was a thinker by instinct, he was
a worker by effort only; and the higher of these kinds being dependent
upon the lower for its exhibition, there was often a lamentable lack of
evidence of his power in either. It is a provoking correlation, and has
conduced to the obscurity of many a genius.
'Kit,' said his sister, on reviving at the end of the bad headache which
had followed the dance, 'those poems seem to have increased in value
with you. The lady, lofty as she appears to be, would be flattered if
she only could know how much you study them. Have you decided to thank
her for them? Now let us talk it over-I like having a chat about such a
pretty new subject.'
'I would thank her in a moment if I were absolutely certain that she had
anything to do with sending them, or even writing them. I am not quite
sure of that yet.'
'How strange that a woman could bring herself to write those verses!'
'Not at all strange-they are natural outpourings.'
Faith looked critically at the remoter caverns of the fire.
'Why strange?' continued Christopher. 'There is no harm in them.'
'O no-no harm. But I cannot explain to you-unless you see it partly of
your own accord-that to write them she must be rather a fast lady-not a
bad fast lady; a nice fast lady, I mean, of course. There, I have said
it now, and I daresay you are vexed with me, for your interest in her
has deepened to what it originally was, I think. I don't mean any
absolute harm by "fast," Kit.'
'Bold, forward, you mean, I suppose?'
Faith tried to hit upon a better definition which should meet all views;
and, on failing to do so, looked concerned at her brother's somewhat
grieved appearance, and said, helplessly, 'Yes, I suppose I do.'
'My idea of her is quite the reverse. A poetess must intrinsically be
sensitive, or she could never feel: but then, frankness is a rhetorical
necessity even with the most modest, if their inspirations are to do any
good in the world. You will, for certain, not be interested in something
I was going to tell you, which I thought would have pleased you
immensely; but it is not worth mentioning now.'
'If you will not tell me, never mind. But don't be crabbed, Kit! You
know how interested I am in all your affairs.'
'It is only that I have composed an air to one of the prettiest of her
songs, "When tapers tall"-but I am not sure about the power of it. This
is how it begins-I threw it off in a few minutes, after you had gone to
bed.'
He went to the piano and lightly touched over an air, the manuscript
copy of which he placed in front of him, and listened to hear her
opinion, having proved its value frequently; for it was not that of a
woman merely, but impersonally human. Though she was unknown to fame,
this was a great gift in Faith, since to have an unsexed judgment is as
precious as to be an unsexed being is deplorable.
'It is very fair indeed,' said the sister, scarcely moving her lips in
her great attention. 'Now again, and again, and again. How could you do
it in the time!'
Kit knew that she admired his performance: passive assent was her usual
praise, and she seldom insisted vigorously upon any view of his
compositions unless for purposes of emendation.
'I was thinking that, as I cannot very well write to her, I may as well
send her this,' said Christopher, with lightened spirits, voice to
correspond, and eyes likewise; 'there can be no objection to it, for
such things are done continually. Consider while I am gone, Faith. I
shall be out this evening for an hour or two.'
When Christopher left the house shortly after, instead of going into the
town on some errand, as was customary whenever he went from home after
dark, he ascended a back street, passed over the hills behind, and
walked at a brisk pace inland along the road to Rookington Park, where,
as he had learnt, Ethelberta and Lady Petherwin were staying for a time,
the day or two which they spent at Wyndway having formed a short break
in the middle of this visit. The moon was shining to-night, and
Christopher sped onwards over the pallid high-road as readily as he
could have done at noonday. In three-quarters of an hour he reached the
park gates; and entering now upon a tract which he had never before
explored, he went along more cautiously and with some uncertainty as to
the precise direction that the road would take. A frosted expanse of
even grass, on which the shadow of his head appeared with an opal halo
round it, soon allowed the house to be discovered beyond, the other
portions of the park abounding with timber older and finer than that of
any other spot in the neighbourhood. Christopher withdrew into the
shade, and wheeled round to the front of the building that contained his
old love. Here he gazed and idled, as many a man has done before him-
wondering which room the fair poetess occupied, waiting till lights
began to appear in the upper windows-which they did as uncertainly as
glow-worms bHANDlinking up at eventide-and warming with currents of
revived feeling in perhaps the sweetest of all conditions. New love is
brightest, and long love is greatest; but revived love is the tenderest
thing known upon earth.
Occupied thus, Christopher was greatly surprised to see, on casually
glancing to one side, another man standing close to the shadowy trunk of
another tree, in a similar attitude to his own, gazing, with arms
folded, as blankly at the windows of the house as Christopher himself
had been gazing. Not willing to be discovered, Christopher stuck closer
to his tree. While he waited thus, the stranger began murmuring words,
in a slow soft voice. Christopher listened till he heard the following:-
'Pale was the day and rayless, love, That had an eve so dim.'
Two well-known lines from one of Ethelberta's poems.
Jealousy is a familiar kind of heat which disfigures, licks playfully,
clouds, blackens, and boils a man as a fire does a pot; and on
recognizing these pilferings from what he had grown to regard as his own
treasury, Christopher's fingers began to nestle with great vigour in the
palms of his hands. Three or four minutes passed, when the unknown rival
gave a last glance at the windows, and walked away. Christopher did not
like the look of that walk at all-there was grace enough in it to
suggest that his antagonist had no mean chance of finding favour in a
woman's eyes. A sigh, too, seemed to proceed from the stranger's breast;
but as their distance apart was too great for any such sound to be heard
by any possibility, Christopher set down that to imagination, or to the
brushing of the wind over the trees.
The lighted windows went out one by one, and all the house was in
darkness. Julian then walked off himself, with a vigour that was
spasmodic only, and with much less brightness of mind than he had
experienced on his journey hither. The stranger had gone another way,
and Christopher saw no more of him. When he reached Sandbourne, Faith
was still sitting up.
'But I told you I was going to take a long walk,' he said.
'No, Christopher: really you did not. How tired and sad you do look-
though I always know beforehand when you are in that state: one of your
feet has a drag about it as you pass along the pavement outside the
window.'
'Yes, I forgot that I did not tell you.'
He could not begin to describe his pilgrimage: it was too silly a thing
even for her to hear of.
'It does not matter at all about my staying up,' said Faith assuringly;
'that is, if exercise benefits you. Walking up and down the lane, I
suppose?'
'No; not walking up and down the lane.'
'The turnpike-road to Rookington is pleasant.'
'Faith, that is really where I have been. How came you to know?'
'I only guessed. Verses and an accidental meeting produce a special
journey.'
'Ethelberta is a fine woman, physically and mentally, both. I wonder
people do not talk about her twice as much as they do.'
'Then surely you are getting attached to her again. You think you
discover in her more than anybody else does; and love begins with a
sense of superior discernment.'
'No, no. That is only nonsense,' he said hurriedly. 'However, love her
or love her not, I can keep a corner of my heart for you, Faith. There
is another brute after her too, it seems.'
'Of course there is: I expect there are many. Her position in society is
above ours, so that it is an unwise course to go troubling yourself more
about her.'
'No. If a needy man must be so foolish as to fall in love, it is best to
do so where he cannot double his foolishness by marrying the woman.'
'I don't like to hear you talk so slightingly of what poor father did.'
Christopher fixed his attention on the supper. That night, late as it
was, when Faith was in bed and sleeping, he sat before a sheet of music-
paper, neatly copying his composition upon it. The manuscript was
intended as an offering to Ethelberta at the first convenient
opportunity.
'Well, after all my trouble to find out about Ethelberta, here comes the
clue unasked for,' said the musician to his sister a few days later.
She turned and saw that he was reading the Wessex Reflector.
'What is it?' asked Faith.
'The secret of the true authorship of the book is out at last, and it is
Ethelberta of course. I am so glad to have it proved hers.'
'But can we believe-?'
'O yes. Just hear what "Our London Correspondent" says. It is one of the
nicest bits of gossip that he has furnished us with for a long time.'
'Yes: now read it, do.'
'"The author of 'Metres by E.'"' Christopher began, '"a book of which so
much has been said and conjectured, and one, in fact, that has been the
chief talk for several weeks past of the literary circles to which I
belong, is a young lady who was a widow before she reached the age of
eighteen, and is now not far beyond her fourth lustrum. I was
additionally informed by a friend whom I met yesterday on his way to the
House of Lords, that her name is Mrs. Petherwin-Christian name
Ethelberta; and that she resides with her mother-in-law at their house
in Exonbury Crescent. She is, moreover, the daughter of the late Bishop
of Silchester (if report may be believed), whose active benevolence, as
your readers know, left his family in comparatively straitened
circumstances at his death. The marriage was a secret one, and much
against the wish of her husband's friends, who are wealthy people on all
sides. The death of the bridegroom two or three weeks after the wedding
led to a reconciliation; and the young poetess was taken to the home
which she still occupies, devoted to the composition of such brilliant
effusions as those the world has lately been favoured with from her
pen."'
'If you want to send her your music, you can do so now,' said Faith.
'I might have sent it before, but I wanted to deliver it personally.
However, it is all the same now, I suppose, whether I send it or not. I
always knew that our destinies would lie apart, though she was once
temporarily under a cloud. Her momentary inspiration to write that
"Cancelled Words" was the worst possible omen for me. It showed that,
thinking me no longer useful as a practical chance, she would make me
ornamental as a poetical regret. But I'll send the manuscript of the
song.'
'In the way of business, as a composer only; and you must say to
yourself, "Ethelberta, as thou art but woman, I dare; but as widow I
fear thee."'
Notwithstanding Christopher's affected carelessness, that evening saw a
great deal of nicety bestowed upon the operation of wrapping up and
sending off the song. He dropped it into the box and heard it fall, and
with the curious power which he possessed of setting his wisdom to watch
any particular folly in himself that it could not hinder, speculated as
he walked on the result of this first tangible step of return to his old
position as Ethelberta's lover.
9. A LADY'S DRAWING-ROOMS-ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM
It was a house on the north side of Hyde Park, between ten and eleven in
the evening, and several intelligent and courteous people had assembled
there to enjoy themselves as far as it was possible to do so in a
neutral way-all carefully keeping every variety of feeling in a state of
solution, in spite of any attempt such feelings made from time to time
to crystallize on interesting subjects in hand.
'Neigh, who is that charming woman with her head built up in a novel way
even for hair architecture-the one with her back towards us?' said a man
whose coat fitted doubtfully to a friend whose coat fitted well.
'Just going to ask for the same information,' said Mr. Neigh,
determining the very longest hair in his beard to an infinitesimal
nicety by drawing its lower portion through his fingers. 'I have quite
forgotten-cannot keep people's names in my head at all; nor could my
father either-nor any of my family-a very odd thing. But my old friend
Mrs. Napper knows for certain.' And he turned to one of a small group of
middle-aged persons near, who, instead of skimming the surface of things
in general, like the rest of the company, were going into the very
depths of them.
'O-that is the celebrated Mrs. Petherwin, the woman who makes rhymes and
prints 'em,' said Mrs. Napper, in a detached sentence, and then
continued talking again to those on the other side of her.
The two loungers went on with their observations of Ethelberta's
headdress, which, though not extraordinary or eccentric, did certainly
convey an idea of indefinable novelty. Observers were sometimes half
inclined to think that her cuts and modes were acquired by some secret
communication with the mysterious clique which orders the livery of the
fashionable world, for-and it affords a parallel to cases in which
clever thinkers in other spheres arrive independently at one and the
same conclusion-Ethelberta's fashion often turned out to be the coming
one.
'O, is that the woman at last?' said Neigh, diminishing his broad
general gaze at the room to a close criticism of Ethelberta.
'"The rhymes," as Mrs. Napper calls them, are not to be despised,' said
his companion. 'They are not quite virginibus puerisque, and the
writer's opinions of life and society differ very materially from mine,
but I cannot help admiring her in the more reflective pieces; the songs
I don't care for. The method in which she handles curious subjects, and
at the same time impresses us with a full conviction of her modesty, is
very adroit, and somewhat blinds us to the fact that no such poems were
demanded of her at all.'
'I have not read them,' said Neigh, secretly wrestling with his jaw, to
prevent a yawn; 'but I suppose I must. The truth is, that I never care
much for reading what one ought to read; I wish I did, but I cannot help
it. And, no doubt, you admire the lady immensely for writing them: I
don't. Everybody is so talented now-a-days that the only people I care
to honour as deserving real distinction are those who remain in
obscurity. I am myself hoping for a corner in some biographical
dictionary when the time comes for those works only to contain lists of
the exceptional individuals of whom nothing is known but that they lived
and died.'
'Ah-listen. They are going to sing one of her songs,' said his friend,
looking towards a bustling movement in the neighbourhood of the piano.
'I believe that song, "When tapers tall," has been set to music by three
or four composers already.'
'Men of any note?' said Neigh, at last beaten by his yawn, which
courtesy nevertheless confined within his person to such an extent that
only a few unimportant symptoms, such as reduced eyes and a certain
rectangular manner of mouth in speaking, were visible.
'Scarcely,' replied the other man. 'Established writers of music do not
expend their energies upon new verse until they find that such verse is
likely to endure; for should the poet be soon forgotten, their labour is
in some degree lost.'
'Artful dogs-who would have thought it?' said Neigh, just as an exercise
in words; and they drew nearer to the piano, less to become listeners to
the singing than to be spectators of the scene in that quarter. But
among some others the interest in the songs seemed to be very great; and
it was unanimously wished that the young lady who had practised the
different pieces of music privately would sing some of them now in the
order of their composers' reputations. The musical persons in the room
unconsciously resolved themselves into a committee of taste.
One and another had been tried, when, at the end of the third, a lady
spoke to Ethelberta.
'Now, Mrs. Petherwin,' she said, gracefully throwing back her face,
'your opinion is by far the most valuable. In which of the cases do you
consider the marriage of verse and tune to have been most successful?'
Ethelberta, finding these and other unexpected calls made upon herself,
came to the front without flinching.
'The sweetest and the best that I like by far,' she said, 'is none of
these. It is one which reached me by post only this morning from a place
in Wessex, and is written by an unheard-of man who lives somewhere down
there-a man who will be, nevertheless, heard a great deal of some day, I
hope-think. I have only practised it this afternoon; but, if one's own
judgment is worth anything, it is the best.'
'Let us have your favourite, by all means,' said another friend of
Ethelberta's who was present-Mrs. Doncastle.
'I am so sorry that I cannot oblige you, since you wish to hear it,'
replied the poetess regretfully; 'but the music is at home. I had not
received it when I lent the others to Miss Belmaine, and it is only in
manuscript like the rest.'
'Could it not be sent for?' suggested an enthusiast who knew that
Ethelberta lived only in the next street, appealing by a look to her,
and then to the mistress of the house.
'Certainly, let us send for it,' said that lady. A footman was at once
quietly despatched with precise directions as to where Christopher's
sweet production might be found.
'What-is there going to be something interesting?' asked a young married
friend of Mrs. Napper, who had returned to her original spot.
'Yes-the best song she has written is to be sung in the best manner to
the best air that has been composed for it. I should not wonder if she
were going to sing it herself.'
'Did you know anything of Mrs. Petherwin until her name leaked out in
connection with these ballads?'
'No; but I think I recollect seeing her once before. She is one of those
people who are known, as one may say, by subscription: everybody knows a
little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody
knows her entirely. She was the orphan child of some clergyman, I
believe. Lady Petherwin, her mother-in-law, has been taking her about a
great deal latterly.'
'She has apparently a very good prospect.'
'Yes; and it is through her being of that curious undefined character
which interprets itself to each admirer as whatever he would like to
have it. Old men like her because she is so girlish; youths because she
is womanly; wicked men because she is good in their eyes; good men
because she is wicked in theirs.'
'She must be a very anomalous sort of woman, at that rate.'
'Yes. Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to
her inconsistencies in principle.'
'These poems must have set her up. She appears to be quite the correct
spectacle. Happy Mrs. Petherwin!'
The subject of their dialogue was engaged in a conversation with Mrs.
Belmaine upon the management of households-a theme provoked by a
discussion that was in progress in the pages of some periodical of the
time. Mrs. Belmaine was very full of the argument, and went on from
point to point till she came to servants.
The face of Ethelberta showed caution at once.
'I consider that Lady Plamby pets her servants by far too much,' said
Mrs. Belmaine. 'O, you do not know her? Well, she is a woman with
theories; and she lends her maids and men books of the wrong kind for
their station, and sends them to picture exhibitions which they don't in
the least understand-all for the improvement of their taste, and morals,
and nobody knows what besides. It only makes them dissatisfied.'
The face of Ethelberta showed venturesomeness. 'Yes, and dreadfully
ambitious!' she said.
'Yes, indeed. What a turn the times have taken! People of that sort push
on, and get into business, and get great warehouses, until at last,
without ancestors, or family, or name, or estate-'
'Or the merest scrap of heirloom or family jewel.'
'Or heirlooms, or family jewels, they are thought as much of as if their
forefathers had glided unobtrusively through the peerage-'
'Ever since the first edition.'
'Yes.' Mrs. Belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been
going to say, 'for the last seven hundred years,' but fancying from
Ethelberta's addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling
century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known
courtesy, and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake
that she might have made. This sensitiveness was a trait in her
character which gave great gratification to her husband, and, indeed, to
all who knew her.
'And have you any theory on the vexed question of servant-government?'
continued Mrs. Belmaine, smiling. 'But no-the subject is of far too
practical a nature for one of your bent, of course.'
'O no-it is not at all too practical. I have thought of the matter
often,' said Ethelberta. 'I think the best plan would be for somebody to
write a pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with the Servants," just as there
was once written a terribly stinging one, "The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters," which had a great effect.'
'I have always understood that that was written by a dissenter as a
satire upon the Church?'
'Ah-so it was: but the example will do to illustrate my meaning.'
'Quite so-I understand-so it will,' said Mrs. Belmaine, with clouded
faculties.
Meanwhile Christopher's music had arrived. An accomplished gentleman who
had every musical talent except that of creation, scanned the notes
carefully from top to bottom, and sat down to accompany the singer.
There was no lady present of sufficient confidence or skill to venture
into a song she had never seen before, and the only one who had seen it
was Ethelberta herself; she did not deny having practised it the greater
part of the afternoon, and was very willing to sing it now if anybody
would derive pleasure from the performance. Then she began, and the
sweetness of her singing was such that even the most unsympathetic
honoured her by looking as if they would be willing to listen to every
note the song contained if it were not quite so much trouble to do so.
Some were so interested that, instead of continuing their conversation,
they remained in silent consideration of how they would continue it when
she had finished; while the particularly civil people arranged their
countenances into every attentive form that the mind could devise. One
emotional gentleman looked at the corner of a chair as if, till that
moment, such an object had never crossed his vision before; the movement
of his finger to the imagined tune was, for a deaf old clergyman, a
perfect mine of interest; whilst a young man from the country was
powerless to put an end to an enchanted gaze at nothing at all in the
exact middle of the room before him. Neigh, and the general phalanx of
cool men and celebrated club yawners, were so much affected that they
raised their chronic look of great objection to things, to an expression
of scarcely any objection at all.
'What makes it so interesting,' said Mrs. Doncastle to Ethelberta, when
the song was over and she had retired from the focus of the company,
'is, that it is played from the composer's own copy, which has never met
the public eye, or any other than his own before to-day. And I see that
he has actually sketched in the lines by hand, instead of having ruled
paper-just as the great old composers used to do. You must have been as
pleased to get it fresh from the stocks like that as he probably was
pleased to get your thanks.'
Ethelberta became reflective. She had not thanked Christopher; moreover,
she had decided, after some consideration, that she ought not to thank
him. What new thoughts were suggested by that remark of Mrs.
Doncastle's, and what new inclination resulted from the public
presentation of his tune and her words as parts of one organic whole,
are best explained by describing her doings at a later hour, when,
having left her friends somewhat early, she had reached home and retired
from public view for that evening.
Ethelberta went to her room, sent away the maid who did double duty for
herself and Lady Petherwin, walked in circles about the carpet till the
fire had grown haggard and cavernous, sighed, took a sheet of paper and
wrote:-
'DEAR MR. JULIAN,-I have said I would not write: I have said it twice;
but discretion, under some circumstances, is only another name for
unkindness. Before thanking you for your sweet gift, let me tell you in
a few words of something which may materially change an aspect of
affairs under which I appear to you to deserve it.
'With regard to my history and origin you are altogether mistaken; and
how can I tell whether your bitterness at my previous silence on those
points may not cause you to withdraw your act of courtesy now? But the
gratification of having at last been honest with you may compensate even
for the loss of your respect.
'The matter is a small one to tell, after all. What will you say on
learning that I am not the trodden-down "lady by birth" that you have
supposed me? That my father is not dead, as you probably imagine; that
he is working for his living as one among a peculiarly stigmatized and
ridiculed multitude?
'Had he been a brawny cottager, carpenter, mason, blacksmith, well-
digger, navvy, tree-feller-any effective and manly trade, in short, a
worker in which can stand up in the face of the noblest and daintiest,
and bare his gnarled arms and say, with a consciousness of superior
power, "Look at a real man!" I should have been able to show you
antecedents which, if not intensely romantic, are not altogether
antagonistic to romance. But the present fashion of associating with
one particular class everything that is ludicrous and bombastic
overpowers me when I think of it in relation to myself and your known
sensitiveness. When the well-born poetess of good report melts into. .
.'
Having got thus far, a faint-hearted look, which had begun to show
itself several sentences earlier, became pronounced. She threw the
writing into the dull fire, poked and stirred it till a red inflammation
crept over the sheet, and then started anew:-
'DEAR MR. JULIAN,-Not knowing your present rank as composer-whether on
the very brink of fame, or as yet a long way off-I cannot decide what
form of expression my earnest acknowledgments should take. Let me
simply say in one short phrase, I thank you infinitely!
'I am no musician, and my opinion on music may not be worth much: yet I
know what I like (as everybody says, but I do not use the words as a
form to cover a hopeless blank on all connected with the subject), and
this sweet air I love. You must have glided like a breeze about me-seen
into a heart not worthy of scrutiny, jotted down words that cannot
justify attention-before you could have apotheosized the song in so
exquisite a manner. My gratitude took the form of wretchedness when, on
hearing the effect of the ballad in public this evening, I thought that
I had not power to withhold a reply which might do us both more harm
than good. Then I said, "Away with all emotion-I wish the world was
drained dry of it-I will take no notice," when a lady whispered at my
elbow to the effect that of course I had expressed my gratification to
you. I ought first to have mentioned that your creation has been played
to-night to full drawing-rooms, and the original tones cooled the
artificial air like a fountain almost.
'I prophesy great things of you. Perhaps, at the time when we are each
but a row of bones in our individual graves, your genius will be
remembered, while my mere cleverness will have been long forgotten.
'But-you must allow a woman of experience to say this-the undoubted
power that you possess will do you socially no good unless you mix with
it the ingredient of ambition-a quality in which I fear you are very
deficient. It is in the hope of stimulating you to a better opinion of
yourself that I write this letter.
'Probably I shall never meet you again. Not that I think circumstances
to be particularly powerful to prevent such a meeting, rather it is that
I shall energetically avoid it. There can be no such thing as strong
friendship between a man and a woman not of one family.
'More than that there must not be, and this is why we will not meet.
You see that I do not mince matters at all; but it is hypocrisy to avoid
touching upon a subject which all men and women in our position
inevitably think of, no matter what they say. Some women might have
written distantly, and wept at the repression of their real feeling; but
it is better to be more frank, and keep a dry eye.-Yours,
ETHELBERTA.'
Her feet felt cold and her heart weak as she directed the letter, and
she was overpowered with weariness. But murmuring, 'If I let it stay
till the morning I shall not send it, and a man may be lost to fame
because of a woman's squeamishness-it shall go,' she partially dressed
herself, wrapped a large cloak around her, descended the stairs, and
went out to the pillar-box at the corner, leaving the door not quite
close. No gust of wind had realized her misgivings that it might be
blown shut on her return, and she re-entered as softly as she had
emerged.
It will be seen that Ethelberta had said nothing about her family after
all.
10. LADY PETHERWIN'S HOUSE
The next day old Lady Petherwin, who had not accompanied Ethelberta the
night before, came into the morning-room, with a newspaper in her hand.
'What does this mean, Ethelberta?' she inquired in tones from which
every shade of human expressiveness was extracted by some awful and
imminent mood that lay behind. She was pointing to a paragraph under the
heading of 'Literary Notes,' which contained in a few words the
announcement of Ethelberta's authorship that had more circumstantially
appeared in the Wessex Reflector.
'It means what it says,' said Ethelberta quietly.
'Then it is true?'
'Yes. I must apologize for having kept it such a secret from you. It was
not done in the spirit that you may imagine: it was merely to avoid
disturbing your mind that I did it so privately.'
'But surely you have not written every one of those ribald verses?'
Ethelberta looked inclined to exclaim most vehemently against this; but
what she actually did say was, '"Ribald"-what do you mean by that? I
don't think that you are aware what "ribald" means.'
'I am not sure that I am. As regards some words as well as some persons,
the less you are acquainted with them the more it is to your credit.'
'I don't quite deserve this, Lady Petherwin.'
'Really, one would imagine that women wrote their books during those
dreams in which people have no moral sense, to see how improper some,
even virtuous, ladies become when they get into print.'
'I might have done a much more unnatural thing than write those poems.
And perhaps I might have done a much better thing, and got less praise.
But that's the world's fault, not mine.'
'You might have left them unwritten, and shown more fidelity.'
'Fidelity! it is more a matter of humour than principle. What has
fidelity to do with it?'
'Fidelity to my dear boy's memory.'
'It would be difficult to show that because I have written so-called
tender and gay verse, I feel tender and gay. It is too often assumed
that a person's fancy is a person's real mind. I believe that in the
majority of cases one is fond of imagining the direct opposite of one's
principles in sheer effort after something fresh and free; at any rate,
some of the lightest of those rhymes were composed between the deepest
fits of dismals I have ever known. However, I did expect that you might
judge in the way you have judged, and that was my chief reason for not
telling you what I had done.'
'You don't deny that you tried to escape from recollections you ought to
have cherished? There is only one thing that women of your sort are as
ready to do as to take a man's name, and that is, drop his memory.'
'Dear Lady Petherwin-don't be so unreasonable as to blame a live person
for living! No woman's head is so small as to be filled for life by a
memory of a few months. Four years have passed since I last saw my boy-
husband. We were mere children; see how I have altered since in mind,
substance, and outline-I have even grown half an inch taller since his
death. Two years will exhaust the regrets of widows who have long been
faithful wives; and ought I not to show a little new life when my
husband died in the honeymoon?'
'No. Accepting the protection of your husband's mother was, in effect,
an avowal that you rejected the idea of being a widow to prolong the
idea of being a wife; and the sin against your conventional state thus
assumed is almost as bad as would have been a sin against the married
state itself. If you had gone off when he died, saying, "Thank heaven, I
am free!" you would, at any rate, have shown some real honesty.'
'I should have been more virtuous by being more unfeeling. That often
happens.'
'I have taken to you, and made a great deal of you-given you the
inestimable advantages of foreign travel and good society to enlarge
your mind. In short, I have been like a Naomi to you in everything, and
I maintain that writing these poems saps the foundation of it all.'
'I do own that you have been a very good Naomi to me thus far; but Ruth
was quite a fast widow in comparison with me, and yet Naomi never blamed
her. You are unfortunate in your illustration. But it is dreadfully
flippant of me to answer you like this, for you have been kind. But why
will you provoke me!'
'Yes, you are flippant, Ethelberta. You are too much given to that sort
of thing.'
'Well, I don't know how the secret of my name has leaked out; and I am
not ribald, or anything you say,' said Ethelberta, with a sigh.
'Then you own you do not feel so ardent as you seem in your book?'
'I do own it.'
'And that you are sorry your name has been published in connection with
it?'
'I am.'
'And you think the verses may tend to misrepresent your character as a
gay and rapturous one, when it is not?'
'I do fear it.'
'Then, of course, you will suppress the poems instantly. That is the
only way in which you can regain the position you have hitherto held
with me.'
Ethelberta said nothing; and the dull winter atmosphere had far from
light enough in it to show by her face what she might be thinking.
'Well?' said Lady Petherwin.
'I did not expect such a command as that,' said Ethelberta. 'I have been
obedient for four years, and would continue so-but I cannot suppress the
poems. They are not mine now to suppress.'
'You must get them into your hands. Money will do it, I suppose?'
'Yes, I suppose it would-a thousand pounds.'
'Very well; the money shall be forthcoming,' said Lady Petherwin, after
a pause. 'You had better sit down and write about it at once.'
'I cannot do it,' said Ethelberta; 'and I will not. I don't wish them to
be suppressed. I am not ashamed of them; there is nothing to be ashamed
of in them; and I shall not take any steps in the matter.'
'Then you are an ungrateful woman, and wanting in natural affection for
the dead! Considering your birth-'
'That's an intolerable-'
Lady Petherwin crashed out of the room in a wind of indignation, and
went upstairs and heard no more. Adjoining her chamber was a smaller one
called her study, and, on reaching this, she unlocked a cabinet, took
out a small deed-box, removed from it a folded packet, unfolded it,
crumpled it up, and turning round suddenly flung it into the fire. Then
she stood and beheld it eaten away word after word by the flames,
'Testament'-'all that freehold'-'heirs and assigns' appearing
occasionally for a moment only to disappear for ever. Nearly half the
document had turned into a glossy black when the lady clasped her hands.
'What have I done!' she exclaimed. Springing to the tongs she seized
with them the portion of the writing yet unconsumed, and dragged it out
of the fire. Ethelberta appeared at the door.
'Quick, Ethelberta!' said Lady Petherwin. 'Help me to put this out!' And
the two women went trampling wildly upon the document and smothering it
with a corner of the hearth-rug.
'What is it?' said Ethelberta.
'My will!' said Lady Petherwin. 'I have kept it by me lately, for I have
wished to look over it at leisure-'
'Good heavens!' said Ethelberta. 'And I was just coming in to tell you
that I would always cling to you, and never desert you, ill-use me how
you might!'
'Such an affectionate remark sounds curious at such a time,' said Lady
Petherwin, sinking down in a chair at the end of the struggle.
'But,' cried Ethelberta, 'you don't suppose-'
'Selfishness, my dear, has given me such crooked looks that I can see it
round a corner.'
'If you mean that what is yours to give may not be mine to take, it
would be as well to name it in an impersonal way, if you must name it at
all,' said the daughter-in-law, with wet eyelids. 'God knows I had no
selfish thought in saying that. I came upstairs to ask you to forgive
me, and knew nothing about the will. But every explanation distorts it
all the more!'
'We two have got all awry, dear-it cannot be concealed-awry-awry. Ah,
who shall set us right again? However, now I must send for Mr.
Chancerly-no, I am going out on other business, and I will call upon
him. There, don't spoil your eyes: you may have to sell them.'
She rang the bell and ordered the carriage; and half-an-hour later Lady
Petherwin's coachman drove his mistress up to the door of her lawyer's
office in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
11. SANDBOURNE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD-SOME LONDON STREETS
While this was going on in town, Christopher, at his lodgings in
Sandbourne, had been thrown into rare old visions and dreams by the
appearance of Ethelberta's letter. Flattered and encouraged to ambition
as well as to love by her inspiriting sermon, he put off now the last
remnant of cynical doubt upon the genuineness of his old mistress, and
once and for all set down as disloyal a belief he had latterly acquired
that 'Come, woo me, woo me; for I am like enough to consent,' was all a
young woman had to tell.
All the reasoning of political and social economists would not have
convinced Christopher that he had a better chance in London than in
Sandbourne of making a decent income by reasonable and likely labour;
but a belief in a far more improbable proposition, impetuously
expressed, warmed him with the idea that he might become famous there.
The greater is frequently more readily credited than the less, and an
argument which will not convince on a matter of halfpence appears
unanswerable when applied to questions of glory and honour.
The regulation wet towel and strong coffee of the ambitious and
intellectual student floated before him in visions; but it was with a
sense of relief that he remembered that music, in spite of its drawbacks
as a means of sustenance, was a profession happily unencumbered with
those excruciating preliminaries to greatness.
Christopher talked about the new move to his sister, and he was vexed
that her hopefulness was not roused to quite the pitch of his own. As
with others of his sort, his too general habit of accepting the most
clouded possibility that chances offered was only transcended by his
readiness to kindle with a fitful excitement now and then. Faith was
much more equable. 'If you were not the most melancholy man God ever
created,' she said, kindly looking at his vague deep eyes and thin face,
which was but a few degrees too refined and poetical to escape the
epithet of lantern-jawed from any one who had quarrelled with him, 'you
would not mind my coolness about this. It is a good thing of course to
go; I have always fancied that we were mistaken in coming here.
Mediocrity stamped "London" fetches more than talent marked
"provincial." But I cannot feel so enthusiastic.'
'Still, if we are to go, we may as well go by enthusiasm as by
calculation; it is a sensation pleasanter to the nerves, and leads to
just as good a result when there is only one result possible.'
'Very well,' said Faith. 'I will not depress you. If I had to describe
you I should say you were a child in your impulses, and an old man in
your reflections. Have you considered when we shall start?'
'Yes.'
'What have you thought?'
'That we may very well leave the place in six weeks if we wish.'
'We really may?'
'Yes. And what is more, we will.'
Christopher and Faith arrived in London on an afternoon at the end of
winter, and beheld from one of the river bridges snow-white scrolls of
steam from the tall chimneys of Lambeth, rising against the livid sky
behind, as if drawn in chalk on toned cardboard.
The first thing he did that evening, when settled in their apartments
near the British Museum, before applying himself to the beginning of the
means by which success in life might be attained, was to go out in the
direction of Ethelberta's door, leaving Faith unpacking the things, and
sniffing extraordinary smoke-smells which she discovered in all nooks
and crannies of the rooms. It was some satisfaction to see Ethelberta's
house, although the single feature in which it differed from the other
houses in the Crescent was that no lamp shone from the fanlight over the
entrance-a speciality which, if he cared for omens, was hardly
encouraging. Fearing to linger near lest he might be detected,
Christopher stole a glimpse at the door and at the steps, imagined what
a trifle of the depression worn in each step her feet had tended to
produce, and strolled home again.
Feeling that his reasons for calling just now were scarcely sufficient,
he went next day about the business that had brought him to town, which
referred to a situation as organist in a large church in the north-west
district. The post was half ensured already, and he intended to make of
it the nucleus of a professional occupation and income. Then he sat down
to think of the preliminary steps towards publishing the song that had
so pleased her, and had also, as far as he could understand from her
letter, hit the popular taste very successfully; a fact which, however
little it may say for the virtues of the song as a composition, was a
great recommendation to it as a property. Christopher was delighted to
perceive that out of this position he could frame an admissible, if not
an unimpeachable, reason for calling upon Ethelberta. He determined to
do so at once, and obtain the required permission by word of mouth.
He was greatly surprised, when the front of the house appeared in view
on this spring afternoon, to see what a white and sightless aspect
pervaded all the windows. He came close: the eyeball blankness was
caused by all the shutters and blinds being shut tight from top to
bottom. Possibly this had been the case for some time-he could not tell.
In one of the windows was a card bearing the announcement, 'This House
to be let Furnished.' Here was a merciless clash between fancy and fact.
Regretting now his faint-heartedness in not letting her know beforehand
by some means that he was about to make a new start in the world, and
coming to dwell near her, Christopher rang the bell to make inquiries. A
gloomy caretaker appeared after a while, and the young man asked whither
the ladies had gone to live. He was beyond measure depressed to learn
that they were in the South of France-Arles, the man thought the place
was called-the time of their return to town being very uncertain; though
one thing was clear, they meant to miss the forthcoming London season
altogether.
As Christopher's hope to see her again had brought a resolve to do so,
so now resolve led to dogged patience. Instead of attempting anything by
letter, he decided to wait; and he waited well, occupying himself in
publishing a 'March' and a 'Morning and Evening Service in E flat.' Some
four-part songs, too, engaged his attention when the heavier duties of
the day were over-these duties being the giving of lessons in harmony
and counterpoint, in which he was aided by the introductions of a man
well known in the musical world, who had been acquainted with young
Julian as a promising amateur long before he adopted music as the staff
of his pilgrimage.
It was the end of summer when he again tried his fortune at the house in
Exonbury Crescent. Scarcely calculating upon finding her at this
stagnant time of the town year, and only hoping for information, Julian
was surprised and excited to see the shutters open, and the house
wearing altogether a living look, its neighbours having decidedly died
off meanwhile.
'The family here,' said a footman in answer to his inquiry, 'are only
temporary tenants of the house. It is not Lady Petherwin's people.'
'Do you know the Petherwins' present address?'
'Underground, sir, for the old lady. She died some time ago in
Switzerland, and was buried there, I believe.'
'And Mrs. Petherwin-the young lady,' said Christopher, starting.
'We are not acquainted personally with the family,' the man replied. 'My
master has only taken the house for a few months, whilst extensive
alterations are being made in his own on the other side of the park,
which he goes to look after every day. If you want any further
information about Lady Petherwin, Mrs. Petherwin will probably give it.
I can let you have her address.'
'Ah, yes; thank you,' said Christopher.
The footman handed him one of some cards which appeared to have been
left for the purpose. Julian, though tremblingly anxious to know where
Ethelberta was, did not look at it till he could take a cool survey in
private. The address was 'Arrowthorne Lodge, Upper Wessex.'
'Dear me!' said Christopher to himself, 'not far from Melchester; and
not dreadfully far from Sandbourne.'
12. ARROWTHORNE PARK AND LODGE
Summer was just over when Christopher Julian found himself rattling
along in the train to Sandbourne on some trifling business appertaining
to his late father's affairs, which would afford him an excuse for
calling at Arrowthorne about the song of hers that he wished to produce.
He alighted in the afternoon at a little station some twenty miles short
of Sandbourne, and leaving his portmanteau behind him there, decided to
walk across the fields, obtain if possible the interview with the lady,
and return then to the station to finish the journey to Sandbourne,
which he could thus reach at a convenient hour in the evening, and, if
he chose, take leave of again the next day.
It was an afternoon which had a fungous smell out of doors, all being
sunless and stagnant overhead and around. The various species of trees
had begun to assume the more distinctive colours of their decline, and
where there had been one pervasive green were now twenty greenish
yellows, the air in the vistas between them being half opaque with blue
exhalation. Christopher in his walk overtook a countryman, and inquired
if the path they were following would lead him to Arrowthorne Lodge.
''Twill take 'ee into Arr'thorne Park,' the man replied. 'But you won't
come anigh the Lodge, unless you bear round to the left as might be.'
'Mrs. Petherwin lives there, I believe?'
'No, sir. Leastwise unless she's but lately come. I have never heard of
such a woman.'
'She may possibly be only visiting there.'
'Ah, perhaps that's the shape o't. Well, now you tell o't, I have seen a
strange face thereabouts once or twice lately. A young good-looking maid
enough, seemingly.'
'Yes, she's considered a very handsome lady.'
'I've heard the woodmen say, now that you tell o't, that they meet her
every now and then, just at the closing in of the day, as they come home
along with their nitches of sticks; ay, stalking about under the trees
by herself-a tall black martel, so long-legged and awful-like that you'd
think 'twas the old feller himself a-coming, they say. Now a woman must
be a queer body to my thinking, to roam about by night so lonesome and
that? Ay, now that you tell o't, there is such a woman, but 'a never
have showed in the parish; sure I never thought who the body was-no, not
once about her, nor where 'a was living and that-not I, till you spoke.
Well, there, sir, that's Arr'thorne Lodge; do you see they three elms?'
He pointed across the glade towards some confused foliage a long way
off.
'I am not sure about the sort of tree you mean,' said Christopher, 'I
see a number of trees with edges shaped like edges of clouds.'
'Ay, ay, they be oaks; I mean the elms to the left hand.'
'But a man can hardly tell oaks from elms at that distance, my good
fellow!'
'That 'a can very well-leastwise, if he's got the sense.'
'Well, I think I see what you mean,' said Christopher. 'What next?'
'When you get there, you bear away smart to nor'-west, and you'll come
straight as a line to the Lodge.'
'How the deuce am I to know which is north-west in a strange place, with
no sun to tell me?'
'What, not know nor-west? Well, I should think a boy could never live
and grow up to be a man without knowing the four quarters. I knowed 'em
when I was a mossel of a chiel. We be no great scholars here, that's
true, but there isn't a Tom-rig or Jack-straw in these parts that don't
know where they lie as well as I. Now I've lived, man and boy, these
eight-and-sixty years, and never met a man in my life afore who hadn't
learnt such a common thing as the four quarters.'
Christopher parted from his companion and soon reached a stile,
clambering over which he entered a park. Here he threaded his way, and
rounding a clump of aged trees the young man came in view of a light and
elegant country-house in the half-timbered Gothic style of the late
revival, apparently only a few years old. Surprised at finding himself
so near, Christopher's heart fluttered unmanageably till he had taken an
abstract view of his position, and, in impatience at his want of nerve,
adopted a sombre train of reasoning to convince himself that, far from
indulgence in the passion of love bringing bliss, it was a folly,
leading to grief and disquiet-certainly one which would do him no good.
Cooled down by this, he stepped into the drive and went up to the house.
'Is Mrs. Petherwin at home?' he said modestly.
'Who did you say, sir?'
He repeated the name.
'Don't know the person.'
'The lady may be a visitor-I call on business.'
'She is not visiting in this house, sir.'
'Is not this Arrowthorne Lodge?'
'Certainly not.'
'Then where is Arrowthorne Lodge, please?'
'Well, it is nearly a mile from here. Under the trees by the high-road.
If you go across by that footpath it will bring you out quicker than by
following the bend of the drive.'
Christopher wondered how he could have managed to get into the wrong
park; but, setting it down to his ignorance of the difference between
oak and elm, he immediately retraced his steps, passing across the park
again, through the gate at the end of the drive, and into the turnpike
road. No other gate, park, or country seat of any description was within
view.
'Can you tell me the way to Arrowthorne Lodge?' he inquired of the first
person he met, who was a little girl.
'You are just coming away from it, sir,' said she. 'I'll show you; I am
going that way.'
They walked along together. Getting abreast the entrance of the park he
had just emerged from, the child said, 'There it is, sir; I live there
too.'
Christopher, with a dazed countenance, looked towards a cottage which
stood nestling in the shrubbery and ivy like a mushroom among grass. 'Is
that Arrowthorne Lodge?' he repeated.
'Yes, and if you go up the drive, you come to Arrowthorne House.'
'Arrowthorne Lodge-where Mrs. Petherwin lives, I mean.'
'Yes. She lives there along wi' mother and we. But she don't want
anybody to know it, sir, cause she's celebrate, and 'twouldn't do at
all.'
Christopher said no more, and the little girl became interested in the
products of the bank and ditch by the wayside. He left her, pushed open
the heavy gate, and tapped at the Lodge door.
The latch was lifted. 'Does Mrs. Petherwin,' he began, and, determined
that there should be no mistake, repeated, 'Does Mrs. Ethelberta
Petherwin, the poetess, live here?' turning full upon the person who
opened the door.
'She does, sir,' said a faltering voice; and he found himself face to
face with the pupil-teacher of Sandbourne.
13. THE LODGE (continued)-THE COPSE BEHIND
'This is indeed a surprise; I-am glad to see you!' Christopher
stammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one he
had intended-a smile not without a tinge of ghastliness.
'Yes-I am home for the holidays,' said the blushing maiden; and, after a
critical pause, she added, 'If you wish to speak to my sister, she is in
the plantation with the children.'
'O no-no, thank you-not necessary at all,' said Christopher, in haste.
'I only wish for an interview with a lady called Mrs. Petherwin.'
'Yes; Mrs Petherwin-my sister,' said Picotee. 'She is in the plantation.
That little path will take you to her in five minutes.'
The amazed Christopher persuaded himself that this discovery was very
delightful, and went on persuading so long that at last he felt it to be
so. Unable, like many other people, to enjoy being satirized in words
because of the irritation it caused him as aimed-at victim, he sometimes
had philosophy enough to appreciate a satire of circumstance, because
nobody intended it. Pursuing the path indicated, he found himself in a
thicket of scrubby undergrowth, which covered an area enclosed from the
park proper by a decaying fence. The boughs were so tangled that he was
obliged to screen his face with his hands, to escape the risk of having
his eyes filliped out by the twigs that impeded his progress. Thus
slowly advancing, his ear caught, between the rustles, the tones of a
voice in earnest declamation; and, pushing round in that direction, he
beheld through some beech boughs an open space about ten yards in
diameter, floored at the bottom with deep beds of curled old leaves, and
cushions of furry moss. In the middle of this natural theatre was the
stump of a tree that had been felled by a saw, and upon the flat stool
thus formed stood Ethelberta, whom Christopher had not beheld since the
ball at Wyndway House.
Round her, leaning against branches or prostrate on the ground, were
five or six individuals. Two were young mechanics-one of them evidently
a carpenter. Then there was a boy about thirteen, and two or three
younger children. Ethelberta's appearance answered as fully as ever to
that of an English lady skilfully perfected in manner, carriage, look,
and accent; and the incongruity of her present position among lives
which had had many of Nature's beauties stamped out of them, and few of
the beauties of Art stamped in, brought him, as a second feeling, a
pride in her that almost equalled his first sentiment of surprise.
Christopher's attention was meanwhile attracted from the constitution of
the group to the words of the speaker in the centre of it-words to which
her auditors were listening with still attention.
It appeared to Christopher that Ethelberta had lately been undergoing
some very extraordinary experiences. What the beginning of them had been
he could not in the least understand, but the portion she was describing
came distinctly to his ears, and he wondered more and more.
'He came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from the
edge. I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. How I longed for the
assistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching the
block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms
around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped
up with an oath. This method of attack told me a new thing with wretched
distinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was
to serve my turn no longer. The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for
he exclaimed, "You don't escape me, masquerading madam," or some such
words, and came on. My only hope was that in his excitement he might
forget to notice where the grass terminated near the edge of the cliff,
though this could be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own
feeling more distinct on this point I hastily bared my feet.'
The listeners moistened their lips, Ethelberta took breath, and then
went on to describe the scene that ensued, 'A dreadful variation on the
game of Blindman's buff,' being the words by which she characterized it.
Ethelberta's manner had become so impassioned at this point that the
lips of her audience parted, the children clung to their elders, and
Christopher could control himself no longer. He thrust aside the boughs,
and broke in upon the group.
'For Heaven's sake, Ethelberta,' he exclaimed with great excitement,
'where did you meet with such a terrible experience as that?'
The children shrieked, as if they thought that the interruption was in
some way the catastrophe of the events in course of narration. Every one
started up; the two young mechanics stared, and one of them inquired, in
return, 'What's the matter, friend?'
Christopher had not yet made reply when Ethelberta stepped from her
pedestal down upon the crackling carpet of deep leaves.
'Mr. Julian!' said she, in a serene voice, turning upon him eyes of such
a disputable stage of colour, between brown and grey, as would have
commended itself to a gallant duellist of the last century as a point on
which it was absolutely necessary to take some friend's life or other.
But the calmness was artificially done, and the astonishment that did
not appear in Ethelberta's tones was expressed by her gaze. Christopher
was not in a mood to draw fine distinctions between recognized and
unrecognized organs of speech. He replied to the eyes.
'I own that your surprise is natural,' he said, with an anxious look
into her face, as if he wished to get beyond this interpolated scene to
something more congenial and understood. 'But my concern at such a
history of yourself since I last saw you is even more natural than your
surprise at my manner of breaking in.'
'That history would justify any conduct in one who hears it-'
'Yes, indeed.'
'If it were true,' added Ethelberta, smiling. 'But it is as false as-'
She could name nothing notoriously false without raising an image of
what was disagreeable, and she continued in a better manner: 'The story
I was telling is entirely a fiction, which I am getting up for a
particular purpose-very different from what appears at present.'
'I am sorry there was such a misunderstanding,' Christopher stammered,
looking upon the ground uncertain and ashamed. 'Yet I am not, either,
for I am very glad you have not undergone such trials, of course. But
the fact is, I-being in the neighbourhood-I ventured to call on a matter
of business, relating to a poem which I had the pleasure of setting to
music at the beginning of the year.'
Ethelberta was only a little less ill at ease than Christopher showed
himself to be by this way of talking.
'Will you walk slowly on?' she said gently to the two young men, 'and
take the children with you; this gentleman wishes to speak to me on
business.'
The biggest young man caught up a little one under his arm, and plunged
amid the boughs; another little one lingered behind for a few moments to
look shyly at Christopher, with an oblique manner of hiding her mouth
against her shoulder and her eyes behind her pinafore. Then she
vanished, the boy and the second young man followed, and Ethelberta and
Christopher stood within the wood-bound circle alone.
'I hope I have caused no inconvenience by interrupting the proceedings,'
said Christopher softly; 'but I so very much wished to see you!'
'Did you, indeed-really wish to see me?' she said gladly. 'Never mind
inconvenience then; it is a word which seems shallow in meaning under
the circumstances. I surely must say that a visit is to my advantage,
must I not? I am not as I was, you see, and may receive as advantages
what I used to consider as troubles.'
'Has your life really changed so much?'
'It has changed. But what I first meant was that an interesting visitor
at a wrong time is better than a stupid one at a right time.'
'I had been behind the trees for some minutes, looking at you, and
thinking of you; but what you were doing rather interrupted my first
meditation. I had thought of a meeting in which we should continue our
intercourse at the point at which it was broken off years ago, as if the
omitted part had not existed at all; but something, I cannot tell what,
has upset all that feeling, and-'
'I can soon tell you the meaning of my extraordinary performance,'
Ethelberta broke in quickly, and with a little trepidation. 'My mother-
in-law, Lady Petherwin, is dead; and she has left me nothing but her
house and furniture in London-more than I deserve, but less than she had
distinctly led me to expect; and so I am somewhat in a corner.'
'It is always so.'
'Not always, I think. But this is how it happened. Lady Petherwin was
very capricious; when she was not foolishly kind she was unjustly harsh.
A great many are like it, never thinking what a good thing it would be,
instead of going on tacking from side to side between favour and
cruelty, to keep to a mean line of common justice. And so we quarrelled,
and she, being absolute mistress of all her wealth, destroyed her will
that was in my favour, and made another, leaving me nothing but the fag-
end of the lease of the town-house and the furniture in it. Then, when
we were abroad, she turned to me again, forgave everything, and,
becoming ill afterwards, wrote a letter to the brother, to whom she had
left the bulk of her property, stating that I was to have twenty-
thousand of the one-hundred-thousand pounds she had bequeathed to him-as
in the original will-doing this by letter in case anything should happen
to her before a new will could be considered, drawn, and signed, and
trusting to his honour quite that he would obey her expressed wish
should she die abroad. Well, she did die, in the full persuasion that I
was provided for; but her brother (as I secretly expected all the time)
refused to be morally bound by a document which had no legal value, and
the result is that he has everything, except, of course, the furniture
and the lease. It would have been enough to break the heart of a person
who had calculated upon getting a fortune, which I never did; for I felt
always like an intruder and a bondswoman, and had wished myself out of
the Petherwin family a hundred times, with my crust of bread and
liberty. For one thing, I was always forbidden to see my relatives, and
it pained me much. Now I am going to move for myself, and consider that
I have a good chance of success in what I may undertake, because of an
indifference I feel about succeeding which gives the necessary coolness
that any great task requires.'
'I presume you mean to write more poems?'
'I cannot-that is, I can write no more that satisfy me. To blossom into
rhyme on the sparkling pleasures of life, you must be under the
influence of those pleasures, and I am at present quite removed from
them-surrounded by gaunt realities of a very different description.'
'Then try the mournful. Trade upon your sufferings: many do, and
thrive.'
'It is no use to say that-no use at all. I cannot write a line of verse.
And yet the others flowed from my heart like a stream. But nothing is so
easy as to seem clever when you have money.'
'Except to seem stupid when you have none,' said Christopher, looking at
the dead leaves.
Ethelberta allowed herself to linger on that thought for a few seconds;
and continued, 'Then the question arose, what was I to do? I felt that
to write prose would be an uncongenial occupation, and altogether a poor
prospect for a woman like me. Finally I have decided to appear in
public.'
'Not on the stage?'
'Certainly not on the stage. There is no novelty in a poor lady turning
actress, and novelty is what I want. Ordinary powers exhibited in a new
way effect as much as extraordinary powers exhibited in an old way.'
'Yes-so they do. And extraordinary powers, and a new way too, would be
irresistible.'
'I don't calculate upon both. I had written a prose story by request,
when it was found that I had grown utterly inane over verse. It was
written in the first person, and the style was modelled after De Foe's.
The night before sending it off, when I had already packed it up, I was
reading about the professional story-tellers of Eastern countries, who
devoted their lives to the telling of tales. I unfastened the manuscript
and retained it, convinced that I should do better by telling the
story.'
'Well thought of!' exclaimed Christopher, looking into her face. 'There
is a way for everybody to live, if they can only find it out.'
'It occurred to me,' she continued, blushing slightly, 'that tales of
the weird kind were made to be told, not written. The action of a teller
is wanted to give due effect to all stories of incident; and I hope that
a time will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of
fiction at home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at
the feet of a professed romancer. I am going to tell my tales before a
London public. As a child, I had a considerable power in arresting the
attention of other children by recounting adventures which had never
happened; and men and women are but children enlarged a little. Look at
this.'
She drew from her pocket a folded paper, shook it abroad, and disclosed
a rough draft of an announcement to the effect that Mrs. Petherwin,
Professed Story-teller, would devote an evening to that ancient form of
the romancer's art, at a well-known fashionable hall in London. 'Now you
see,' she continued, 'the meaning of what you observed going on here.
That you heard was one of three tales I am preparing, with a view of
selecting the best. As a reserved one, I have the tale of my own life-to
be played as a last card. It was a private rehearsal before my brothers
and sisters-not with any view of obtaining their criticism, but that I
might become accustomed to my own voice in the presence of listeners.'
'If I only had had half your enterprise, what I might have done in the
world!'
'Now did you ever consider what a power De Foe's manner would have if
practised by word of mouth? Indeed, it is a style which suits itself
infinitely better to telling than to writing, abounding as it does in
colloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper in these days,
but have a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real. And so, in
short, I am going to talk De Foe on a subject of my own. Well?'
The last word had been given tenderly, with a long-drawn sweetness, and
was caused by a look that Christopher was bending upon her at the
moment, in which he revealed that he was thinking less of the subject
she was so eagerly and hopefully descanting upon than upon her aspect in
explaining it. It is a fault of manner particularly common among men
newly imported into the society of bright and beautiful women; and we
will hope that, springing as it does from no unworthy source, it is as
soon forgiven in the general world as it was here.
'I was only following a thought,' said Christopher:-'a thought of how I
used to know you, and then lost sight of you, and then discovered you
famous, and how we are here under these sad autumn trees, and nobody in
sight.'
'I think it must be tea-time,' she said suddenly. 'Tea is a great meal
with us here-you will join us, will you not?' And Ethelberta began to
make for herself a passage through the boughs. Another rustle was heard
a little way off, and one of the children appeared.
'Emmeline wants to know, please, if the gentleman that come to see 'ee
will stay to tea; because, if so, she's agoing to put in another
spoonful for him and a bit of best green.'
'O Georgina-how candid! Yes, put in some best green.'
Before Christopher could say any more to her, they were emerging by the
corner of the cottage, and one of the brothers drew near them. 'Mr.
Julian, you'll bide and have a cup of tea wi' us?' he inquired of
Christopher. 'An old friend of yours, is he not, Mrs. Petherwin? Dan and
I be going back to Sandbourne to-night, and we can walk with 'ee as far
as the station.'
'I shall be delighted,' said Christopher; and they all entered the
cottage. The evening had grown clearer by this time; the sun was peeping
out just previous to departure, and sent gold wires of light across the
glades and into the windows, throwing a pattern of the diamond quarries,
and outlines of the geraniums in pots, against the opposite wall. One
end of the room was polygonal, such a shape being dictated by the
exterior design; in this part the windows were placed, as at the east
end of continental churches. Thus, from the combined effects of the
ecclesiastical lancet lights and the apsidal shape of the room, it
occurred to Christopher that the sisters were all a delightful set of
pretty saints, exhibiting themselves in a lady chapel, and backed up by
unkempt major prophets, as represented by the forms of their big
brothers.
Christopher sat down to tea as invited, squeezing himself in between two
children whose names were almost as long as their persons, and whose tin
cups discoursed primitive music by means of spoons rattled inside them
until they were filled. The tea proceeded pleasantly, notwithstanding
that the cake, being a little burnt, tasted on the outside like the
latter plums in snapdragon. Christopher never could meet the eye of
Picotee, who continued in a wild state of flushing all the time, fixing
her looks upon the sugar-basin, except when she glanced out of the
window to see how the evening was going on, and speaking no word at all
unless it was to correct a small sister of somewhat crude manners as
regards filling the mouth, which Picotee did in a whisper, and a gentle
inclination of her mouth to the little one's ear, and a still deeper
blush than before.
Their visitor next noticed that an additional cup-and-saucer and plate
made their appearance occasionally at the table, were silently
replenished, and then carried off by one of the children to an inner
apartment.
'Our mother is bedridden,' said Ethelberta, noticing Christopher's look
at the proceeding. 'Emmeline attends to the household, except when
Picotee is at home, and Joey attends to the gate; but our mother's
affliction is a very unfortunate thing for the poor children. We are
thinking of a plan of living which will, I hope, be more convenient than
this is; but we have not yet decided what to do.' At this minute a
carriage and pair of horses became visible through one of the angular
windows of the apse, in the act of turning in from the highway towards
the park gate. The boy who answered to the name of Joey sprang up from
the table with the promptness of a Jack-in-the-box, and ran out at the
door. Everybody turned as the carriage passed through the gate, which
Joey held open, putting his other hand where the brim of his hat would
have been if he had worn one, and lapsing into a careless boy again the
instant that the vehicle had gone by.
'There's a tremendous large dinner-party at the House to-night,' said
Emmeline methodically, looking at the equipage over the edge of her
teacup, without leaving off sipping. 'That was Lord Mountclere. He's a
wicked old man, they say.'
'Lord Mountclere?' said Ethelberta musingly. 'I used to know some
friends of his. In what way is he wicked?'
'I don't know,' said Emmeline, with simplicity. 'I suppose it is because
he breaks the commandments. But I wonder how a big rich lord can want to
steal anything.' Emmeline's thoughts of breaking commandments
instinctively fell upon the eighth, as being in her ideas the only case
wherein the gain could be considered as at all worth the hazard.
Ethelberta said nothing; but Christopher thought that a shade of
depression passed over her.
'Hook back the gate, Joey,' shouted Emmeline, when the carriage had
proceeded up the drive. 'There's more to come.'
Joey did as ordered, and by the time he got indoors another carriage
turned in from the public road-a one-horse brougham this time.
'I know who that is: that's Mr. Ladywell,' said Emmeline, in the same
matter-of-fact tone. 'He's been here afore: he's a distant relation of
the squire's, and he once gave me sixpence for picking up his gloves.'
'What shall I live to see?' murmured the poetess, under her breath,
nearly dropping her teacup in an involuntary trepidation, from which she
made it a point of dignity to recover in a moment. Christopher's eyes,
at that exhibition from Ethelberta, entered her own like a pair of
lances. Picotee, seeing Christopher's quick look of jealousy, became
involved in her turn, and grew pale as a lily in her endeavours to
conceal the complications to which it gave birth in her poor little
breast likewise.
'You judge me very wrongly,' said Ethelberta, in answer to Christopher's
hasty look of resentment.
'In supposing Mr. Ladywell to be a great friend of yours?' said
Christopher, who had in some indescribable way suddenly assumed a right
to Ethelberta as his old property.
'Yes: for I hardly know him, and certainly do not value him.'
After this there was something in the mutual look of the two, though
their words had been private, which did not tend to remove the anguish
of fragile Picotee. Christopher, assured that Ethelberta's embarrassment
had been caused by nothing more than the sense of her odd social
subsidence, recovered more bliss than he had lost, and regarded calmly
the profile of young Ladywell between the two windows of his brougham as
it passed the open cottage door, bearing him along unconscious as the
dead of the nearness of his beloved one, and of the sad buffoonery that
fate, fortune, and the guardian angels had been playing with Ethelberta
of late. He recognized the face as that of the young man whom he had
encountered when watching Ethelberta's window from Rookington Park.
'Perhaps you remember seeing him at the Christmas dance at Wyndway?' she
inquired. 'He is a good-natured fellow. Afterwards he sent me that
portfolio of sketches you see in the corner. He might possibly do
something in the world as a painter if he were obliged to work at the
art for his bread, which he is not.' She added with bitter pleasantry:
'In bare mercy to his self-respect I must remain unseen here.'
It impressed Christopher to perceive how, under the estrangement which
arose from differences of education, surroundings, experience, and
talent, the sympathies of close relationship were perceptible in
Ethelberta's bearing towards her brothers and sisters. At a remark upon
some simple pleasure wherein she had not participated because absent and
occupied by far more comprehensive interests, a gloom as of banishment
would cross her face and dim it for awhile, showing that the free habits
and enthusiasms of country life had still their charm with her, in the
face of the subtler gratifications of abridged bodices, candlelight, and
no feelings in particular, which prevailed in town. Perhaps the one
condition which could work up into a permanent feeling the passing
revival of his fancy for a woman whose chief attribute he had supposed
to be sprightliness was added now by the romantic ubiquity of station
that attached to her. A discovery which might have grated on the senses
of a man wedded to conventionality was a positive pleasure to one whose
faith in society had departed with his own social ruin.
The room began to darken, whereupon Christopher arose to leave; and the
brothers Sol and Dan offered to accompany him.
14. A TURNPIKE ROAD
'We be thinking of coming to London ourselves soon,' said Sol, a
carpenter and joiner by trade, as he walked along at Christopher's left
hand. 'There's so much more chance for a man up the country. Now, if you
was me, how should you set about getting a job, sir?'
'What can you do?' said Christopher.
'Well, I am a very good staircase hand; and I have been called neat at
sash-frames; and I can knock together doors and shutters very well; and
I can do a little at the cabinet-making. I don't mind framing a roof,
neither, if the rest be busy; and I am always ready to fill up my time
at planing floor-boards by the foot.'
'And I can mix and lay flat tints,' said Dan, who was a house painter,
'and pick out mouldings, and grain in every kind of wood you can
mention-oak, maple, walnut, satinwood, cherry-tree-'
'You can both do too much to stand the least chance of being allowed to
do anything in a city, where limitation is all the rule in labour. To
have any success, Sol, you must be a man who can thoroughly look at a
door to see what ought to be done to it, but as to looking at a window,
that's not your line; or a person who, to the remotest particular,
understands turning a screw, but who does not profess any knowledge of
how to drive a nail. Dan must know how to paint blue to a marvel, but
must be quite in the dark about painting green. If you stick to some
such principle of specialty as this, you may get employment in London.'
'Ha-ha-ha!' said Dan, striking at a stone in the road with the stout
green hazel he carried. 'A wink is as good as a nod: thank'ee-we'll mind
all that now.'
'If we do come,' said Sol, 'we shall not mix up with Mrs. Petherwin at
all.'
'O indeed!'
'O no. (Perhaps you think it odd that we call her "Mrs. Petherwin," but
that's by agreement as safer and better than Berta, because we be such
rough chaps you see, and she's so lofty.) 'Twould demean her to claim
kin wi' her in London-two journeymen like we, that know nothing besides
our trades.'
'Not at all,' said Christopher, by way of chiming in in the friendliest
manner. 'She would be pleased to see any straightforward honest man and
brother, I should think, notwithstanding that she has moved in other
society for a time.'
'Ah, you don't know Berta!' said Dan, looking as if he did.
'How-in what way do you mean?' said Christopher uneasily.
'So lofty-so very lofty! Isn't she, Sol? Why she'll never stir out from
mother's till after dark, and then her day begins; and she'll traipse
about under the trees, and never go into the high-road, so that nobody
in the way of gentle-people shall run up against her and know her living
in such a little small hut after biding in a big mansion-place. There,
we don't find fault wi' her about it: we like her just the same, though
she don't speak to us in the street; for a feller must be a fool to make
a piece of work about a woman's pride, when 'tis his own sister, and
hang upon her and bother her when he knows 'tis for her good that he
should not. Yes, her life has been quare enough. I hope she enjoys it,
but for my part I like plain sailing. None of your ups and downs for me.
There, I suppose 'twas her nater to want to look into the world a bit.'
'Father and mother kept Berta to school, you understand, sir,' explained
the more thoughtful Sol, 'because she was such a quick child, and they
always had a notion of making a governess of her. Sums? If you said to
that child, "Berta, 'levenpence-three-farthings a day, how much a year?"
she would tell 'ee in three seconds out of her own little head. And that
hard sum about the herrings she had done afore she was nine.'
'True, she had,' said Dan. 'And we all know that to do that is to do
something that's no nonsense.'
'What is the sum?' Christopher inquired.
'What-not know the sum about the herrings?' said Dan, spreading his gaze
all over Christopher in amazement.
'Never heard of it,' said Christopher.
'Why down in these parts just as you try a man's soul by the Ten
Commandments, you try his head by that there sum-hey, Sol?'
'Ay, that we do.'
'A herring and a half for three-halfpence, how many can ye get for
'levenpence: that's the feller; and a mortal teaser he is, I assure 'ee.
Our parson, who's not altogether without sense o' week days, said one
afternoon, "If cunning can be found in the multiplication table at all,
Chickerel, 'tis in connection with that sum." Well, Berta was so clever
in arithmetic that she was asked to teach summing at Miss Courtley's,
and there she got to like foreign tongues more than ciphering, and at
last she hated ciphering, and took to books entirely. Mother and we were
very proud of her at that time: not that we be stuck-up people at all-be
we, Sol?'
'Not at all; nobody can say that we be that, though there's more of it
in the country than there should be by all account.'
'You'd be surprised to see how vain the girls about here be getting.
Little rascals, why they won't curtsey to the loftiest lady in the land;
no, not if you were to pay 'em to do it. Now, the men be different. Any
man will touch his hat for a pint of beer. But then, of course, there's
some difference between the two. Touching your hat is a good deal less
to do than bending your knees, as Berta used to say, when she was blowed
up for not doing it. She was always one of the independent sort-you
never seed such a maid as she was! Now, Picotee was quite the other
way.'
'Has Picotee left Sandbourne entirely?'
'O no; she is home for the holidays. Well, Mr. Julian, our road parts
from yours just here, unless you walk into the next town along with us.
But I suppose you get across to this station and go by rail?'
'I am obliged to go that way for my portmanteau,' said Christopher, 'or
I should have been pleased to walk further. Shall I see you in
Sandbourne to-morrow? I hope so.'
'Well, no. 'Tis hardly likely that you will see us-hardly. We know how
unpleasant it is for a high sort of man to have rough chaps like us
hailing him, so we think it best not to meet you-thank you all the same.
So if you should run up against us in the street, we should be just as
well pleased by your taking no notice, if you wouldn't mind. 'Twill save
so much awkwardness-being in our working clothes. 'Tis always the plan
that Mrs. Petherwin and we agree to act upon, and we find it best for
both. I hope you take our meaning right, and as no offence, Mr. Julian.'
'And do you do the same with Picotee?'
'O Lord, no-'tisn't a bit of use to try. That's the worst of Picotee-
there's no getting rid of her. The more in the rough we be the more
she'll stick to us; and if we say she shan't come, she'll bide and fret
about it till we be forced to let her.'
Christopher laughed, and promised, on condition that they would retract
the statement about their not being proud; and then he wished his
friends good-night.
15. AN INNER ROOM AT THE LODGE
At the Lodge at this time a discussion of some importance was in
progress. The scene was Mrs. Chickerel's bedroom, to which,
unfortunately, she was confined by some spinal complaint; and here she
now appeared as an interesting woman of five-and-forty, properly dressed
as far as visible, and propped up in a bed covered with a quilt which
presented a field of little squares in many tints, looking altogether
like a bird's-eye view of a market garden.
Mrs. Chickerel had been nurse in a nobleman's family until her marriage,
and after that she played the part of wife and mother, upon the whole,
affectionately and well. Among her minor differences with her husband
had been one about the naming of the children; a matter that was at last
compromised by an agreement under which the choice of the girls' names
became her prerogative, and that of the boys' her husband's, who limited
his field of selection to strict historical precedent as a set-off to
Mrs. Chickerel's tendency to stray into the regions of romance.
The only grown-up daughters at home, Ethelberta and Picotee, with their
brother Joey, were sitting near her; the two youngest children, Georgina
and Myrtle, who had been strutting in and out of the room, and otherwise
endeavouring to walk, talk, and speak like the gentleman just gone away,
were packed off to bed. Emmeline, of that transitional age which causes
its exponent to look wistfully at the sitters when romping and at the
rompers when sitting, uncertain whether her position in the household is
that of child or woman, was idling in a corner. The two absent brothers
and two absent sisters-eldest members of the family-completed the round
ten whom Mrs. Chickerel with thoughtless readiness had presented to a
crowded world, to cost Ethelberta many wakeful hours at night while she
revolved schemes how they might be decently maintained.
'I still think,' Ethelberta was saying, 'that the plan I first proposed
is the best. I am convinced that it will not do to attempt to keep on
the Lodge. If we are all together in town, I can look after you much
better than when you are far away from me down here.'
'Shall we not interfere with you-your plans for keeping up your
connections?' inquired her mother, glancing up towards Ethelberta by
lifting the flesh of her forehead, instead of troubling to raise her
face altogether.
'Not nearly so much as by staying here.'
'But,' said Picotee, 'if you let lodgings, won't the gentlemen and
ladies know it?'
'I have thought of that,' said Ethelberta, 'and this is how I shall
manage. In the first place, if mother is there, the lodgings can be let
in her name, all bills will be receipted by her, and all tradesmen's
orders will be given as from herself. Then, we will take no English
lodgers at all; we will advertise the rooms only in Continental
newspapers, as suitable for a French or German gentleman or two, and by
this means there will be little danger of my acquaintance discovering
that my house is not entirely a private one, or of any lodger being a
friend of my acquaintance. I have thought over every possible way of
combining the dignified social position I must maintain to make my
story-telling attractive, with my absolute lack of money, and I can see
no better one.'
'Then if Gwendoline is to be your cook, she must soon give notice at her
present place?'
'Yes. Everything depends upon Gwendoline and Cornelia. But there is time
enough for them to give notice-Christmas will be soon enough. If they
cannot or will not come as cook and housemaid, I am afraid the plan will
break down. A vital condition is that I do not have a soul in the house
(beyond the lodgers) who is not one of my own relations. When we have
put Joey into buttons, he will do very well to attend to the door.'
'But s'pose,' said Joey, after a glassy look at his future appearance in
the position alluded to, 'that any of your gentle-people come to see ye,
and when I opens the door and lets 'em in a swinging big lodger stalks
downstairs. What will 'em think? Up will go their eye-glasses at one
another till they glares each other into holes. My gracious!'
'The one who calls will only think that another visitor is leaving,
Joey. But I shall have no visitors, or very few. I shall let it be well
known among my late friends that my mother is an invalid, and that on
this account we receive none but the most intimate friends. These
intimate friends not existing, we receive nobody at all.'
'Except Sol and Dan, if they get a job in London? They'll have to call
upon us at the back door, won't they, Berta?' said Joey.
'They must go down the area steps. But they will not mind that; they
like the idea.'
'And father, too, must he go down the steps?'
'He may come whichever way he likes. He will be glad enough to have us
near at any price. I know that he is not at all happy at leaving you
down here, and he away in London. You remember that he has only taken
the situation at Mr. Doncastle's on the supposition that you all come to
town as soon as he can see an opening for getting you there; and as
nothing of the sort has offered itself to him, this will be the very
thing. Of course, if I succeed wonderfully well in my schemes for story-
tellings, readings of my ballads and poems, lectures on the art of
versification, and what not, we need have no lodgers; and then we shall
all be living a happy family-all taking our share in keeping the
establishment going.'
'Except poor me!' sighed the mother.
'My dear mother, you will be necessary as a steadying power-a flywheel,
in short, to the concern. I wish that father could live there, too.'
'He'll never give up his present way of life-it has grown to be a part
of his nature. Poor man, he never feels at home except in somebody
else's house, and is nervous and quite a stranger in his own. Sich is
the fatal effects of service!'
'O mother, don't!' said Ethelberta tenderly, but with her teeth on edge;
and Picotee curled up her toes, fearing that her mother was going to
moralize.
'Well, what I mean is, that your father would not like to live upon your
earnings, and so forth. But in town we shall be near him-that's one
comfort, certainly.'
'And I shall not be wanted at all,' said Picotee, in a melancholy tone.
'It is much better to stay where you are,' her mother said. 'You will
come and spend the holidays with us, of course, as you do now.'
'I should like to live in London best,' murmured Picotee, her head
sinking mournfully to one side. 'I HATE being in Sandbourne now!'
'Nonsense!' said Ethelberta severely. 'We are all contriving how to live
most comfortably, and it is by far the best thing for you to stay at the
school. You used to be happy enough there.'
Picotee sighed, and said no more.
16. A LARGE PUBLIC HALL
It was the second week in February, Parliament had just met, and
Ethelberta appeared for the first time before an audience in London.
There was some novelty in the species of entertainment that the active
young woman had proposed to herself, and this doubtless had due effect
in collecting the body of strangers that greeted her entry, over and
above those friends who came to listen to her as a matter of course. Men
and women who had become totally indifferent to new actresses, new
readers, and new singers, once more felt the freshness of curiosity as
they considered the promise of the announcement. But the chief
inducement to attend lay in the fact that here was to be seen in the
flesh a woman with whom the tongue of rumour had been busy in many
romantic ways-a woman who, whatever else might be doubted, had certainly
produced a volume of verses which had been the talk of the many who had
read them, and of the many more who had not, for several consecutive
weeks.
What was her story to be? Persons interested in the inquiry-a small
proportion, it may be owned, of the whole London public, and chiefly
young men-answered this question for themselves by assuming that it
would take the form of some pungent and gratifying revelation of the
innermost events of her own life, from which her gushing lines had
sprung as an inevitable consequence, and which being once known, would
cause such musical poesy to appear no longer wonderful.
The front part of the room was well filled, rows of listeners showing
themselves like a drilled-in crop of which not a seed has failed. They
were listeners of the right sort, a majority having noses of the
prominent and dignified type, which when viewed in oblique perspective
ranged as regularly as bow-windows at a watering place. Ethelberta's
plan was to tell her pretended history and adventures while sitting in a
chair-as if she were at her own fireside, surrounded by a circle of
friends. By this touch of domesticity a great appearance of truth and
naturalness was given, though really the attitude was at first more
difficult to maintain satisfactorily than any one wherein stricter
formality should be observed. She gently began her subject, as if
scarcely knowing whether a throng were near her or not, and, in her fear
of seeming artificial, spoke too low. This defect, however, she soon
corrected, and ultimately went on in a charmingly colloquial manner.
What Ethelberta relied upon soon became evident. It was not upon the
intrinsic merits of her story as a piece of construction, but upon her
method of telling it. Whatever defects the tale possessed-and they were
not a few-it had, as delivered by her, the one pre-eminent merit of
seeming like truth. A modern critic has well observed of De Foe that he
had the most amazing talent on record for telling lies; and Ethelberta,
in wishing her fiction to appear like a real narrative of personal
adventure, did wisely to make De Foe her model. His is a style even
better adapted for speaking than for writing, and the peculiarities of
diction which he adopts to give verisimilitude to his narratives
acquired enormous additional force when exhibited as viva-voce
mannerisms. And although these artifices were not, perhaps, slavishly
copied from that master of feigning, they would undoubtedly have
reminded her hearers of him, had they not mostly been drawn from an
easeful section in society which is especially characterized by the
mental condition of knowing nothing about any author a week after they
have read him. The few there who did remember De Foe were impressed by a
fancy that his words greeted them anew in a winged auricular form,
instead of by the weaker channels of print and eyesight. The reader may
imagine what an effect this well-studied method must have produced when
intensified by a clear, living voice, animated action, and the brilliant
and expressive eye of a handsome woman-attributes which of themselves
almost compelled belief. When she reached the most telling passages,
instead of adding exaggerated action and sound, Ethelberta would lapse
to a whisper and a sustained stillness, which were more striking than
gesticulation. All that could be done by art was there, and if
inspiration was wanting nobody missed it.
It was in performing this feat that Ethelberta seemed first to discover
in herself the full power of that self-command which further onward in
her career more and more impressed her as a singular possession, until
at last she was tempted to make of it many fantastic uses, leading to
results that affected more households than her own. A talent for
demureness under difficulties without the cold-bloodedness which renders
such a bearing natural and easy, a face and hand reigning unmoved
outside a heart by nature turbulent as a wave, is a constitutional
arrangement much to be desired by people in general; yet, had Ethelberta
been framed with less of that gift in her, her life might have been more
comfortable as an experience, and brighter as an example, though perhaps
duller as a story.
'Ladywell, how came this Mrs. Petherwin to think of such a queer trick
as telling romances, after doing so well as a poet?' said a man in the
stalls to his friend, who had been gazing at the Story-teller with a
rapt face.
'What-don't you know?-everybody did, I thought,' said the painter.
'A mistake. Indeed, I should not have come here at all had I not heard
the subject mentioned by accident yesterday at Grey's; and then I
remembered her to be the same woman I had met at some place-Belmaine's I
think it was-last year, when I thought her just getting on for handsome
and clever, not to put it too strongly.'
'Ah! naturally you would not know much,' replied Ladywell, in an eager
whisper. 'Perhaps I am judging others by myself a little more than-but,
as you have heard, she is an acquaintance of mine. I know her very well,
and, in fact, I originally suggested the scheme to her as a pleasant way
of adding to her fame. "Depend upon it, dear Mrs. Petherwin," I said,
during a pause in one of our dances together some time ago, "any public
appearance of yours would be successful beyond description."'
'O, I had no idea that you knew her so well! Then it is quite through
you that she has adopted this course?'
'Well, not entirely-I could not say entirely. She said that some day,
perhaps, she might do such a thing; and, in short, I reduced her vague
ideas to form.'
'I should not mind knowing her better-I must get you to throw us
together in some way,' said Neigh, with some interest. 'I had no idea
that you were such an old friend. You could do it, I suppose?'
'Really, I am afraid-hah-hah-may not have the opportunity of obliging
you. I met her at Wyndway, you know, where she was visiting with Lady
Petherwin. It was some time ago, and I cannot say that I have ever met
her since.'
'Or before?' said Neigh.
'Well-no; I never did.'
'Ladywell, if I had half your power of going to your imagination for
facts, I would be the greatest painter in England.'
'Now Neigh-that's too bad-but with regard to this matter, I do speak
with some interest,' said Ladywell, with a pleased sense of himself.
'In love with her?-Smitten down?-Done for?'
'Now, now! However, several other fellows chaff me about her. It was
only yesterday that Jones said-'
'Do you know why she cares to do this sort of thing?'
'Merely a desire for fame, I suppose.'
'I should think she has fame enough already.'
'That I can express no opinion upon. I am thinking of getting her
permission to use her face in a subject I am preparing. It is a fine
face for canvas. Glorious contour-glorious. Ah, here she is again, for
the second part.'
'Dream on, young fellow. You'll make a rare couple!' said Neigh, with a
flavour of superciliousness unheeded by his occupied companion.
Further back in the room were a pair of faces whose keen interest in the
performance contrasted much with the languidly permissive air of those
in front. When the ten minutes' break occurred, Christopher was the
first of the two to speak. 'Well, what do you think of her, Faith?' he
said, shifting restlessly on his seat.
'I like the quiet parts of the tale best, I think,' replied the sister;
'but, of course, I am not a good judge of these things. How still the
people are at times! I continually take my eyes from her to look at the
listeners. Did you notice the fat old lady in the second row, with her
cloak a little thrown back? She was absolutely unconscious, and stayed
with her face up and lips parted like a little child of six.'
'She well may! the thing is a triumph. That fellow Ladywell is here, I
believe-yes, it is he, busily talking to the man on his right. If I were
a woman I would rather go donkey-driving than stick myself up there, for
gaping fops to quiz and say what they like about! But she had no choice,
poor thing; for it was that or nothing with her.'
Faith, who had secret doubts about the absolute necessity of
Ethelberta's appearance in public, said, with remote meanings, 'Perhaps
it is not altogether a severe punishment to her to be looked at by well-
dressed men. Suppose she feels it as a blessing, instead of an
affliction?'
'She is a different sort of woman, Faith, and so you would say if you
knew her. Of course, it is natural for you to criticize her severely
just now, and I don't wish to defend her.'
'I think you do a little, Kit.'
'No; I am indifferent about it all. Perhaps it would have been better
for me if I had never seen her; and possibly it might have been better
for her if she had never seen me. She has a heart, and the heart is a
troublesome encumbrance when great things have to be done. I wish you
knew her: I am sure you would like each other.'
'O yes,' said Faith, in a voice of rather weak conviction. 'But, as we
live in such a plain way, it would be hardly desirable at present.'
Ethelberta being regarded, in common with the latest conjurer, spirit-
medium, aeronaut, giant, dwarf or monarch, as a new sensation, she was
duly criticized in the morning papers, and even obtained a notice in
some of the weekly reviews.
'A handsome woman,' said one of these, 'may have her own reasons for
causing the flesh of the London public to creep upon its bones by her
undoubtedly remarkable narrative powers; but we question if much good
can result from such a form of entertainment. Nevertheless, some praise
is due. We have had the novel-writer among us for some time, and the
novel-reader has occasionally appeared on our platforms; but we believe
that this is the first instance on record of a Novel-teller-one, that is
to say, who relates professedly as fiction a romantic tale which has
never been printed-the whole owing its chief interest to the method
whereby the teller identifies herself with the leading character in the
story.'
Another observed: 'When once we get away from the magic influence of the
story-teller's eye and tongue, we perceive how improbable, even
impossible, is the tissue of events to which we have been listening with
so great a sense of reality, and we feel almost angry with ourselves at
having been the victims of such utter illusion.'
'Mrs. Petherwin's personal appearance is decidedly in her favour,' said
another. 'She affects no unconsciousness of the fact that form and
feature are no mean vehicles of persuasion, and she uses the powers of
each to the utmost. There spreads upon her face when in repose an air of
innocence which is charmingly belied by the subtlety we discover beneath
it when she begins her tale; and this amusing discrepancy between her
physical presentment and the inner woman is further illustrated by the
misgiving, which seizes us on her entrance, that so impressionable a
lady will never bear up in the face of so trying an audience. . . . The
combinations of incident which Mrs. Petherwin persuades her hearers that
she has passed through are not a little marvellous; and if what is
rumoured be true, that the tales are to a great extent based upon her
own experiences, she has proved herself to be no less daring in
adventure than facile in her power of describing it.'
17. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
After such successes as these, Christopher could not forego the
seductive intention of calling upon the poetess and romancer, at her now
established town residence in Exonbury Crescent. One wintry afternoon he
reached the door-now for the third time-and gave a knock which had in it
every tender refinement that could be thrown into the somewhat
antagonistic vehicle of noise. Turning his face down the street he
waited restlessly on the step. There was a strange light in the
atmosphere: the glass of the street-lamps, the varnished back of a
passing cab, a milk-woman's cans, and a row of church-windows glared in
his eyes like new-rubbed copper; and on looking the other way he beheld
a bloody sun hanging among the chimneys at the upper end, as a danger-
lamp to warn him off.
By this time the door was opened, and before him stood Ethelberta's
young brother Joey, thickly populated with little buttons, the remainder
of him consisting of invisible green.
'Ah, Joseph,' said Christopher, instantly recognizing the boy. 'What,
are you here in office? Is your-'
Joey lifted his forefinger and spread his mouth in a genial manner, as
if to signify particular friendliness mingled with general caution.
'Yes, sir, Mrs. Petherwin is my mistress. I'll see if she is at home,
sir,' he replied, raising his shoulders and winking a wink of strategic
meanings by way of finish-all which signs showed, if evidence were
wanted, how effectually this pleasant young page understood, though
quite fresh from Wessex, the duties of his peculiar position. Mr. Julian
was shown to the drawing-room, and there he found Ethelberta alone.
She gave him a hand so cool and still that Christopher, much as he
desired the contact, was literally ashamed to let her see and feel his
own, trembling with unmanageable excess of feeling. It was always so,
always had been so, always would be so, at these meetings of theirs: she
was immeasurably the strongest; and the deep-eyed young man fancied, in
the chagrin which the perception of this difference always bred in him,
that she triumphed in her superior control. Yet it was only in little
things that their sexes were thus reversed: Christopher would receive
quite a shock if a little dog barked at his heels, and be totally
unmoved when in danger of his life.
Certainly the most self-possessed woman in the world, under pressure of
the incongruity between their last meeting and the present one, might
have shown more embarrassment than Ethelberta showed on greeting him to-
day. Christopher was only a man in believing that the shyness which she
did evince was chiefly the result of personal interest. She might or
might not have been said to blush-perhaps the stealthy change upon her
face was too slow an operation to deserve that name: but, though pale
when he called, the end of ten minutes saw her colour high and wide. She
soon set him at his ease, and seemed to relax a long-sustained tension
as she talked to him of her arrangements, hopes, and fears.
'And how do you like London society?' said Ethelberta.
'Pretty well, as far as I have seen it: to the surface of its front
door.'
'You will find nothing to be alarmed at if you get inside.'
'O no-of course not-except my own shortcomings,' said the modest
musician. 'London society is made up of much more refined people than
society anywhere else.'
'That's a very prevalent opinion; and it is nowhere half so prevalent as
in London society itself. However, come and see my house-unless you
think it a trouble to look over a house?'
'No; I should like it very much.'
The decorations tended towards the artistic gymnastics prevalent in some
quarters at the present day. Upon a general flat tint of duck's-egg
green appeared quaint patterns of conventional foliage, and birds, done
in bright auburn, several shades nearer to redbreast-red than was
Ethelberta's hair, which was thus thrust further towards brown by such
juxtaposition-a possible reason for the choice of tint. Upon the glazed
tiles within the chimney-piece were the forms of owls, bats, snakes,
frogs, mice, spiders in their webs, moles, and other objects of aversion
and darkness, shaped in black and burnt in after the approved fashion.
'My brothers Sol and Dan did most of the actual work,' said Ethelberta,
'though I drew the outlines, and designed the tiles round the fire. The
flowers, mice, and spiders are done very simply, you know: you only
press a real flower, mouse, or spider out flat under a piece of glass,
and then copy it, adding a little more emaciation and angularity at
pleasure.'
'In that "at pleasure" is where all the art lies,' said he.
'Well, yes-that is the case,' said Ethelberta thoughtfully; and
preceding him upstairs, she threw open a door on one of the floors,
disclosing Dan in person, engaged upon a similar treatment of this floor
also. Sol appeared bulging from the door of a closet, a little further
on, where he was fixing some shelves; and both wore workmen's blouses.
At once coming down from the short ladder he was standing upon, Dan
shook Christopher's hand with some velocity.
'We do a little at a time, you see,' he said, 'because Colonel down
below, and Mrs. Petherwin's visitors, shan't smell the turpentine.'
'We be pushing on to-day to get it out of the way,' said Sol, also
coming forward and greeting their visitor, but more reluctantly than his
brother had done. 'Now I'll tell ye what-you two,' he added, after an
uneasy pause, turning from Christopher to Ethelberta and back again in
great earnestness; 'you'd better not bide here, talking to we rough
ones, you know, for folks might find out that there's something closer
between us than workmen and employer and employer's friend. So Berta and
Mr. Julian, if you'll go on and take no more notice o' us, in case of
visitors, it would be wiser-else, perhaps, if we should be found out
intimate with ye, and bring down your gentility, you'll blame us for it.
I get as nervous as a cat when I think I may be the cause of any
disgrace to ye.'
'Don't be so silly, Sol,' said Ethelberta, laughing.
'Ah, that's all very well,' said Sol, with an unbelieving smile; 'but if
we bain't company for you out of doors, you bain't company for we
within-not that I find fault with ye or mind it, and shan't take
anything for painting your house, nor will Dan neither, any more for
that-no, not a penny; in fact, we are glad to do it for 'ee. At the same
time, you keep to your class, and we'll keep to ours. And so, good
afternoon, Berta, when you like to go, and the same to you, Mr. Julian.
Dan, is that your mind?'
'I can but own it,' said Dan.
The two brothers then turned their backs upon their visitors, and went
on working, and Ethelberta and her lover left the room. 'My brothers,
you perceive,' said she, 'represent the respectable British workman in
his entirety, and a touchy individual he is, I assure you, on points of
dignity, after imbibing a few town ideas from his leaders. They are
painfully off-hand with me, absolutely refusing to be intimate, from a
mistaken notion that I am ashamed of their dress and manners; which, of
course, is absurd.'
'Which, of course, is absurd,' said Christopher.
'Of course it is absurd!' she repeated with warmth, and looking keenly
at him. But, finding no harm in his face, she continued as before: 'Yet,
all the time, they will do anything under the sun that they think will
advance my interests. In our hearts we are one. All they ask me to do is
to leave them to themselves, and therefore I do so. Now, would you like
to see some more of your acquaintance?'
She introduced him to a large attic; where he found himself in the
society of two or three persons considerably below the middle height,
whose manners were of that gushing kind sometimes called Continental,
their ages ranging from five years to eight. These were the youngest
children, presided over by Emmeline, as professor of letters, capital
and small.
'I am giving them the rudiments of education here,' said Ethelberta;
'but I foresee several difficulties in the way of keeping them here,
which I must get over as best I can. One trouble is, that they don't get
enough air and exercise.'
'Is Mrs. Chickerel living here as well?' Christopher ventured to
inquire, when they were downstairs again.
'Yes; but confined to her room as usual, I regret to say. Two more
sisters of mine, whom you have never seen at all, are also here. They
are older than any of the rest of us, and had, broadly speaking, no
education at all, poor girls. The eldest, Gwendoline, is my cook, and
Cornelia is my housemaid. I suffer much sadness, and almost misery
sometimes, in reflecting that here are we, ten brothers and sisters,
born of one father and mother, who might have mixed together and shared
all in the same scenes, and been properly happy, if it were not for the
strange accidents that have split us up into sections as you see,
cutting me off from them without the compensation of joining me to any
others. They are all true as steel in keeping the secret of our kin,
certainly; but that brings little joy, though some satisfaction
perhaps.'
'You might be less despondent, I think. The tale-telling has been one of
the successes of the season.'
'Yes, I might; but I may observe that you scarcely set the example of
blitheness.'
'Ah-that's not because I don't recognize the pleasure of being here. It
is from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling I have that at the
most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so
short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness
out of bare respect to his insight.
"As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher
night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake
year to sorrow."'
Ethelberta bowed uncertainly; the remark might refer to her past conduct
or it might not. 'My great cause of uneasiness is the children,' she
presently said, as a new page of matter. 'It is my duty, at all risk and
all sacrifice of sentiment, to educate and provide for them. The grown-
up ones, older than myself, I cannot help much, but the little ones I
can. I keep my two French lodgers for the sake of them.'
'The lodgers, of course, don't know the relationship between yourself
and the rest of the people in the house?'
'O no!-nor will they ever. My mother is supposed to let the ground and
first floors to me-a strange lady-as she does the second and third
floors to them. Still, I may be discovered.'
'Well-if you are?'
'Let me be. Life is a battle, they say; but it is only so in the sense
that a game of chess is a battle-there is no seriousness in it; it may
be put an end to at any inconvenient moment by owning yourself beaten,
with a careless "Ha-ha!" and sweeping your pieces into the box.
Experimentally, I care to succeed in society; but at the bottom of my
heart, I don't care.'
'For that very reason you are likely to do it. My idea is, make ambition
your business and indifference your relaxation, and you will fail; but
make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation, and you
will succeed. So impish are the ways of the gods.'
'I hope that you at any rate will succeed,' she said, at the end of a
silence.
'I never can-if success means getting what one wants.'
'Why should you not get that?'
'It has been forbidden to me.'
Her complexion changed just enough to show that she knew what he meant.
'If you were as bold as you are subtle, you would take a more cheerful
view of the matter,' she said, with a look signifying innermost things.
'I will instantly! Shall I test the truth of my cheerful view by a word
of question?'
'I deny that you are capable of taking that view, and until you prove
that you are, no question is allowed,' she said, laughing, and still
warmer in the face and neck. 'Nothing but melancholy, gentle melancholy,
now as in old times when there was nothing to cause it.'
'Ah-you only tease.'
'You will not throw aside that bitter medicine of distrust, for the
world. You have grown so used to it, that you take it as food, as some
invalids do their mixtures.'
'Ethelberta, you have my heart-my whole heart. You have had it ever
since I first saw you. Now you understand me, and no pretending that you
don't, mind, this second time.'
'I understood you long ago; you have not understood me.'
'You are mysterious,' he said lightly; 'and perhaps if I disentangle
your mystery I shall find it to cover-indifference. I hope it does-for
your sake.'
'How can you say so!' she exclaimed reproachfully. 'Yet I wish it did
too-I wish it did cover indifference-for yours. But you have all of me
that you care to have, and may keep it for life if you wish to. Listen,
surely there was a knock at the door? Let us go inside the room: I am
always uneasy when anybody comes, lest any awkward discovery should be
made by a visitor of my miserable contrivances for keeping up the
establishment.'
Joey met them before they had left the landing.
'Please, Berta,' he whispered, 'Mr. Ladywell has called, and I've showed
him into the liberry. You know, Berta, this is how it was, you know: I
thought you and Mr. Julian were in the drawing-room, and wouldn't want
him to see ye together, and so I asked him to step into the liberry a
minute.'
'You must improve your way of speaking,' she said, with quick
embarrassment, whether at the mention of Ladywell's name before Julian,
or at the way Joey coupled herself with Christopher, was quite
uncertain. 'Will you excuse me for a few moments?' she said, turning to
Christopher. 'Pray sit down; I shall not be long.' And she glided
downstairs.
They had been standing just by the drawing-room door, and Christopher
turned back into the room with no very satisfactory countenance. It was
very odd, he thought, that she should go down to Ladywell in that
mysterious manner, when he might have been admitted to where they were
talking without any trouble at all. What could Ladywell have to say, as
an acquaintance calling upon her for a few minutes, that he was not to
hear? Indeed, if it came to that, what right had Ladywell to call upon
her at all, even though she were a widow, and to some extent chartered
to live in a way which might be considered a trifle free if indulged in
by other young women. This was the first time that he himself had
ventured into her house on that very account-a doubt whether it was
quite proper to call, considering her youth, and the fertility of her
position as ground for scandal. But no sooner did he arrive than here
was Ladywell blundering in, and, since this conjunction had occurred on
his first visit, the chances were that Ladywell came very often.
Julian walked up and down the room, every moment expanding itself to a
minute in his impatience at the delay and vexation at the cause. After
scrutinizing for the fifth time every object on the walls as if
afflicted with microscopic closeness of sight, his hands under his coat-
tails, and his person jigging up and down upon his toes, he heard her
coming up the stairs. When she entered the apartment her appearance was
decidedly that of a person subsiding after some little excitement.
'I did not calculate upon being so long,' she said sweetly, at the same
time throwing back her face and smiling. 'But I-was longer than I
expected.'
'It seemed rather long,' said Christopher gloomily, 'but I don't mind
it.'
'I am glad of that,' said Ethelberta.
'As you asked me to stay, I was very pleased to do so, and always should
be; but I think that now I will wish you good-bye.'
'You are not vexed with me?' she said, looking quite into his face. 'Mr.
Ladywell is nobody, you know.'
'Nobody?'
'Well, he is not much, I mean. The case is, that I am sitting to him for
a subject in which my face is to be used-otherwise than as a portrait-
and he called about it.'
'May I say,' said Christopher, 'that if you want yourself painted, you
are ill-advised not to let it be done by a man who knows how to use the
brush a little?'
'O, he can paint!' said Ethelberta, rather warmly. 'His last picture was
excellent, I think. It was greatly talked about.'
'I imagined you to say that he was a mere nobody!'
'Yes, but-how provoking you are!-nobody, I mean, to talk to. He is a
true artist, nevertheless.'
Christopher made no reply. The warm understanding between them had quite
ended now, and there was no fanning it up again. Sudden tiffs had been
the constant misfortune of their courtship in days gone by, had been the
remote cause of her marriage to another; and the familiar shadows seemed
to be rising again to cloud them with the same persistency as ever.
Christopher went downstairs with well-behaved moodiness, and left the
house forthwith. The postman came to the door at the same time.
Ethelberta opened a letter from Picotee-now at Sandbourne again; and,
stooping to the fire-light, she began to read:-
'MY DEAR ETHELBERTA,-I have tried to like staying at Sandbourne because
you wished it, but I can't endure the town at all, dear Berta;
everything is so wretched and dull! O, I only wish you knew how dismal
it is here, and how much I would give to come to London! I cannot help
thinking that I could do better in town. You see, I should be close to
you, and should have the benefit of your experience. I would not mind
what I did for a living could I be there where you all are. It is so
like banishment to be here. If I could not get a pupil-teachership in
some London school (and I believe I could by advertising) I could stay
with you, and be governess to Georgina and Myrtle, for I am sure you
cannot spare time enough to teach them as they ought to be taught, and
Emmeline is not old enough to have any command over them. I could also
assist at your dressmaking, and you must require a great deal of that to
be done if you continue to appear in public. Mr. Long read in the
papers the account of your first evening, and afterwards I heard two
ladies of our committee talking about it; but of course not one of them
knew my personal interest in the discussion. Now will you, Ethelberta,
think if I may not come: Do, there's a dear sister! I will do anything
you set me about if I may only come.-Your ever affectionate,
PICOTEE.'
'Great powers above-what worries do beset me!' cried Ethelberta, jumping
up. 'What can possess the child so suddenly?-she used to like Sandbourne
well enough!' She sat down, and hastily scribbled the following reply:-
'MY DEAR PICOTEE-There is only a little time to spare before the post
goes, but I will try to answer your letter at once. Whatever is the
reason of this extraordinary dislike to Sandbourne? It is a nice
healthy place, and you are likely to do much better than either of our
elder sisters, if you follow straight on in the path you have chosen.
Of course, if such good fortune should attend me that I get rich by my
contrivances of public story-telling and so on, I shall share everything
with you and the rest of us, in which case you shall not work at all.
But (although I have been unexpectedly successful so far) this is
problematical; and it would be rash to calculate upon all of us being
able to live, or even us seven girls only, upon the fortune I am going
to make that way. So, though I don't mean to be harsh, I must impress
upon you the necessity of going on as you are going just at present. I
know the place must be dull, but we must all put up with dulness
sometimes. You, being next to me in age, must aid me as well as you can
in doing something for the younger ones; and if anybody at all comes and
lives here otherwise than as a servant, it must be our father-who will
not, however, at present hear of such a thing when I mention it to him.
Do think of all this, Picotee, and bear up! Perhaps we shall all be
happy and united some day. Joey is waiting to run to the post-office
with this at once. All are well. Sol and Dan have nearly finished the
repairs and decorations of my house-but I will tell you of that another
time.-Your affectionate sister, BERTA.'
18. NEAR SANDBOURNE-LONDON STREETS-ETHELBERTA'S
When this letter reached its destination the next morning, Picotee, in
her over-anxiety, could not bring herself to read it in anybody's
presence, and put it in her pocket till she was on her walk across the
moor. She still lived at the cottage out of the town, though at some
inconvenience to herself, in order to teach at a small village night-
school whilst still carrying on her larger occupation of pupil-teacher
in Sandbourne.
So she walked and read, and was soon in tears. Moreover, when she
thought of what Ethelberta would have replied had that keen sister known
the wildness of her true reason in wishing to go, she shuddered with
misery. To wish to get near a man only because he had been kind to her,
and had admired her pretty face, and had given her flowers, to nourish a
passion all the more because of its hopeless impracticability, were
things to dream of, not to tell. Picotee was quite an unreasoning
animal. Her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct
herself in them, how to make up anew, in unobtrusive shapes, the
valuable wearing apparel she sent from time to time-so as to provoke
neither exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the
great. Ethelberta did everything for her, in short; and Picotee obeyed
orders with the abstracted ease of mind which people show who have their
thinking done for them, and put out their troubles as they do their
washing. She was quite willing not to be clever herself, since it was
unnecessary while she had a much-admired sister, who was clever enough
for two people and to spare.
This arrangement, by which she gained an untroubled existence in
exchange for freedom of will, had worked very pleasantly for Picotee
until the anomaly of falling in love on her own account created a jar in
the machinery. Then she began to know how wearing were miserable days,
and how much more wearing were miserable nights. She pictured
Christopher in London calling upon her dignified sister (for Ethelberta
innocently mentioned his name sometimes in writing) and imagined over
and over again the mutual signs of warm feeling between them. And now
Picotee resolved upon a noble course. Like Juliet, she had been troubled
with a consciousness that perhaps her love for Christopher was a trifle
forward and unmaidenly, even though she had determined never to let him
or anybody in the whole world know of it. To set herself to pray that
she might have strength to see him without a pang the lover of her
sister, who deserved him so much more than herself, would be a grand
penance and corrective.
After uttering petitions to this effect for several days, she still felt
very bad; indeed, in the psychological difficulty of striving for what
in her soul she did not desire, rather worse, if anything. At last,
weary of walking the old road and never meeting him, and blank in a
general powerlessness, she wrote the letter to Ethelberta, which was
only the last one of a series that had previously been written and torn
up.
Now this hope had been whirled away like thistledown, and the case was
grievous enough to distract a greater stoic than Picotee. The end of it
was that she left the school on insufficient notice, gave up her cottage
home on the plea-true in the letter-that she was going to join a
relative in London, and went off thither by a morning train, leaving her
things packed ready to be sent on when she should write for them.
Picotee arrived in town late on a cold February afternoon, bearing a
small bag in her hand. She crossed Westminster Bridge on foot, just
after dusk, and saw a luminous haze hanging over each well-lighted
street as it withdrew into distance behind the nearer houses, showing
its direction as a train of morning mist shows the course of a distant
stream when the stream itself is hidden. The lights along the riverside
towards Charing Cross sent an inverted palisade of gleaming swords down
into the shaking water, and the pavement ticked to the touch of
pedestrians' feet, most of whom tripped along as if walking only to
practise a favourite quick step, and held handkerchiefs to their mouths
to strain off the river mist from their lungs. She inquired her way to
Exonbury Crescent, and between five and six o'clock reached her sister's
door.
Two or three minutes were passed in accumulating resolution sufficient
to ring the bell, which when at last she did, was not performed in a way
at all calculated to make the young man Joey hasten to the door. After
the lapse of a certain time he did, however, find leisure to stroll and
see what the caller might want, out of curiosity to know who there could
be in London afraid to ring a bell twice.
Joey's delight exceeded even his surprise, the ruling maxim of his life
being the more the merrier, under all circumstances. The beaming young
man was about to run off and announce her upstairs and downstairs, left
and right, when Picotee called him hastily to her. In the hall her quick
young eye had caught sight of an umbrella with a peculiar horn handle-an
umbrella she had been accustomed to meet on Sandbourne Moor on many
happy afternoons. Christopher was evidently in the house.
'Joey,' she said, as if she were ready to faint, 'don't tell Berta I am
come. She has company, has she not?'
'O no-only Mr. Julian!' said the brother. 'He's quite one of the
family!'
'Never mind-can't I go down into the kitchen with you?' she inquired.
There had been bliss and misery mingled in those tidings, and she
scarcely knew for a moment which way they affected her. What she did
know was that she had run her dear fox to earth, and a sense of
satisfaction at that feat prevented her just now from counting the cost
of the performance.
'Does Mr. Julian come to see her very often?' said she.
'O yes-he's always a-coming-a regular bore to me.'
'A regular what?'
'Bore!-Ah, I forgot, you don't know our town words. However, come
along.'
They passed by the doors on tiptoe, and their mother upstairs being,
according to Joey's account, in the midst of a nap, Picotee was
unwilling to disturb her; so they went down at once to the kitchen, when
forward rushed Gwendoline the cook, flourishing her floury hands, and
Cornelia the housemaid, dancing over her brush; and these having
welcomed and made Picotee comfortable, who should ring the area-bell,
and be admitted down the steps, but Sol and Dan. The workman-brothers,
their day's duties being over, had called to see their relations, first,
as usual, going home to their lodgings in Marylebone and making
themselves as spruce as bridegrooms, according to the rules of their
newly-acquired town experience. For the London mechanic is only nine
hours a mechanic, though the country mechanic works, eats, drinks, and
sleeps a mechanic throughout the whole twenty-four.
'God bless my soul-Picotee!' said Dan, standing fixed. 'Well-I say, this
is splendid! ha-ha!'
'Picotee-what brought you here?' said Sol, expanding the circumference
of his face in satisfaction. 'Well, come along-never mind so long as you
be here.'
Picotee explained circumstances as well as she could without stating
them, and, after a general conversation of a few minutes, Sol
interrupted with-'Anybody upstairs with Mrs. Petherwin?'
'Mr. Julian was there just now,' said Joey; 'but he may be gone. Berta
always lets him slip out how he can, the form of ringing me up not being
necessary with him. Wait a minute-I'll see.'
Joseph vanished up the stairs; and, the question whether Christopher
were gone or not being an uninteresting one to the majority, the talking
went on upon other matters. When Joey crept down again a minute later,
Picotee was sitting aloof and silent, and he accordingly singled her out
to speak to.
'Such a lark, Picotee!' he whispered. 'Berta's a-courting of her young
man. Would you like to see how they carries on a bit?'
'Dearly I should!' said Picotee, the pupils of her eyes dilating.
Joey conducted her to the top of the basement stairs, and told her to
listen. Within a few yards of them was the morning-room door, now
standing ajar; and an intermittent flirtation in soft male and female
tones could be heard going on inside. Picotee's lips parted at thus
learning the condition of things, and she leant against the stair-newel.
'My? What's the matter?' said Joey.
'If this is London, I don't like it at all!' moaned Picotee.
'Well-I never see such a girl-fainting all over the stairs for nothing
in the world.'
'O-it will soon be gone-it is-it is only indigestion.'
'Indigestion? Much you simple country people can know about that! You
should see what devils of indigestions we get in high life-eating
'normous great dinners and suppers that require clever physicians to
carry 'em off, or else they'd carry us off with gout next day; and
waking in the morning with such a splitting headache, and dry throat,
and inward cusses about human nature, that you feel all the world like
some great lord. However, now let's go down again.'
'No, no, no!' said the unhappy maiden imploringly. 'Hark!'
They listened again. The voices of the musician and poetess had changed:
there was a decided frigidity in their tone-then came a louder
expression-then a silence.
'You needn't be afeard,' said Joey. 'They won't fight; bless you, they
busts out quarrelling like this times and times when they've been over-
friendly, but it soon gets straight with 'em again.'
There was now a quick walk across the room, and Joey and his sister drew
down their heads out of sight. Then the room door was slammed, quick
footsteps went along the hall, the front door closed just as loudly, and
Christopher's tread passed into nothing along the pavement.
'That's rather a wuss one than they mostly have; but Lord, 'tis nothing
at all.'
'I don't much like biding here listening!' said Picotee.
'O, 'tis how we do all over the West End,' said Joey. ''Tis yer
ignorance of town life that makes it seem a good deal to 'ee.'
'You can't make much boast about town life; for you haven't left off
talking just as they do down in Wessex.'
'Well, I own to that-what's fair is fair, and 'tis a true charge; but if
I talk the Wessex way 'tisn't for want of knowing better; 'tis because
my staunch nater makes me bide faithful to our old ancient institutions.
You'd soon own 'twasn't ignorance in me, if you knowed what large
quantities of noblemen I gets mixed up with every day. In fact 'tis
thoughted here and there that I shall do very well in the world.'
'Well, let us go down,' said Picotee. 'Everything seems so overpowering
here.'
'O, you'll get broke in soon enough. I felt just the same when I first
entered into society.'
'Do you think Berta will be angry with me? How does she treat you?'
'Well, I can't complain. You see she's my own flesh and blood, and what
can I say? But, in secret truth, the wages is terrible low, and barely
pays for the tobacco I consooms.'
'O Joey, you wicked boy! If mother only knew that you smoked!'
'I don't mind the wickedness so much as the smell. And Mrs. Petherwin
has got such a nose for a fellow's clothes. 'Tis one of the greatest
knots in service-the smoke question. 'Tis thoughted that we shall make a
great stir about it in the mansions of the nobility soon.'
'How much more you know of life than I do-you only fourteen and me
seventeen!'
'Yes, that's true. You see, age is nothing-'tis opportunity. And even I
can't boast, for many a younger man knows more.'
'But don't smoke, Joey-there's a dear!'
'What can I do? Society hev its rules, and if a person wishes to keep
himself up, he must do as the world do. We be all Fashion's slave-as
much a slave as the meanest in the land!'
They got downstairs again; and when the dinner of the French lady and
gentleman had been sent up and cleared away, and also Ethelberta's
evening tea (which she formed into a genuine meal, making a dinner of
luncheon, when nobody was there, to give less trouble to her servant-
sisters), they all sat round the fire. Then the rustle of a dress was
heard on the staircase, and squirrel-haired Ethelberta appeared in
person. It was her custom thus to come down every spare evening, to
teach Joey and her sisters something or other-mostly French, which she
spoke fluently; but the cook and housemaid showed more ambition than
intelligence in acquiring that tongue, though Joey learnt it readily
enough.
There was consternation in the camp for a moment or two, on account of
poor Picotee, Ethelberta being not without firmness in matters of
discipline. Her eye instantly lighted upon her disobedient sister, now
looking twice as disobedient as she really was.
'O, you are here, Picotee? I am glad to see you,' said the mistress of
the house quietly.
This was altogether to Picotee's surprise, for she had expected a round
rating at least, in her freshness hardly being aware that this reserve
of feeling was an acquired habit of Ethelberta's, and that civility
stood in town for as much vexation as a tantrum represented in Wessex.
Picotee lamely explained her outward reasons for coming, and soon began
to find that Ethelberta's opinions on the matter would not be known by
the tones of her voice. But innocent Picotee was as wily as a
religionist in sly elusions of the letter whilst infringing the spirit
of a dictum; and by talking very softly and earnestly about the wondrous
good she could do by remaining in the house as governess to the
children, and playing the part of lady's-maid to her sister at show
times, she so far coaxed Ethelberta out of her intentions that she
almost accepted the plan as a good one. It was agreed that for the
present, at any rate, Picotee should remain. Then a visit was made to
Mrs. Chickerel's room, where the remainder of the evening was passed;
and harmony reigned in the household.
19. ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM
Picotee's heart was fitfully glad. She was near the man who had enlarged
her capacity from girl's to woman's, a little note or two of young
feeling to a whole diapason; and though nearness was perhaps not in
itself a great reason for felicity when viewed beside the complete
realization of all that a woman can desire in such circumstances, it was
much in comparison with the outer darkness of the previous time.
It became evident to all the family that some misunderstanding had
arisen between Ethelberta and Mr. Julian. What Picotee hoped in the
centre of her heart as to the issue of the affair it would be too
complex a thing to say. If Christopher became cold towards her sister he
would not come to the house; if he continued to come it would really be
as Ethelberta's lover-altogether, a pretty game of perpetual check for
Picotee.
He did not make his appearance for several days. Picotee, being a
presentable girl, and decidedly finer-natured than her sisters below
stairs, was allowed to sit occasionally with Ethelberta in the
afternoon, when the teaching of the little ones had been done for the
day; and thus she had an opportunity of observing Ethelberta's emotional
condition with reference to Christopher, which Picotee did with an
interest that the elder sister was very far from suspecting.
At first Ethelberta seemed blithe enough without him. One more day went,
and he did not come, and then her manner was that of apathy. Another day
passed, and from fanciful elevations of the eyebrow, and long
breathings, it became apparent that Ethelberta had decidedly passed the
indifferent stage, and was getting seriously out of sorts about him.
Next morning she looked all hope. He did not come that day either, and
Ethelberta began to look pale with fear.
'Why don't you go out?' said Picotee timidly.
'I can hardly tell: I have been expecting some one.'
'When she comes I must run up to mother at once, must I not?' said
clever Picotee.
'It is not a lady,' said Ethelberta blandly. She came then and stood by
Picotee, and looked musingly out of the window. 'I may as well tell you,
perhaps,' she continued. 'It is Mr. Julian. He is-I suppose-my lover, in
plain English.'
'Ah!' said Picotee.
'Whom I am not going to marry until he gets rich.'
'Ah-how strange! If I had him-such a lover, I mean-I would marry him if
he continued poor.'
'I don't doubt it, Picotee; just as you come to London without caring
about consequences, or would do any other crazy thing and not mind in
the least what came of it. But somebody in the family must take a
practical view of affairs, or we should all go to the dogs.'
Picotee recovered from the snubbing which she felt that she deserved,
and charged gallantly by saying, with delicate showings of indifference,
'Do you love this Mr. What's-his-name of yours?'
'Mr. Julian? O, he's a very gentlemanly man. That is, except when he is
rude, and ill-uses me, and will not come and apologize!'
'If I had him-a lover, I would ask him to come if I wanted him to.'
Ethelberta did not give her mind to this remark; but, drawing a long
breath, said, with a pouting laugh, which presaged unreality, 'The idea
of his getting indifferent now! I have been intending to keep him on
until I got tired of his attentions, and then put an end to them by
marrying him; but here is he, before he has hardly declared himself,
forgetting my existence as much as if he had vowed to love and cherish
me for life. 'Tis an unnatural inversion of the manners of society.'
'When did you first get to care for him, dear Berta?'
'O-when I had seen him once or twice.'
'Goodness-how quick you were!'
'Yes-if I am in the mind for loving I am not to be hindered by shortness
of acquaintanceship.'
'Nor I neither!' sighed Picotee.
'Nor any other woman. We don't need to know a man well in order to love
him. That's only necessary when we want to leave off.'
'O Berta-you don't believe that!'
'If a woman did not invariably form an opinion of her choice before she
has half seen him, and love him before she has half formed an opinion,
there would be no tears and pining in the whole feminine world, and
poets would starve for want of a topic. I don't believe it, do you say?
Ah, well, we shall see.'
Picotee did not know what to say to this; and Ethelberta left the room
to see about her duties as public story-teller, in which capacity she
had undertaken to appear again this very evening.
20. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE HALL-THE ROAD HOME
London was illuminated by the broad full moon. The pavements looked
white as if mantled with snow; ordinary houses were sublimated to the
rank of public buildings, public buildings to palaces, and the faces of
women walking the streets to those of calendared saints and guardian-
angels, by the pure bleaching light from the sky.
In the quiet little street where opened the private door of the Hall
chosen by Ethelberta for her story-telling, a brougham was waiting. The
time was about eleven o'clock; and presently a lady came out from the
building, the moonbeams forthwith flooding her face, which they showed
to be that of the Story-teller herself. She hastened across to the
carriage, when a second thought arrested her motion: telling the man-
servant and a woman inside the brougham to wait for her, she wrapped up
her features and glided round to the front of the house, where she
paused to observe the carriages and cabs driving up to receive the
fashionable crowd stepping down from the doors. Standing here in the
throng which her own talent and ingenuity had drawn together, she
appeared to enjoy herself by listening for a minute or two to the names
of several persons of more or less distinction as they were called out,
and then regarded attentively the faces of others of lesser degree: to
scrutinize the latter was, as the event proved, the real object of the
journey from round the corner. When nearly every one had left the doors,
she turned back disappointed. Ethelberta had been fancying that her
alienated lover Christopher was in the back rows to-night, but, as far
as could now be observed, the hopeful supposition was a false one.
When she got round to the back again, a man came forward. It was
Ladywell, whom she had spoken to already that evening. 'Allow me to
bring you your note-book, Mrs. Petherwin: I think you had forgotten it,'
he said. 'I assure you that nobody has handled it but myself.'
Ethelberta thanked him, and took the book. 'I use it to look into
between the parts, in case my memory should fail me,' she explained. 'I
remember that I did lay it down, now you remind me.'
Ladywell had apparently more to say, and moved by her side towards the
carriage; but she declined the arm he offered, and said not another word
till he went on, haltingly:
'Your triumph to-night was very great, and it was as much a triumph to
me as to you; I cannot express my feeling-I cannot say half that I
would. If I might only-'
'Thank you much,' said Ethelberta, with dignity. 'Thank you for bringing
my book, but I must go home now. I know that you will see that it is not
necessary for us to be talking here.'
'Yes-you are quite right,' said the repressed young painter, struck by
her seriousness. 'Blame me; I ought to have known better. But perhaps a
man-well, I will say it-a lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. I saw that,
and hoped that I might speak without real harm.'
'You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!' she
said, with the slightest accent of sarcasm. 'But pray do not attend me
further-it is not at all necessary or desirable. My maid is in the
carriage.' She bowed, turned, and entered the vehicle, seating herself
beside Picotee.
'It was harsh!' said Ladywell to himself, as he looked after the
retreating carriage. 'I was a fool; but it was harsh. Yet what man on
earth likes a woman to show too great a readiness at first? She is
right: she would be nothing without repulse!' And he moved away in an
opposite direction.
'What man was that?' said Picotee, as they drove along.
'O-a mere Mr. Ladywell: a painter of good family, to whom I have been
sitting for what he calls an Idealization. He is a dreadful simpleton.'
'Why did you choose him?'
'I did not: he chose me. But his silliness of behaviour is a hopeful
sign for the picture. I have seldom known a man cunning with his brush
who was not simple with his tongue; or, indeed, any skill in particular
that was not allied to general stupidity.'
'Your own skill is not like that, is it, Berta?'
'In men-in men. I don't mean in women. How childish you are!'
The slight depression at finding that Christopher was not present, which
had followed Ethelberta's public triumph that evening, was covered over,
if not removed, by Ladywell's declaration, and she reached home serene
in spirit. That she had not the slightest notion of accepting the
impulsive painter made little difference; a lover's arguments being apt
to affect a lady's mood as much by measure as by weight. A useless
declaration like a rare china teacup with a hole in it, has its
ornamental value in enlarging a collection.
No sooner had they entered the house than Mr. Julian's card was
discovered; and Joey informed them that he had come particularly to
speak with Ethelberta, quite forgetting that it was her evening for
tale-telling.
This was real delight, for between her excitements Ethelberta had been
seriously sick-hearted at the horrible possibility of his never calling
again. But alas! for Christopher. There being nothing like a dead
silence for getting one's off-hand sweetheart into a corner, there is
nothing like prematurely ending it for getting into that corner one's
self.
'Now won't I punish him for daring to stay away so long!' she exclaimed
as soon as she got upstairs. 'It is as bad to show constancy in your
manners as fickleness in your heart at such a time as this.'
'But I thought honesty was the best policy?' said Picotee.
'So it is, for the man's purpose. But don't you go believing in sayings,
Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Women who
use public proverbs as a guide through events are those who have not
ingenuity enough to make private ones as each event occurs.'
She sat down, and rapidly wrote a line to Mr. Julian:-
'EXONBURY CRESCENT.
'I return from Mayfair Hall to find you have called. You will, I know,
be good enough to forgive my saying what seems an unfriendly thing, when
I assure you that the circumstances of my peculiar situation make it
desirable, if not necessary. It is that I beg you not to give me the
pleasure of a visit from you for some little time, for unhappily the
frequency of your kind calls has been noticed; and I am now in fear that
we may be talked about-invidiously-to the injury of us both. The town,
or a section of it, has turned its bull's-eye upon me with a brightness
which I did not in the least anticipate; and you will, I am sure,
perceive how indispensable it is that I should be circumspect.-Yours
sincerely,
E. PETHERWIN.'
21. A STREET-NEIGH'S ROOMS-CHRISTOPHER'S ROOMS
As soon as Ethelberta had driven off from the Hall, Ladywell turned back
again; and, passing the front entrance, overtook his acquaintance Mr.
Neigh, who had been one of the last to emerge. The two were going in the
same direction, and they walked a short distance together.
'Has anything serious happened?' said Neigh, noticing an abstraction in
his companion. 'You don't seem in your usual mood to-night.'
'O, it is only that affair between us,' said Ladywell.
'Affair? Between you and whom?'
'Her and myself, of course. It will be in every fellow's mouth now, I
suppose!'
'But-not anything between yourself and Mrs. Petherwin?'
'A mere nothing. But surely you started, Neigh, when you suspected it
just this moment?'
'No-you merely fancied that.'
'Did she not speak well to-night! You were in the room, I believe?'
'Yes, I just turned in for half-an-hour: it seems that everybody does,
so I thought I must. But I had no idea that you were feeble that way.'
'It is very kind of you, Neigh-upon my word it is-very kind; and of
course I appreciate the delicacy which-which-'
'What's kind?'
'I mean your well-intentioned plan for making me believe that nothing is
known of this. But stories will of course get wind; and if our
attachment has made more noise in the world than I intended it should,
and causes any public interest, why-ha-ha!-it must. There is some little
romance in it perhaps, and people will talk of matters of that sort
between individuals of any repute-little as that is with one of the
pair.'
'Of course they will-of course. You are a rising man, remember, whom
some day the world will delight to honour.'
'Thank you for that, Neigh. Thank you sincerely.'
'Not at all. It is merely justice to say it, and one must he generous to
deserve thanks.'
'Ha-ha!-that's very nicely put, and undeserved I am sure. And yet I need
a word of that sort sometimes!'
'Genius is proverbially modest.'
'Pray don't, Neigh-I don't deserve it, indeed. Of course it is well
meant in you to recognize any slight powers, but I don't deserve it.
Certainly, my self-assurance was never too great. 'Tis the misfortune of
all children of art that they should be so dependent upon any scraps of
praise they can pick up to help them along.'
'And when that child gets so deep in love that you can only see the
whites of his eyes-'
'Ah-now, Neigh-don't, I say!'
'But why did-'
'Why did I love her?'
'Yes, why did you love her?'
'Ah, if I could only turn self-vivisector, and watch the operation of my
heart, I should know!'
'My dear fellow, you must be very bad indeed to talk like that. A poet
himself couldn't be cleaner gone.'
'Now, don't chaff, Neigh; do anything, but don't chaff. You know that I
am the easiest man in the world for taking it at most times. But I can't
stand it now; I don't feel up to it. A glimpse of paradise, and then
perdition. What would you do, Neigh?'
'She has refused you, then?'
'Well-not positively refused me; but it is so near it that a dull man
couldn't tell the difference. I hardly can myself.'
'How do you really stand with her?' said Neigh, with an anxiety ill-
concealed.
'Off and on-neither one thing nor the other. I was determined to make an
effort the last time she sat to me, and so I met her quite coolly, and
spoke only of technicalities with a forced smile-you know that way of
mine for drawing people out, eh, Neigh?'
'Quite, quite.'
'A forced smile, as much as to say, "I am obliged to entertain you, but
as a mere model for art purposes." But the deuce a bit did she care. And
then I frequently looked to see what time it was, as the end of the
sitting drew near-rather a rude thing to do, as a rule.'
'Of course. But that was your finesse. Ha-ha!-capital! Yet why not
struggle against such slavery? It is regularly pulling you down. What's
a woman's beauty, after all?'
'Well you may say so! A thing easier to feel than define,' murmured
Ladywell. 'But it's no use, Neigh-I can't help it as long as she
repulses me so exquisitely! If she would only care for me a little, I
might get to trouble less about her.'
'And love her no more than one ordinarily does a girl by the time one
gets irrevocably engaged to her. But I suppose she keeps you back so
thoroughly that you carry on the old adoration with as much vigour as if
it were a new fancy every time?'
'Partly yes, and partly no! It's very true, and it's not true!'
''Tis to be hoped she won't hate you outright, for then you would
absolutely die of idolizing her.'
'Don't, Neigh!-Still there's some truth in it-such is the perversity of
our hearts. Fancy marrying such a woman!'
'We should feel as eternally united to her after years and years of
marriage as to a dear new angel met at last night's dance.'
'Exactly-just what I should have said. But did I hear you say "We,"
Neigh? You didn't say "WE should feel?"'
'Say "we"?-yes-of course-putting myself in your place just in the way of
speaking, you know.'
'Of course, of course; but one is such a fool at these times that one
seems to detect rivalry in every trumpery sound! Were you never a little
touched?'
'Not I. My heart is in the happy position of a country which has no
history or debt.'
'I suppose I should rejoice to hear it,' said Ladywell. 'But the
consciousness of a fellow-sufferer being in just such another hole is
such a relief always, and softens the sense of one's folly so very
much.'
'There's less Christianity in that sentiment than in your confessing to
it, old fellow. I know the truth of it nevertheless, and that's why
married men advise others to marry. Were all the world tied up, the
pleasantly tied ones would be equivalent to those at present free. But
what if your fellow-sufferer is not only in another such a hole, but in
the same one?'
'No, Neigh-never! Don't trifle with a friend who-'
'That is, refused like yourself, as well as in love.'
'Ah, thanks, thanks! It suddenly occurred to me that we might be dead
against one another as rivals, and a friendship of many long-days be
snapped like a-like a reed.'
'No-no-only a jest,' said Neigh, with a strangely accelerated speech.
'Love-making is an ornamental pursuit that matter-of-fact fellows like
me are quite unfit for. A man must have courted at least half-a-dozen
women before he's a match for one; and since triumph lies so far ahead,
I shall keep out of the contest altogether.'
'Your life would be pleasanter if you were engaged. It is a nice thing,
after all.'
'It is. The worst of it would be that, when the time came for breaking
it off, a fellow might get into an action for breach-women are so fond
of that sort of thing now; and I hate love-affairs that don't end
peaceably!'
'But end it by peaceably marrying, my dear fellow!'
'It would seem so singular. Besides, I have a horror of antiquity: and
you see, as long as a man keeps single, he belongs in a measure to the
rising generation, however old he may be; but as soon as he marries and
has children, he belongs to the last generation, however young he may
be. Old Jones's son is a deal younger than young Brown's father, though
they are both the same age.'
'At any rate, honest courtship cures a man of many evils he had no power
to stem before.'
'By substituting an incurable matrimony!'
'Ah-two persons must have a mind for that before it can happen!' said
Ladywell, sorrowfully shaking his head.
'I think you'll find that if one has a mind for it, it will be quite
sufficient. But here we are at my rooms. Come in for half-an-hour?'
'Not to-night, thanks!'
They parted, and Neigh went in. When he got upstairs he murmured in his
deepest chest note, 'O, lords, that I should come to this! But I shall
never be such a fool as to marry her! What a flat that poor young devil
was not to discover that we were tarred with the same brush. O, the
deuce, the deuce!' he continued, walking about the room as if
passionately stamping, but not quite doing it because another man had
rooms below.
Neigh drew from his pocket-book an envelope embossed with the name of a
fashionable photographer, and out of this pulled a portrait of the lady
who had, in fact, enslaved his secret self equally with his frank young
friend the painter. After contemplating it awhile with a face of cynical
adoration, he murmured, shaking his head, 'Ah, my lady; if you only knew
this, I should be snapped up like a snail! Not a minute's peace for me
till I had married you. I wonder if I shall!-I wonder.'
Neigh was a man of five-and-thirty-Ladywell's senior by ten years; and,
being of a phlegmatic temperament, he had glided thus far through the
period of eligibility with impunity. He knew as well as any man how far
he could go with a woman and yet keep clear of having to meet her in
church without her bonnet; but it is doubtful if his mind that night
were less disturbed with the question how to guide himself out of the
natural course which his passion for Ethelberta might tempt him into,
than was Ladywell's by his ardent wish to secure her.
About the time at which Neigh and Ladywell parted company, Christopher
Julian was entering his little place in Bloomsbury. The quaint figure of
Faith, in her bonnet and cloak, was kneeling on the hearth-rug
endeavouring to stir a dull fire into a bright one.
'What-Faith! you have never been out alone?' he said.
Faith's soft, quick-shutting eyes looked unutterable things, and she
replied, 'I have been to hear Mrs. Petherwin's story-telling again.'
'And walked all the way home through the streets at this time of night,
I suppose!'
'Well, nobody molested me, either going or coming back.'
'Faith, I gave you strict orders not to go into the streets after two
o'clock in the day, and now here you are taking no notice of what I say
at all!'
'The truth is, Kit, I wanted to see with my spectacles what this woman
was really like, and I went without them last time. I slipped in behind,
and nobody saw me.'
'I don't think much of her after what I have seen tonight,' said
Christopher, moodily recurring to a previous thought.
'Why? What is the matter?'
'I thought I would call on her this afternoon, but when I got there I
found she had left early for the performance. So in the evening, when I
thought it would be all over, I went to the private door of the Hall to
speak to her as she came out, and ask her flatly a question or two which
I was fool enough to think I must ask her before I went to bed. Just as
I was drawing near she came out, and, instead of getting into the
brougham that was waiting for her, she went round the corner. When she
came back a man met her and gave her something, and they stayed talking
together two or three minutes. The meeting may certainly not have been
intentional on her part; but she has no business to be going on so
coolly when-when-in fact, I have come to the conclusion that a woman's
affection is not worth having. The only feeling which has any dignity or
permanence or worth is family affection between close blood-relations.'
'And yet you snub me sometimes, Mr. Kit.'
'And, for the matter of that, you snub me. Still, you know what I mean-
there's none of that off-and-on humbug between us. If we grumble with
one another we are united just the same: if we don't write when we are
parted, we are just the same when we meet-there has been some rational
reason for silence; but as for lovers and sweethearts, there is nothing
worth a rush in what they feel!'
Faith said nothing in reply to this. The opinions she had formed upon
the wisdom of her brother's pursuit of Ethelberta would have come just
then with an ill grace. It must, however, have been evident to
Christopher, had he not been too preoccupied for observation, that
Faith's impressions of Ethelberta were not quite favourable as regarded
her womanhood, notwithstanding that she greatly admired her talents.
22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
Ethelberta came indoors one day from the University boat-race, and sat
down, without speaking, beside Picotee, as if lost in thought.
'Did you enjoy the sight?' said Picotee.
'I scarcely know. We couldn't see at all from Mrs. Belmaine's carriage,
so two of us-very rashly-agreed to get out and be rowed across to the
other side where the people were quite few. But when the boatman had us
in the middle of the river he declared he couldn't land us on the other
side because of the barges, so there we were in a dreadful state-tossed
up and down like corks upon great waves made by steamers till I made up
my mind for a drowning. Well, at last we got back again, but couldn't
reach the carriage for the crowd; and I don't know what we should have
done if a gentleman hadn't come-sent by Mrs. Belmaine, who was in a
great fright about us; then he was introduced to me, and-I wonder how it
will end!'
'Was there anything so wonderful in the beginning, then?'
'Yes. One of the coolest and most practised men in London was ill-
mannered towards me from sheer absence of mind-and could there be higher
flattery? When a man of that sort does not give you the politeness you
deserve, it means that in his heart he is rebelling against another
feeling which his pride suggests that you do not deserve. O, I forgot to
say that he is a Mr. Neigh, a nephew of Mr. Doncastle's, who lives at
ease about Piccadilly and Pall Mall, and has a few acres somewhere-but I
don't know much of him. The worst of my position now is that I excite
this superficial interest in many people and a deep friendship in
nobody. If what all my supporters feel could be collected into the
hearts of two or three they would love me better than they love
themselves; but now it pervades all and operates in none.'
'But it must operate in this gentleman?'
'Well, yes-just for the present. But men in town have so many
contrivances for getting out of love that you can't calculate upon
keeping them in for two days together. However, it is all the same to
me. There's only-but let that be.'
'What is there only?' said Picotee coaxingly.
'Only one man,' murmured Ethelberta, in much lower tones. 'I mean, whose
wife I should care to be; and the very qualities I like in him will, I
fear, prevent his ever being in a position to ask me.'
'Is he the man you punished the week before last by forbidding him to
come?'
'Perhaps he is: but he does not want civility from me. Where there's
much feeling there's little ceremony.'
'It certainly seems that he does not want civility from you to make him
attentive to you,' said Picotee, stifling a sigh; 'for here is a letter
in his handwriting, I believe.'
'You might have given it to me at once,' said Ethelberta, opening the
envelope hastily. It contained very few sentences: they were to the
effect that Christopher had received her letter forbidding him to call;
that he had therefore at first resolved not to call or even see her
more, since he had become such a shadow in her path. Still, as it was
always best to do nothing hastily, he had on second thoughts decided to
ask her to grant him a last special favour, and see him again just once,
for a few minutes only that afternoon, in which he might at least say
Farewell. To avoid all possibility of compromising her in anybody's
eyes, he would call at half-past six, when other callers were likely to
be gone, knowing that from the peculiar constitution of the household
the hour would not interfere with her arrangements. There being no time
for an answer, he would assume that she would see him, and keep the
engagement; the request being one which could not rationally be objected
to.
'There-read it!' said Ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'Did you ever
hear such audacity? Fixing a time so soon that I cannot reply, and thus
making capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really an
arbitrary arrangement of his own. That's real rebellion-forcing himself
into my house when I said strictly he was not to come; and then, that it
cannot rationally be objected to-I don't like his "rationally."'
'Where there's much love there's little ceremony, didn't you say just
now?' observed innocent Picotee.
'And where there's little love, no ceremony at all. These manners of his
are dreadful, and I believe he will never improve.'
'It makes you care not a bit about him, does it not, Berta?' said
Picotee hopefully.
'I don't answer for that,' said Ethelberta. 'I feel, as many others do,
that a want of ceremony which is produced by abstraction of mind is no
defect in a poet or musician, fatal as it may be to an ordinary man.'
'Mighty me! You soon forgive him.'
'Picotee, don't you be so quick to speak. Before I have finished, how do
you know what I am going to say? I'll never tell you anything again, if
you take me up so. Of course I am going to punish him at once, and make
him remember that I am a lady, even if I do like him a little.'
'How do you mean to punish him?' said Picotee, with interest.
'By writing and telling him that on no account is he to come.'
'But there is not time for a letter-'
'That doesn't matter. It will show him that I did not mean him to come.'
At hearing the very merciful nature of the punishment, Picotee sighed
without replying; and Ethelberta despatched her note. The hour of
appointment drew near, and Ethelberta showed symptoms of unrest. Six
o'clock struck and passed. She walked here and there for nothing, and it
was plain that a dread was filling her: her letter might accidentally
have had, in addition to the moral effect which she had intended, the
practical effect which she did not intend, by arriving before, instead
of after, his purposed visit to her, thereby stopping him in spite of
all her care.
'How long are letters going to Bloomsbury?' she said suddenly.
'Two hours, Joey tells me,' replied Picotee, who had already inquired on
her own private account.
'There!' exclaimed Ethelberta petulantly. 'How I dislike a man to
misrepresent things! He said there was not time for a reply!'
'Perhaps he didn't know,' said Picotee, in angel tones; 'and so it
happens all right, and he has got it, and he will not come after all.'
They waited and waited, but Christopher did not appear that night; the
true case being that his declaration about insufficient time for a reply
was merely an ingenious suggestion to her not to be so cruel as to
forbid him. He was far from suspecting when the letter of denial did
reach him-about an hour before the time of appointment-that it was sent
by a refinement of art, of which the real intention was futility, and
that but for his own misstatement it would have been carefully delayed.
The next day another letter came from the musician, decidedly short and
to the point. The irate lover stated that he would not be made a fool of
any longer: under any circumstances he meant to come that self-same
afternoon, and should decidedly expect her to see him.
'I will not see him!' said Ethelberta. 'Why did he not call last night?'
'Because you told him not to,' said Picotee.
'Good gracious, as if a woman's words are to be translated as literally
as Homer! Surely he is aware that more often than not "No" is said to a
man's importunities because it is traditionally the correct modest
reply, and for nothing else in the world. If all men took words as
superficially as he does, we should die of decorum in shoals.'
'Ah, Berta! how could you write a letter that you did not mean should be
obeyed?'
'I did in a measure mean it, although I could have shown Christian
forgiveness if it had not been. Never mind; I will not see him. I'll
plague my heart for the credit of my sex.'
To ensure the fulfilment of this resolve, Ethelberta determined to give
way to a headache that she was beginning to be aware of, go to her room,
disorganize her dress, and ruin her hair by lying down; so putting it
out of her power to descend and meet Christopher on any momentary
impulse.
Picotee sat in the room with her, reading, or pretending to read, and
Ethelberta pretended to sleep. Christopher's knock came up the stairs,
and with it the end of the farce.
'I'll tell you what,' said Ethelberta in the prompt and broadly-awake
tone of one who had been concentrated on the expectation of that sound
for a length of time, 'it was a mistake in me to do this! Joey will be
sure to make a muddle of it.'
Joey was heard coming up the stairs. Picotee opened the door, and said,
with an anxiety transcending Ethelberta's, 'Well?'
'O, will you tell Mrs. Petherwin that Mr. Julian says he'll wait.'
'You were not to ask him to wait,' said Ethelberta, within.
'I know that,' said Joey, 'and I didn't. He's doing that out of his own
head.'
'Then let Mr. Julian wait, by all means,' said Ethelberta. 'Allow him to
wait if he likes, but tell him it is uncertain if I shall be able to
come down.'
Joey then retired, and the two sisters remained in silence.
'I wonder if he's gone,' Ethelberta said, at the end of a long time.
'I thought you were asleep,' said Picotee. 'Shall we ask Joey? I have
not heard the door close.'
Joey was summoned, and after a leisurely ascent, interspersed by various
gymnastic performances over the handrail here and there, appeared again.
'He's there jest the same: he don't seem to be in no hurry at all,' said
Joey.
'What is he doing?' inquired Picotee solicitously.
'O, only looking at his watch sometimes, and humming tunes, and playing
rat-a-tat-tat upon the table. He says he don't mind waiting a bit.'
'You must have made a mistake in the message,' said Ethelberta, within.
'Well, no. I am correct as a jineral thing. I jest said perhaps you
would be engaged all the evening, and perhaps you wouldn't.'
When Joey had again retired, and they had waited another ten minutes,
Ethelberta said, 'Picotee, do you go down and speak a few words to him.
I am determined he shall not see me. You know him a little; you remember
when he came to the Lodge?'
'What must I say to him?'
Ethelberta paused before replying. 'Try to find out if-if he is much
grieved at not seeing me, and say-give him to understand that I will
forgive him, Picotee.'
'Very well.'
'And Picotee-'
'Yes.'
'If he says he must see me-I think I will get up. But only if he says
must: you remember that.'
Picotee departed on her errand. She paused on the staircase trembling,
and thinking between the thrills how very far would have been the
conduct of her poor slighted self from proud recalcitration had Mr.
Julian's gentle request been addressed to her instead of to Ethelberta;
and she went some way in the painful discovery of how much more
tantalizing it was to watch an envied situation that was held by another
than to be out of sight of it altogether. Here was Christopher waiting
to bestow love, and Ethelberta not going down to receive it: a commodity
unequalled in value by any other in the whole wide world was being
wantonly wasted within that very house. If she could only have stood to-
night as the beloved Ethelberta, and not as the despised Picotee, how
different would be this going down! Thus she went along, red and pale
moving in her cheeks as in the Northern Lights at their strongest time.
Meanwhile Christopher had sat waiting minute by minute till the evening
shades grew browner, and the fire sank low. Joey, finding himself not
particularly wanted upon the premises after the second inquiry, had
slipped out to witness a nigger performance round the corner, and Julian
began to think himself forgotten by all the household. The perception
gradually cooled his emotions and enabled him to hold his hat quite
steadily.
When Picotee gently thrust open the door she was surprised to find the
room in darkness, the fire gone completely out, and the form of
Christopher only visible by a faint patch of light, which, coming from a
lamp on the opposite side of the way and falling upon the mirror, was
thrown as a pale nebulosity upon his shoulder. Picotee was too flurried
at sight of the familiar outline to know what to do, and, instead of
going or calling for a light, she mechanically advanced into the room.
Christopher did not turn or move in any way, and then she perceived that
he had begun to doze in his chair.
Instantly, with the precipitancy of the timorous, she said, 'Mr.
Julian!' and touched him on the shoulder-murmuring then, 'O, I beg
pardon, I-I will get a light.'
Christopher's consciousness returned, and his first act, before rising,
was to exclaim, in a confused manner, 'Ah-you have come-thank you,
Berta!' then impulsively to seize her hand, as it hung beside his head,
and kiss it passionately. He stood up, still holding her fingers.
Picotee gasped out something, but was completely deprived of articulate
utterance, and in another moment being unable to control herself at this
sort of first meeting with the man she had gone through fire and water
to be near, and more particularly by the overpowering kiss upon her
hand, burst into hysterical sobbing. Julian, in his inability to imagine
so much emotion-or at least the exhibition of it-in Ethelberta, gently
drew Picotee further forward by the hand he held, and utilized the
solitary spot of light from the mirror by making it fall upon her face.
Recognizing the childish features, he at once, with an exclamation,
dropped her hand and started back. Being in point of fact a complete
bundle of nerves and nothing else, his thin figure shook like a harp-
string in painful excitement at a contretemps which would scarcely have
quickened the pulse of an ordinary man.
Poor Picotee, feeling herself in the wind of a civil d\x97-, started back
also, sobbing more than ever. It was a little too much that the first
result of his discovery of the mistake should be absolute repulse. She
leant against the mantelpiece, when Julian, much bewildered at her
superfluity of emotion, assisted her to a seat in sheer humanity. But
Christopher was by no means pleased when he again thought round the
circle of circumstances.
'How could you allow such an absurd thing to happen?' he said, in a
stern, though trembling voice. 'You knew I might mistake. I had no idea
you were in the house: I thought you were miles away, at Sandbourne or
somewhere! But I see: it is just done for a joke, ha-ha!'
This made Picotee rather worse still. 'O-O-O-O!' she replied, in the
tone of pouring from a bottle. 'What shall I do-o-o-o! It is-not done
for a-joke at all-l-l-l!'
'Not done for a joke? Then never mind-don't cry, Picotee. What was it
done for, I wonder?'
Picotee, mistaking the purport of his inquiry, imagined him to refer to
her arrival in the house, quite forgetting, in her guilty sense of
having come on his account, that he would have no right or thought of
asking questions about a natural visit to a sister, and she said: 'When
you-went away from-Sandbourne, I-I-I didn't know what to do, and then I
ran away, and came here, and then Ethelberta-was angry with me; but she
says I may stay; but she doesn't know that I know you, and how we used
to meet along the road every morning-and I am afraid to tell her-O, what
shall I do!'
'Never mind it,' said Christopher, a sense of the true state of her case
dawning upon him with unpleasant distinctness, and bringing some
irritation at his awkward position; though it was impossible to be long
angry with a girl who had not reasoning foresight enough to perceive
that doubtful pleasure and certain pain must be the result of any
meeting whilst hearts were at cross purposes in this way.
'Where is your sister?' he asked.
'She wouldn't come down, unless she MUST,' said Picotee. 'You have vexed
her, and she has a headache besides that, and I came instead.'
'So that I mightn't be wasted altogether. Well, it's a strange business
between the three of us. I have heard of one-sided love, and reciprocal
love, and all sorts, but this is my first experience of a concatenated
affection. You follow me, I follow Ethelberta, and she follows-Heaven
knows who!'
'Mr. Ladywell!' said the mortified Picotee.
'Good God, if I didn't think so!' said Christopher, feeling to the soles
of his feet like a man in a legitimate drama.
'No, no, no!' said the frightened girl hastily. 'I am not sure it is Mr.
Ladywell. That's altogether a mistake of mine!'
'Ah, yes, you want to screen her,' said Christopher, with a withering
smile at the spot of light. 'Very sisterly, doubtless; but none of that
will do for me. I am too old a bird by far-by very far! Now are you sure
she does not love Ladywell?'
'Yes!'
'Well, perhaps I blame her wrongly. She may have some little good faith-
a woman has, here and there. How do you know she does not love
Ladywell?'
'Because she would prefer Mr. Neigh to him, any day.'
'Ha!'
'No, no-you mistake, sir-she doesn't love either at all-Ethelberta
doesn't. I meant that she cannot love Mr. Ladywell because he stands
lower in her opinion than Mr. Neigh, and him she certainly does not care
for. She only loves you. If you only knew how true she is you wouldn't
be so suspicious about her, and I wish I had not come here-yes, I do!'
'I cannot tell what to think of it. Perhaps I don't know much of this
world after all, or what girls will do. But you don't excuse her to me,
Picotee.'
Before this time Picotee had been simulating haste in getting a light;
but in her dread of appearing visibly to Christopher's eyes, and showing
him the precise condition of her tear-stained face, she put it off
moment after moment, and stirred the fire, in hope that the faint
illumination thus produced would be sufficient to save her from the
charge of stupid conduct as entertainer.
Fluttering about on the horns of this dilemma, she was greatly relieved
when Christopher, who read her difficulty, and the general painfulness
of the situation, said that since Ethelberta was really suffering from a
headache he would not wish to disturb her till to-morrow, and went off
downstairs and into the street without further ceremony.
Meanwhile other things had happened upstairs. No sooner had Picotee left
her sister's room, than Ethelberta thought it would after all have been
much better if she had gone down herself to speak to this admirably
persistent lover. Was she not drifting somewhat into the character of
coquette, even if her ground of offence-a word of Christopher's about
somebody else's mean parentage, which was spoken in utter forgetfulness
of her own position, but had wounded her to the quick nevertheless-was
to some extent a tenable one? She knew what facilities in suffering
Christopher always showed; how a touch to other people was a blow to
him, a blow to them his deep wound, although he took such pains to look
stolid and unconcerned under those inflictions, and tried to smile as if
he had no feelings whatever. It would be more generous to go down to
him, and be kind. She jumped up with that alertness which comes so
spontaneously at those sweet bright times when desire and duty run hand
in hand.
She hastily set her hair and dress in order-not such matchless order as
she could have wished them to be in, but time was precious-and descended
the stairs. When on the point of pushing open the drawing-room door,
which wanted about an inch of being closed, she was astounded to
discover that the room was in total darkness, and still more to hear
Picotee sobbing inside. To retreat again was the only action she was
capable of at that moment: the clash between this picture and the
anticipated scene of Picotee and Christopher sitting in frigid propriety
at opposite sides of a well-lighted room was too great. She flitted
upstairs again with the least possible rustle, and flung herself down on
the couch as before, panting with excitement at the new knowledge that
had come to her.
There was only one possible construction to be put upon this in
Ethelberta's rapid mind, and that approximated to the true one. She had
known for some time that Picotee once had a lover, or something akin to
it, and that he had disappointed her in a way which had never been told.
No stranger, save in the capacity of the one beloved, could wound a
woman sufficiently to make her weep, and it followed that Christopher
was the man of Picotee's choice. As Ethelberta recalled the
conversations, conclusion after conclusion came like pulsations in an
aching head. 'O, how did it happen, and who is to blame?' she exclaimed.
'I cannot doubt his faith, and I cannot doubt hers; and yet how can I
keep doubting them both?'
It was characteristic of Ethelberta's jealous motherly guard over her
young sisters that, amid these contending inquiries, her foremost
feeling was less one of hope for her own love than of championship for
Picotee's.
23. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued) Picotee was heard on the stairs:
Ethelberta covered her face.
'Is he waiting?' she said faintly, on finding that Picotee did not begin
to speak.
'No; he is gone,' said Picotee.
'Ah, why is that?' came quickly from under the handkerchief. 'He has
forgotten me-that's what it is!'
'O no, he has not!' said Picotee, just as bitterly.
Ethelberta had far too much heroism to let much in this strain escape
her, though her sister was prepared to go any lengths in the same. 'I
suppose,' continued Ethelberta, in the quiet way of one who had only a
headache the matter with her, 'that he remembered you after the meeting
at Anglebury?'
'Yes, he remembered me.'
'Did you tell me you had seen him before that time?'
'I had seen him at Sandbourne. I don't think I told you.'
'At whose house did you meet him?'
'At nobody's. I only saw him sometimes,' replied Picotee, in great
distress.
Ethelberta, though of all women most miserable, was brimming with
compassion for the throbbing girl so nearly related to her, in whom she
continually saw her own weak points without the counterpoise of her
strong ones. But it was necessary to repress herself awhile: the
intended ways of her life were blocked and broken up by this jar of
interests, and she wanted time to ponder new plans. 'Picotee, I would
rather be alone now, if you don't mind,' she said. 'You need not leave
me any light; it makes my eyes ache, I think.'
Picotee left the room. But Ethelberta had not long been alone and in
darkness when somebody gently opened the door, and entered without a
candle.
'Berta,' said the soft voice of Picotee again, 'may I come in?'
'O yes,' said Ethelberta. 'Has everything gone right with the house this
evening?'
'Yes; and Gwendoline went out just now to buy a few things, and she is
going to call round upon father when he has got his dinner cleared
away.'
'I hope she will not stay and talk to the other servants. Some day she
will let drop something or other before father can stop her.'
'O Berta!' said Picotee, close beside her. She was kneeling in front of
the couch, and now flinging her arm across Ethelberta's shoulder and
shaking violently, she pressed her forehead against her sister's temple,
and breathed out upon her cheek:
'I came in again to tell you something which I ought to have told you
just now, and I have come to say it at once because I am afraid I shan't
be able to to-morrow. Mr. Julian was the young man I spoke to you of a
long time ago, and I should have told you all about him, but you said he
was your young man too, and-and I didn't know what to do then, because I
thought it was wrong in me to love your young man; and Berta, he didn't
mean me to love him at all, but I did it myself, though I did not want
to do it, either; it would come to me! And I didn't know he belonged to
you when I began it, or I would not have let him meet me at all; no I
wouldn't!'
'Meet you? You don't mean to say he used to meet you?' whispered
Ethelberta.
'Yes,' said Picotee; 'but he could not help it. We used to meet on the
road, and there was no other road unless I had gone ever so far round.
But it is worse than that, Berta! That was why I couldn't bide in
Sandbourne, and-and ran away to you up here; it was not because I wanted
to see you, Berta, but because I-I wanted-'
'Yes, yes, I know,' said Ethelberta hurriedly.
'And then when I went downstairs he mistook me for you for a moment, and
that caused-a confusion!'
'O, well, it does not much matter,' said Ethelberta, kissing Picotee
soothingly. 'You ought not of course to have come to London in such a
manner; but, since you have come, we will make the best of it. Perhaps
it may end happily for you and for him. Who knows?'
'Then don't you want him, Berta?'
'O no; not at all!'
'What-and don't you really want him, Berta?' repeated Picotee, starting
up.
'I would much rather he paid his addresses to you. He is not the sort of
man I should wish to-think it best to marry, even if I were to marry,
which I have no intention of doing at present. He calls to see me
because we are old friends, but his calls do not mean anything more than
that he takes an interest in me. It is not at all likely that I shall
see him again! and I certainly never shall see him unless you are
present.'
'That will be very nice.'
'Yes. And you will be always distant towards him, and go to leave the
room when he comes, when I will call you back; but suppose we continue
this to-morrow? I can tell you better then what to do.'
When Picotee had left her the second time, Ethelberta turned over upon
her breast and shook in convulsive sobs which had little relationship
with tears. This abandonment ended as suddenly as it had begun-not
lasting more than a minute and a half altogether-and she got up in an
unconsidered and unusual impulse to seek relief from the stinging
sarcasm of this event-the unhappy love of Picotee-by mentioning
something of it to another member of the family, her eldest sister
Gwendoline, who was a woman full of sympathy.
Ethelberta descended to the kitchen, it being now about ten o'clock. The
room was empty, Gwendoline not having yet returned, and Cornelia, being
busy about her own affairs upstairs. The French family had gone to the
theatre, and the house on that account was very quiet to-night.
Ethelberta sat down in the dismal place without turning up the gas, and
in a few minutes admitted Gwendoline.
The round-faced country cook floundered in, untying her bonnet as she
came, laying it down on a chair, and talking at the same time. 'Such a
place as this London is, to be sure!' she exclaimed, turning on the gas
till it whistled. 'I wish I was down in Wessex again. Lord-a-mercy,
Berta, I didn't see it was you! I thought it was Cornelia. As I was
saying, I thought that, after biding in this underground cellar all the
week, making up messes for them French folk, and never pleasing 'em, and
never shall, because I don't understand that line, I thought I would go
out and see father, you know.'
'Is he very well?' said Ethelberta.
'Yes; and he is going to call round when he has time. Well, as I was a-
coming home-along I thought, "Please the Lord I'll have some chippols
for supper just for a plain trate," and I went round to the late
greengrocer's for 'em; and do you know they sweared me down that they
hadn't got such things as chippols in the shop, and had never heard of
'em in their lives. At last I said, "Why, how can you tell me such a
brazen story?-here they be, heaps of 'em!" It made me so vexed that I
came away there and then, and wouldn't have one-no, not at a gift.'
'They call them young onions here,' said Ethelberta quietly; 'you must
always remember that. But, Gwendoline, I wanted-'
Ethelberta felt sick at heart, and stopped. She had come down on the
wings of an impulse to unfold her trouble about Picotee to her hard-
headed and much older sister, less for advice than to get some heart-
ease by interchange of words; but alas, she could proceed no further.
The wretched homeliness of Gwendoline's mind seemed at this particular
juncture to be absolutely intolerable, and Ethelberta was suddenly
convinced that to involve Gwendoline in any such discussion would simply
be increasing her own burden, and adding worse confusion to her sister's
already confused existence.
'What were you going to say?' said the honest and unsuspecting
Gwendoline.
'I will put it off until to-morrow,' Ethelberta murmured gloomily; 'I
have a bad headache, and I am afraid I cannot stay with you after all.'
As she ascended the stairs, Ethelberta ached with an added pain not much
less than the primary one which had brought her down. It was that old
sense of disloyalty to her class and kin by feeling as she felt now
which caused the pain, and there was no escaping it. Gwendoline would
have gone to the ends of the earth for her: she could not confide a
thought to Gwendoline!
'If she only knew of that unworthy feeling of mine, how she would
grieve,' said Ethelberta miserably.
She next went up to the servants' bedrooms, and to where Cornelia slept.
On Ethelberta's entrance Cornelia looked up from a perfect wonder of a
bonnet, which she held in her hands. At sight of Ethelberta the look of
keen interest in her work changed to one of gaiety.
'I am so glad-I was just coming down,' Cornelia said in a whisper;
whenever they spoke as relations in this house it was in whispers. 'Now,
how do you think this bonnet will do? May I come down, and see how I
look in your big glass?' She clapped the bonnet upon her head. 'Won't it
do beautiful for Sunday afternoon?'
'It looks very attractive, as far as I can see by this light,' said
Ethelberta. 'But is it not rather too brilliant in colour-blue and red
together, like that? Remember, as I often tell you, people in town never
wear such bright contrasts as they do in the country.'
'O Berta!' said Cornelia, in a deprecating tone; 'don't object. If
there's one thing I do glory in it is a nice flare-up about my head o'
Sundays-of course if the family's not in mourning, I mean.' But, seeing
that Ethelberta did not smile, she turned the subject, and added
docilely: 'Did you come up for me to do anything? I will put off
finishing my bonnet if I am wanted.'
'I was going to talk to you about family matters, and Picotee,' said
Ethelberta. 'But, as you are busy, and I have a headache, I will put it
off till to-morrow.'
Cornelia seemed decidedly relieved, for family matters were far from
attractive at the best of times; and Ethelberta went down to the next
floor, and entered her mother's room.
After a short conversation Mrs. Chickerel said, 'You say you want to ask
me something?'
'Yes: but nothing of importance, mother. I was thinking about Picotee,
and what would be the best thing to do-'
'Ah, well you may, Berta. I am so uneasy about this life you have led us
into, and full of fear that your plans may break down; if they do,
whatever will become of us? I know you are doing your best; but I cannot
help thinking that the coming to London and living with you was wild and
rash, and not well weighed afore we set about it. You should have
counted the cost first, and not advised it. If you break down, and we
are all discovered living so queer and unnatural, right in the heart of
the aristocracy, we should be the laughing-stock of the country: it
would kill me, and ruin us all-utterly ruin us!'
'O mother, I know all that so well!' exclaimed Ethelberta, tears of
anguish filling her eyes. 'Don't depress me more than I depress myself
by such fears, or you will bring about the very thing we strive to
avoid! My only chance is in keeping in good spirits, and why don't you
try to help me a little by taking a brighter view of things?'
'I know I ought to, my dear girl, but I cannot. I do so wish that I
never let you tempt me and the children away from the Lodge. I cannot
think why I allowed myself to be so persuaded-cannot think! You are not
to blame-it is I. I am much older than you, and ought to have known
better than listen to such a scheme. This undertaking seems too big-the
bills frighten me. I have never been used to such wild adventure, and I
can't sleep at night for fear that your tale-telling will go wrong, and
we shall all be exposed and shamed. A story-teller seems such an
impossible castle-in-the-air sort of a trade for getting a living by-I
cannot think how ever you came to dream of such an unheard-of thing.'
'But it is not a castle in the air, and it does get a living!' said
Ethelberta, her lip quivering.
'Well, yes, while it is just a new thing; but I am afraid it cannot
last-that's what I fear. People will find you out as one of a family of
servants, and their pride will be stung at having gone to hear your
romancing; then they will go no more, and what will happen to us and the
poor little ones?'
'We must all scatter again!'
'If we could get as we were once, I wouldn't mind that. But we shall
have lost our character as simple country folk who know nothing, which
are the only class of poor people that squires will give any help to;
and I much doubt if the girls would get places after such a discovery-it
would be so awkward and unheard-of.'
'Well, all I can say is,' replied Ethelberta, 'that I will do my best.
All that I have is theirs and yours as much as mine, and these
arrangements are simply on their account. I don't like my relations
being my servants; but if they did not work for me, they would have to
work for others, and my service is much lighter and pleasanter than any
other lady's would be for them, so the advantages are worth the risk. If
I stood alone, I would go and hide my head in any hole, and care no more
about the world and its ways. I wish I was well out of it, and at the
bottom of a quiet grave-anybody might have the world for me then! But
don't let me disturb you longer; it is getting late.'
Ethelberta then wished her mother good-night, and went away. To attempt
confidences on such an ethereal matter as love was now absurd; her
hermit spirit was doomed to dwell apart as usual; and she applied
herself to deep thinking without aid and alone. Not only was there
Picotee's misery to disperse; it became imperative to consider how best
to overpass a more general catastrophe.
24. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued)-THE BRITISH MUSEUM
Mrs. Chickerel, in deploring the risks of their present speculative mode
of life, was far from imagining that signs of the foul future so much
dreaded were actually apparent to Ethelberta at the time the lament was
spoken. Hence the daughter's uncommon sensitiveness to prophecy. It was
as if a dead-reckoner poring over his chart should predict breakers
ahead to one who already beheld them.
That her story-telling would prove so attractive Ethelberta had not
ventured to expect for a moment; that having once proved attractive
there should be any falling-off until such time had elapsed as would
enable her to harvest some solid fruit was equally a surprise. Future
expectations are often based without hesitation upon one happy accident,
when the only similar condition remaining to subsequent sets of
circumstances is that the same person forms the centre of them. Her
situation was so peculiar, and so unlike that of most public people,
that there was hardly an argument explaining this triumphant opening
which could be used in forecasting the close; unless, indeed, more
strategy were employed in the conduct of the campaign than Ethelberta
seemed to show at present.
There was no denying that she commanded less attention than at first:
the audience had lessened, and, judging by appearances, might soon be
expected to be decidedly thin. In excessive lowness of spirit,
Ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of
her mother's dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive
evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth. Yet it was
very far less conclusive than she supposed. Public interest might
without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the
falling-off being only an accident of the season. Her novelties had been
hailed with pleasure, the rather that their freshness tickled than that
their intrinsic merit was appreciated; and, like many inexperienced
dispensers of a unique charm, Ethelberta, by bestowing too liberally and
too frequently, was destroying the very element upon which its
popularity depended. Her entertainment had been good in its conception,
and partly good in its execution; yet her success had but little to do
with that goodness. Indeed, what might be called its badness in a
histrionic sense-that is, her look sometimes of being out of place, the
sight of a beautiful woman on a platform, revealing tender airs of
domesticity which showed her to belong by character to a quiet drawing-
room-had been primarily an attractive feature. But alas, custom was
staling this by improving her up to the mark of an utter impersonator,
thereby eradicating the pretty abashments of a poetess out of her
sphere; and more than one well-wisher who observed Ethelberta from afar
feared that it might some day come to be said of her that she had
'Enfeoffed herself to popularity: That, being daily swallowed by men's
eyes, They surfeited with honey, and began To loathe the taste of
sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much.'
But this in its extremity was not quite yet.
We discover her one day, a little after this time, sitting before a
table strewed with accounts and bills from different tradesmen of the
neighbourhood, which she examined with a pale face, collecting their
totals on a blank sheet. Picotee came into the room, but Ethelberta took
no notice whatever of her. The younger sister, who subsisted on scraps
of notice and favour, like a dependent animal, even if these were only
an occasional glance of the eye, could not help saying at last, 'Berta,
how silent you are. I don't think you know I am in the room.'
'I did not observe you,' said Ethelberta. 'I am very much engaged: these
bills have to be paid.'
'What, and cannot we pay them?' said Picotee, in vague alarm.
'O yes, I can pay them. The question is, how long shall I be able to do
it?'
'That is sad; and we are going on so nicely, too. It is not true that
you have really decided to leave off story-telling now the people don't
crowd to hear it as they did?'
'I think I shall leave off.'
'And begin again next year?'
'That is very doubtful.'
'I'll tell you what you might do,' said Picotee, her face kindling with
a sense of great originality. 'You might travel about to country towns
and tell your story splendidly.'
'A man in my position might perhaps do it with impunity; but I could not
without losing ground in other domains. A woman may drive to Mayfair
from her house in Exonbury Crescent, and speak from a platform there,
and be supposed to do it as an original way of amusing herself; but when
it comes to starring in the provinces she establishes herself as a woman
of a different breed and habit. I wish I were a man! I would give up
this house, advertise it to be let furnished, and sally forth with
confidence. But I am driven to think of other ways to manage than that.'
Picotee fell into a conjectural look, but could not guess.
'The way of marriage,' said Ethelberta. 'Otherwise perhaps the poetess
may live to become what Dryden called himself when he got old and poor-a
rent-charge on Providence. . . . . Yes, I must try that way,' she
continued, with a sarcasm towards people out of hearing. I must buy a
"Peerage" for one thing, and a "Baronetage," and a "House of Commons,"
and a "Landed Gentry," and learn what people are about me. 'I must go to
Doctors' Commons and read up wills of the parents of any likely gudgeons
I may know. I must get a Herald to invent an escutcheon of my family,
and throw a genealogical tree into the bargain in consideration of my
taking a few second-hand heirlooms of a pawnbroking friend of his. I
must get up sham ancestors, and find out some notorious name to start my
pedigree from. It does not matter what his character was; either villain
or martyr will do, provided that he lived five hundred years ago. It
would be considered far more creditable to make good my descent from
Satan in the age when he went to and fro on the earth than from a
ministering angel under Victoria.'
'But, Berta, you are not going to marry any stranger who may turn up?'
said Picotee, who had creeping sensations of dread when Ethelberta
talked like this.
'I had no such intention. But, having once put my hand to the plough,
how shall I turn back?'
'You might marry Mr. Ladywell,' said Picotee, who preferred to look at
things in the concrete.
'Yes, marry him villainously; in cold blood, without a moment to prepare
himself.'
'Ah, you won't!'
'I am not so sure about that. I have brought mother and the children to
town against her judgment and against my father's; they gave way to my
opinion as to one who from superior education has larger knowledge of
the world than they. I must prove my promises, even if Heaven should
fall upon me for it, or what a miserable future will theirs be! We must
not be poor in London. Poverty in the country is a sadness, but poverty
in town is a horror. There is something not without grandeur in the
thought of starvation on an open mountain or in a wide wood, and your
bones lying there to bleach in the pure sun and rain; but a back garret
in a rookery, and the other starvers in the room insisting on keeping
the window shut-anything to deliver us from that!'
'How gloomy you can be, Berta! It will never be so dreadful. Why, I can
take in plain sewing, and you can do translations, and mother can knit
stockings, and so on. How much longer will this house be yours?'
'Two years. If I keep it longer than that I shall have to pay rent at
the rate of three hundred a year. The Petherwin estate provides me with
it till then, which will be the end of Lady Petherwin's term.'
'I see it; and you ought to marry before the house is gone, if you mean
to marry high,' murmured Picotee, in an inadequate voice, as one
confronted by a world so tragic that any hope of her assisting therein
was out of the question.
It was not long after this exposition of the family affairs that
Christopher called upon them; but Picotee was not present, having gone
to think of superhuman work on the spur of Ethelberta's awakening talk.
There was something new in the way in which Ethelberta received the
announcement of his name; passion had to do with it, so had
circumspection; the latter most, for the first time since their reunion.
'I am going to leave this part of England,' said Christopher, after a
few gentle preliminaries. 'I was one of the applicants for the post of
assistant-organist at Melchester Cathedral when it became vacant, and I
find I am likely to be chosen, through the interest of one of my
father's friends.'
'I congratulate you.'
'No, Ethelberta, it is not worth that. I did not originally mean to
follow this course at all; but events seemed to point to it in the
absence of a better.'
'I too am compelled to follow a course I did not originally mean to
take.' After saying no more for a few moments, she added, in a tone of
sudden openness, a richer tincture creeping up her cheek, 'I want to put
a question to you boldly-not exactly a question-a thought. Have you
considered whether the relations between us which have lately prevailed
are-are the best for you-and for me?'
'I know what you mean,' said Christopher, hastily anticipating all that
she might be going to say; 'and I am glad you have given me the
opportunity of speaking upon that subject. It has been very good and
considerate in you to allow me to share your society so frequently as
you have done since I have been in town, and to think of you as an
object to exist for and strive for. But I ought to have remembered that,
since you have nobody at your side to look after your interests, it
behoved me to be doubly careful. In short, Ethelberta, I am not in a
position to marry, nor can I discern when I shall be, and I feel it
would be an injustice to ask you to be bound in any way to one lower and
less talented than you. You cannot, from what you say, think it
desirable that the engagement should continue. I have no right to ask
you to be my betrothed, without having a near prospect of making you my
wife. I don't mind saying this straight out-I have no fear that you will
doubt my love; thank Heaven, you know what that is well enough! However,
as things are, I wish you to know that I cannot conscientiously put in a
claim upon your attention.'
A second meaning was written in Christopher's look, though he scarcely
uttered it. A woman so delicately poised upon the social globe could not
in honour be asked to wait for a lover who was unable to set bounds to
the waiting period. Yet he had privily dreamed of an approach to that
position-an unreserved, ideally perfect declaration from Ethelberta that
time and practical issues were nothing to her; that she would stand as
fast without material hopes as with them; that love was to be an end
with her henceforth, having utterly ceased to be a means. Therefore this
surreptitious hope of his, founded on no reasonable expectation, was
like a guilty thing surprised when Ethelberta answered, with a
predominance of judgment over passion still greater than before:
'It is unspeakably generous in you to put it all before me so nicely,
Christopher. I think infinitely more of you for being so unreserved,
especially since I too have been thinking much on the indefiniteness of
the days to come. We are not numbered among the blest few who can afford
to trifle with the time. Yet to agree to anything like a positive
parting will be quite unnecessary. You did not mean that, did you? for
it is harsh if you did.' Ethelberta smiled kindly as she said this, as
much as to say that she was far from really upbraiding him. 'Let it be
only that we will see each other less. We will bear one another in mind
as deeply attached friends if not as definite lovers, and keep up
friendly remembrances of a sort which, come what may, will never have to
be ended by any painful process termed breaking off. Different persons,
different natures; and it may be that marriage would not be the most
favourable atmosphere for our old affection to prolong itself in. When
do you leave London?'
The disconnected query seemed to be subjoined to disperse the crude
effect of what had gone before.
'I hardly know,' murmured Christopher. 'I suppose I shall not call here
again.'
Whilst they were silent somebody entered the room softly, and they
turned to discover Picotee.
'Come here, Picotee,' said Ethelberta.
Picotee came with an abashed bearing to where the other two were
standing, and looked down steadfastly.
'Mr. Julian is going away,' she continued, with determined firmness. 'He
will not see us again for a long time.' And Ethelberta added, in a lower
tone, though still in the unflinching manner of one who had set herself
to say a thing, and would say it-'He is not to be definitely engaged to
me any longer. We are not thinking of marrying, you know, Picotee. It is
best that we should not.'
'Perhaps it is,' said Christopher hurriedly, taking up his hat. 'Let me
now wish you good-bye; and, of course, you will always know where I am,
and how to find me.'
It was a tender time. He inclined forward that Ethelberta might give him
her hand, which she did; whereupon their eyes met. Mastered by an
impelling instinct she had not reckoned with, Ethelberta presented her
cheek. Christopher kissed it faintly. Tears were in Ethelberta's eyes
now, and she was heartfull of many emotions. Placing her arm round
Picotee's waist, who had never lifted her eyes from the carpet, she drew
the slight girl forward, and whispered quickly to him-'Kiss her, too.
She is my sister, and I am yours.'
It seemed all right and natural to their respective moods and the tone
of the moment that free old Wessex manners should prevail, and
Christopher stooped and dropped upon Picotee's cheek likewise such a
farewell kiss as he had imprinted upon Ethelberta's.
'Care for us both equally!' said Ethelberta.
'I will,' said Christopher, scarcely knowing what he said.
When he had reached the door of the room, he looked back and saw the two
sisters standing as he had left them, and equally tearful. Ethelberta at
once said, in a last futile struggle against letting him go altogether,
and with thoughts of her sister's heart:
'I think that Picotee might correspond with Faith; don't you, Mr.
Julian?'
'My sister would much like to do so,' said he.
'And you would like it too, would you not, Picotee?'
'O yes,' she replied. 'And I can tell them all about you.'
'Then it shall be so, if Miss Julian will.' She spoke in a settled way,
as if something intended had been set in train; and Christopher having
promised for his sister, he went out of the house with a parting smile
of misgiving.
He could scarcely believe as he walked along that those late words, yet
hanging in his ears, had really been spoken, that still visible scene
enacted. He could not even recollect for a minute or two how the final
result had been produced. Did he himself first enter upon the long-
looming theme, or did she? Christopher had been so nervously alive to
the urgency of setting before the hard-striving woman a clear outline of
himself, his surroundings and his fears, that he fancied the main
impulse to this consummation had been his, notwithstanding that a faint
initiative had come from Ethelberta. All had completed itself quickly,
unceremoniously, and easily. Ethelberta had let him go a second time;
yet on foregoing mornings and evenings, when contemplating the necessity
of some such explanation, it had seemed that nothing less than Atlantean
force could overpower their mutual gravitation towards each other.
On his reaching home Faith was not in the house, and, in the restless
state which demands something to talk at, the musician went off to find
her, well knowing her haunt at this time of the day. He entered the
spiked and gilded gateway of the Museum hard by, turned to the wing
devoted to sculptures, and descended to a particular basement room,
which was lined with bas-reliefs from Nineveh. The place was cool,
silent, and soothing; it was empty, save of a little figure in black,
that was standing with its face to the wall in an innermost nook. This
spot was Faith's own temple; here, among these deserted antiques, Faith
was always happy. Christopher looked on at her for some time before she
noticed him, and dimly perceived how vastly differed her homely suit and
unstudied contour-painfully unstudied to fastidious eyes-from
Ethelberta's well-arranged draperies, even from Picotee's clever bits of
ribbon, by which she made herself look pretty out of nothing at all. Yet
this negligence was his sister's essence; without it she would have been
a spoilt product. She had no outer world, and her rusty black was as
appropriate to Faith's unseen courses as were Ethelberta's correct
lights and shades to her more prominent career.
'Look, Kit,' said Faith, as soon as she knew who was approaching. 'This
is a thing I never learnt before; this person is really Sennacherib,
sitting on his throne; and these with fluted beards and hair like
plough-furrows, and fingers with no bones in them, are his warriors-
really carved at the time, you know. Only just think that this is not
imagined of Assyria, but done in Assyrian times by Assyrian hands. Don't
you feel as if you were actually in Nineveh; that as we now walk between
these slabs, so walked Ninevites between them once?'
'Yes. . . . Faith, it is all over. Ethelberta and I have parted.'
'Indeed. And so my plan is to think of verses in the Bible about
Sennacherib and his doings, which resemble these; this verse, for
instance, I remember: "Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah did
Sennacherib, King of Assyria, come up against all the fenced cities of
Judah and took them. And Hezekiah, King of Judah, sent to the King of
Assyria to Lachish," and so on. Well, there it actually is, you see.
There's Sennacherib, and there's Lachish. Is it not glorious to think
that this is a picture done at the time of those very events?'
'Yes. We did not quarrel this time, Ethelberta and I. If I may so put
it, it is worse than quarrelling. We felt it was no use going on any
longer, and so-Come, Faith, hear what I say, or else tell me that you
won't hear, and that I may as well save my breath!'
'Yes, I will really listen,' she said, fluttering her eyelids in her
concern at having been so abstracted, and excluding Sennacherib there
and then from Christopher's affairs by the first settlement of her
features to a present-day aspect, and her eyes upon his face. 'You said
you had seen Ethelberta. Yes, and what did she say?'
'Was there ever anybody so provoking! Why, I have just told you!'
'Yes, yes; I remember now. You have parted. The subject is too large for
me to know all at once what I think of it, and you must give me time,
Kit. Speaking of Ethelberta reminds me of what I have done. I just
looked into the Academy this morning-I thought I would surprise you by
telling you about it. And what do you think I saw? Ethelberta-in the
picture painted by Mr. Ladywell.'
'It is never hung?' said he, feeling that they were at one as to a topic
at last.
'Yes. And the subject is an Elizabethan knight parting from a lady of
the same period-the words explaining the picture being-
"Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou
know'st thy estimate."
The lady is Ethelberta, to the shade of a hair-her living face; and the
knight is-'
'Not Ladywell?'
'I think so; I am not sure.'
'No wonder I am dismissed! And yet she hates him. Well, come along,
Faith. Women allow strange liberties in these days.'
25. THE ROYAL ACADEMY-THE FARNFIELD ESTATE
Ethelberta was a firm believer in the kindly effects of artistic
education upon the masses. She held that defilement of mind often arose
from ignorance of eye; and her philanthropy being, by the simple force
of her situation, of that sort which lingers in the neighbourhood of
home, she concentrated her efforts in this kind upon Sol and Dan.
Accordingly, the Academy exhibition having now just opened, she ordered
the brothers to appear in their best clothes at the entrance to
Burlington House just after noontide on the Saturday of the first week,
this being the only day and hour at which they could attend without
'losing a half' and therefore it was necessary to put up with the
inconvenience of arriving at a crowded and enervating time.
When Ethelberta was set down in the quadrangle she perceived the
faithful pair, big as the Zamzummims of old time, standing like
sentinels in the particular corner that she had named to them: for Sol
and Dan would as soon have attempted petty larceny as broken faith with
their admired lady-sister Ethelberta. They welcomed her with a painfully
lavish exhibition of large new gloves, and chests covered with broad
triangular areas of padded blue silk, occupying the position that the
shirt-front had occupied in earlier days, and supposed to be lineally
descended from the tie of a neckerchief.
The dress of their sister for to-day was exactly that of a respectable
workman's relative who had no particular ambition in the matter of
fashion-a black stuff gown, a plain bonnet to match. A veil she wore for
obvious reasons: her face was getting well known in London, and it had
already appeared at the private view in an uncovered state, when it was
scrutinized more than the paintings around. But now homely and useful
labour was her purpose.
Catalogue in hand she took the two brothers through the galleries,
teaching them in whispers as they walked, and occasionally correcting
them-first, for too reverential a bearing towards the well-dressed
crowd, among whom they persisted in walking with their hats in their
hands and with the contrite bearing of meek people in church; and,
secondly, for a tendency which they too often showed towards straying
from the contemplation of the pictures as art to indulge in curious
speculations on the intrinsic nature of the delineated subject, the
gilding of the frames, the construction of the skylights overhead, or
admiration for the bracelets, lockets, and lofty eloquence of persons
around them.
'Now,' said Ethelberta, in a warning whisper, 'we are coming near the
picture which was partly painted from myself. And, Dan, when you see it,
don't you exclaim "Hullo!" or "That's Berta to a T," or anything at all.
It would not matter were it not dangerous for me to be noticed here to-
day. I see several people who would recognize me on the least
provocation.'
'Not a word,' said Dan. 'Don't you be afeard about that. I feel that I
baint upon my own ground to-day; and wouldn't do anything to cause an
upset, drown me if I would. Would you, Sol?'
In this temper they all pressed forward, and Ethelberta could not but be
gratified at the reception of Ladywell's picture, though it was accorded
by critics not very profound. It was an operation of some minutes to get
exactly opposite, and when side by side the three stood there they
overheard the immediate reason of the pressure. 'Farewell, thou art too
dear for my possessing' had been lengthily discoursed upon that morning
by the Coryphaeus of popular opinion; and the spirit having once been
poured out sons and daughters could prophesy. But, in truth, Ladywell's
work, if not emphatically original, was happily centred on a middle
stratum of taste, and apart from this adventitious help commanded, and
deserved to command, a wide area of appreciation.
While they were standing here in the very heart of the throng
Ethelberta's ears were arrested by two male voices behind her, whose
words formed a novel contrast to those of the other speakers around.
'Some men, you see, with extravagant expectations of themselves, coolly
get them gratified, while others hope rationally and are disappointed.
Luck, that's what it is. And the more easily a man takes life the more
persistently does luck follow him.'
'Of course; because, if he's industrious he does not want luck's
assistance. Natural laws will help him instead.'
'Well, if it is true that Ladywell has painted a good picture he has
done it by an exhaustive process. He has painted every possible bad one
till nothing more of that sort is left for him. You know what lady's
face served as the original to this, I suppose?'
'Mrs. Petherwin's, I hear.'
'Yes, Mrs. Alfred Neigh that's to be.'
'What, that elusive fellow caught at last?'
'So it appears; but she herself is hardly so well secured as yet, it
seems, though he takes the uncertainty as coolly as possible. I knew
nothing about it till he introduced the subject as we were standing here
on Monday, and said, in an off-hand way, "I mean to marry that lady." I
asked him how. "Easily," he said; "I will have her if there are a
hundred at her heels." You will understand that this was quite in
confidence.'
'Of course, of course.' Then there was a slight laugh, and the
companions proceeded to other gossip.
Ethelberta, calm and compressed in manner, sidled along to extricate
herself, not daring to turn round, and Dan and Sol followed, till they
were all clear of the spot. The brothers, who had heard the words
equally well with Ethelberta, made no remark to her upon them, assuming
that they referred to some peculiar system of courtship adopted in high
life, with which they had rightly no concern.
Ethelberta ostensibly continued her business of tutoring the young
workmen just as before, though every emotion in her had been put on the
alert by this discovery. She had known that Neigh admired her; yet his
presumption in uttering such a remark as he was reported to have
uttered, confidentially or otherwise, nearly took away her breath.
Perhaps it was not altogether disagreeable to have her breath so taken
away.
'I mean to marry that lady.' She whispered the words to herself twenty
times in the course of the afternoon. Sol and Dan were left considerably
longer to their private perceptions of the false and true in art than
they had been earlier in the day.
When she reached home Ethelberta was still far removed in her
reflections; and it was noticed afterwards that about this time in her
career her openness of manner entirely deserted her. She mostly was
silent as to her thoughts, and she wore an air of unusual stillness. It
was the silence and stillness of a starry sky, where all is force and
motion. This deep undecipherable habit sometimes suggested, though it
did not reveal, Ethelberta's busy brain to her sisters, and they said to
one another, 'I cannot think what's coming to Berta: she is not so nice
as she used to be.'
The evening under notice was passed desultorily enough after the
discovery of Neigh's self-assured statement. Among other things that she
did after dark, while still musingly examining the probabilities of the
report turning out true, was to wander to the large attic where the
children slept, a frequent habit of hers at night, to learn if they were
snug and comfortable. They were talking now from bed to bed, the person
under discussion being herself. Herself seemed everywhere to-day.
'I know that she is a fairy,' Myrtle was insisting, 'because she must
be, to have such pretty things in her house, and wear silk dresses such
as mother and we and Picotee haven't got, and have money to give us
whenever we want it.'
'Emmeline says perhaps she knows the fairy's godmother, and is not a
fairy herself, because Berta is too tall for a real fairy.'
'She must be one; for when there was a notch burnt in the hem of my
pretty blue frock she said it should be gone in the morning if I would
go to bed and not cry; and in the morning it was gone, and all nice and
straight as new.'
Ethelberta was recalling to mind how she had sat up and repaired the
damage alluded to by cutting off half an inch of the skirt all round and
hemming it anew, when the breathing of the children became regular, and
they fell asleep. Here were bright little minds ready for a training,
which without money and influence she could never give them. The wisdom
which knowledge brings, and the power which wisdom may bring, she had
always assumed would be theirs in her dreams for their social elevation.
By what means were these things to be ensured to them if her skill in
bread-winning should fail her? Would not a well-contrived marriage be of
service? She covered and tucked in one more closely, lifted another upon
the pillow and straightened the soft limbs to an easy position; then sat
down by the window and looked out at the flashing stars. Thoughts of
Neigh's audacious statement returned again upon Ethelberta. He had said
that he meant to marry her. Of what standing was the man who had uttered
such an intention respecting one to whom a politic marriage had become
almost a necessity of existence?
She had often heard Neigh speak indefinitely of some estate-'my little
place' he had called it-which he had purchased no very long time ago.
All she knew was that its name was Farnfield, that it lay thirty or
forty miles out of London in a south-westerly direction, a railway
station in the district bearing the same name, so that there was
probably a village or small town adjoining. Whether the dignity of this
landed property was that of domain, farmstead, allotment, or garden-
plot, Ethelberta had not the slightest conception. She was almost
certain that Neigh never lived there, but that might signify nothing.
The exact size and value of the estate would, she mused, be curious,
interesting, and almost necessary information to her who must become
mistress of it were she to allow him to carry out his singularly cool
and crude, if tender, intention. Moreover, its importance would afford a
very good random sample of his worldly substance throughout, from which
alone, after all, could the true spirit and worth and seriousness of his
words be apprehended. Impecuniosity may revel in unqualified vows and
brim over with confessions as blithely as a bird of May, but such
careless pleasures are not for the solvent, whose very dreams are
negotiable, and are expressed with due care accordingly.
That Neigh had used the words she had far more than prim\xE2-facie
appearances for believing. Neigh's own conduct towards her, though
peculiar rather than devoted, found in these words alone a reasonable
key. But, supposing the estate to be such a verbal hallucination as, for
instance, hers had been at Arrowthorne, when her poor, unprogressive,
hopelessly impracticable Christopher came there to visit her, and was so
wonderfully undeceived about her social standing: what a fiasco, and
what a cuckoo-cry would his utterances about marriage seem then.
Christopher had often told her of his expectations from 'Arrowthorne
Lodge,' and of the blunders that had resulted in consequence. Had not
Ethelberta's affection for Christopher partaken less of lover's passion
than of old-established tutelary tenderness she might have been reminded
by this reflection of the transcendent fidelity he had shown under that
trial-as severe a trial, considering the abnormal, almost morbid,
development of the passion for position in present-day society, as can
be prepared for men who move in the ordinary, unheroic channels of life.
By the following evening the consideration of this possibility, that
Neigh's position might furnish scope for such a disillusive discovery by
herself as hers had afforded to Christopher, decoyed Ethelberta into a
curious little scheme. She was piqued into a practical undertaking by
the man who could say to his friend with such sangfroid, 'I mean to
marry that lady.'
Merely telling Picotee to prepare for an evening excursion, of which she
was to talk to no one, Ethelberta made ready likewise, and they left the
house in a cab about half-an-hour before sunset, and drove to the
Waterloo Station.
With the decline and departure of the sun a fog gathered itself out of
the low meadow-land that bordered the railway as they went along towards
the west, stretching over it like a placid lake, till at the end of the
journey, the mist became generally pervasive, though not dense. Avoiding
observation as much as they conveniently could, the two sisters walked
from the long wooden shed which formed the station here, into the rheumy
air and along the road to the open country. Picotee occasionally
questioned Ethelberta on the object of the strange journey: she did not
question closely, being satisfied that in such sure hands as
Ethelberta's she was safe.
Deeming it unwise to make any inquiry just yet beyond the simple one of
the way to Farnfield, Ethelberta led her companion along a newly-fenced
road across a heath. In due time they came to an ornamental gate with a
curved sweep of wall on each side, signifying the entrance to some
enclosed property or other. Ethelberta, being quite free from any
digested plan for encouraging Neigh in his resolve to wive, was startled
to find a hope in her that this very respectable beginning before their
eyes was the entrance to the Farnfield property: that she hoped it was
nevertheless unquestionable. Just beyond lay a turnpike-house, where was
dimly visible a woman in the act of putting up a shutter to the front
window.
Compelled by this time to come to special questions, Ethelberta
instructed Picotee to ask of this person if the place they had just
passed was the entrance to Farnfield Park. The woman replied that it
was. Directly she had gone indoors Ethelberta turned back again towards
the park gate.
'What have we come for, Berta?' said Picotee, as she turned also.
'I'll tell you some day,' replied her sister.
It was now much past eight o'clock, and, from the nature of the evening,
dusk. The last stopping up-train was about ten, so that half-an-hour
could well be afforded for looking round. Ethelberta went to the gate,
which was found to be fastened by a chain and padlock.
'Ah, the London season,' she murmured.
There was a wicket at the side, and they entered. An avenue of young fir
trees three or four feet in height extended from the gate into the mist,
and down this they walked. The drive was not in very good order, and the
two women were frequently obliged to walk on the grass to avoid the
rough stones in the carriage-way. The double line of young firs now
abruptly terminated, and the road swept lower, bending to the right,
immediately in front being a large lake, calm and silent as a second
sky. They could hear from somewhere on the margin the purl of a weir,
and around were clumps of shrubs, araucarias and deodars being the
commonest.
Ethelberta could not resist being charmed with the repose of the spot,
and hastened on with curiosity to reach the other side of the pool,
where, by every law of manorial topography, the mansion would be
situate. The fog concealed all objects beyond a distance of twenty yards
or thereabouts, but it was nearly full moon, and though the orb was
hidden, a pale diffused light enabled them to see objects in the
foreground. Reaching the other side of the lake the drive enlarged
itself most legitimately to a large oval, as for a sweep before a door,
a pile of rockwork standing in the midst.
But where should have been the front door of a mansion was simply a
rough rail fence, about four feet high. They drew near and looked over.
In the enclosure, and on the site of the imaginary house, was an
extraordinary group. It consisted of numerous horses in the last stage
of decrepitude, the animals being such mere skeletons that at first
Ethelberta hardly recognized them to be horses at all; they seemed
rather to be specimens of some attenuated heraldic animal, scarcely
thick enough through the body to throw a shadow: or enlarged castings of
the fire-dog of past times. These poor creatures were endeavouring to
make a meal from herbage so trodden and thin that scarcely a wholesome
blade remained; the little that there was consisted of the sourer sorts
common on such sandy soils, mingled with tufts of heather and sprouting
ferns.
'Why have we come here, dear Berta?' said Picotee, shuddering.
'I hardly know,' said Ethelberta.
Adjoining this enclosure was another and smaller one, formed of high
boarding, within which appeared to be some sheds and outhouses.
Ethelberta looked through the crevices, and saw that in the midst of the
yard stood trunks of trees as if they were growing, with branches also
extending, but these were sawn off at the points where they began to be
flexible, no twigs or boughs remaining. Each torso was not unlike a huge
hat-stand, and suspended to the pegs and prongs were lumps of some
substance which at first she did not recognize; they proved to be a
chronological sequel to the previous scene. Horses' skulls, ribs,
quarters, legs, and other joints were hung thereon, the whole forming a
huge open-air larder emitting not too sweet a smell.
But what Stygian sound was this? There had arisen at the moment upon the
mute and sleepy air a varied howling from a hundred tongues. It had
burst from a spot close at hand-a low wooden building by a stream which
fed the lake-and reverberated for miles. No further explanation was
required.
'We are close to a kennel of hounds,' said Ethelberta, as Picotee held
tightly to her arm. 'They cannot get out, so you need not fear. They
have a horrid way of suddenly beginning thus at different hours of the
night, for no apparent reason: though perhaps they hear us. These poor
horses are waiting to be killed for their food.'
The experience altogether, from its intense melancholy, was very
depressing, almost appalling to the two lone young women, and they
quickly retraced their footsteps. The pleasant lake, the purl of the
weir, the rudimentary lawns, shrubberies, and avenue, had changed their
character quite. Ethelberta fancied at that moment that she could not
have married Neigh, even had she loved him, so horrid did his belongings
appear to be. But for many other reasons she had been gradually feeling
within this hour that she would not go out of her way at a beck from a
man whose interest was so unimpassioned.
Thinking no more of him as a possible husband she ceased to be afraid to
make inquiries about the peculiarities of his possessions. In the high-
road they came on a local man, resting from wheeling a wheelbarrow, and
Ethelberta asked him, with the air of a countrywoman, who owned the
estate across the road.
'The man owning that is one of the name of Neigh,' said the native,
wiping his face. ''Tis a family that have made a very large fortune by
the knacker business and tanning, though they be only sleeping partners
in it now, and live like lords. Mr. Neigh was going to pull down the old
huts here, and improve the place and build a mansion-in short, he went
so far as to have the grounds planted, and the roads marked out, and the
fish-pond made, and the place christened Farnfield Park; but he did no
more. "I shall never have a wife," he said, "so why should I want a
house to put her in?" He's a terrible hater of women, I hear,
particularly the lower class.'
'Indeed!'
'Yes, and since then he has let half the land to the Honourable Mr.
Mountclere, a brother of Lord Mountclere's. Mr. Mountclere wanted the
spot for a kennel, and as the land is too poor and sandy for cropping,
Mr. Neigh let him have it. 'Tis his hounds that you hear howling.'
They passed on. 'Berta, why did we come down here?' said Picotee.
'To see the nakedness of the land. It was a whim only, and as it will
end in nothing, it is not worth while for me to make further
explanation.'
It was with a curious sense of renunciation that Ethelberta went
homeward. Neigh was handsome, grim-natured, rather wicked, and an
indifferentist; and these attractions interested her as a woman. But the
news of this evening suggested to Ethelberta that herself and Neigh were
too nearly cattle of one colour for a confession on the matter of
lineage to be well received by him; and without confidence of every sort
on the nature of her situation, she was determined to contract no union
at all. The sympathy of unlikeness might lead the scion of some family,
hollow and fungous with antiquity, and as yet unmarked by a mesalliance,
to be won over by her story; but the antipathy of resemblance would be
ineradicable.
26. ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM
While Ethelberta during the next few days was dismissing that evening
journey from her consideration, as an incident altogether foreign to the
organized course of her existence, the hidden fruit thereof was rounding
to maturity in a species unforeseen.
Inferences unassailable as processes, are, nevertheless, to be
suspected, from the almost certain deficiency of particulars on some
side or other. The truth in relation to Neigh's supposed frigidity was
brought before her at the end of the following week, when Dan and Sol
had taken Picotee, Cornelia, and the young children to Kew for the
afternoon.
Early that morning, hours before it was necessary, there had been such a
chatter of preparation in the house as was seldom heard there. Sunday
hats and bonnets had been retrimmed with such cunning that it would have
taken a milliner's apprentice at least to discover that any thread in
them was not quite new. There was an anxious peep through the blind at
the sky at daybreak by Georgina and Myrtle, and the perplexity of these
rural children was great at the weather-signs of the town, where
atmospheric effects had nothing to do with clouds, and fair days and
foul came apparently quite by chance. Punctually at the hour appointed
two friendly human shadows descended across the kitchen window, followed
by Sol and Dan, much to the relief of the children's apprehensions that
they might forget the day.
The brothers were by this time acquiring something of the airs and
manners of London workmen; they were less spontaneous and more
comparative; less genial, but smarter; in obedience to the usual law by
which the emotion that takes the form of humour in country workmen
becomes transmuted to irony among the same order in town. But the fixed
and dogged fidelity to one another under apparent coolness, by which
this family was distinguished, remained unshaken in these members as in
all the rest, leading them to select the children as companions in their
holiday in preference to casual acquaintance. At last they were ready,
and departed, and Ethelberta, after chatting with her mother awhile,
proceeded to her personal duties.
The house was very silent that day, Gwendoline and Joey being the only
ones left below stairs. Ethelberta was wishing that she had thrown off
her state and gone to Kew to have an hour of childhood over again in a
romp with the others, when she was startled by the announcement of a
male visitor-none other than Mr. Neigh.
Ethelberta's attitude on receipt of this information sufficiently
expressed a revived sense that the incidence of Mr. Neigh on her path
might have a meaning after all. Neigh had certainly said he was going to
marry her, and now here he was come to her house-just as if he meant to
do it forthwith. She had mentally discarded him; yet she felt a shock
which was scarcely painful, and a dread which was almost exhilarating.
Her flying visit to Farnfield she thought little of at this moment. From
the fact that the mind prefers imaginings to recapitulation, conjecture
to history, Ethelberta had dwelt more upon Neigh's possible plans and
anticipations than upon the incidents of her evening journey; and the
former assumed a more distinct shape in her mind's eye than anything on
the visible side of the curtain.
Neigh was perhaps not quite so placidly nonchalant as in ordinary;
still, he was by far the most trying visitor that Ethelberta had lately
faced, and she could not get above the stage-not a very high one for the
mistress of a house-of feeling her personality to be inconveniently in
the way of his eyes. He had somewhat the bearing of a man who was going
to do without any fuss what gushing people would call a philanthropic
action.
'I have been intending to write a line to you,' said Neigh; 'but I felt
that I could not be sure of writing my meaning in a way which might
please you. I am not bright at a letter-never was. The question I mean
is one that I hope you will be disposed to answer favourably, even
though I may show the awkwardness of a fellow-person who has never put
such a question before. Will you give me a word of encouragement-just a
hope that I may not be unacceptable as a husband to you? Your talents
are very great; and of course I know that I have nothing at all in that
way. Still people are happy together sometimes in spite of such things.
Will you say "Yes," and settle it now?'
'I was not expecting you had come upon such an errand as this,' said
she, looking up a little, but mostly looking down. 'I cannot say what
you wish, Mr. Neigh.
'Perhaps I have been too sudden and presumptuous. Yes, I know I have
been that. However, directly I saw you I felt that nobody ever came so
near my idea of what is desirable in a lady, and it occurred to me that
only one obstacle should stand in the way of the natural results, which
obstacle would be your refusal. In common kindness consider. I daresay I
am judged to be a man of inattentive habits-I know that's what you think
of me; but under your influence I should be very different; so pray do
not let your dislike to little matters influence you.'
'I would not indeed. But believe me there can be no discussion of
marriage between us,' said Ethelberta decisively.
'If that's the case I may as well say no more. To burden you with my
regrets would be out of place, I suppose,' said Neigh, looking calmly
out of the window.
'Apart from personal feeling, there are considerations which would
prevent what you contemplated,' she murmured. 'My affairs are too
lengthy, intricate, and unpleasant for me to explain to anybody at
present. And that would be a necessary first step.'
'Not at all. I cannot think that preliminary to be necessary at all. I
would put my lawyer in communication with yours, and we would leave the
rest to them: I believe that is the proper way. You could say anything
in confidence to your family-man; and you could inquire through him
anything you might wish to know about my-about me. All you would need to
say to myself are just the two little words-"I will," in the church here
at the end of the Crescent.'
'I am sorry to pain you, Mr. Neigh-so sorry,' said Ethelberta. 'But I
cannot say them.' She was rather distressed that, despite her
discouraging words, he still went on with his purpose, as if he imagined
what she so distinctly said to be no bar, but rather a stimulant, usual
under the circumstances.
'It does not matter about paining me,' said Neigh. 'Don't take that into
consideration at all. But I did not expect you to leave me so entirely
without help-to refuse me absolutely as far as words go-after what you
did. If it had not been for that I should never have ventured to call. I
might otherwise have supposed your interest to be fixed in another
quarter; but your acting in that manner encouraged me to think you could
listen to a word.'
'What do you allude to?' said Ethelberta. 'How have I acted?'
Neigh appeared reluctant to go any further; but the allusion soon became
sufficiently clear. 'I wish my little place at Farnfield had been
worthier of you,' he said brusquely. 'However, that's a matter of time
only. It is useless to build a house there yet. I wish I had known that
you would be looking over it at that time of the evening. A single word,
when we were talking about it the other day, that you were going to be
in the neighbourhood, would have been sufficient. Nothing could have
given me so much delight as to have driven you round.'
He knew that she had been to Farnfield: that knowledge was what had
inspired him to call upon her to-day! Ethelberta breathed a sort of
exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson's damn. Her
face did not change, since a face must be said not to change while it
preserves the same pleasant lines in the mobile parts as before; but
anybody who has preserved his pleasant lines under the half-minute's
peer of the invidious camera, and found what a wizened, starched kind of
thing they stiffen to towards the end of the time, will understand the
tendency of Ethelberta's lovely features now.
'Yes; I walked round,' said Ethelberta faintly.
Neigh was decidedly master of the position at last; but he spoke as if
he did not value that. His knowledge had furnished him with grounds for
calling upon her, and he hastened to undeceive her from supposing that
he could think ill of any motive of hers which gave him those desirable
grounds.
'I supposed you, by that, to give some little thought to me
occasionally,' he resumed, in the same slow and orderly tone. 'How could
I help thinking so? It was your doing that which encouraged me. Now, was
it not natural-I put it to you?'
Ethelberta was almost exasperated at perceiving the awful extent to
which she had compromised herself with this man by her impulsive visit.
Lightly and philosophically as he seemed to take it-as a thing, in
short, which every woman would do by nature unless hindered by
difficulties-it was no trifle to her as long as he was ignorant of her
justification; and this she determined that he should know at once, at
all hazards.
'It was through you in the first place that I did look into your
grounds!' she said excitedly. 'It was your presumption that caused me to
go there. I should not have thought of such a thing else. If you had not
said what you did say I never should have thought of you or Farnfield
either-Farnfield might have been in Kamtschatka for all I cared.'
'I hope sincerely that I never said anything to disturb you?'
'Yes, you did-not to me, but to somebody,' said Ethelberta, with her
eyes over-full of retained tears.
'What have I said to somebody that can be in the least objectionable to
you?' inquired Neigh, with much concern.
'You said-you said, you meant to marry me-just as if I had no voice in
the matter! And that annoyed me, and made me go there out of curiosity.'
Neigh changed colour a little. 'Well, I did say it: I own that I said
it,' he replied at last. Probably he knew enough of her nature not to
feel long disconcerted by her disclosure, however she might have become
possessed of the information. The explanation was certainly a great
excuse to her curiosity; but if Ethelberta had tried she could not have
given him a better ground for making light of her objections to his
suit. 'I felt that I must marry you, that we were predestined to marry
ages ago, and I feel it still!' he continued, with listless ardour. 'You
seem to regret your interest in Farnfield; but to me it is a charm, and
has been ever since I heard of it.'
'If you only knew all!' she said helplessly, showing, without perceiving
it, an unnecessary humility in the remark, since there was no more
reason just then that she should go into details about her life than
that he should about his. But melancholy and mistaken thoughts of
herself as a counterfeit had brought her to this.
'I do not wish to know more,' said Neigh.
'And would you marry any woman off-hand, without being thoroughly
acquainted with her circumstances?' she said, looking at him curiously,
and with a little admiration, for his unconscionably phlegmatic
treatment of her motives in going to Farnfield had a not unbecoming
daring about it in Ethelberta's eye.
'I would marry a woman off-hand when that woman is you. I would make you
mine this moment did I dare; or, to speak with absolute accuracy, within
twenty-four hours. Do assent to it, dear Mrs. Petherwin, and let me be
sure of you for ever. I'll drive to Doctors' Commons this minute, and
meet you to-morrow morning at nine in the church just below. It is a
simple impulse, but I would adhere to it in the coolest moment. Shall it
be arranged in that way, instead of our waiting through the ordinary
routine of preparation? I am not a youth now, but I can see the bliss of
such an act as that, and the contemptible nature of methodical
proceedings beside it!'
He had taken her hand. Ethelberta gave it a subtle movement backwards to
imply that he was not to retain the prize, and said, 'One whose inner
life is almost unknown to you, and whom you have scarcely seen except at
other people's houses!'
'We know each other far better than we may think at first,' said Neigh.
'We are not people to love in a hurry, and I have not done so in this
case. As for worldly circumstances, the most important items in a
marriage contract are the persons themselves, and, as far as I am
concerned, if I get a lady fair and wise I care for nothing further. I
know you are beautiful, for all London owns it; I know you are talented,
for I have read your poetry and heard your romances; and I know you are
politic and discreet-'
'For I have examined your property,' said she, with a weak smile.
Neigh bowed. 'And what more can I wish to know? Come, shall it be?'
'Certainly not to-morrow.'
'I would be entirely in your hands in that matter. I will not urge you
to be precipitate-I could not expect you to be ready yet. My suddenness
perhaps offended you; but, having thought deeply of this bright
possibility, I was apt to forget the forbearance that one ought to show
at first in mentioning it. If I have done wrong forgive me.'
'I will think of that,' said Ethelberta, with a cooler manner. 'But
seriously, all these words are nothing to the purpose. I must remark
that I prize your friendship, but it is not for me to marry now. You
have convinced me of your goodness of heart and freedom from unworthy
suspicions; let that be enough. The best way in which I in my turn can
convince you of my goodness of heart is by asking you to see me in
private no more.'
'And do you refuse to think of me as \x97-. Why do you treat me like that,
after all?' said Neigh, surprised at this want of harmony with his
principle that one convert to matrimony could always find a second
ready-made.
'I cannot explain, I cannot explain,' said she, impatiently. 'I would
and I would not-explain I mean, not marry. I don't love anybody, and I
have no heart left for beginning. It is only honest in me to tell you
that I am interested in watching another man's career, though that is
not to the point either, for no close relationship with him is
contemplated. But I do not wish to speak of this any more. Do not press
me to it.'
'Certainly I will not,' said Neigh, seeing that she was distressed and
sorrowful. 'But do consider me and my wishes; I have a right to ask it
for it is only asking a continuance of what you have already begun to
do. To-morrow I believe I shall have the happiness of seeing you again.'
She did not say no, and long after the door had closed upon him she
remained fixed in thought. 'How can he be blamed for his manner,' she
said, 'after knowing what I did!'
Ethelberta as she sat felt herself much less a Petherwin than a
Chickerel, much less a poetess richly freighted with fancy than an
adventuress with a nebulous prospect. Neigh was one of the few men whose
presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its
very least proportions; and that act of espial, which had so quickly and
inexplicably come to his knowledge, helped his influence still more. She
knew little of the nature of the town bachelor; there were opaque depths
in him which her thoughts had never definitely plumbed. Notwithstanding
her exaltation to the atmosphere of the Petherwin family, Ethelberta was
very far from having the thoroughbred London woman's knowledge of sets,
grades, coteries, cliques, forms, glosses, and niceties, particularly on
the masculine side. Setting the years from her infancy to her first look
into town against those HANDlinking that epoch with the present, the
former period covered not only the greater time, but contained the mass
of her most vivid impressions of life and its ways. But in recognizing
her ignorance of the ratio between words to women and deeds to women in
the ethical code of the bachelor of the club, she forgot that human
nature in the gross differs little with situation, and that a gift
which, if the germs were lacking, no amount of training in clubs and
coteries could supply, was mother-wit like her own.
27. MRS. BELMAINE'S-CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH
Neigh's remark that he believed he should see Ethelberta again the next
day referred to a contemplated pilgrimage of an unusual sort which had
been arranged for that day by Mrs. Belmaine upon the ground of an
incidental suggestion of Ethelberta's. One afternoon in the week
previous they had been chatting over tea at the house of the former
lady, Neigh being present as a casual caller, when the conversation was
directed upon Milton by somebody opening a volume of the poet's works
that lay on a table near.
'Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of
thee-'
said Mrs. Belmaine with the degree of flippancy which is considered
correct for immortal verse, the Bible, God, etc., in these days. And
Ethelberta replied, lit up by a quick remembrance, 'It is a good time to
talk of Milton; for I have been much impressed by reading the "Life;"
and I have decided to go and see his tomb. Could we not all go? We ought
to quicken our memories of the great, and of where they lie, by such a
visit occasionally.'
'We ought,' said Mrs. Belmaine.
'And why shouldn't we?' continued Ethelberta, with interest.
'To Westminster Abbey?' said Mr. Belmaine, a common man of thirty,
younger than his wife, who had lately come into the room.
'No; to where he lies comparatively alone-Cripplegate Church.'
'I always thought that Milton was buried in Poet's Corner,' said Mr.
Belmaine.
'So did I,' said Neigh; 'but I have such an indifferent head for places
that my thinking goes for nothing.'
'Well, it would be a pretty thing to do,' said Mrs. Belmaine, 'and
instructive to all of us. If Mrs. Petherwin would like to go, I should.
We can take you in the carriage and call round for Mrs. Doncastle on our
way, and set you both down again coming back.'
'That would be excellent,' said Ethelberta. 'There is nowhere I like
going to so much as the depths of the city. The absurd narrowness of
world-renowned streets is so surprising-so crooked and shady as they are
too, and full of the quaint smells of old cupboards and cellars. Walking
through one of them reminds me of being at the bottom of some crevasse
or gorge, the proper surface of the globe being the tops of the houses.'
'You will come to take care of us, John? And you, Mr. Neigh, would like
to come? We will tell Mr. Ladywell that he may join us if he cares to,'
said Mrs. Belmaine.
'O yes,' said her husband quietly; and Neigh said he should like nothing
better, after a faint aspect of apprehension at the remoteness of the
idea from the daily track of his thoughts. Mr. Belmaine observing this,
and mistaking it for an indication that Neigh had been dragged into the
party against his will by his over-hasty wife, arranged that Neigh
should go independently and meet them there at the hour named if he
chose to do so, to give him an opportunity of staying away. Ethelberta
also was by this time doubting if she had not been too eager with her
proposal. To go on such a sentimental errand might be thought by her
friends to be simply troublesome, their adherence having been given only
in the regular course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an
outsider here, her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly
in alternations between English watering-places and continental towns.
However, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that
from first to last Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines
whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly
were they practised in sustaining that complete divorce between thinking
and saying which is the hall-mark of high civilization.
But, however she might doubt the Belmaines, she had no doubt as to
Neigh's true sentiments: the time had come when he, notwithstanding his
air of being oppressed by almost every lively invention of town and
country for charming griefs to rest, would not be at all oppressed by a
quiet visit to the purlieus of St Giles's, Cripplegate, since she was
the originator, and was going herself.
It was a bright hope-inspiring afternoon in this mid-May time when the
carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, Mrs. Doncastle, and
Ethelberta, crept along the encumbered streets towards Barbican; till
turning out of that thoroughfare into Redcross Street they beheld the
bold shape of the old tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade,
standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stage, and
hoary grey below, where every corner of every stone was completely
rounded off by the waves of wind and storm.
All people were busy here: our visitors seemed to be the only idle
persons the city contained; and there was no dissonance-there never is-
between antiquity and such beehive industry; for pure industry, in
failing to observe its own existence and aspect, partakes of the
unobtrusive nature of material things. This intra-mural stir was a
flywheel transparent by excessive motion, through which Milton and his
day could be seen as if nothing intervened. Had there been ostensibly
harmonious accessories, a crowd of observing people in search of the
poetical, conscious of the place and the scene, what a discord would
have arisen there! But everybody passed by Milton's grave except
Ethelberta and her friends, and for the moment the city's less invidious
conduct appeared to her more respectful as a practice than her own.
But she was brought out of this rumination by the halt at the church
door, and completely reminded of the present by finding the church open,
and Neigh-the, till yesterday, unimpassioned Neigh-waiting in the
vestibule to receive them, just as if he lived there. Ladywell had not
arrived. It was a long time before Ethelberta could get back to Milton
again, for Neigh was continuing to impend over her future more and more
visibly. The objects along the journey had distracted her mind from him;
but the moment now was as a direct renewal and prolongation of the
declaration-time yesterday, and as if in furtherance of the conclusion
of the episode.
They all alighted and went in, the coachman being told to take the
carriage to a quiet nook further on, and return in half-an-hour. Mrs.
Belmaine and her carriage some years before had accidentally got jammed
crosswise in Cheapside through the clumsiness of the man in turning up a
side street, blocking that great artery of the civilized world for the
space of a minute and a half, when they were pounced upon by half-a-
dozen policemen and forced to back ignominiously up a little slit
between the houses where they did not mean to go, amid the shouts of the
hindered drivers; and it was her nervous recollection of that event
which caused Mrs. Belmaine to be so precise in her directions now.
By the time that they were grouped around the tomb the visit had assumed
a much more solemn complexion than any one among them had anticipated.
Ashamed of the influence that she discovered Neigh to be exercising over
her, and opposing it steadily, Ethelberta drew from her pocket a small
edition of Milton, and proposed that she should read a few lines from
'Paradise Lost.' The responsibility of producing a successful afternoon
was upon her shoulders; she was, moreover, the only one present who
could properly manage blank verse, and this was sufficient to justify
the proposal.
She stood with her head against the marble slab just below the bust, and
began a selected piece, Neigh standing a few yards off on her right
looking into his hat in order to listen accurately, Mr. and Mrs.
Belmaine and Mrs. Doncastle seating themselves in a pew directly facing
the monument. The ripe warm colours of afternoon came in upon them from
the west, upon the sallow piers and arches, and the infinitely deep
brown pews beneath, the aisle over Ethelberta's head being in misty
shade through which glowed a lurid light from a dark-stained window
behind. The sentences fell from her lips in a rhythmical cadence one by
one, and she could be fancied a priestess of him before whose image she
stood, when with a vivid suggestiveness she delivered here, not many
yards from the central money-mill of the world, yet out from the very
tomb of their author, the passage containing the words:
'Mammon led them on; Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From
heaven.'
When she finished reading Ethelberta left the monument, and then each
one present strayed independently about the building, Ethelberta turning
to the left along the passage to the south door. Neigh-from whose
usually apathetic face and eyes there had proceeded a secret smouldering
light as he listened and regarded her-followed in the same direction and
vanished at her heels into the churchyard, whither she had now gone. Mr.
and Mrs. Belmaine exchanged glances, and instead of following the pair
they went with Mrs. Doncastle into the vestry to inquire of the person
in charge for the register of the marriage of Oliver Cromwell, which was
solemnized here. The church was now quite empty, and its stillness was
as a vacuum into which an occasional noise from the street overflowed
and became rarefied away to nothing.
Something like five minutes had passed when a hansom stopped outside the
door, and Ladywell entered the porch. He stood still, and, looking
inquiringly round for a minute or two, sat down in one of the high pews,
as if under the impression that the others had not yet arrived.
While he sat here Neigh reappeared at the south door opposite, and came
slowly in. Ladywell, in rising to go to him, saw that Neigh's attention
was engrossed by something he held in his hand. It was his pocket-book,
and Neigh was looking at a few loose flower-petals which had been placed
between the pages. When Ladywell came forward Neigh looked up, started,
and closed the book quickly, so that some of the petals fluttered to the
ground between the two men. They were striped, red and white, and
appeared to be leaves of the Harlequin rose.
'Ah! here you are, Ladywell,' he said, recovering himself. 'We had given
you up: my aunt said that you would not care to come. They are all in
the vestry.' How it came to pass that Neigh designated those in the
vestry as 'all,' when there was one in the churchyard, was a thing that
he himself could hardly have explained, so much more had it to do with
instinct than with calculation.
'Never mind them-don't interrupt them,' said Ladywell. 'The plain truth
is that I have been very greatly disturbed in mind; and I could not
appear earlier by reason of it. I had some doubt about coming at all.'
'I am sorry to hear that.'
'Neigh-I may as well tell you and have done with it. I have found that a
lady of my acquaintance has two strings to her bow, or I am very much in
error.'
'What-Mrs. Petherwin?' said Neigh uneasily. 'But I thought that-that
fancy was over with you long ago. Even your acquaintance with her was at
an end, I thought.'
'In a measure it is at an end. But let me tell you that what you call a
fancy has been anything but a fancy with me, to be over like a spring
shower. To speak plainly, Neigh, I consider myself badly used by that
woman; damn badly used.'
'Badly used?' said Neigh mechanically, and wondering all the time if
Ladywell had been informed that Ethelberta was to be one of the party
to-day.
'Well, I ought not to talk like that,' said Ladywell, adopting a lighter
tone. 'All is fair in courtship, I suppose, now as ever. Indeed, I mean
to put a good face upon it: if I am beaten, I am. But it is very
provoking, after supposing matters to be going on smoothly, to find out
that you are quite mistaken.'
'I told you you were quite mistaken in supposing she cared for you.'
'That is just the point I was not mistaken in,' said Ladywell warmly.
'She did care for me, and I stood as well with her as any man could
stand until this fellow came, whoever he is. I sometimes feel so
disturbed about it that I have a good mind to call upon her and ask his
name. Wouldn't you, Neigh? Will you accompany me?'
'I would in a moment, but, but- I strongly advise you not to go,' said
Neigh earnestly. 'It would be rash, you know, and rather unmannerly; and
would only hurt your feelings.'
'Well, I am always ready to yield to a friend's arguments. . . . A
sneaking scamp, that's what he is. Why does he not show himself?'
'Don't you really know who he is?' said Neigh, in a pronounced and
exceptional tone, on purpose to give Ladywell a chance of suspecting,
for the position was getting awkward. But Ladywell was blind as
Bartimeus in that direction, so well had indifference to Ethelberta's
charms been feigned by Neigh until he thought seriously of marrying her.
Yet, unfortunately for the interests of calmness, Ladywell was less
blind with his outward eye. In his reflections his glance had lingered
again upon the pocket-book which Neigh still held in his hand, and upon
the two or three rose-leaves on the floor, until he said idly,
superimposing humorousness upon misery, as men in love can:
'Rose-leaves, Neigh? I thought you did not care for flowers. What makes
you amuse yourself with such sentimental objects as those, only fit for
women, or painters like me? If I had not observed you with my own eyes I
should have said that you were about the last man in the world to care
for things of that sort. Whatever makes you keep rose-leaves in your
pocket-book?'
'The best reason on earth,' said Neigh. 'A woman gave them to me.'
'That proves nothing unless she is a great deal to you,' said Ladywell,
with the experienced air of a man who, whatever his inferiority in years
to Neigh, was far beyond him in knowledge of that sort, by virtue of his
recent trials.
'She is a great deal to me.'
'If I did not know you to be such a confirmed misogynist I should say
that this is a serious matter.'
'It is serious,' said Neigh quietly. 'The probability is that I shall
marry the woman who gave me these. Anyhow I have asked her the question,
and she has not altogether said no.'
'I am glad to hear it, Neigh,' said Ladywell heartily. 'I am glad to
hear that your star is higher than mine.'
Before Neigh could make further reply Ladywell was attracted by the glow
of green sunlight reflected through the south door by the grass of the
churchyard, now in all its spring freshness and luxuriance. He bent his
steps thither, followed anxiously by Neigh.
'I had no idea there was such a lovely green spot in the city,' Ladywell
continued, passing out. 'Trees too, planted in the manner of an orchard.
What a charming place!'
The place was truly charming just at that date. The untainted leaves of
the lime and plane trees and the newly-sprung grass had in the sun a
brilliancy of beauty that was brought into extraordinary prominence by
the sable soil showing here and there, and the charcoaled stems and
trunks out of which the leaves budded: they seemed an importation, not a
produce, and their delicacy such as would perish in a day.
'What is this round tower?' Ladywell said again, walking towards the
iron-grey bastion, partly covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, which
stood obtruding into the enclosure.
'O, didn't you know that was here? That's a piece of the old city wall,'
said Neigh, looking furtively around at the same time. Behind the
bastion the churchyard ran into a long narrow strip, grassed like the
other part, but completely hidden from it by the cylinder of ragged
masonry. On rounding this projection, Ladywell beheld within a few feet
of him a lady whom he knew too well.
'Mrs. Petherwin here!' exclaimed he, proving how ignorant he had been of
the composition of the party he was to meet, and accounting at the same
time for his laxity in attending it.
'I forgot to tell you,' said Neigh awkwardly, behind him, 'that Mrs.
Petherwin was to come with us.'
Ethelberta's look was somewhat blushful and agitated, as if from some
late transaction: she appeared to have been secluding herself there till
she should have recovered her equanimity. However, she came up to him
and said, 'I did not see you before this moment: we had been thinking
you would not come.'
While these words were being prettily spoken, Ladywell's face became
pale as death. On Ethelberta's bosom were the stem and green calyx of a
rose, almost all its flower having disappeared. It had been a Harlequin
rose, for two or three of its striped leaves remained to tell the tale.
She could not help noticing his fixed gaze, and she said quickly, 'Yes,
I have lost my pretty rose: this may as well go now,' and she plucked
the stem from its fastening in her dress and flung it away.
Poor Ladywell turned round to meet Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, whose voices
were beginning to be heard just within the church door, leaving Neigh
and Ethelberta together. It was a graceful act of young Ladywell's that,
in the midst of his own pain at the strange tale the rose-leaves
suggested-Neigh's rivalry, Ethelberta's mutability, his own defeat-he
was not regardless of the intense embarrassment which might have been
caused had he remained.
The two were silent at first, and it was evident that Ethelberta's mood
was one of anger at something that had gone before. She turned aside
from him to follow the others, when Neigh spoke in a tone somewhat
bitter and somewhat stern.
'What-going like that! After being compromised together, why don't you
close with me? Ladywell knows all: I had already told him that the rose-
leaves were given me by my intended wife. We seem to him to be
practising deceptions all of a piece, and what folly it is to play off
so! As to what I did, that I ask your forgiveness for.'
Ethelberta looked upon the ground and maintained a compressed lip. Neigh
resumed: 'If I showed more feeling than you care for, I insist that it
was not more than was natural under the circumstances, if not quite
proper. Opinions may differ, but my experience goes to prove that
conventional squeamishness at such times as these is more talked and
written about than practised. Plain behaviour must be expected when
marriage is the question. Nevertheless, I do say-and I cannot say more-
that I am sincerely sorry to have offended you by exceeding my
privileges. I will never do so again.'
'Don't say privileges. You have none.'
'I am sorry that I thought otherwise, and that others will think so too.
Ladywell is, at any rate, bent on thinking so. . . . It might have been
made known to him in a gentle way-but God disposes.'
'There is nothing to make known-I don't understand,' said Ethelberta,
going from him.
By this time Ladywell had walked round the gravel walks with the two
other ladies and Mr. Belmaine, and they were all turning to come back
again. The young painter had deputed his voice to reply to their
remarks, but his understanding continued poring upon other things. When
he came up to Ethelberta, his agitation had left him: she too was free
from constraint; while Neigh was some distance off, carefully examining
nothing in particular in an old fragment of wall.
The little party was now united again as to its persons; though in
spirit far otherwise. They went through the church in general talk,
Ladywell sad but serene, and Ethelberta keeping far-removed both from
him and from Neigh. She had at this juncture entered upon that Sphinx-
like stage of existence in which, contrary to her earlier manner, she
signified to no one of her ways, plans, or sensations, and spoke little
on any subject at all. There were occasional smiles now which came only
from the face, and speeches from the lips merely.
The journey home was performed as they had come, Ladywell not accepting
the seat in Neigh's cab which was phlegmatically offered him. Mrs.
Doncastle's acquaintance with Ethelberta had been slight until this day;
but the afternoon's proceeding had much impressed the matron with her
younger friend. Before they parted she said, with the sort of affability
which is meant to signify the beginning of permanent friendship: 'A
friend of my husband's, Lord Mountclere, has been anxious for some time
to meet you. He is a great admirer of the poems, and more still of the
story-telling invention, and your power in it. He has been present many
times at the Mayfair Hall to hear you. When will you dine with us to
meet him? I know you will like him. Will Thursday be convenient?'
Ethelberta stood for a moment reflecting, and reflecting hoped that Mrs.
Doncastle had not noticed her momentary perplexity. Crises were becoming
as common with her as blackberries; and she had foreseen this one a long
time. It was not that she was to meet Lord Mountclere, for he was only a
name and a distant profile to her: it was that her father would
necessarily be present at the meeting, in the most anomalous position
that human nature could endure.
However, having often proved in her disjointed experience that the
shortest way out of a difficulty lies straight through it, Ethelberta
decided to dine at the Doncastles', and, as she murmured that she should
have great pleasure in meeting any friend of theirs, set about
contriving how the encounter with her dearest relative might be made
safe and unsuspected. She bade them adieu blithely; but the thoughts
engendered by the invitation stood before her as sorrowful and rayless
ghosts which could not be laid. Often at such conjunctures as these,
when the futility of her great undertaking was more than usually
manifest, did Ethelberta long like a tired child for the conclusion of
the whole matter; when her work should be over, and the evening come;
when she might draw her boat upon the shore, and in some thymy nook
await eternal night with a placid mind.
28. ETHELBERTA'S-MR. CHICKEREL'S ROOM
The question of Neigh or no Neigh had reached a pitch of insistence
which no longer permitted of dallying, even by a popular beauty. His
character was becoming defined to Ethelberta as something very
differently composed from that of her first imagining. She had set him
down to be a man whose external in excitability owed nothing to self-
repression, but stood as the natural surface of the mass within. Neigh's
urban torpor, she said, might have been in the first instance produced
by art, but, were it thus, it had gone so far as to permeate him. This
had been disproved, first surprisingly, by his reported statement;
wondrously, in the second place, by his call upon her and sudden
proposal; thirdly, to a degree simply astounding, by what had occurred
in the city that day. For Neigh, before the fervour had subsided which
was produced in him by her look and general power while reading
'Paradise Lost,' found himself alone with her in a nook outside the
church, and there had almost demanded her promise to be his wife. She
had replied by asking for time, and idly offering him the petals of her
rose, that had shed themselves in her hand. Neigh, in taking them,
pressed her fingers more warmly than she thought she had given him
warrant for, which offended her. It was certainly a very momentary
affair, and when it was over seemed to surprise himself almost as much
as it had vexed her; but it had reminded her of one truth which she was
in danger of forgetting. The town gentleman was not half so far removed
from Sol and Dan, and the hard-handed order in general, in his passions
as in his philosophy. He still continued to be the male of his species,
and when the heart was hot with a dream Pall Mall had much the same
aspect as Wessex.
Well, she had not accepted him yet; indeed, for the moment they were in
a pet with one another. Yet that might soon be cleared off, and then
recurred the perpetual question, would the advantage that might accrue
to her people by her marriage be worth the sacrifice? One palliative
feature must be remembered when we survey the matrimonial ponderings of
the poetess and romancer. What she contemplated was not meanly to
ensnare a husband just to provide incomes for her and her family, but to
find some man she might respect, who would maintain her in such a stage
of comfort as should, by setting her mind free from temporal anxiety,
enable her to further organize her talent, and provide incomes for them
herself. Plenty of saleable originality was left in her as yet, but it
was getting crushed under the rubbish of her necessities.
She was not sure that Neigh would stand the test of her revelations. It
would be possible to lead him to marry her without revealing anything-
the events of the last few days had shown her that-yet Ethelberta's
honesty shrank from the safe course of holding her tongue. It might be
pleasant to many a modern gentleman to find himself allied with a lady,
none of whose ancestors had ever pandered to a court, lost an army,
taken a bribe, oppressed a community, or broken a bank; but the added
disclosure that, in avoiding these stains, her kindred had worked and
continued to work with their hands for bread, might lead such an one to
consider that the novelty was dearly purchased.
Ethelberta was, upon the whole, dissatisfied with her progress thus far.
She had planned many things and fulfilled few. Had her father been by
this time provided for and made independent of the world, as she had
thought he might be, not only would her course with regard to Neigh be
quite clear, but the impending awkwardness of dining with her father
behind her chair could not have occurred. True, that was a small matter
beside her regret for his own sake that he was still in harness; and a
mere change of occupation would be but a tribute to a fastidiousness
which he did not himself share. She had frequently tried to think of a
vocation for him that would have a more dignified sound, and be less
dangerously close to her own path: the post of care-taker at some
provincial library, country stationer, registrar of births and deaths,
and many others had been discussed and dismissed in face of the
unmanageable fact that her father was serenely happy and comfortable as
a butler, looking with dread at any hint of change short of perfect
retirement. Since, then, she could not offer him this retirement, what
right had she to interfere with his mode of life at all? In no other
social groove on earth would he thrive as he throve in his present one,
to which he had been accustomed from boyhood, and where the remuneration
was actually greater than in professions ten times as stately in name.
For the rest, too, Ethelberta had indulged in hopes, the high education
of the younger ones being the chief of these darling wishes. Picotee
wanted looking to badly enough. Sol and Dan required no material help;
they had quickly obtained good places of work under a Pimlico builder;
for though the brothers scarcely showed as yet the light-fingered
deftness of London artizans, the want was in a measure compensated by
their painstaking, and employers are far from despising country hands
who bring with them strength, industry, and a desire to please. But
their sister had other lines laid down for them than those of level
progress; to start them some day as masters instead of men was a long-
cherished wish of Ethelberta's.
Thus she had quite enough machinery in her hands to keep decently going,
even were she to marry a man who would take a kindly view of her
peculiar situation, and afford her opportunities of strengthening her
powers for her kindred's good. But what would be the result if, eighteen
months hence-the date at which her occupation of the house in Exonbury
Crescent came to an end-she were still a widow, with no accumulated
capital, her platform talents grown homely and stunted through narrow
living, and her tender vein of poesy completely dispersed by it? To
calmly relinquish the struggle at that point would have been the act of
a stoic, but not of a woman, particularly when she considered the
children, the hopes of her mother for them, and her own condition-though
this was least-under the ironical cheers which would greet a slip back
into the mire.
It here becomes necessary to turn for a moment to Master Joey Chickerel,
Ethelberta's troublesome page and brother. The face of this juvenile was
that of a Graeco-Roman satyr to the furthest degree of completeness.
Viewed in front, the outer line of his upper lip rose in a double arch
nearly to his little round nostrils, giving an expression of a jollity
so delicious to himself as to compel a perpetual drawing in of his
breath. During half-laughs his lips parted in the middle, and remained
closed at the corners, which were small round pits like his nostrils,
the same form being repeated as dimples a little further back upon his
cheek. The opening for each eye formed a sparkling crescent, both upper
and under lid having the convexity upwards.
But during some few days preceding the dinner-party at the Doncastles'
all this changed. The luxuriant curves departed, a compressed lineality
was to be observed everywhere, the pupils of his eyes seemed flattened,
and the carriage of his head was limp and sideways. This was a feature
so remarkable and new in him that Picotee noticed it, and was lifted
from the melancholy current of her own affairs in contemplating his.
'Well, what's the matter?' said Picotee.
'O-nothing,' said Joey.
'Nothing? How can you say so?'
'The world's a holler mockery-that's what I say.'
'Yes, so it is, to some; but not to you,' said Picotee, sighing.
'Don't talk argument, Picotee. I only hope you'll never feel what I feel
now. If it wasn't for my juties here I know what I'd do; I'd 'list,
that's what I'd do. But having my position to fill here as the only
responsible man-servant in the house, I can't leave.'
'Has anybody been beating you?'
'Beating! Do I look like a person who gets beatings? No, it is a
madness,' said Joey, putting his hand upon his chest. 'The case is, I am
in love.'
'O Joey, a boy no bigger than you are!' said Picotee reprovingly. Her
personal interest in the passion, however, provoked her to inquire, in
the next breath, 'Who is it? Do tell, Joey.'
'No bigger than I! What hev bigness to do with it? That's just like your
old-fashioned notions. Bigness is no more wanted in courting nowadays
than in soldiering or smoking or any other duty of man. Husbands is
rare; and a promising courter who means business will fetch his price in
these times, big or small, I assure ye. I might have been engaged a
dozen times over as far as the bigness goes. You should see what a
miserable little fellow my rival is afore you talk like that. Now you
know I've got a rival, perhaps you'll own there must be something in
it.'
'Yes, that seems like the real thing. But who is the young woman?'
'Well, I don't mind telling you, Picotee. It is Mrs. Doncastle's new
maid. I called to see father last night, and had supper there; and you
should have seen how lovely she were-eating sparrowgrass sideways, as if
she were born to it. But, of course, there's a rival-there always is-I
might have known that, and I will crush him!'
'But Mrs. Doncastle's new maid-if that was she I caught a glimpse of the
other day-is ever so much older than you-a dozen years.'
'What's that to a man in love? Pooh-I wish you would leave me, Picotee;
I wants to be alone.'
A short time after this Picotee was in the company of Ethelberta, and
she took occasion to mention Joey's attachment. Ethelberta grew
exceedingly angry directly she heard of it.
'What a fearful nuisance that boy is becoming,' she said. 'Does father
know anything of this?'
'I think not,' said Picotee. 'O no, he cannot; he would not allow any
such thing to go on; she is so much older than Joey.'
'I should think he wouldn't allow it! The fact is I must be more strict
about this growing friendliness between you all and the Doncastle
servants. There shall be absolutely no intimacy or visiting of any sort.
When father wants to see any of you he must come here, unless there is a
most serious reason for your calling upon him. Some disclosure or
reference to me otherwise than as your mistress, will certainly be made
else, and then I am ruined. I will speak to father myself about Joey's
absurd nonsense this evening. I am going to see him on another matter.'
And Ethelberta sighed. 'I am to dine there on Thursday,' she added.
'To dine there, Berta? Well, that is a strange thing! Why, father will
be close to you!'
'Yes,' said Ethelberta quietly.
'How I should like to see you sitting at a grand dinner-table, among
lordly dishes and shining people, and father about the room unnoticed!
Berta, I have never seen a dinner-party in my life, and father said that
I should some day; he promised me long ago.'
'How will he be able to carry out that, my dear child?' said Ethelberta,
drawing her sister gently to her side.
'Father says that for an hour and a half the guests are quite fixed in
the dining-room, and as unlikely to move as if they were trees planted
round the table. Do let me go and see you, Berta,' Picotee added
coaxingly. 'I would give anything to see how you look in the midst of
elegant people talking and laughing, and you my own sister all the time,
and me looking on like puss-in-the-corner.'
Ethelberta could hardly resist the entreaty, in spite of her recent
resolution.
'We will leave that to be considered when I come home to-night,' she
said. 'I must hear what father says.'
After dark the same evening a woman, dressed in plain black and wearing
a hood, went to the servants' entrance of Mr. Doncastle's house, and
inquired for Mr. Chickerel. Ethelberta found him in a room by himself,
and on entering she closed the door behind her, and unwrapped her face.
'Can you sit with me a few minutes, father?' she said.
'Yes, for a quarter of an hour or so,' said the butler. 'Has anything
happened? I thought it might be Picotee.'
'No. All's well yet. But I thought it best to see you upon one or two
matters which are harassing me a little just now. The first is, that
stupid boy Joey has got entangled in some way with the lady's-maid at
this house; a ridiculous affair it must be by all account, but it is too
serious for me to treat lightly. She will worm everything out of him,
and a pretty business it will be then.'
'God bless my soul! why, the woman is old enough to be his mother! I
have never heard a sound of it till now. What do you propose to do?'
'I have hardly thought: I cannot tell at all. But we will consider that
after I have done. The next thing is, I am to dine here Thursday-that
is, to-morrow.'
'You going to dine here, are you?' said her father in surprise. 'Dear
me, that's news. We have a dinner-party to-morrow, but I was not aware
that you knew our people.'
'I have accepted the invitation,' said Ethelberta. 'But if you think I
had better stay away, I will get out of it by some means. Heavens! what
does that mean-will anybody come in?' she added, rapidly pulling up her
hood and jumping from the seat as the loud tones of a bell clanged forth
in startling proximity.
'O no-it is all safe,' said her father. 'It is the area door-nothing to
do with me. About the dinner: I don't see why you may not come. Of
course you will take no notice of me, nor shall I of you. It is to be
rather a large party. Lord What's-his-name is coming, and several good
people.'
'Yes; he is coming to meet me, it appears. But, father,' she said more
softly and slowly, 'how wrong it will be for me to come so close to you,
and never recognize you! I don't like it. I wish you could have given up
service by this time; it would have been so much less painful for us all
round. I thought we might have been able to manage it somehow.'
'Nonsense, nonsense,' said Mr. Chickerel crossly. 'There is not the
least reason why I should give up. I want to save a little money first.
If you don't like me as I am, you must keep away from me. Don't be
uneasy about my comfort; I am right enough, thank God. I can mind myself
for many a year yet.'
Ethelberta looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she did not speak.
She never could help crying when she met her father here.
'I have been in service now for more than seven-and-thirty years,' her
father went on. 'It is an honourable calling; and why should you
maintain me because you can earn a few pounds by your gifts, and an old
woman left you her house and a few sticks of furniture? If she had left
you any money it would have been a different thing, but as you have to
work for every penny you get, I cannot think of it. Suppose I should
agree to come and live with you, and then you should be ill, or such
like, and I no longer able to help myself? O no, I'll stick where I am,
for here I am safe as to food and shelter at any rate. Surely,
Ethelberta, it is only right that I, who ought to keep you all, should
at least keep your mother and myself? As to our position, that we cannot
help; and I don't mind that you are unable to own me.'
'I wish I could own you-all of you.'
'Well, you chose your course, my dear; and you must abide by it. Having
put your hand to the plough, it will be foolish to turn back.'
'It would, I suppose. Yet I wish I could get a living by some simple
humble occupation, and drop the name of Petherwin, and be Berta
Chickerel again, and live in a green cottage as we used to do when I was
small. I am miserable to a pitiable degree sometimes, and sink into
regrets that I ever fell into such a groove as this. I don't like covert
deeds, such as coming here to-night, and many are necessary with me from
time to time. There is something without which splendid energies are a
drug; and that is a cold heart. There is another thing necessary to
energy, too-the power of distinguishing your visions from your
reasonable forecasts when looking into the future, so as to allow your
energy to lay hold of the forecasts only. I begin to have a fear that
mother is right when she implies that I undertook to carry out visions
and all. But ten of us are so many to cope with. If God Almighty had
only killed off three-quarters of us when we were little, a body might
have done something for the rest; but as we are it is hopeless!'
'There is no use in your going into high doctrine like that,' said
Chickerel. 'As I said before, you chose your course. You have begun to
fly high, and you had better keep there.'
'And to do that there is only one way-that is, to do it surely, so that
I have some groundwork to enable me to keep up to the mark in my
profession. That way is marriage.'
'Marriage? Who are you going to marry?'
'God knows. Perhaps Lord Mountclere. Stranger things have happened.'
'Yes, so they have; though not many wretcheder things. I would sooner
see you in your grave, Ethelberta, than Lord Mountclere's wife, or the
wife of anybody like him, great as the honour would be.'
'Of course that was only something to say; I don't know the man even.'
'I know his valet. However, marry who you may, I hope you'll be happy,
my dear girl. You would be still more divided from us in that event; but
when your mother and I are dead, it will make little difference.'
Ethelberta placed her hand upon his shoulder, and smiled cheerfully.
'Now, father, don't despond. All will be well, and we shall see no such
misfortune as that for many a year. Leave all to me. I am a rare hand at
contrivances.'
'You are indeed, Berta. It seems to me quite wonderful that we should be
living so near together and nobody suspect the relationship, because of
the precautions you have taken.'
'Yet the precautions were rather Lady Petherwin's than mine, as you
know. Consider how she kept me abroad. My marriage being so secret made
it easy to cut off all traces, unless anybody had made it a special
business to search for them. That people should suspect as yet would be
by far the more wonderful thing of the two. But we must, for one thing,
have no visiting between our girls and the servants here, or they soon
will suspect.'
Ethelberta then laid down a few laws on the subject, and, explaining the
other details of her visit, told her father soon that she must leave
him.
He took her along the passage and into the area. They were standing at
the bottom of the steps, saying a few parting words about Picotee's
visit to see the dinner, when a female figure appeared by the railing
above, slipped in at the gate, and flew down the steps past the father
and daughter. At the moment of passing she whispered breathlessly to
him, 'Is that you, Mr. Chickerel?'
'Yes,' said the butler.
She tossed into his arms a quantity of wearing apparel, and adding,
'Please take them upstairs for me-I am late,' rushed into the house.
'Good heavens, what does that mean?' said Ethelberta, holding her
father's arm in her uneasiness.
'That's the new lady's-maid, just come in from an evening walk-that
young scamp's sweetheart, if what you tell me is true. I don't yet know
what her character is, but she runs neck and neck with time closer than
any woman I ever met. She stays out at night like this till the last
moment, and often throws off her dashing courting-clothes in this way,
as she runs down the steps, to save a journey to the top of the house to
her room before going to Mrs. Doncastle's, who is in fact at this minute
waiting for her. Only look here.' Chickerel gathered up a hat decked
with feathers and flowers, a parasol, and a light muslin train-skirt,
out of the pocket of the latter tumbling some long golden tresses of
hair.
'What an extraordinary woman,' said Ethelberta. 'A perfect Cinderella.
The idea of Joey getting desperate about a woman like that; no doubt she
has just come in from meeting him.'
'No doubt-a blockhead. That's his taste, is it! I'll soon see if I can't
cure his taste if it inclines towards Mrs. Menlove.'
'Mrs. what?'
'Menlove; that's her name. She came about a fortnight ago.'
'And is that Menlove-what shall we do!' exclaimed Ethelberta. 'The idea
of the boy singling out her-why it is ruin to him, to me, and to us
all!'
She hastily explained to her father that Menlove had been Lady
Petherwin's maid and her own at some time before the death of her
mother-in-law, that she had only stayed with them through a three
months' tour because of her flightiness, and hence had learnt nothing of
Ethelberta's history, and probably had never thought at all about it.
But nevertheless they were as well acquainted as a lady and her maid
well could be in the time. 'Like all such doubtful characters,'
continued Ethelberta, 'she was one of the cleverest and lightest-handed
women we ever had about us. When she first came, my hair was getting
quite weak; but by brushing it every day in a peculiar manner, and
treating it as only she knew how, she brought it into splendid
condition.'
'Well, this is the devil to pay, upon my life!' said Mr. Chickerel, with
a miserable gaze at the bundle of clothes and the general situation at
the same time. 'Unfortunately for her friendship, I have snubbed her two
or three times already, for I don't care about her manner. You know she
has a way of trading on a man's sense of honour till it puts him into an
awkward position. She is perfectly well aware that, whatever scrape I
find her out in, I shall not have the conscience to report her, because
I am a man, and she is a defenceless woman; and so she takes advantage
of one's feeling by making me, or either of the menservants, her bottle-
holder, as you see she has done now.'
'This is all simply dreadful,' said Ethelberta. 'Joey is shrewd and
trustworthy; but in the hands of such a woman as that! I suppose she did
not recognize me.'
'There was no chance of that in the dark.'
'Well, I cannot do anything in it,' said she. 'I cannot manage Joey at
all.'
'I will see if I can,' said Mr. Chickerel. 'Courting at his age, indeed-
what shall we hear next!'
Chickerel then accompanied his daughter along the street till an empty
cab passed them, and putting her into it he returned to the house again.
29. ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM-MR. DONCASTLE'S HOUSE
The dressing of Ethelberta for the dinner-party was an undertaking into
which Picotee threw her whole skill as tirewoman. Her energies were
brisker that day than they had been at any time since the Julians first
made preparations for departure from town; for a letter had come to her
from Faith, telling of their arrival at the old cathedral city, which
was found to suit their inclinations and habits infinitely better than
London; and that she would like Picotee to visit them there some day.
Picotee felt, and so probably felt the writer of the letter, that such a
visit would not be very practicable just now; but it was a pleasant
idea, and for fastening dreams upon was better than nothing.
Such musings were encouraged also by Ethelberta's remarks as the
dressing went on.
'We will have a change soon,' she said; 'we will go out of town for a
few days. It will do good in many ways. I am getting so alarmed about
the health of the children; their faces are becoming so white and thin
and pinched that an old acquaintance would hardly know them; and they
were so plump when they came. You are looking as pale as a ghost, and I
daresay I am too. A week or two at Knollsea will see us right.'
'O, how charming!' said Picotee gladly.
Knollsea was a village on the coast, not very far from Melchester, the
new home of Christopher; not very far, that is to say, in the eye of a
sweetheart; but seeing that there was, as the crow flies, a stretch of
thirty-five miles between the two places, and that more than one-third
the distance was without a railway, an elderly gentleman might have
considered their situations somewhat remote from each other.
'Why have you chosen Knollsea?' inquired Picotee.
'Because of aunt's letter from Rouen-have you seen it?'
'I did not read it through.'
'She wants us to get a copy of the register of her baptism; and she is
not absolutely certain which of the parishes in and about Knollsea they
were living in when she was born. Mother, being a year younger, cannot
tell of course. First I thought of writing to the clergyman of each
parish, but that would be troublesome, and might reveal the secret of my
birth; but if we go down there for a few days, and take some lodgings,
we shall be able to find out all about it at leisure. Gwendoline and
Joey can attend to mother and the people downstairs, especially as
father will look in every evening until he goes out of town, to see if
they are getting on properly. It will be such a weight off my soul to
slip away from acquaintances here.'
'Will it?'
'Yes. At the same time I ought not to speak so, for they have been very
kind. I wish we could go to Rouen afterwards; aunt repeats her
invitation as usual. However, there is time enough to think of that.'
Ethelberta was dressed at last, and, beholding the lonely look of poor
Picotee when about to leave the room, she could not help having a
sympathetic feeling that it was rather hard for her sister to be denied
so small an enjoyment as a menial peep at a feast when she herself was
to sit down to it as guest.
'If you still want to go and see the procession downstairs you may do
so,' she said reluctantly; 'provided that you take care of your tongue
when you come in contact with Menlove, and adhere to father's
instructions as to how long you may stay. It may be in the highest
degree unwise; but never mind, go.'
Then Ethelberta departed for the scene of action, just at the hour of
the sun's lowest decline, when it was fading away, yellow and mild as
candle-light, and when upper windows facing north-west reflected to
persons in the street dissolving views of tawny cloud with brazen edges,
the original picture of the same being hidden from sight by soiled walls
and slaty slopes.
Before entering the presence of host and hostess, Ethelberta contrived
to exchange a few words with her father.
'In excellent time,' he whispered, full of paternal pride at the superb
audacity of her situation here in relation to his. 'About half of them
are come.'
'Mr. Neigh?'
'Not yet; he's coming.'
'Lord Mountclere?'
'Yes. He came absurdly early; ten minutes before anybody else, so that
Mrs. D. could hardly get on her bracelets and things soon enough to
scramble downstairs and receive him; and he's as nervous as a boy. Keep
up your spirits, dear, and don't mind me.'
'I will, father. And let Picotee see me at dinner if you can. She is
very anxious to look at me. She will be here directly.'
And Ethelberta, having been announced, joined the chamberful of
assembled guests, among whom for the present we lose sight of her.
Meanwhile the evening outside the house was deepening in tone, and the
lamps began to bHANDlink up. Her sister having departed, Picotee hastily
arrayed herself in a little black jacket and chip hat, and tripped
across the park to the same point. Chickerel had directed a maid-servant
known as Jane to receive his humbler daughter and make her comfortable;
and that friendly person, who spoke as if she had known Picotee five-
and-twenty years, took her to the housekeeper's room, where the visitor
deposited her jacket and hat, and rested awhile.
A quick-eyed, light-haired, slight-built woman came in when Jane had
gone. 'Are you Miss Chickerel?' she said to Picotee.
'Yes,' said Picotee, guessing that this was Menlove, and fearing her a
little.
'Jane tells me that you have come to visit your father, and would like
to look at the company going to dinner. Well, they are not much to see,
you know; but such as they are you are welcome to the sight of. Come
along with me.'
'I think I would rather wait for father, if you will excuse me, please.'
'Your father is busy now; it is no use for you to think of saying
anything to him.'
Picotee followed her guide up a back staircase to the height of several
flights, and then, crossing a landing, they descended to the upper part
of the front stairs.
'Now look over the balustrade, and you will see them all in a minute,'
said Mrs. Menlove. 'O, you need not be timid; you can look out as far as
you like. We are all independent here; no slavery for us: it is not as
it is in the country, where servants are considered to be of different
blood and bone from their employers, and to have no eyes for anything
but their work. Here they are coming.'
Picotee then had the pleasure of looking down upon a series of human
crowns-some black, some white, some strangely built upon, some smooth
and shining-descending the staircase in disordered column and great
discomfort, their owners trying to talk, but breaking off in the midst
of syllables to look to their footing. The young girl's eyes had not
drooped over the handrail more than a few moments when she softly
exclaimed, 'There she is, there she is! How lovely she looks, does she
not?'
'Who?' said Mrs. Menlove.
Picotee recollected herself, and hastily drew in her impulses. 'My dear
mistress,' she said blandly. 'That is she on Mr. Doncastle's arm. And
look, who is that funny old man the elderly lady is helping downstairs?'
'He is our honoured guest, Lord Mountclere. Mrs. Doncastle will have him
all through the dinner, and after that he will devote himself to Mrs.
Petherwin, your "dear mistress." He keeps looking towards her now, and
no doubt thinks it a nuisance that she is not with him. Well, it is
useless to stay here. Come a little further-we'll follow them.' Menlove
began to lead the way downstairs, but Picotee held back.
'Won't they see us?' she said.
'No. And if they do, it doesn't matter. Mrs. Doncastle would not object
in the least to the daughter of her respected head man being
accidentally seen in the hall.'
They descended to the bottom and stood in the hall. 'O, there's father!'
whispered Picotee, with childlike gladness, as Chickerel became visible
to her by the door. The butler nodded to his daughter, and became again
engrossed in his duties.
'I wish I could see her-my mistress-again,' said Picotee.
'You seem mightily concerned about your mistress,' said Menlove. 'Do you
want to see if you have dressed her properly?'
'Yes, partly; and I like her, too. She is very kind to me.'
'You will have a chance of seeing her soon. When the door is nicely open
you can look in for a moment. I must leave you now for a few minutes,
but I will come again.'
Menlove departed, and Picotee stood waiting. She wondered how Ethelberta
was getting on, and whether she enjoyed herself as much as it seemed her
duty to do in such a superbly hospitable place. Picotee then turned her
attention to the hall, every article of furniture therein appearing
worthy of scrutiny to her unaccustomed eyes. Here she walked and looked
about for a long time till an excellent opportunity offered itself of
seeing how affairs progressed in the dining-room.
Through the partly-opened door there became visible a sideboard which
first attracted her attention by its richness. It was, indeed, a
noticeable example of modern art-workmanship, in being exceptionally
large, with curious ebony mouldings at different stages; and, while the
heavy cupboard doors at the bottom were enriched with inlays of paler
wood, other panels were decorated with tiles, as if the massive
composition had been erected on the spot as part of the solid building.
However, it was on a space higher up that Picotee's eyes and thoughts
were fixed. In the great mirror above the middle ledge she could see
reflected the upper part of the dining-room, and this suggested to her
that she might see Ethelberta and the other guests reflected in the same
way by standing on a chair, which, quick as thought, she did.
To Picotee's dazed young vision her beautiful sister appeared as the
chief figure of a glorious pleasure-parliament of both sexes, surrounded
by whole regiments of candles grouped here and there about the room. She
and her companions were seated before a large flowerbed, or small
hanging garden, fixed at about the level of the elbow, the attention of
all being concentrated rather upon the uninteresting margin of the bed,
and upon each other, than on the beautiful natural objects growing in
the middle, as it seemed to Picotee. In the ripple of conversation
Ethelberta's clear voice could occasionally be heard, and her young
sister could see that her eyes were bright, and her face beaming, as if
divers social wants and looming penuriousness had never been within her
experience. Mr. Doncastle was quite absorbed in what she was saying. So
was the queer old man whom Menlove had called Lord Mountclere.
'The dashing widow looks very well, does she not?' said a person at
Picotee's elbow.
It was her conductor Menlove, now returned again, whom Picotee had quite
forgotten.
'She will do some damage here to-night you will find,' continued
Menlove. 'How long have you been with her?'
'O, a long time-I mean rather a short time,' stammered Picotee.
'I know her well enough. I was her maid once, or rather her mother-in-
law's, but that was long before you knew her. I did not by any means
find her so lovable as you seem to think her when I had to do with her
at close quarters. An awful flirt-awful. Don't you find her so?'
'I don't know.'
'If you don't yet you will know. But come down from your perch-the
dining-room door will not be open again for some time-and I will show
you about the rooms upstairs. This is a larger house than Mrs.
Petherwin's, as you see. Just come and look at the drawing-rooms.'
Wishing much to get rid of Menlove, yet fearing to offend her, Picotee
followed upstairs. Dinner was almost over by this time, and when they
entered the front drawing-room a young man-servant and maid were there
rekindling the lights.
'Now let's have a game of cat-and-mice,' said the maid-servant cheerily.
'There's plenty of time before they come up.'
'Agreed,' said Menlove promptly. 'You will play, will you not, Miss
Chickerel?'
'No, indeed,' said Picotee, aghast.
'Never mind, then; you look on.'
Away then ran the housemaid and Menlove, and the young footman started
at their heels. Round the room, over the furniture, under the furniture,
through the furniture, out of one window, along the balcony, in at
another window, again round the room-so they glided with the swiftness
of swallows and the noiselessness of ghosts.
Then the housemaid drew a jew's-harp from her pocket, and struck up a
lively waltz sotto voce. The footman seized Menlove, who appeared
nothing loth, and began spinning gently round the room with her, to the
time of the fascinating measure
'Which fashion hails, from countesses to queens, And maids and valets
dance behind the scenes.'
Picotee, who had been accustomed to unceiled country cottages all her
life, wherein the scamper of a mouse is heard distinctly from floor to
floor, exclaimed in a terrified whisper, at viewing all this, 'They'll
hear you underneath, they'll hear you, and we shall all be ruined!'
'Not at all,' came from the cautious dancers. 'These are some of the
best built houses in London-double floors, filled in with material that
will deaden any row you like to make, and we make none. But come and
have a turn yourself, Miss Chickerel.'
The young man relinquished Menlove, and on the spur of the moment seized
Picotee. Picotee flounced away from him in indignation, backing into a
corner with ruffled feathers, like a pullet trying to appear a hen.
'How dare you touch me!' she said, with rounded eyes. 'I'll tell
somebody downstairs of you, who'll soon see about it!'
'What a baby; she'll tell her father.'
'No I shan't; somebody you are all afraid of, that's who I'll tell.'
'Nonsense,' said Menlove; 'he meant no harm.'
Playtime was now getting short, and further antics being dangerous on
that account, the performers retired again downstairs, Picotee of
necessity following. Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of
uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were
quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing
so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from
their shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill-
sometimes doing heavy work, sometimes none; teasing and worrying with
impish laughter half suppressed, and vanishing directly mortal eyes were
bent on them. Separate and distinct from overt existence under the sun,
this life could hardly be without its distinctive pleasures, all of them
being more or less pervaded by thrills and titillations from games of
hazard, and the perpetual risk of sensational surprises.
Long before this time Picotee had begun to be anxious to get home again,
but Menlove seemed particularly to desire her company, and pressed her
to sit awhile, telling her young friend, by way of entertainment, of
various extraordinary love adventures in which she had figured as
heroine when travelling on the Continent. These stories had one and all
a remarkable likeness in a certain point-Menlove was always unwilling to
love the adorer, and the adorer was always unwilling to live afterwards
on account of it.
'Ha-ha-ha!' in men's voices was heard from the distant dining-room as
the two women went on talking.
'And then,' continued Menlove, 'there was that duel I was the cause of
between the courier and the French valet. Dear me, what a trouble that
was; yet I could do nothing to prevent it. This courier was a very
handsome man-they are handsome sometimes.'
'Yes, they are. My aunt married one.'
'Did she? Where do they live?'
'They keep an hotel at Rouen,' murmured Picotee, in doubt whether this
should have been told or not.
'Well, he used to follow me to the English Church every Sunday
regularly, and I was so determined not to give my hand where my heart
could never be, that I slipped out at the other door while he stood
expecting me by the one I entered. Here I met M. Pierre, when, as ill
luck would have it, the other came round the corner, and seeing me
talking to the valet, he challenged him at once.'
'Ha-ha-ha!' was heard again afar.
'Did they fight?' said Picotee.
'Yes, I believe they did. We left Nice the next day; but I heard some
time after of a duel not many miles off, and although I could not get
hold of the names, I make no doubt it was between those two gentlemen. I
never knew which of them fell; poor fellow, whichever it was.'
'Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!' came from the dining-room.
'Whatever are those boozy men laughing at, I wonder?' said Menlove.
'They are always so noisy when the ladies have gone upstairs. Upon my
soul, I'll run up and find out.'
'No, no, don't,' entreated Picotee, putting her hand on her
entertainer's arm. 'It seems wrong; it is no concern of ours.'
'Wrong be hanged-anything on an impulse,' said Mrs. Menlove, skipping
across the room and out of the door, which stood open, as did others in
the house, the evening being sultry and oppressive.
Picotee waited in her seat until it occurred to her that she could
escape the lady's-maid by going off into her father's pantry in her
absence. But before this had been put into effect Menlove appeared
again.
'Such fun as they are having up there,' she said. 'Somebody asked Mr.
Neigh to tell a story which he had told at some previous time, but he
was very reluctant to do so, and pretended he could not recollect it.
Well, then, the other man-I could not distinguish him by his voice-began
telling it, to prompt Mr. Neigh's memory; and, as far as I could
understand, it was about some lady who thought Mr. Neigh was in love
with her, and, to find whether he was worth accepting or not, she went
with her maid at night to see his estate, and wandered about and got
lost, and was frightened, and I don't know what besides. Then Mr. Neigh
laughed too, and said he liked such common sense in a woman. No names
were mentioned, but I fancy, from the awkwardness of Mr. Neigh at being
compelled to tell it, that the lady is one of those in the drawing-room.
I should like to know which it was.'
'I know-have heard something about it,' said Picotee, blushing with
anger. 'It was nothing at all like that. I wonder Mr. Neigh had the
audacity ever to talk of the matter, and to misrepresent it so greatly!'
'Tell all about it, do,' said Menlove.
'O no,' said Picotee. 'I promised not to say a word.'
'It is your mistress, I expect.'
'You may think what you like; but the lady is anything but a mistress of
mine.'
The flighty Menlove pressed her to tell the whole story, but finding
this useless the subject was changed. Presently her father came in, and,
taking no notice of Menlove, told his daughter that she had been called
for. Picotee very readily put on her things, and on going outside found
Joey awaiting her. Mr. Chickerel followed closely, with sharp glances
from the corner of his eye, and it was plain from Joey's nervous manner
of lingering in the shadows of the area doorway instead of entering the
house, that the butler had in some way set himself to prevent all
communion between the fair lady's-maid and his son for that evening at
least.
He watched Picotee and her brother off the premises, and the pair went
on their way towards Exonbury Crescent, very few words passing between
them. Picotee's thoughts had turned to the proposed visit to Knollsea,
and Joey was sulky under disappointment and the blank of thwarted
purposes.
30. ON THE HOUSETOP
'Picotee, are you asleep?' Ethelberta whispered softly at dawn the next
morning, by the half-opened door of her sister's bedroom.
'No, I keep waking, it is so warm.'
'So do I. Suppose we get up and see the sun rise. The east is filling
with flame.'
'Yes, I should like it,' said Picotee.
The restlessness which had brought Ethelberta hither in slippers and
dressing-gown at such an early hour owed its origin to another cause
than the warmth of the weather; but of that she did not speak as yet.
Picotee's room was an attic, with windows in the roof-a chamber dismal
enough at all times, and very shadowy now. While Picotee was wrapping
up, Ethelberta placed a chair under the window, and mounting upon this
they stepped outside, and seated themselves within the parapet.
The air was as clear and fresh as on a mountain side; sparrows
chattered, and birds of a species unsuspected at later hours could be
heard singing in the park hard by, while here and there on ridges and
flats a cat might be seen going calmly home from the devilries of the
night to resume the amiabilities of the day.
'I am so sorry I was asleep when you reached home,' said Picotee. 'I was
so anxious to tell you something I heard of, and to know what you did;
but my eyes would shut, try as I might, and then I tried no longer. Did
you see me at all, Berta?'
'Never once. I had an impression that you were there. I fancied you were
from father's carefully vacuous look whenever I glanced at his face. But
were you careful about what you said, and did you see Menlove? I felt
all the time that I had done wrong in letting you come; the
gratification to you was not worth the risk to me.'
'I saw her, and talked to her. But I am certain she suspected nothing. I
enjoyed myself very much, and there was no risk at all.'
'I am glad it is no worse news. However, you must not go there again:
upon that point I am determined.'
'It was a good thing I did go, all the same. I'll tell you why when you
have told me what happened to you.'
'Nothing of importance happened to me.'
'I expect you got to know the lord you were to meet?'
'O yes-Lord Mountclere.'
'And it's dreadful how fond he is of you-quite ridiculously taken up
with you-I saw that well enough. Such an old man, too; I wouldn't have
him for the world!'
'Don't jump at conclusions so absurdly, Picotee. Why wouldn't you have
him for the world?'
'Because he is old enough to be my grandfather, and yours too.'
'Indeed he is not; he is only middle-aged.'
'O Berta! Sixty-five at least.'
'He may or may not be that; and if he is, it is not old. He is so
entertaining that one forgets all about age in connection with him.'
'He laughs like this-"Hee-hee-hee!"' Picotee introduced as much
antiquity into her face as she could by screwing it up and suiting the
action to the word.
'This very odd thing occurred,' said Ethelberta, to get Picotee off the
track of Lord Mountclere's peculiarities, as it seemed. 'I was saying to
Mr. Neigh that we were going to Knollsea for a time, feeling that he
would not be likely to know anything about such an out-of-the-way place,
when Lord Mountclere, who was near, said, "I shall be at Enckworth Court
in a few days, probably at the time you are at Knollsea. The Imperial
Archaeological Association holds its meetings in that part of Wessex
this season, and Corvsgate Castle, near Knollsea, is one of the places
on our list." Then he hoped I should be able to attend. Did you ever
hear anything so strange? Now, I should like to attend very much, not on
Lord Mountclere's account, but because such gatherings are interesting,
and I have never been to one; yet there is this to be considered, would
it be right for me to go without a friend to such a place? Another point
is, that we shall live in menagerie style at Knollsea for the sake of
the children, and we must do it economically in case we accept Aunt
Charlotte's invitation to Rouen; hence, if he or his friends find us out
there it will be awkward for me. So the alternative is Knollsea or some
other place for us.'
'Let it be Knollsea, now we have once settled it,' said Picotee
anxiously. 'I have mentioned to Faith Julian that we shall be there.'
'Mentioned it already! You must have written instantly.'
'I had a few minutes to spare, and I thought I might as well write.'
'Very well; we will stick to Knollsea,' said Ethelberta, half in doubt.
'Yes-otherwise it will be difficult to see about aunt's baptismal
certificate. We will hope nobody will take the trouble to pry into our
household. . . . And now, Picotee, I want to ask you something-something
very serious. How would you like me to marry Mr. Neigh?'
Ethelberta could not help laughing with a faint shyness as she asked the
question under the searching east ray. 'He has asked me to marry him,'
she continued, 'and I want to know what you would say to such an
arrangement. I don't mean to imply that the event is certain to take
place; but, as a mere supposition, what do you say to it, Picotee?'
Ethelberta was far from putting this matter before Picotee for advice or
opinion; but, like all people who have an innate dislike to hole-and-
corner policy, she felt compelled to speak of it to some one.
'I should not like him for you at all,' said Picotee vehemently. 'I
would rather you had Mr. Ladywell.'
'O, don't name him!'
'I wouldn't have Mr. Neigh at any price, nevertheless. It is about him
that I was going to tell you.' Picotee proceeded to relate Menlove's
account of the story of Ethelberta's escapade, which had been dragged
from Neigh the previous evening by the friend to whom he had related it
before he was so enamoured of Ethelberta as to regard that performance
as a positive virtue in her. 'Nobody was told, or even suspected, who
the lady of the anecdote was,' Picotee concluded; 'but I knew instantly,
of course, and I think it very unfortunate that we ever went to that
dreadful ghostly estate of his, Berta.'
Ethelberta's face heated with mortification. She had no fear that Neigh
had told names or other particulars which might lead to her
identification by any friend of his, and she could make allowance for
bursts of confidence; but there remained the awkward fact that he
himself knew her to be the heroine of the episode. What annoyed her most
was that Neigh could ever have looked upon her indiscretion as a
humorous incident, which he certainly must have done at some time or
other to account for his telling it. Had he been angry with her, or
sneered at her for going, she could have forgiven him; but to see her
manoeuvre in the light of a joke, to use it as illustrating his grim
theory of womankind, and neither to like nor to dislike her the more for
it from first to last, this was to treat her with a cynicism which was
intolerable. That Neigh's use of the incident as a stock anecdote ceased
long before he had decided to ask her to marry him she had no doubt, but
it showed that his love for her was of that sort in which passion makes
war upon judgment, and prevails in spite of will. Moreover, he might
have been speaking ironically when he alluded to the act as a virtue in
a woman, which seemed the more likely when she remembered his cool
bearing towards her in the drawing-room. Possibly it was an antipathetic
reaction, induced by the renewed recollection of her proceeding.
'I will never marry Mr. Neigh!' she said, with decision. 'That shall
settle it. You need not think over any such contingency, Picotee. He is
one of those horrid men who love with their eyes, the remainder part of
him objecting all the time to the feeling; and even if his objections
prove the weaker, and the man marries, his general nature conquers again
by the time the wedding trip is over, so that the woman is miserable at
last, and had better not have had him at all.'
'That applies still more to Lord Mountclere, to my thinking. I never saw
anything like the look of his eyes upon you.'
'O no, no-you understand nothing if you say that. But one thing be sure
of, there is no marriage likely to take place between myself and Mr.
Neigh. I have longed for a sound reason for disliking him, and now I
have got it. Well, we will talk no more of this-let us think of the nice
little pleasure we have in store-our stay at Knollsea. There we will be
as free as the wind. And when we are down there, I can drive across to
Corvsgate Castle if I wish to attend the Imperial Association meeting,
and nobody will know where I came from. Knollsea is not more than five
miles from the Castle, I think.'
Picotee was by this time beginning to yawn, and Ethelberta did not feel
nearly so wakeful as she had felt half-an-hour earlier. Tall and swarthy
columns of smoke were now soaring up from the kitchen chimneys around,
spreading horizontally when at a great height, and forming a roof of
haze which was turning the sun to a copper colour, and by degrees
spoiling the sweetness of the new atmosphere that had rolled in from the
country during the night, giving it the usual city smell. The resolve to
make this rising the beginning of a long and busy day, which should set
them beforehand with the rest of the world, weakened with their growing
weariness, and an impulse to lie down just for a quarter of an hour
before dressing, ended in a sound sleep that did not relinquish its hold
upon them till late in the forenoon.
31. KNOLLSEA-A LOFTY DOWN-A RUINED CASTLE
Knollsea was a seaside village lying snug within two headlands as
between a finger and thumb. Everybody in the parish who was not a
boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half the
property and had been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who owned the
other half, and had been to sea.
The knowledge of the inhabitants was of the same special sort as their
pursuits. The quarrymen in white fustian understood practical geology,
the laws and accidents of dips, faults, and cleavage, far better than
the ways of the world and mammon; the seafaring men in Guernsey frocks
had a clearer notion of Alexandria, Constantinople, the Cape, and the
Indies than of any inland town in their own country. This, for them,
consisted of a busy portion, the Channel, where they lived and laboured,
and a dull portion, the vague unexplored miles of interior at the back
of the ports, which they seldom thought of.
Some wives of the village, it is true, had learned to let lodgings, and
others to keep shops. The doors of these latter places were formed of an
upper hatch, usually kept open, and a lower hatch, with a bell attached,
usually kept shut. Whenever a stranger went in, he would hear a
whispering of astonishment from a back room, after which a woman came
forward, looking suspiciously at him as an intruder, and advancing
slowly enough to allow her mouth to get clear of the meal she was
partaking of. Meanwhile the people in the back room would stop their
knives and forks in absorbed curiosity as to the reason of the
stranger's entry, who by this time feels ashamed of his unwarrantable
intrusion into this hermit's cell, and thinks he must take his hat off.
The woman is quite alarmed at seeing that he is not one of the fifteen
native women and children who patronize her, and nervously puts her hand
to the side of her face, which she carries slanting. The visitor finds
himself saying what he wants in an apologetic tone, when the woman tells
him that they did keep that article once, but do not now; that nobody
does, and probably never will again; and as he turns away she looks
relieved that the dilemma of having to provide for a stranger has passed
off with no worse mishap than disappointing him.
A cottage which stood on a high slope above this townlet and its bay
resounded one morning with the notes of a merry company. Ethelberta had
managed to find room for herself and her young relations in the house of
one of the boatmen, whose wife attended upon them all. Captain Flower,
the husband, assisted her in the dinner preparations, when he slipped
about the house as lightly as a girl and spoke of himself as cook's
mate. The house was so small that the sailor's rich voice, developed by
shouting in high winds during a twenty years' experience in the coasting
trade, could be heard coming from the kitchen between the chirpings of
the children in the parlour. The furniture of this apartment consisted
mostly of the painting of a full-rigged ship, done by a man whom the
captain had specially selected for the purpose because he had been
seven-and-twenty years at sea before touching a brush, and thereby
offered a sufficient guarantee that he understood how to paint a vessel
properly.
Before this picture sat Ethelberta in a light linen dress, and with
tightly-knotted hair-now again Berta Chickerel as of old-serving out
breakfast to the rest of the party, and sometimes lifting her eyes to
the outlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of
grange scenery with marine. Upon the irregular slope between the house
and the quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening
on the boughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because
that building chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun.
Under the trees were a few Cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys
of the village below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or
smack, and the violet waters of the bay, seamed and creased by breezes
insufficient to raise waves; beyond all a curved wall of cliff,
terminating in a promontory, which was flanked by tall and shining
obelisks of chalk rising sheer from the trembling blue race beneath.
By one sitting in the room that commanded this prospect, a white
butterfly among the apple-trees might be mistaken for the sails of a
yacht far away on the sea; and in the evening when the light was dim,
what seemed like a fly crawling upon the window-pane would turn out to
be a boat in the bay.
When breakfast was over, Ethelberta sat leaning on the window-sill
considering her movements for the day. It was the time fixed for the
meeting of the Imperial Association at Corvsgate Castle, the celebrated
ruin five miles off, and the meeting had some fascinations for her. For
one thing, she had never been present at a gathering of the kind,
although what was left in any shape from the past was her constant
interest, because it recalled her to herself and fortified her mind.
Persons waging a harassing social fight are apt in the interest of the
combat to forget the smallness of the end in view; and the hints that
perishing historical remnants afforded her of the attenuating effects of
time even upon great struggles corrected the apparent scale of her own.
She was reminded that in a strife for such a ludicrously small object as
the entry of drawing-rooms, winning, equally with losing, is below the
zero of the true philosopher's concern.
There could never be a more excellent reason than this for going to view
the meagre stumps remaining from flourishing bygone centuries, and it
had weight with Ethelberta this very day; but it would be difficult to
state the whole composition of her motive. The approaching meeting had
been one of the great themes at Mr. Doncastle's dinner-party, and Lord
Mountclere, on learning that she was to be at Knollsea, had recommended
her attendance at some, if not all of the meetings, as a desirable and
exhilarating change after her laborious season's work in town. It was
pleasant to have won her way so far in high places that her health of
body and mind should be thus considered-pleasant, less as personal
gratification, than that it casually reflected a proof of her good
judgment in a course which everybody among her kindred had condemned by
calling a foolhardy undertaking.
And she might go without the restraint of ceremony. Unconventionality-
almost eccentricity-was de rigueur for one who had been first heard of
as a poetess; from whose red lips magic romance had since trilled for
weeks to crowds of listeners, as from a perennial spring.
So Ethelberta went, after a considerable pondering how to get there
without the needless sacrifice either of dignity or cash. It would be
inconsiderate to the children to spend a pound on a brougham when as
much as she could spare was wanted for their holiday. It was almost too
far too walk. She had, however, decided to walk, when she met a boy with
a donkey, who offered to lend it to her for three shillings. The animal
was rather sad-looking, but Ethelberta found she could sit upon the pad
without discomfort. Considering that she might pull up some distance
short of the castle, and leave the ass at a cottage before joining her
four-wheeled friends, she struck the bargain and rode on her way.
This was, first by a path on the shore where the tide dragged huskily up
and down the shingle without disturbing it, and thence up the steep
crest of land opposite, whereon she lingered awhile to let the ass
breathe. On one of the spires of chalk into which the hill here had been
split was perched a cormorant, silent and motionless, with wings spread
out to dry in the sun after his morning's fishing, their white surface
shining like mail. Retiring without disturbing him and turning to the
left along the lofty ridge which ran inland, the country on each side
lay beneath her like a map, domains behind domains, parishes by the
score, harbours, fir-woods, and little inland seas mixing curiously
together. Thence she ambled along through a huge cemetery of barrows,
containing human dust from prehistoric times.
Standing on the top of a giant's grave in this antique land, Ethelberta
lifted her eyes to behold two sorts of weather pervading Nature at the
same time. Far below on the right hand it was a fine day, and the silver
sunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea which stretched round an
island with fir-trees and gorse, and amid brilliant crimson heaths
wherein white paths and roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and
zigzags like flashes of lightning. Outside, where the broad Channel
appeared, a berylline and opalized variegation of ripples, currents,
deeps, and shallows, lay as fair under the sun as a New Jerusalem, the
shores being of gleaming sand. Upon the radiant heather bees and
butterflies were busy, she knew, and the birds on that side were just
beginning their autumn songs.
On the left, quite up to her position, was dark and cloudy weather,
shading a valley of heavy greens and browns, which at its further side
rose to meet the sea in tall cliffs, suggesting even here at their back
how terrible were their aspects seaward in a growling southwest gale.
Here grassed hills rose like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and little
plantations between them formed a still deeper and sadder monochrome. A
zinc sky met a leaden sea on this hand, the low wind groaned and whined,
and not a bird sang.
The ridge along which Ethelberta rode divided these two climates like a
wall; it soon became apparent that they were wrestling for mastery
immediately in her pathway. The issue long remained doubtful, and this
being an imaginative hour with her, she watched as typical of her own
fortunes how the front of battle swayed-now to the west, flooding her
with sun, now to the east, covering her with shade: then the wind moved
round to the north, a blue hole appeared in the overhanging cloud, at
about the place of the north star; and the sunlight spread on both sides
of her.
The towers of the notable ruin to be visited rose out of the furthermost
shoulder of the upland as she advanced, its site being the slope and
crest of a smoothly nibbled mount at the toe of the ridge she had
followed. When observing the previous uncertainty of the weather on this
side Ethelberta had been led to doubt if the meeting would be held here
to-day, and she was now strengthened in her opinion that it would not by
the total absence of human figures amid the ruins, though the time of
appointment was past. This disposed of another question which had
perplexed her: where to find a stable for the ass during the meeting,
for she had scarcely liked the idea of facing the whole body of lords
and gentlemen upon the animal's back. She now decided to retain her
seat, ride round the ruin, and go home again, without troubling further
about the movements of the Association or acquaintance with the members
composing it.
Accordingly Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode under
the first archway into the outer ward. As she had expected, not a soul
was here. The arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her
eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit
to the spot. Ascending the green incline and through another arch into
the second ward, she still pressed on, till at last the ass was unable
to clamber an inch further. Here she dismounted, and tying him to a
stone which projected like a fang from a raw edge of wall, performed the
remainder of the ascent on foot. Once among the towers above, she became
so interested in the windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe
of daws peering invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot the
flight of time.
Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before she came out from the
immense walls, and looked from an opening to the front over the wide
expanse of the outer ward, by which she had ascended.
Ethelberta was taken aback to see there a file of shining carriages,
which had arrived during her seclusion in the keep. From these began to
burst a miscellany of many-coloured draperies, blue, buff, pied, and
black; they united into one, and crept up the incline like a cloud,
which then parted into fragments, dived into old doorways, and lost
substance behind projecting piles. Recognizing in this the ladies and
gentlemen of the meeting, her first thought was how to escape, for she
was suddenly overcome with dread to meet them all single-handed as she
stood. She drew back and hurried round to the side, as the laughter and
voices of the assembly began to be audible, and, more than ever vexed
that she could not have fallen in with them in some unobtrusive way,
Ethelberta found that they were immediately beneath her.
Venturing to peep forward again, what was her mortification at finding
them gathered in a ring, round no object of interest belonging to the
ruin, but round her faithful beast, who had loosened himself in some way
from the stone, and stood in the middle of a plat of grass, placidly
regarding them.
Being now in the teeth of the Association, there was nothing to do but
to go on, since, if she did not, the next few steps of their advance
would disclose her. She made the best of it, and began to descend in the
broad view of the assembly, from the midst of which proceeded a laugh-
'Hee-hee-hee!' Ethelberta knew that Lord Mountclere was there.
'The poor thing has strayed from its owner,' said one lady, as they all
stood eyeing the apparition of the ass.
'It may belong to some of the villagers,' said the President in a
historical voice: 'and it may be appropriate to mention that many were
kept here in olden times: they were largely used as beasts of burden in
victualling the castle previous to the last siege, in the year sixteen
hundred and forty-five.'
'It is very weary, and has come a long way, I think,' said a lady;
adding, in an imaginative tone, 'the humble creature looks so aged and
is so quaintly saddled that we may suppose it to be only an animated
relic, of the same date as the other remains.'
By this time Lord Mountclere had noticed Ethelberta's presence, and
straightening himself to ten years younger, he lifted his hat in answer
to her smile, and came up jauntily. It was a good time now to see what
the viscount was really like. He appeared to be about sixty-five, and
the dignified aspect which he wore to a gazer at a distance became
depreciated to jocund slyness upon nearer view, when the small type
could be read between the leading lines. Then it could be seen that his
upper lip dropped to a point in the middle, as if impressing silence
upon his too demonstrative lower one. His right and left profiles were
different, one corner of his mouth being more compressed than the other,
producing a deep line thence downwards to the side of his chin. Each
eyebrow rose obliquely outwards and upwards, and was thus far above the
little eye, shining with the clearness of a pond that has just been able
to weather the heats of summer. Below this was a preternaturally fat
jowl, which, by thrusting against cheeks and chin, caused the arch old
mouth to be almost buried at the corners.
A few words of greeting passed, and Ethelberta told him how she was
fearing to meet them all, united and primed with their morning's
knowledge as they appeared to be.
'Well, we have not done much yet,' said Lord Mountclere. 'As for myself,
I have given no thought at all to our day's work. I had not forgotten
your promise to attend, if you could possibly drive across, and-hee-hee-
hee!-I have frequently looked towards the hill where the road descends.
. . . Will you now permit me to introduce some of my party-as many of
them as you care to know by name? I think they would all like to speak
to you.'
Ethelberta then found herself nominally made known to ten or a dozen
ladies and gentlemen who had wished for special acquaintance with her.
She stood there, as all women stand who have made themselves remarkable
by their originality, or devotion to any singular cause, as a person
freed of her hampering and inconvenient sex, and, by virtue of her
popularity, unfettered from the conventionalities of manner prescribed
by custom for household womankind. The charter to move abroad
unchaperoned, which society for good reasons grants only to women of
three sorts-the famous, the ministering, and the improper-Ethelberta was
in a fair way to make splendid use of: instead of walking in protected
lanes she experienced that luxury of isolation which normally is enjoyed
by men alone, in conjunction with the attention naturally bestowed on a
woman young and fair. Among the presentations were Mr. and Mrs. Tynn,
member and member's mainspring for North Wessex; Sir Cyril and Lady
Blandsbury; Lady Jane Joy; and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere, the
viscount's brother. There also hovered near her the learned Doctor Yore;
Mr. Small, a profound writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend
Mr. Brook, rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, dean; and the
undoubtedly Reverend Mr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped into
the fold by chance.
These and others looked with interest at Ethelberta: the old county
fathers hard, as at a questionable town phenomenon, the county sons
tenderly, as at a pretty creature, and the county daughters with great
admiration, as at a lady reported by their mammas to be no better than
she should be. It will be seen that Ethelberta was the sort of woman
that well-rooted local people might like to look at on such a free and
friendly occasion as an archaeological meeting, where, to gratify a
pleasant whim, the picturesque form of acquaintance is for the nonce
preferred to the useful, the spirits being so brisk as to swerve from
strict attention to the select and sequent gifts of heaven, blood and
acres, to consider for an idle moment the subversive Mephistophelian
endowment, brains.
'Our progress in the survey of the castle has not been far as yet,' Lord
Mountclere resumed; 'indeed, we have only just arrived, the weather this
morning being so unsettled. When you came up we were engaged in a
preliminary study of the poor animal you see there: how it could have
got up here we cannot understand.'
He pointed as he spoke to the donkey which had brought Ethelberta
thither, whereupon she was silent, and gazed at her untoward beast as if
she had never before beheld him.
The ass looked at Ethelberta as though he would say, 'Why don't you own
me, after safely bringing you over those weary hills?' But the pride and
emulation which had made her what she was would not permit her, as the
most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule
that had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gaily
caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings
of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were too
much to endure.
'Many come and picnic here,' she said serenely, 'and the animal may have
been left till they return from some walk.'
'True,' said Lord Mountclere, without the slightest suspicion of the
truth. The humble ass hung his head in his usual manner, and it demanded
little fancy from Ethelberta to imagine that he despised her. And then
her mind flew back to her history and extraction, to her father-perhaps
at that moment inventing a private plate-powder in an underground
pantry-and with a groan at her inconsistency in being ashamed of the
ass, she said in her heart, 'My God, what a thing am I!'
They then all moved on to another part of the castle, the viscount
busying himself round and round her person like the head scraper at a
pig-killing; and as they went indiscriminately mingled, jesting lightly
or talking in earnest, she beheld ahead of her the form of Neigh among
the rest.
Now, there could only be one reason on earth for Neigh's presence-her
remark that she might attend-for Neigh took no more interest in
antiquities than in the back of the moon. Ethelberta was a little
flurried; perhaps he had come to scold her, or to treat her badly in
that indefinable way of his by which he could make a woman feel as
nothing without any direct act at all. She was afraid of him, and,
determining to shun him, was thankful that Lord Mountclere was near, to
take off the edge of Neigh's manner towards her if he approached.
'Do you know in what part of the ruins the lecture is to be given?' she
said to the viscount.
'Wherever you like,' he replied gallantly. 'Do you propose a place, and
I will get Dr. Yore to adopt it. Say, shall it be here, or where they
are standing?'
How could Ethelberta refrain from exercising a little power when it was
put into her hands in this way?
'Let it be here,' she said, 'if it makes no difference to the meeting.'
'It shall be,' said Lord Mountclere.
And then the lively old nobleman skipped like a roe to the President and
to Dr. Yore, who was to read the paper on the castle, and they soon
appeared coming back to where the viscount's party and Ethelberta were
beginning to seat themselves. The bulk of the company followed, and Dr.
Yore began.
He must have had a countenance of leather-as, indeed, from his colour he
appeared to have-to stand unmoved in his position, and read, and look up
to give explanations, without a change of muscle, under the dozens of
bright eyes that were there converged upon him, like the sticks of a
fan, from the ladies who sat round him in a semicircle upon the grass.
However, he went on calmly, and the women sheltered themselves from the
heat with their umbrellas and sunshades, their ears lulled by the hum of
insects, and by the drone of the doctor's voice. The reader buzzed on
with the history of the castle, tracing its development from a mound
with a few earthworks to its condition in Norman times; he related
monkish marvels connected with the spot; its resistance under Matilda to
Stephen, its probable shape while a residence of King John, and the sad
story of the Damsel of Brittany, sister of his victim Arthur, who was
confined here in company with the two daughters of Alexander, king of
Scotland. He went on to recount the confinement of Edward II. herein,
previous to his murder at Berkeley, the gay doings in the reign of
Elizabeth, and so downward through time to the final overthrow of the
stern old pile. As he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at
the various features appertaining to the date of his story, which he
told with splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his
narrative, particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it
became coloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments
of history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easy
for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were
thrown back, and complexions forgotten, in the interest of the history.
The doctor's face was then no longer criticized as a rugged boulder, a
dried fig, an oak carving, or a walnut shell, but became blotted out
like a mountain top in a shining haze by the nebulous pictures conjured
by his tale.
Then the lecture ended, and questions were asked, and individuals of the
company wandered at will, the light dresses of the ladies sweeping over
the hot grass and brushing up thistledown which had hitherto lain
quiescent, so that it rose in a flight from the skirts of each like a
comet's tail.
Some of Lord Mountclere's party, including himself and Ethelberta,
wandered now into a cool dungeon, partly open to the air overhead, where
long arms of ivy hung between their eyes and the white sky. While they
were here, Lady Jane Joy and some other friends of the viscount told
Ethelberta that they were probably coming on to Knollsea.
She instantly perceived that getting into close quarters in that way
might be very inconvenient, considering the youngsters she had under her
charge, and straightway decided upon a point that she had debated for
several days-a visit to her aunt in Normandy. In London it had been a
mere thought, but the Channel had looked so tempting from its brink that
the journey was virtually fixed as soon as she reached Knollsea, and
found that a little pleasure steamer crossed to Cherbourg once a week
during the summer, so that she would not have to enter the crowded
routes at all.
'I am afraid I shall not see you in Knollsea,' she said. 'I am about to
go to Cherbourg and then to Rouen.'
'How sorry I am. When do you leave?'
'At the beginning of next week,' said Ethelberta, settling the time
there and then.
'Did I hear you say that you were going to Cherbourg and Rouen?' Lord
Mountclere inquired.
'I think to do so,' said Ethelberta.
'I am going to Normandy myself,' said a voice behind her, and without
turning she knew that Neigh was standing there.
They next went outside, and Lord Mountclere offered Ethelberta his arm
on the ground of assisting her down the burnished grass slope.
Ethelberta, taking pity upon him, took it; but the assistance was all on
her side; she stood like a statue amid his slips and totterings, some of
which taxed her strength heavily, and her ingenuity more, to appear as
the supported and not the supporter. The incident brought Neigh still
further from his retirement, and she learnt that he was one of a
yachting party which had put in at Knollsea that morning; she was
greatly relieved to find that he was just now on his way to London,
whence he would probably proceed on his journey abroad.
Ethelberta adhered as well as she could to her resolve that Neigh should
not speak with her alone, but by dint of perseverance he did manage to
address her without being overheard.
'Will you give me an answer?' said Neigh. 'I have come on purpose.'
'I cannot just now. I have been led to doubt you.'
'Doubt me? What new wrong have I done?'
'Spoken jestingly of my visit to Farnfield.'
'Good \x97-! I did not speak or think of you. When I told that incident I
had no idea who the lady was-I did not know it was you till two days
later, and I at once held my tongue. I vow to you upon my soul and life
that what I say is true. How shall I prove my truth better than by my
errand here?'
'Don't speak of this now. I am so occupied with other things. I am going
to Rouen, and will think of it on my way.'
'I am going there too. When do you go?'
'I shall be in Rouen next Wednesday, I hope.'
'May I ask where?'
'H\xF4tel Beau S\xE9jour.'
'Will you give me an answer there? I can easily call upon you. It is now
a month and more since you first led me to hope-'
'I did not lead you to hope-at any rate clearly.'
'Indirectly you did. And although I am willing to be as considerate as
any man ought to be in giving you time to think over the question, there
is a limit to my patience. Any necessary delay I will put up with, but I
won't be trifled with. I hate all nonsense, and can't stand it.'
'Indeed. Good morning.'
'But Mrs. Petherwin-just one word.'
'I have nothing to say.'
'I will meet you at Rouen for an answer. I would meet you in Hades for
the matter of that. Remember this: next Wednesday, if I live, I shall
call upon you at Rouen.'
She did not say nay.
'May I?' he added.
'If you will.'
'But say it shall be an appointment?'
'Very well.'
Lord Mountclere was by this time toddling towards them to ask if they
would come on to his house, Enckworth Court, not very far distant, to
lunch with the rest of the party. Neigh, having already arranged to go
on to town that afternoon, was obliged to decline, and Ethelberta
thought fit to do the same, idly asking Lord Mountclere if Enckworth
Court lay in the direction of a gorge that was visible where they stood.
'No; considerably to the left,' he said. 'The opening you are looking at
would reveal the sea if it were not for the trees that block the way.
Ah, those trees have a history; they are half-a-dozen elms which I
planted myself when I was a boy. How time flies!'
'It is unfortunate they stand just so as to cover the blue bit of sea.
That addition would double the value of the view from here.'
'You would prefer the blue sea to the trees?'
'In that particular spot I should; they might have looked just as well,
and yet have hidden nothing worth seeing. The narrow slit would have
been invaluable there.'
'They shall fall before the sun sets, in deference to your opinion,'
said Lord Mountclere.
'That would be rash indeed,' said Ethelberta, laughing, 'when my opinion
on such a point may be worth nothing whatever.'
'Where no other is acted upon, it is practically the universal one,' he
replied gaily.
And then Ethelberta's elderly admirer bade her adieu, and away the whole
party drove in a long train over the hills towards the valley wherein
stood Enckworth Court. Ethelberta's carriage was supposed by her friends
to have been left at the village inn, as were many others, and her
retiring from view on foot attracted no notice.
She watched them out of sight, and she also saw the rest depart-those
who, their interest in archaeology having begun and ended with this
spot, had, like herself, declined the hospitable viscount's invitation,
and started to drive or walk at once home again. Thereupon the castle
was quite deserted except by Ethelberta, the ass, and the jackdaws, now
floundering at ease again in and about the ivy of the keep.
Not wishing to enter Knollsea till the evening shades were falling, she
still walked amid the ruins, examining more leisurely some points which
the stress of keeping herself companionable would not allow her to
attend to while the assemblage was present. At the end of the survey,
being somewhat weary with her clambering, she sat down on the slope
commanding the gorge where the trees grew, to make a pencil sketch of
the landscape as it was revealed between the ragged walls. Thus engaged
she weighed the circumstances of Lord Mountclere's invitation, and could
not be certain if it were prudishness or simple propriety in herself
which had instigated her to refuse. She would have liked the visit for
many reasons, and if Lord Mountclere had been anybody but a remarkably
attentive old widower, she would have gone. As it was, it had occurred
to her that there was something in his tone which should lead her to
hesitate. Were any among the elderly or married ladies who had appeared
upon the ground in a detached form as she had done-and many had appeared
thus-invited to Enckworth; and if not, why were they not? That Lord
Mountclere admired her there was no doubt, and for this reason it
behoved her to be careful. His disappointment at parting from her was,
in one aspect, simply laughable, from its odd resemblance to the
unfeigned sorrow of a boy of fifteen at a first parting from his first
love; in another aspect it caused reflection; and she thought again of
his curiosity about her doings for the remainder of the summer.
While she sketched and thought thus, the shadows grew longer, and the
sun low. And then she perceived a movement in the gorge. One of the
trees forming the curtain across it began to wave strangely: it went
further to one side, and fell. Where the tree had stood was now a rent
in the foliage, and through the narrow rent could be seen the distant
sea.
Ethelberta uttered a soft exclamation. It was not caused by the surprise
she had felt, nor by the intrinsic interest of the sight, nor by want of
comprehension. It was a sudden realization of vague things hitherto
dreamed of from a distance only-a sense of novel power put into her
hands without request or expectation. A landscape was to be altered to
suit her whim. She had in her lifetime moved essentially larger
mountains, but they had seemed of far less splendid material than this;
for it was the nature of the gratification rather than its magnitude
which enchanted the fancy of a woman whose poetry, in spite of her
necessities, was hardly yet extinguished. But there was something more,
with which poetry had little to do. Whether the opinion of any pretty
woman in England was of more weight with Lord Mountclere than memories
of his boyhood, or whether that distinction was reserved for her alone;
this was a point that she would have liked to know.
The enjoyment of power in a new element, an enjoyment somewhat
resembling in kind that which is given by a first ride or swim, held
Ethelberta to the spot, and she waited, but sketched no more. Another
tree-top swayed and vanished as before, and the slit of sea was larger
still. Her mind and eye were so occupied with this matter that, sitting
in her nook, she did not observe a thin young man, his boots white with
the dust of a long journey on foot, who arrived at the castle by the
valley-road from Knollsea. He looked awhile at the ruin, and, skirting
its flank instead of entering by the great gateway, climbed up the scarp
and walked in through a breach. After standing for a moment among the
walls, now silent and apparently empty, with a disappointed look he
descended the slope, and proceeded along on his way.
Ethelberta, who was in quite another part of the castle, saw the black
spot diminishing to the size of a fly as he receded along the dusty
road, and soon after she descended on the other side, where she
remounted the ass, and ambled homeward as she had come, in no bright
mood. What, seeing the precariousness of her state, was the day's
triumph worth after all, unless, before her beauty abated, she could
ensure her position against the attacks of chance?
'To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus.'
-she said it more than once on her journey that day.
On entering the sitting-room of their cot up the hill she found it
empty, and from a change perceptible in the position of small articles
of furniture, something unusual seemed to have taken place in her
absence. The dwelling being of that sort in which whatever goes on in
one room is audible through all the rest, Picotee, who was upstairs,
heard the arrival and came down. Picotee's face was rosed over with the
brilliance of some excitement. 'What do you think I have to tell you,
Berta?' she said.
'I have no idea,' said her sister. 'Surely,' she added, her face
intensifying to a wan sadness, 'Mr. Julian has not been here?'
'Yes,' said Picotee. 'And we went down to the sands-he, and Myrtle, and
Georgina, and Emmeline, and I-and Cornelia came down when she had put
away the dinner. And then we dug wriggles out of the sand with Myrtle's
spade: we got such a lot, and had such fun; they are in a dish in the
kitchen. Mr. Julian came to see you; but at last he could wait no
longer, and when I told him you were at the meeting in the castle ruins
he said he would try to find you there on his way home, if he could get
there before the meeting broke up.'
'Then it was he I saw far away on the road-yes, it must have been.' She
remained in gloomy reverie a few moments, and then said, 'Very well-let
it be. Picotee, get me some tea: I do not want dinner.'
But the news of Christopher's visit seemed to have taken away her
appetite for tea also, and after sitting a little while she flung
herself down upon the couch, and told Picotee that she had settled to go
and see their aunt Charlotte.
'I am going to write to Sol and Dan to ask them to meet me there,' she
added. 'I want them, if possible, to see Paris. It will improve them
greatly in their trades, I am thinking, if they can see the kinds of
joinery and decoration practised in France. They agreed to go, if I
should wish it, before we left London. You, of course, will go as my
maid.'
Picotee gazed upon the sea with a crestfallen look, as if she would
rather not cross it in any capacity just then.
'It would scarcely be worth going to the expense of taking me, would
it?' she said.
The cause of Picotee's sudden sense of economy was so plain that her
sister smiled; but young love, however foolish, is to a thinking person
far too tragic a power for ridicule; and Ethelberta forbore, going on as
if Picotee had not spoken: 'I must have you with me. I may be seen
there: so many are passing through Rouen at this time of the year.
Cornelia can take excellent care of the children while we are gone. I
want to get out of England, and I will get out of England. There is
nothing but vanity and vexation here.'
'I am sorry you were away when he called,' said Picotee gently.
'O, I don't mean that. I wish there were no different ranks in the
world, and that contrivance were not a necessary faculty to have at all.
Well, we are going to cross by the little steamer that puts in here, and
we are going on Monday.' She added in another minute, 'What had Mr.
Julian to tell us that he came here? How did he find us out?'
'I mentioned that we were coming here in my letter to Faith. Mr. Julian
says that perhaps he and his sister may also come for a few days before
the season is over. I should like to see Miss Julian again. She is such
a nice girl.'
'Yes.' Ethelberta played with her hair, and looked at the ceiling as she
reclined. 'I have decided after all,' she said, 'that it will be better
to take Cornelia as my maid, and leave you here with the children.
Cornelia is stronger as a companion than you, and she will be delighted
to go. Do you think you are competent to keep Myrtle and Georgina out of
harm's way?'
'O yes-I will be exceedingly careful,' said Picotee, with great
vivacity. 'And if there is time I can go on teaching them a little.'
Then Picotee caught Ethelberta's eye, and colouring red, sank down
beside her sister, whispering, 'I know why it is! But if you would
rather have me with you I will go, and not once wish to stay.'
Ethelberta looked as if she knew all about that, and said, 'Of course
there will be no necessity to tell the Julians about my departure until
they have fixed the time for coming, and cannot alter their minds.'
The sound of the children with Cornelia, and their appearance outside
the window, pushing between the fuchsia bushes which overhung the path,
put an end to this dialogue; they entered armed with buckets and spades,
a very moist and sandy aspect pervading them as far up as the high-water
mark of their clothing, and began to tell Ethelberta of the wonders of
the deep.
32. A ROOM IN ENCKWORTH COURT 'Are you sure the report is true?'
'I am sure that what I say is true, my lord; but it is hardly to be
called a report. It is a secret, known at present to nobody but myself
and Mrs. Doncastle's maid.'
The speaker was Lord Mountclere's trusty valet, and the conversation was
between him and the viscount in a dressing-room at Enckworth Court, on
the evening after the meeting of archaeologists at Corvsgate Castle.
'H'm-h'm; the daughter of a butler. Does Mrs. Doncastle know of this
yet, or Mr. Neigh, or any of their friends?'
'No, my lord.'
'You are quite positive?'
'Quite positive. I was, by accident, the first that Mrs. Menlove named
the matter to, and I told her it might be much to her advantage if she
took particular care it should go no further.'
'Mrs. Menlove! Who's she?'
'The lady's-maid at Mrs. Doncastle's, my lord.'
'O, ah-of course. You may leave me now, Tipman.' Lord Mountclere
remained in thought for a moment. 'A clever little puss, to hoodwink us
all like this-hee-hee!' he murmured. 'Her education-how finished; and
her beauty-so seldom that I meet with such a woman. Cut down my elms to
please a butler's daughter-what a joke-certainly a good joke! To
interest me in her on the right side instead of the wrong was strange.
But it can be made to change sides-hee-hee!-it can be made to change
sides! Tipman!'
Tipman came forward from the doorway.
'Will you take care that that piece of gossip you mentioned to me is not
repeated in this house? I strongly disapprove of talebearing of any
sort, and wish to hear no more of this. Such stories are never true.
Answer me-do you hear? Such stories are never true.'
'I beg pardon, but I think your lordship will find this one true,' said
the valet quietly.
'Then where did she get her manners and education? Do you know?'
'I do not, my lord. I suppose she picked 'em up by her wits.'
'Never mind what you suppose,' said the old man impatiently. 'Whenever I
ask a question of you tell me what you know, and no more.'
'Quite so, my lord. I beg your lordship's pardon for supposing.'
'H'm-h'm. Have the fashion-books and plates arrived yet?'
'Le Follet has, my lord; but not the others.'
'Let me have it at once. Always bring it to me at once. Are there any
handsome ones this time?'
'They are much the same class of female as usual, I think, my lord,'
said Tipman, fetching the paper and laying it before him.
'Yes, they are,' said the viscount, leaning back and scrutinizing the
faces of the women one by one, and talking softly to himself in a way
that had grown upon him as his age increased. 'Yet they are very well:
that one with her shoulder turned is pure and charming-the brown-haired
one will pass. All very harmless and innocent, but without character; no
soul, or inspiration, or eloquence of eye. What an eye was hers! There
is not a girl among them so beautiful. . . . Tipman! Come and take it
away. I don't think I will subscribe to these papers any longer-how long
have I subscribed? Never mind-I take no interest in these things, and I
suppose I must give them up. What white article is that I see on the
floor yonder?'
'I can see nothing, my lord.'
'Yes, yes, you can. At the other end of the room. It is a white
handkerchief. Bring it to me.'
'I beg pardon, my lord, but I cannot see any white handkerchief.
Whereabouts does your lordship mean?'
'There in the corner. If it is not a handkerchief, what is it? Walk
along till you come to it-that is it; now a little further-now your foot
is against it.'
'O that-it is not anything. It is the light reflected against the
skirting, so that it looks like a white patch of something-that is all.'
'H'm-hm. My eyes-how weak they are! I am getting old, that's what it is:
I am an old man.'
'O no, my lord.'
'Yes, an old man.'
'Well, we shall all be old some day, and so will your lordship, I
suppose; but as yet-'
'I tell you I am an old man!'
'Yes, my lord-I did not mean to contradict. An old man in one sense-old
in a young man's sense, but not in a house-of-parliament or historical
sense. A little oldish-I meant that, my lord.'
'I may be an old man in one sense or in another sense in your mind; but
let me tell you there are men older than I-'
'Yes, so there are, my lord.'
'People may call me what they please, and you may be impertinent enough
to repeat to me what they say, but let me tell you I am not a very old
man after all. I am not an old man.'
'Old in knowledge of the world I meant, my lord, not in years.'
'Well, yes. Experience of course I cannot be without. And I like what is
beautiful. Tipman, you must go to Knollsea; don't send, but go yourself,
as I wish nobody else to be concerned in this. Go to Knollsea, and find
out when the steamboat for Cherbourg starts; and when you have done
that, I shall want you to send Taylor to me. I wish Captain Strong to
bring the Fawn round into Knollsea Bay. Next week I may want you to go
to Cherbourg in the yacht with me-if the Channel is pretty calm-and then
perhaps to Rouen and Paris. But I will speak of that to-morrow.'
'Very good, my lord.'
'Meanwhile I recommend that you and Mrs. Menlove repeat nothing you may
have heard concerning the lady you just now spoke of. Here is a slight
present for Mrs. Menlove; and accept this for yourself.' He handed
money.
'Your lordship may be sure we will not,' the valet replied.
33. THE ENGLISH CHANNEL-NORMANDY
On Monday morning the little steamer Speedwell made her appearance round
the promontory by Knollsea Bay, to take in passengers for the transit to
Cherbourg. Breezes the freshest that could blow without verging on
keenness flew over the quivering deeps and shallows; and the sunbeams
pierced every detail of barrow, path and rabbit-run upon the lofty
convexity of down and waste which shut in Knollsea from the world to the
west.
They left the pier at eight o'clock, taking at first a short easterly
course to avoid a sinister ledge of limestones jutting from the water
like crocodile's teeth, which first obtained notoriety in English
history through being the spot whereon a formidable Danish fleet went to
pieces a thousand years ago. At the moment that the Speedwell turned to
enter upon the direct course, a schooner-yacht, whose sheets gleamed
like bridal satin, loosed from a remoter part of the bay; continuing to
bear off, she cut across the steamer's wake, and took a course almost
due southerly, which was precisely that of the Speedwell. The wind was
very favourable for the yacht, blowing a few points from north in a
steady pressure on her quarter, and, having been built with every modern
appliance that shipwrights could offer, the schooner found no difficulty
in getting abreast, and even ahead, of the steamer, as soon as she had
escaped the shelter of the hills.
The more or less parallel courses of the vessels continued for some time
without causing any remark among the people on board the Speedwell. At
length one noticed the fact, and another; and then it became the general
topic of conversation in the group upon the bridge, where Ethelberta,
her hair getting frizzed and her cheeks carnationed by the wind, sat
upon a camp-stool looking towards the prow.
'She is bound for Guernsey,' said one. 'In half-an-hour she will put
about for a more westerly course, you'll see.'
'She is not for Guernsey or anywhere that way,' said an acquaintance,
looking through his glass. 'If she is out for anything more than a
morning cruise, she is bound for our port. I should not wonder if she is
crossing to get stocked, as most of them do, to save the duty on her
wine and provisions.'
'Do you know whose yacht it is?'
'I do not.'
Ethelberta looked at the light leaning figure of the pretty schooner,
which seemed to skate along upon her bilge and make white shavings of
all the sea that touched her. She at first imagined that this might be
the yacht Neigh had arrived in at the end of the previous week, for she
knew that he came as one of a yachting party, and she had noticed no
other boat of that sort in the bay since his arrival. But as all his
party had gone ashore and not yet returned, she was surprised to see the
supposed vessel here. To add to her perplexity, she could not be
positive, now that it came to a real nautical query, whether the craft
of Neigh's friends had one mast or two, for she had caught but a
fragmentary view of the topsail over the apple-trees.
'Is that the yacht which has been lying at Knollsea for the last few
days?' she inquired of the master of the Speedwell, as soon as she had
an opportunity.
The master warmed beneath his copper-coloured rind. 'O no, miss; that
one you saw was a cutter-a smaller boat altogether,' he replied. 'Built
on the sliding-keel principle, you understand, miss-and red below her
water-line, if you noticed. This is Lord Mountclere's yacht-the Fawn.
You might have seen her re'ching in round Old-Harry Rock this morning
afore we started.'
'Lord Mountclere's?'
'Yes-a nobleman of this neighbourhood. But he don't do so much at
yachting as he used to in his younger days. I believe he's aboard this
morning, however.'
Ethelberta now became more absorbed than ever in their ocean comrade,
and watched its motions continually. The schooner was considerably in
advance of them by this time, and seemed to be getting by degrees out of
their course. She wondered if Lord Mountclere could be really going to
Cherbourg: if so, why had he said nothing about the trip to her when she
spoke of her own approaching voyage thither? The yacht changed its
character in her eyes; losing the indefinite interest of the unknown, it
acquired the charm of a riddle on motives, of which the alternatives
were, had Lord Mountclere's journey anything to do with her own, or had
it not? Common probability pointed to the latter supposition; but the
time of starting, the course of the yacht, and recollections of Lord
Mountclere's homage, suggested the more extraordinary possibility.
She went across to Cornelia. 'The man who handed us on board-didn't I
see him speaking to you this morning?' she said.
'O yes,' said Cornelia. 'He asked if my mistress was the popular Mrs.
Petherwin?
'And you told him, I suppose?'
'Yes.'
'What made you do that, Cornelia?'
'I thought I might: I couldn't help it. When I went through the toll-
gate, such a gentlemanly-looking man asked me if he should help me to
carry the things to the end of the pier; and as we went on together he
said he supposed me to be Mrs. Petherwin's maid. I said, "Yes." The two
men met afterwards, so there would ha' been no good in my denying it to
one of 'em.'
'Who was this gentlemanly person?'
'I asked the other man that, and he told me one of Lord Mountclere's
upper servants. I knew then there was no harm in having been civil to
him. He is well-mannered, and talks splendid language.'
'That yacht you see on our right hand is Lord Mountclere's property. If
I do not mistake, we shall have her closer by-and-by, and you may meet
your gentlemanly friend again. Be careful how you talk to him.'
Ethelberta sat down, thought of the meeting at Corvsgate Castle, of the
dinner-party at Mr. Doncastle's, of the strange position she had there
been in, and then of her father. She suddenly reproached herself for
thoughtlessness; for in her pocket lay a letter from him, which she had
taken from the postman that morning at the moment of coming from the
door, and in the hurry of embarking had forgotten ever since. Opening it
quickly, she read:-
'MY DEAR ETHELBERTA,-Your letter reached me yesterday, and I called
round at Exonbury Crescent in the afternoon, as you wished. Everything
is going on right there, and you have no occasion to be anxious about
them. I do not leave town for another week or two, and by the time I am
gone Sol and Dan will have returned from Paris, if your mother and
Gwendoline want any help: so that you need not hurry back on their
account.
'I have something else to tell you, which is not quite so satisfactory,
and it is this that makes me write at once; but do not be alarmed. It
began in this way. A few nights after the dinner-party here I was
determined to find out if there was any truth in what you had been told
about that boy, and having seen Menlove go out as usual after dark, I
followed her. Sure enough, when she had got into the park, up came
master Joe, smoking a cigar. As soon as they had met I went towards
them, and Menlove, seeing somebody draw nigh, began to edge off, when
the blockhead said, "Never mind, my love, it is only the old man."
Being very provoked with both of them, though she was really the most to
blame, I gave him some smart cuts across the shoulders with my cane, and
told him to go home, which he did with a flea in his ear, the rascal. I
believe I have cured his courting tricks for some little time.
'Well, Menlove then walked by me, quite cool, as if she were merely a
lady passing by chance at the time, which provoked me still more,
knowing the whole truth of it, and I could not help turning upon her and
saying, "You, madam, ought to be served the same way." She replied in
very haughty words, and I walked away, saying that I had something
better to do than argue with a woman of her character at that hour of
the evening. This so set her up that she followed me home, marched into
my pantry, and told me that if I had been more careful about my manners
in calling her a bad character, it might have been better both for me
and my stuck-up daughter-a daw in eagle's plumes-and so on. Now it
seems that she must have coaxed something out of Joey about you-for what
lad in the world could be a match for a woman of her experience and
arts! I hope she will do you no serious damage; but I tell you the
whole state of affairs exactly as they are, that you may form your own
opinions. After all, there is no real disgrace, for none of us have
ever done wrong, but have worked honestly for a living. However, I will
let you know if anything serious really happens.'
This was all that her father said on the matter, the letter concluding
with messages to the children and directions from their mother with
regard to their clothes.
Ethelberta felt very distinctly that she was in a strait; the old
impression that, unless her position were secured soon, it never would
be secured, returned with great force. A doubt whether it was worth
securing would have been very strong ere this, had not others besides
herself been concerned in her fortunes. She looked up from her letter,
and beheld the pertinacious yacht; it led her up to a conviction that
therein lay a means and an opportunity.
Nothing further of importance occurred in crossing. Ethelberta's head
ached after a while, and Cornelia's healthy cheeks of red were found to
have diminished their colour to the size of a wafer and the quality of a
stain. The Speedwell entered the breakwater at Cherbourg to find the
schooner already in the roadstead; and by the time the steamer was
brought up Ethelberta could see the men on board the yacht clewing up
and making things snug in a way from which she inferred that they were
not going to leave the harbour again that day. With the aspect of a fair
galleon that could easily out-manoeuvre her persevering buccaneer,
Ethelberta passed alongside. Could it be possible that Lord Mountclere
had on her account fixed this day for his visit across the Channel?
'Well, I would rather be haunted by him than by Mr. Neigh,' she said;
and began laying her plans so as to guard against inconvenient
surprises.
The next morning Ethelberta was at the railway station, taking tickets
for herself and Cornelia, when she saw an old yet sly and somewhat
merry-faced Englishman a little way off. He was attended by a younger
man, who appeared to be his valet.
'I will exchange one of these tickets,' she said to the clerk, and
having done so she went to Cornelia to inform her that it would after
all be advisable for them to travel separate, adding, 'Lord Mountclere
is in the station, and I think he is going on by our train. Remember,
you are my maid again now. Is not that the gentlemanly man who assisted
you yesterday?' She signified the valet as she spoke.
'It is,' said Cornelia.
When the passengers were taking their seats, and Ethelberta was thinking
whether she might not after all enter a second-class with Cornelia
instead of sitting solitary in a first because of an old man's
proximity, she heard a shuffling at her elbow, and the next moment found
that he was overtly observing her as if he had not done so in secret at
all. She at once gave him an unsurprised gesture of recognition. 'I saw
you some time ago; what a singular coincidence,' she said.
'A charming one,' said Lord Mountclere, smiling a half-minute smile, and
making as if he would take his hat off and would not quite. 'Perhaps we
must not call it coincidence entirely,' he continued; 'my journey, which
I have contemplated for some time, was not fixed this week altogether
without a thought of your presence on the road-hee-hee! Do you go far
to-day?'
'As far as Caen,' said Ethelberta.
'Ah! That's the end of my day's journey, too,' said Lord Mountclere.
They parted and took their respective places, Lord Mountclere choosing a
compartment next to the one Ethelberta was entering, and not, as she had
expected, attempting to join her.
Now she had instantly fancied when the viscount was speaking that there
were signs of some departure from his former respectful manner towards
her; and an enigma lay in that. At their earlier meetings he had never
ventured upon a distinct coupling of himself and herself as he had done
in his broad compliment to-day-if compliment it could be called. She was
not sure that he did not exceed his license in telling her deliberately
that he had meant to hover near her in a private journey which she was
taking without reference to him. She did not object to the act, but to
the avowal of the act; and, being as sensitive as a barometer on signs
affecting her social condition, it darted upon Ethelberta for one little
moment that he might possibly have heard a word or two about her being
nothing more nor less than one of a tribe of thralls; hence his freedom
of manner. Certainly a plain remark of that sort was exactly what a
susceptible peer might be supposed to say to a pretty woman of far
inferior degree. A rapid redness filled her face at the thought that he
might have smiled upon her as upon a domestic whom he was disposed to
chuck under the chin. 'But no,' she said. 'He would never have taken the
trouble to follow and meet with me had he learnt to think me other than
a lady. It is extremity of devotion-that's all.'
It was not Ethelberta's inexperience, but that her conception of self
precluded such an association of ideas, which led her to dismiss the
surmise that his attendance could be inspired by a motive beyond that of
paying her legitimate attentions as a co-ordinate with him and his in
the social field. Even if he only meant flirtation, she read it as of
that sort from which courtship with an eye to matrimony differs only in
degree. Hence, she thought, his interest in her was not likely, under
the ordinary influences of caste feeling, to continue longer than while
he was kept in ignorance of her consanguinity with a stock proscribed.
She sighed at the anticipated close of her full-feathered towering when
her ties and bonds should be uncovered. She might have seen matters in a
different light, and sighed more. But in the stir of the moment it
escaped her thought that ignorance of her position, and a consequent
regard for her as a woman of good standing, would have prevented his
indulgence in any course which was open to the construction of being
disrespectful.
Valognes, Carentan, Isigny, Bayeux, were passed, and the train drew up
at Caen. Ethelberta's intention had been to stay here for one night, but
having learnt from Lord Mountclere, as previously described, that this
was his destination, she decided to go on. On turning towards the
carriage after a few minutes of promenading at the Caen station, she was
surprised to perceive that Lord Mountclere, who had alighted as if to
leave, was still there.
They spoke again to each other. 'I find I have to go further,' he
suddenly said, when she had chatted with him a little time. And
beckoning to the man who was attending to his baggage, he directed the
things to be again placed in the train.
Time passed, and they changed at the next junction. When Ethelberta
entered a carriage on the branch line to take her seat for the remainder
of the journey, there sat the viscount in the same division. He
explained that he was going to Rouen.
Ethelberta came to a quick resolution. Her audacity, like that of a
child getting nearer and nearer a parent's side, became wonderfully
vigorous as she approached her destination; and though there were three
good hours of travel to Rouen as yet, the heavier part of the journey
was past. At her aunt's would be a safe refuge, play what pranks she
might, and there she would to-morrow meet those bravest of defenders Sol
and Dan, to whom she had sent as much money as she could conveniently
spare towards their expenses, with directions that they were to come by
the most economical route, and meet her at the house of her aunt, Madame
Moulin, previous to their educational trip to Paris, their own
contribution being the value of the week's work they would have to lose.
Thus backed up by Sol and Dan, her aunt, and Cornelia, Ethelberta felt
quite the reverse of a lonely female persecuted by a wicked lord in a
foreign country. 'He shall pay for his weaknesses, whatever they mean,'
she thought; 'and what they mean I will find out at once.'
'I am going to Paris,' she said.
'You cannot to-night, I think.'
'To-morrow, I mean.'
'I should like to go on to-morrow. Perhaps I may. So that there is a
chance of our meeting again.'
'Yes; but I do not leave Rouen till the afternoon. I first shall go to
the cathedral, and drive round the city.'
Lord Mountclere smiled pleasantly. There seemed a sort of encouragement
in her words. Ethelberta's thoughts, however, had flown at that moment
to the approaching situation at her aunt's hotel: it would be extremely
embarrassing if he should go there.
'Where do you stay, Lord Mountclere?' she said.
Thus directly asked, he could not but commit himself to the name of the
hotel he had been accustomed to patronize, which was one in the upper
part of the city.
'Mine is not that one,' said Ethelberta frigidly.
No further remark was made under this head, and they conversed for the
remainder of the daylight on scenery and other topics, Lord Mountclere's
air of festivity lending him all the qualities of an agreeable
companion. But notwithstanding her resolve, Ethelberta failed, for that
day at least, to make her mind clear upon Lord Mountclere's intentions.
To that end she would have liked first to know what were the exact
limits set by society to conduct under present conditions, if society
had ever set any at all, which was open to question: since experience
had long ago taught her that much more freedom actually prevails in the
communion of the sexes than is put on paper as etiquette, or admitted in
so many words as correct behaviour. In short, everything turned upon
whether he had learnt of her position when off the platform at Mayfair
Hall.
Wearied with these surmises, and the day's travel, she closed her eyes.
And then her enamoured companion more widely opened his, and traced the
beautiful features opposite him. The arch of the brows-like a slur in
music-the droop of the lashes, the meeting of the lips, and the sweet
rotundity of the chin-one by one, and all together, they were adored,
till his heart was like a retort full of spirits of wine.
It was a warm evening, and when they arrived at their journey's end
distant thunder rolled behind heavy and opaque clouds. Ethelberta bade
adieu to her attentive satellite, called to Cornelia, and entered a cab;
but before they reached the inn the thunder had increased. Then a cloud
cracked into flame behind the iron spire of the cathedral, showing in
relief its black ribs and stanchions, as if they were the bars of a
blazing cresset held on high.
'Ah, we will clamber up there to-morrow,' said Ethelberta.
A wondrous stillness pervaded the streets of the city after this, though
it was not late; and their arrival at M. Moulin's door was quite an
event for the quay. No rain came, as they had expected, and by the time
they halted the western sky had cleared, so that the newly-lit lamps on
the quay, and the evening glow shining over the river, inwove their
harmonious rays as the warp and woof of one lustrous tissue. Before they
had alighted there appeared from the archway Madame Moulin in person,
followed by the servants of the hotel in a manner signifying that they
did not receive a visitor once a fortnight, though at that moment the
clatter of sixty knives, forks, and tongues was audible through an open
window from the adjoining dining-room, to the great interest of a group
of idlers outside. Ethelberta had not seen her aunt since she last
passed through the town with Lady Petherwin, who then told her that this
landlady was the only respectable relative she seemed to have in the
world.
Aunt Charlotte's face was an English outline filled in with French
shades under the eyes, on the brows, and round the mouth, by the natural
effect of years; she resembled the British hostess as little as well
could be, no point in her causing the slightest suggestion of drops
taken for the stomach's sake. Telling the two young women she would
gladly have met them at the station had she known the hour of their
arrival, she kissed them both without much apparent notice of a
difference in their conditions; indeed, seeming rather to incline to
Cornelia, whose country face and homely style of clothing may have been
more to her mind than Ethelberta's finished travelling-dress, a class of
article to which she appeared to be well accustomed. Her husband was at
this time at the head of the table-d'hote, and mentioning the fact as an
excuse for his non-appearance, she accompanied them upstairs.
After the strain of keeping up smiles with Lord Mountclere, the rattle
and shaking, and the general excitements of the chase across the water
and along the rail, a face in which she saw a dim reflex of her mother's
was soothing in the extreme, and Ethelberta went up to the staircase
with a feeling of expansive thankfulness. Cornelia paused to admire the
clean court and the small caged birds sleeping on their perches, the
boxes of veronica in bloom, of oleander, and of tamarisk, which
freshened the air of the court and lent a romance to the lamplight, the
cooks in their paper caps and white blouses appearing at odd moments
from an Avernus behind; while the prompt 'v'la!' of teetotums in mob
caps, spinning down the staircase in answer to the periodic clang of
bells, filled her with wonder, and pricked her conscience with thoughts
of how seldom such transcendent nimbleness was attempted by herself in a
part so nearly similar.
34. THE H\xD4TEL BEAU S\xC9JOUR AND SPOTS NEAR IT
The next day, much to Ethelberta's surprise, there was a letter for her
in her mother's up-hill hand. She neglected all the rest of its contents
for the following engrossing sentences:-
'Menlove has wormed everything out of poor Joey, we find, and your
father is much upset about it. She had another quarrel with him, and
then declared she would expose you and us to Mrs. Doncastle and all your
friends. I think that Menlove is the kind of woman who will stick to
her word, and the question for you to consider is, how can you best face
out any report of the truth which she will spread, and contradict the
lies that she will add to it? It appears to me to be a dreadful thing,
and so it will probably appear to you. The worst part will be that your
sisters and brothers are your servants, and that your father is actually
engaged in the house where you dine. I am dreadful afraid that this
will be considered a fine joke for gossips, and will cause no end of
laughs in society at your expense. At any rate, should Menlove spread
the report, it would absolutely prevent people from attending your
lectures next season, for they would feel like dupes, and be angry with
theirselves, and you, and all of us.
'The only way out of the muddle that I can see for you is to put some
scheme of marrying into effect as soon as possible, and before these
things are known. Surely by this time, with all your opportunities, you
have been able to strike up an acquaintance with some gentleman or
other, so as to make a suitable match. You see, my dear Berta, marriage
is a thing which, once carried out, fixes you more firm in a position
than any personal brains can do; for as you stand at present, every
loose tooth, and every combed-out hair, and every new wrinkle, and every
sleepless night, is so much took away from your chance for the future,
depending as it do upon your skill in charming. I know that you have
had some good offers, so do listen to me, and warm up the best man of
them again a bit, and get him to repeat his words before your roundness
shrinks away, and 'tis too late.
'Mr. Ladywell has called here to see you; it was just after I had heard
that this Menlove might do harm, so I thought I could do no better than
send down word to him that you would much like to see him, and were
wondering sadly why he had not called lately. I gave him your address
at Rouen, that he might find you, if he chose, at once, and be got to
propose, since he is better than nobody. I believe he said, directly
Joey gave him the address, that he was going abroad, and my opinion is
that he will come to you, because of the encouragement I gave him. If
so, you must thank me for my foresight and care for you.
'I heave a sigh of relief sometimes at the thought that I, at any rate,
found a husband before the present man-famine began. Don't refuse him
this time, there's a dear, or, mark my words, you'll have cause to rue
it-unless you have beforehand got engaged to somebody better than he.
You will not if you have not already, for the exposure is sure to come
soon.'
'O, this false position!-it is ruining your nature, my too thoughtful
mother! But I will not accept any of them-I'll brazen it out!' said
Ethelberta, throwing the letter wherever it chose to fly, and picking it
up to read again. She stood and thought it all over. 'I must decide to
do something!' was her sigh again; and, feeling an irresistible need of
motion, she put on her things and went out to see what resolve the
morning would bring.
No rain had fallen during the night, and the air was now quiet in a warm
heavy fog, through which old cider-smells, reminding her of Wessex,
occasionally came from narrow streets in the background. Ethelberta
passed up the Rue Grand-Pont into the little dusky Rue Saint-Romain,
behind the cathedral, being driven mechanically along by the fever and
fret of her thoughts. She was about to enter the building by the
transept door, when she saw Lord Mountclere coming towards her.
Ethelberta felt equal to him, or a dozen such, this morning. The looming
spectres raised by her mother's information, the wearing sense of being
over-weighted in the race, were driving her to a Hamlet-like
fantasticism and defiance of augury; moreover, she was abroad.
'I am about to ascend to the parapets of the cathedral,' said she, in
answer to a half inquiry.
'I should be delighted to accompany you,' he rejoined, in a manner as
capable of explanation by his knowledge of her secret as was
Ethelberta's manner by her sense of nearing the end of her maying. But
whether this frequent glide into her company was meant as ephemeral
flirtation, to fill the half-hours of his journey, or whether it meant a
serious love-suit-which were the only alternatives that had occurred to
her on the subject-did not trouble her now. 'I am bound to be civil to
so great a lord,' she lightly thought, and expressing no objection to
his presence, she passed with him through the outbuildings, containing
Gothic lumber from the shadowy pile above, and ascended the stone
staircase. Emerging from its windings, they duly came to the long wooden
ladder suspended in mid-air that led to the parapet of the tower. This
being wide enough for two abreast, she could hardly do otherwise than
wait a moment for the viscount, who up to this point had never faltered,
and who amused her as they went by scraps of his experience in various
countries, which, to do him justice, he told with vivacity and humour.
Thus they reached the end of the flight, and entered behind a
balustrade.
'The prospect will be very lovely from this point when the fog has blown
off,' said Lord Mountclere faintly, for climbing and chattering at the
same time had fairly taken away his breath. He leant against the masonry
to rest himself. 'The air is clearing already; I fancy I saw a sunbeam
or two.'
'It will be lovelier above,' said Ethelberta. 'Let us go to the platform
at the base of the fl\xE8che, and wait for a view there.'
'With all my heart,' said her attentive companion.
They passed in at a door and up some more stone steps, which landed them
finally in the upper chamber of the tower. Lord Mountclere sank on a
beam, and asked smilingly if her ambition was not satisfied with this
goal. 'I recollect going to the top some years ago,' he added, 'and it
did not occur to me as being a thing worth doing a second time. And
there was no fog then, either.'
'O,' said Ethelberta, 'it is one of the most splendid things a person
can do! The fog is going fast, and everybody with the least artistic
feeling in the direction of bird's-eye views makes the ascent every time
of coming here.'
'Of course, of course,' said Lord Mountclere. 'And I am only too happy
to go to any height with you.'
'Since you so kindly offer, we will go to the very top of the spire-up
through the fog and into the sunshine,' said Ethelberta.
Lord Mountclere covered a grim misgiving by a gay smile, and away they
went up a ladder admitting to the base of the huge iron framework above;
then they entered upon the regular ascent of the cage, towards the
hoped-for celestial blue, and among breezes which never descended so low
as the town. The journey was enlivened with more breathless witticisms
from Lord Mountclere, till she stepped ahead of him again; when he asked
how many more steps there were.
She inquired of the man in the blue blouse who accompanied them. 'Fifty-
five,' she returned to Lord Mountclere a moment later.
They went round, and round, and yet around.
'How many are there now?' Lord Mountclere demanded this time of the man.
'A hundred and ninety, Monsieur,' he said.
'But there were only fifty-five ever so long ago!'
'Two hundred and five, then,' said the man. 'Perhaps the mist prevented
Mademoiselle hearing me distinctly?'
'Never mind: I would follow were there five thousand more, did
Mademoiselle bid me!' said the exhausted nobleman gallantly, in English.
'Hush!' said Ethelberta, with displeasure.
'He doesn't understand a word,' said Lord Mountclere.
They paced the remainder of their spiral pathway in silence, and having
at last reached the summit, Lord Mountclere sank down on one of the
steps, panting out, 'Dear me, dear me!'
Ethelberta leaned and looked around, and said, 'How extraordinary this
is. It is sky above, below, everywhere.'
He dragged himself together and stepped to her side. They formed as it
were a little world to themselves, being completely ensphered by the
fog, which here was dense as a sea of milk. Below was neither town,
country, nor cathedral-simply whiteness, into which the iron legs of
their gigantic perch faded to nothing.
'We have lost our labour; there is no prospect for you, after all, Lord
Mountclere,' said Ethelberta, turning her eyes upon him. He looked at
her face as if there were, and she continued, 'Listen; I hear sounds
from the town: people's voices, and carts, and dogs, and the noise of a
railway-train. Shall we now descend, and own ourselves disappointed?'
'Whenever you choose.'
Before they had put their intention in practice there appeared to be
reasons for waiting awhile. Out of the plain of fog beneath, a stone
tooth seemed to be upheaving itself: then another showed forth. These
were the summits of the St. Romain and the Butter Towers-at the western
end of the building. As the fog stratum collapsed other summits
manifested their presence further off-among them the two spires and
lantern of St. Ouen's; when to the left the dome of St. Madeline's
caught a first ray from the peering sun, under which its scaly surface
glittered like a fish. Then the mist rolled off in earnest, and revealed
far beneath them a whole city, its red, blue, and grey roofs forming a
variegated pattern, small and subdued as that of a pavement in mosaic.
Eastward in the spacious outlook lay the hill of St. Catherine, breaking
intrusively into the large level valley of the Seine; south was the
river which had been the parent of the mist, and the Ile Lacroix,
gorgeous in scarlet, purple, and green. On the western horizon could be
dimly discerned melancholy forests, and further to the right stood the
hill and rich groves of Boisguillaume.
Ethelberta having now done looking around, the descent was begun and
continued without intermission till they came to the passage behind the
parapet.
Ethelberta was about to step airily forward, when there reached her ear
the voices of persons below. She recognized as one of them the slow
unaccented tones of Neigh.
'Please wait a minute!' she said in a peremptory manner of confusion
sufficient to attract Lord Mountclere's attention.
A recollection had sprung to her mind in a moment. She had half made an
appointment with Neigh at her aunt's hotel for this very week, and here
was he in Rouen to keep it. To meet him while indulging in this vagary
with Lord Mountclere-which, now that the mood it had been engendered by
was passing off, she somewhat regretted-would be the height of
imprudence.
'I should like to go round to the other side of the parapet for a few
moments,' she said, with decisive quickness. 'Come with me, Lord
Mountclere.'
They went round to the other side. Here she kept the viscount and their
suisse until she deemed it probable that Neigh had passed by, when she
returned with her companions and descended to the bottom. They emerged
into the Rue Saint-Romain, whereupon a woman called from the opposite
side of the way to their guide, stating that she had told the other
English gentleman that the English lady had gone into the fl\xE8che.
Ethelberta turned and looked up. She could just discern Neigh's form
upon the steps of the fl\xE8che above, ascending toilsomely in search of
her.
'What English gentleman could that have been?' said Lord Mountclere,
after paying the man. He spoke in a way which showed he had not
overlooked her confusion. 'It seems that he must have been searching for
us, or rather for you?'
'Only Mr. Neigh,' said Ethelberta. 'He told me he was coming here. I
believe he is waiting for an interview with me.'
'H'm,' said Lord Mountclere.
'Business-only business,' said she.
'Shall I leave you? Perhaps the business is important-most important.'
'Unfortunately it is.'
'You must forgive me this once: I cannot help-will you give me
permission to make a difficult remark?' said Lord Mountclere, in an
impatient voice.
'With pleasure.'
'Well, then, the business I meant was-an engagement to be married.'
Had it been possible for a woman to be perpetually on the alert she
might now have supposed that Lord Mountclere knew all about her; a
mechanical deference must have restrained such an illusion had he seen
her in any other light than that of a distracting slave. But she
answered quietly, 'So did I.'
'But how does he know-dear me, dear me! I beg pardon,' said the
viscount.
She looked at him curiously, as if to imply that he was seriously out of
his reckoning in respect of her if he supposed that he would be allowed
to continue this little play at love-making as long as he chose, when
she was offered the position of wife by a man so good as Neigh.
They stood in silence side by side till, much to her ease, Cornelia
appeared at the corner waiting. At the last moment he said, in somewhat
agitated tones, and with what appeared to be a renewal of the respect
which had been imperceptibly dropped since they crossed the Channel, 'I
was not aware of your engagement to Mr. Neigh. I fear I have been acting
mistakenly on that account.'
'There is no engagement as yet,' said she.
Lord Mountclere brightened like a child. 'Then may I have a few words in
private-'
'Not now-not to-day,' said Ethelberta, with a certain irritation at she
knew not what. 'Believe me, Lord Mountclere, you are mistaken in many
things. I mean, you think more of me than you ought. A time will come
when you will despise me for this day's work, and it is madness in you
to go further.'
Lord Mountclere, knowing what he did know, may have imagined what she
referred to; but Ethelberta was without the least proof that he had the
key to her humour. 'Well, well, I'll be responsible for the madness,' he
said. 'I know you to be-a famous woman, at all events; and that's
enough. I would say more, but I cannot here. May I call upon you?'
'Not now.'
'When shall I?'
'If you must, let it be a month hence at my house in town,' she said
indifferently, the Hamlet mood being still upon her. 'Yes, call upon us
then, and I will tell you everything that may remain to be told, if you
should be inclined to listen. A rumour is afloat which will undeceive
you in much, and depress me to death. And now I will walk back: pray
excuse me.' She entered the street, and joined Cornelia.
Lord Mountclere paced irregularly along, turned the corner, and went
towards his inn, nearing which his tread grew lighter, till he scarcely
seemed to touch the ground. He became gleeful, and said to himself,
nervously palming his hip with his left hand, as if previous to plunging
it into hot water for some prize: 'Upon my life I've a good mind! Upon
my life I have!. . . . I must make a straightforward thing of it, and at
once; or he will have her. But he shall not, and I will-hee-hee!'
The fascinated man, screaming inwardly with the excitement, glee, and
agony of his position, entered the hotel, wrote a hasty note to
Ethelberta and despatched it by hand, looked to his dress and
appearance, ordered a carriage, and in a quarter of an hour was being
driven towards the H\xF4tel Beau S\xE9jour, whither his note had preceded him.
35. THE HOTEL (continued), AND THE QUAY IN FRONT
Ethelberta, having arrived there some time earlier, had gone straight to
her aunt, whom she found sitting behind a large ledger in the office,
making up the accounts with her husband, a well-framed reflective man
with a grey beard. M. Moulin bustled, waited for her remarks and
replies, and made much of her in a general way, when Ethelberta said,
what she had wanted to say instantly, 'Has a gentleman called Mr. Neigh
been here?'
'O yes-I think it is Neigh-there's a card upstairs,' replied her aunt.
'I told him you were alone at the cathedral, and I believe he walked
that way. Besides that one, another has come for you-a Mr. Ladywell, and
he is waiting.'
'Not for me?'
'Yes, indeed. I thought he seemed so anxious, under a sort of assumed
calmness, that I recommended him to remain till you came in.'
'Goodness, aunt; why did you?' Ethelberta said, and thought how much her
mother's sister resembled her mother in doings of that sort.
'I thought he had some good reason for seeing you. Are these men
intruders, then?'
'O no-a woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as
public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman
is a tribute to me. You cannot have celebrity and sex-privilege both.'
Thus Ethelberta laughed off the awkward conjuncture, inwardly deploring
the unconscionable maternal meddling which had led to this, though not
resentfully, for she had too much staunchness of heart to decry a
parent's misdirected zeal. Had the clanship feeling been universally as
strong as in the Chickerel family, the fable of the well-bonded fagot
might have remained unwritten.
Ladywell had sent her a letter about getting his picture of herself
engraved for an illustrated paper, and she had not replied, considering
that she had nothing to do with the matter, her form and feature having
been given in the painting as no portrait at all, but as those of an
ideal. To see him now would be vexatious; and yet it was chilly and
formal to an ungenerous degree to keep aloof from him, sitting lonely in
the same house. 'A few weeks hence,' she thought, 'when Menlove's
disclosures make me ridiculous, he may slight me as a lackey's girl, an
upstart, an adventuress, and hardly return my bow in the street. Then I
may wish I had given him no personal cause for additional bitterness.'
So, putting off the fine lady, Ethelberta thought she would see Ladywell
at once.
Ladywell was unaffectedly glad to meet her; so glad, that Ethelberta
wished heartily, for his sake, there could be warm friendship between
herself and him, as well as all her lovers, without that insistent
courtship-and-marriage question, which sent them all scattering like
leaves in a pestilent blast, at enmity with one another. She was less
pleased when she found that Ladywell, after saying all there was to say
about his painting, gently signified that he had been misinformed, as he
believed, concerning her future intentions, which had led to his
absenting himself entirely from her; the remark being of course, a
natural product of her mother's injudicious message to him.
She cut him short with terse candour. 'Yes,' she said, 'a false report
is in circulation. I am not yet engaged to be married to any one, if
that is your meaning.'
Ladywell looked cheerful at this frank answer, and said tentatively, 'Am
I forgotten?'
'No; you are exactly as you always were in my mind.'
'Then I have been cruelly deceived. I was guided too much by
appearances, and they were very delusive. I am beyond measure glad I
came here to-day. I called at your house and learnt that you were here;
and as I was going out of town, in any indefinite direction, I settled
then to come this way. What a happy idea it was! To think of you now-and
I may be permitted to-'
'Assuredly you may not. How many times I have told you that!'
'But I do not wish for any formal engagement,' said Ladywell quickly,
fearing she might commit herself to some expression of positive denial,
which he could never surmount. 'I'll wait-I'll wait any length of time.
Remember, you have never absolutely forbidden my-friendship. Will you
delay your answer till some time hence, when you have thoroughly
considered; since I fear it may be a hasty one now?'
'Yes, indeed; it may be hasty.'
'You will delay it?'
'Yes.'
'When shall it be?'
'Say a month hence. I suggest that, because by that time you will have
found an answer in your own mind: strange things may happen before then.
"She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and
she shall seek them, but shall not find them; then shall she say, I will
go and return to my first"-however, that's no matter.'
'What-did you-?' Ladywell began, altogether bewildered by this.
'It is a passage in Hosea which came to my mind, as possibly applicable
to myself some day,' she answered. 'It was mere impulse.'
'Ha-ha!-a jest-one of your romances broken loose. There is no law for
impulse: that is why I am here.'
Thus fancifully they conversed till the interview concluded. Getting her
to promise that she would see him again, Ladywell retired to a sitting-
room on the same landing, in which he had been writing letters before
she came up. Immediately upon this her aunt, who began to suspect that
something peculiar was in the wind, came to tell her that Mr. Neigh had
been inquiring for her again.
'Send him in,' said Ethelberta.
Neigh's footsteps approached, and the well-known figure entered.
Ethelberta received him smilingly, for she was getting so used to
awkward juxtapositions that she treated them quite as a natural
situation. She merely hoped that Ladywell would not hear them talking
through the partition.
Neigh scarcely said anything as a beginning: she knew his errand
perfectly; and unaccountable as it was to her, the strange and
unceremonious relationship between them, that had originated in the
peculiar conditions of their first close meeting, was continued now as
usual.
'Have you been able to bestow a thought on the question between us? I
hope so,' said Neigh.
'It is no use,' said Ethelberta. 'Wait a month, and you will not require
an answer. You will not mind speaking low, because of a person in the
next room?'
'Not at all.-Why will that be?'
'I might say; but let us speak of something else.'
'I don't see how we can,' said Neigh brusquely. 'I had no other reason
on earth for calling here. I wished to get the matter settled, and I
could not be satisfied without seeing you. I hate writing on matters of
this sort. In fact I can't do it, and that's why I am here.'
He was still speaking when an attendant entered with a note.
'Will you excuse me one moment?' said Ethelberta, stepping to the window
and opening the missive. It contained these words only, in a scrawl so
full of deformities that she could hardly piece its meaning together:-
'I must see you again to-day unless you absolutely deny yourself to me,
which I shall take as a refusal to meet me any more. I will arrive,
punctually, five minutes after you receive this note. Do pray be alone
if you can, and eternally gratify,-Yours,
'MOUNTCLERE.'
'If anything has happened I shall be pleased to wait,' said Neigh,
seeing her concern when she had closed the note.
'O no, it is nothing,' said Ethelberta precipitately. 'Yet I think I
will ask you to wait,' she added, not liking to dismiss Neigh in a
hurry; for she was not insensible to his perseverance in seeking her
over all these miles of sea and land; and secondly, she feared that if
he were to leave on the instant he might run into the arms of Lord
Mountclere and Ladywell.
'I shall be only too happy to stay till you are at leisure,' said Neigh,
in the unimpassioned delivery he used whether his meaning were a trite
compliment or the expression of his most earnest feeling.
'I may be rather a long time,' said Ethelberta dubiously.
'My time is yours.'
Ethelberta left the room and hurried to her aunt, exclaiming, 'O, Aunt
Charlotte, I hope you have rooms enough to spare for my visitors, for
they are like the fox, the goose, and the corn, in the riddle; I cannot
leave them together, and I can only be with one at a time. I want the
nicest drawing-room you have for an interview of a bare two minutes with
an old gentleman. I am so sorry this has happened, but it is not
altogether my fault! I only arranged to see one of them; but the other
was sent to me by mother, in a mistake, and the third met with me on my
journey: that's the explanation. There's the oldest of them just come.'
She looked through the glass partition, and under the arch of the court-
gate, as the wheels of the viscount's carriage were heard outside.
Ethelberta ascended to a room on the first floor, Lord Mountclere was
shown up, and the door closed upon them.
At this time Neigh was very comfortably lounging in an arm-chair in
Ethelberta's room on the second floor. This was a pleasant enough way of
passing the minutes with such a tender interview in prospect; and as he
leant he looked with languid and luxurious interest through the open
casement at the spars and rigging of some luggers on the Seine, the
pillars of the suspension bridge, and the scenery of the Faubourg St.
Sever on the other side of the river. How languid his interest might
ultimately have become there is no knowing; but there soon arose upon
his ear the accents of Ethelberta in low distinctness from somewhere
outside the room.
'Yes; the scene is pleasant to-day,' she said. 'I like a view over a
river.'
'I should think the steamboats are objectionable when they stop here,'
said another person.
Neigh's face closed in to an aspect of perplexity. 'Surely that cannot
be Lord Mountclere?' he muttered.
Had he been certain that Ethelberta was only talking to a stranger,
Neigh would probably have felt their conversation to be no business of
his, much as he might have been surprised to find her giving audience to
another man at such a place. But his impression that the voice was that
of his acquaintance, Lord Mountclere, coupled with doubts as to its
possibility, was enough to lead him to rise from the chair and put his
head out of the window.
Upon a balcony beneath him were the speakers, as he had suspected-
Ethelberta and the viscount.
Looking right and left, he saw projecting from the next window the head
of his friend Ladywell, gazing right and left likewise, apparently just
drawn out by the same voice which had attracted himself.
'What-you, Neigh!-how strange,' came from Ladywell's lips before he had
time to recollect that great coolness existed between himself and Neigh
on Ethelberta's account, which had led to the reduction of their
intimacy to the most attenuated of nods and good-mornings ever since the
Harlequin-rose incident at Cripplegate.
'Yes; it is rather strange,' said Neigh, with saturnine evenness. 'Still
a fellow must be somewhere.'
Each then looked over his window-sill downwards, upon the speakers who
had attracted them thither.
Lord Mountclere uttered something in a low tone which did not reach the
young men; to which Ethelberta replied, 'As I have said, Lord
Mountclere, I cannot give you an answer now. I must consider what to do
with Mr. Neigh and Mr. Ladywell. It is too sudden for me to decide at
once. I could not do so until I have got home to England, when I will
write you a letter, stating frankly my affairs and those of my
relatives. I shall not consider that you have addressed me on the
subject of marriage until, having received my letter, you-'
'Repeat my proposal,' said Lord Mountclere.
'Yes.'
'My dear Mrs. Petherwin, it is as good as repeated! But I have no right
to assume anything you don't wish me to assume, and I will wait. How
long is it that I am to suffer in this uncertainty?'
'A month. By that time I shall have grown weary of my other two
suitors.'
'A month! Really inflexible?'
Ethelberta had returned inside the window, and her answer was inaudible.
Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met. Both had been
reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to
instantly retire. Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same. Each saw
that the face of his companion was flushed.
'Come in and see me,' said Ladywell quickly, before quite withdrawing
his head. 'I am staying in this room.'
'I will,' said Neigh; and taking his hat he left Ethelberta's apartment
forthwith.
On entering the quarters of his friend he found him seated at a table
whereon writing materials were strewn. They shook hands in silence, but
the meaning in their looks was enough.
'Just let me write a note, Ladywell, and I'm your man,' said Neigh then,
with the freedom of an old acquaintance.
'I was going to do the same thing,' said Ladywell.
Neigh then sat down, and for a minute or two nothing was to be heard but
the scratching of a pair of pens, ending on the one side with a more
boisterous scratch, as the writer shaped 'Eustace Ladywell,' and on the
other with slow firmness in the characters 'Alfred Neigh.'
'There's for you, my fair one,' said Neigh, closing and directing his
letter.
'Yours is for Mrs. Petherwin? So is mine,' said Ladywell, grasping the
bell-pull. 'Shall I direct it to be put on her table with this one?'
'Thanks.' And the two letters went off to Ethelberta's sitting-room,
which she had vacated to receive Lord Mountclere in an empty one
beneath. Neigh's letter was simply a pleading of a sudden call away
which prevented his waiting till she should return; Ladywell's, though
stating the same reason for leaving, was more of an upbraiding nature,
and might almost have told its reader, were she to take the trouble to
guess, that he knew of the business of Lord Mountclere with her to-day.
'Now, let us get out of this place,' said Neigh. He proceeded at once
down the stairs, followed by Ladywell, who-settling his account at the
bureau without calling for a bill, and directing his portmanteau to be
sent to the Right-bank railway station-went with Neigh into the street.
They had not walked fifty yards up the quay when two British workmen, in
holiday costume, who had just turned the corner of the Rue Jeanne d'Arc,
approached them. Seeing him to be an Englishman, one of the two
addressed Neigh, saying, 'Can you tell us the way, sir, to the Hotel
Bold Soldier?'
Neigh pointed out the place he had just come from to the tall young men,
and continued his walk with Ladywell.
Ladywell was the first to break silence. 'I have been considerably
misled, Neigh,' he said; 'and I imagine from what has just happened that
you have been misled too.'
'Just a little,' said Neigh, bringing abstracted lines of meditation
into his face. 'But it was my own fault: for I ought to have known that
these stage and platform women have what they are pleased to call
Bohemianism so thoroughly engrained with their natures that they are no
more constant to usage in their sentiments than they are in their way of
living. Good Lord, to think she has caught old Mountclere! She is sure
to have him if she does not dally with him so long that he gets cool
again.'
'A beautiful creature like her to think of marrying such an infatuated
idiot as he!'
'He can give her a title as well as younger men. It will not be the
first time that such matches have been made.'
'I can't believe it,' said Ladywell vehemently. 'She has too much poetry
in her-too much good sense; her nature is the essence of all that's
romantic. I can't help saying it, though she has treated me cruelly.'
'She has good looks, certainly. I'll own to that. As for her romance and
good-feeling, that I leave to you. I think she has treated you no more
cruelly, as you call it, than she has me, come to that.'
'She told me she would give me an answer in a month,' said Ladywell
emotionally.
'So she told me,' said Neigh.
'And so she told him,' said Ladywell.
'And I have no doubt she will keep her word to him in her usual precise
manner.'
'But see what she implied to me! I distinctly understood from her that
the answer would be favourable.'
'So did I.'
'So does he.'
'And he is sure to be the one who gets it, since only one of us can.
Well, I wouldn't marry her for love, money, nor-'
'Offspring.'
'Exactly: I would not. "I'll give you an answer in a month"-to all three
of us! For God's sake let's sit down here and have something to drink.'
They drew up a couple of chairs to one of the tables of a wine-shop
close by, and shouted to the waiter with the vigour of persons going to
the dogs. Here, behind the horizontal-headed trees that dotted this part
of the quay, they sat over their bottles denouncing womankind till the
sun got low down upon the river, and the houses on the further side
began to be toned by a blue mist. At last they rose from their seats and
departed, Neigh to dine and consider his route, and Ladywell to take the
train for Dieppe.
While these incidents had been in progress the two workmen had found
their way into the hotel where Ethelberta was staying. Passing through
the entrance, they stood at gaze in the court, much perplexed as to the
door to be made for; the difficulty was solved by the appearance of
Cornelia, who in expectation of them had been for the last half-hour
leaning over the sill of her bed-room window, which looked into the
interior, amusing herself by watching the movements to and fro in the
court beneath.
After conversing awhile in undertones as if they had no real right there
at all, Cornelia told them she would call their sister, if an old
gentleman who had been to see her were gone again. Cornelia then ran
away, and Sol and Dan stood aloof, till they had seen the old gentleman
alluded to go to the door and drive off, shortly after which Ethelberta
ran down to meet them.
'Whatever have you got as your luggage?' she said, after hearing a few
words about their journey, and looking at a curious object like a huge
extended accordion with bellows of gorgeous-patterned carpeting.
'Well, I thought to myself,' said Sol, ''tis a terrible bother about
carrying our things. So what did I do but turn to and make a carpet-bag
that would hold all mine and Dan's too. This, you see, Berta, is a deal
top and bottom out of three-quarter stuff, stained and varnished. Well,
then you see I've got carpet sides tacked on with these brass nails,
which make it look very handsome; and so when my bag is empty 'twill
shut up and be only a couple of boards under yer arm, and when 'tis open
it will hold a'most anything you like to put in it. That portmantle
didn't cost more than three half-crowns altogether, and ten pound
wouldn't ha' got anything so strong from a portmantle maker, would it,
Dan?'
'Well, no.'
'And then you see, Berta,' Sol continued in the same earnest tone, and
further exhibiting the article, 'I've made this trap-door in the top
with hinges and padlock complete, so that-'
'I am afraid it is tiring you after your journey to explain all this to
me,' said Ethelberta gently, noticing that a few Gallic smilers were
gathering round. 'Aunt has found a nice room for you at the top of the
staircase in that corner-"Escalier D" you'll see painted at the bottom-
and when you have been up come across to me at number thirty-four on
this side, and we'll talk about everything.'
'Look here, Sol,' said Dan, who had left his brother and gone on to the
stairs. 'What a rum staircase-the treads all in little blocks, and
painted chocolate, as I am alive!'
'I am afraid I shall not be able to go on to Paris with you, after all,'
Ethelberta continued to Sol. 'Something has just happened which makes it
desirable for me to return at once to England. But I will write a list
of all you are to see, and where you are to go, so that it will make
little difference, I hope.'
Ten minutes before this time Ethelberta had been frankly and earnestly
asked by Lord Mountclere to become his bride; not only so, but he
pressed her to consent to have the ceremony performed before they
returned to England. Ethelberta had unquestionably been much surprised;
and, barring the fact that the viscount was somewhat ancient in
comparison with herself, the temptation to close with his offer was
strong, and would have been felt as such by any woman in the position of
Ethelberta, now a little reckless by stress of circumstances, and tinged
with a bitterness of spirit against herself and the world generally. But
she was experienced enough to know what heaviness might result from a
hasty marriage, entered into with a mind full of concealments and
suppressions which, if told, were likely to stop the marriage
altogether; and after trying to bring herself to speak of her family and
situation to Lord Mountclere as he stood, a certain caution triumphed,
and she concluded that it would be better to postpone her reply till she
could consider which of two courses it would be advisable to adopt; to
write and explain to him, or to explain nothing and refuse him. The
third course, to explain nothing and hasten the wedding, she rejected
without hesitation. With a pervading sense of her own obligations in
forming this compact it did not occur to her to ask if Lord Mountclere
might not have duties of explanation equally with herself, though
bearing rather on the moral than the social aspects of the case.
Her resolution not to go on to Paris was formed simply because Lord
Mountclere himself was proceeding in that direction, which might lead to
other unseemly rencounters with him had she, too, persevered in her
journey. She accordingly gave Sol and Dan directions for their guidance
to Paris and back, starting herself with Cornelia the next day to return
again to Knollsea, and to decide finally and for ever what to do in the
vexed question at present agitating her.
Never before in her life had she treated marriage in such a terribly
cool and cynical spirit as she had done that day; she was almost
frightened at herself in thinking of it. How far any known system of
ethics might excuse her on the score of those curious pressures which
had been brought to bear upon her life, or whether it could excuse her
at all, she had no spirit to inquire. English society appeared a gloomy
concretion enough to abide in as she contemplated it on this journey
home; yet, since its gloominess was less an essential quality than an
accident of her point of view, that point of view she had determined to
change.
There lay open to her two directions in which to move. She might annex
herself to the easy-going high by wedding an old nobleman, or she might
join for good and all the easy-going low, by plunging back to the level
of her family, giving up all her ambitions for them, settling as the
wife of a provincial music-master named Julian, with a little shop of
fiddles and flutes, a couple of old pianos, a few sheets of stale music
pinned to a string, and a narrow back parlour, wherein she would wait
for the phenomenon of a customer. And each of these divergent grooves
had its fascinations, till she reflected with regard to the first that,
even though she were a legal and indisputable Lady Mountclere, she might
be despised by my lord's circle, and left lone and lorn. The
intermediate path of accepting Neigh or Ladywell had no more attractions
for her taste than the fact of disappointing them had qualms for her
conscience; and how few these were may be inferred from her opinion,
true or false, that two words about the spigot on her escutcheon would
sweep her lovers' affections to the antipodes. She had now and then
imagined that her previous intermarriage with the Petherwin family might
efface much besides her surname, but experience proved that the having
been wife for a few weeks to a minor who died in his father's lifetime,
did not weave such a tissue of glory about her course as would resist a
speedy undoing by startling confessions on her station before her
marriage, and her environments now.
36. THE HOUSE IN TOWN
Returning by way of Knollsea, where she remained a week or two,
Ethelberta appeared one evening at the end of September before her house
in Exonbury Crescent, accompanied by a pair of cabs with the children
and luggage; but Picotee was left at Knollsea, for reasons which
Ethelberta explained when the family assembled in conclave. Her father
was there, and began telling her of a surprising change in Menlove-an
unasked-for concession to their cause, and a vow of secrecy which he
could not account for, unless any friend of Ethelberta's had bribed her.
'O no-that cannot be,' said she. Any influence of Lord Mountclere to
that effect was the last thing that could enter her thoughts. 'However,
what Menlove does makes little difference to me now.' And she proceeded
to state that she had almost come to a decision which would entirely
alter their way of living.
'I hope it will not be of the sort your last decision was,' said her
mother.
'No; quite the reverse. I shall not live here in state any longer. We
will let the house throughout as lodgings, while it is ours; and you and
the girls must manage it. I will retire from the scene altogether, and
stay for the winter at Knollsea with Picotee. I want to consider my
plans for next year, and I would rather be away from town. Picotee is
left there, and I return in two days with the books and papers I
require.'
'What are your plans to be?'
'I am going to be a schoolmistress-I think I am.'
'A schoolmistress?'
'Yes. And Picotee returns to the same occupation, which she ought never
to have forsaken. We are going to study arithmetic and geography until
Christmas; then I shall send her adrift to finish her term as pupil-
teacher, while I go into a training-school. By the time I have to give
up this house I shall just have got a little country school.'
'But,' said her mother, aghast, 'why not write more poems and sell 'em?'
'Why not be a governess as you were?' said her father.
'Why not go on with your tales at Mayfair Hall?' said Gwendoline.
'I'll answer as well as I can. I have decided to give up romancing
because I cannot think of any more that pleases me. I have been trying
at Knollsea for a fortnight, and it is no use. I will never be a
governess again: I would rather be a servant. If I am a schoolmistress I
shall be entirely free from all contact with the great, which is what I
desire, for I hate them, and am getting almost as revolutionary as Sol.
Father, I cannot endure this kind of existence any longer; I sleep at
night as if I had committed a murder: I start up and see processions of
people, audiences, battalions of lovers obtained under false pretences-
all denouncing me with the finger of ridicule. Mother's suggestion about
my marrying I followed out as far as dogged resolution would carry me,
but during my journey here I have broken down; for I don't want to marry
a second time among people who would regard me as an upstart or
intruder. I am sick of ambition. My only longing now is to fly from
society altogether, and go to any hovel on earth where I could be at
peace.'
'What-has anybody been insulting you?' said Mrs. Chickerel.
'Yes; or rather I sometimes think he may have: that is, if a proposal of
marriage is only removed from being a proposal of a very different kind
by an accident.'
'A proposal of marriage can never be an insult,' her mother returned.
'I think otherwise,' said Ethelberta.
'So do I,' said her father.
'Unless the man was beneath you, and I don't suppose he was that,' added
Mrs. Chickerel.
'You are quite right; he was not that. But we will not talk of this
branch of the subject. By far the most serious concern with me is that I
ought to do some good by marriage, or by heroic performance of some
kind; while going back to give the rudiments of education to remote
hamleteers will do none of you any good whatever.'
'Never you mind us,' said her father; 'mind yourself.'
'I shall hardly be minding myself either, in your opinion, by doing
that,' said Ethelberta dryly. 'But it will be more tolerable than what I
am doing now. Georgina, and Myrtle, and Emmeline, and Joey will not get
the education I intended for them; but that must go, I suppose.'
'How full of vagaries you are,' said her mother. 'Why won't it do to
continue as you are? No sooner have I learnt up your schemes, and got
enough used to 'em to see something in 'em, than you must needs bewilder
me again by starting some fresh one, so that my mind gets no rest at
all.'
Ethelberta too keenly felt the justice of this remark, querulous as it
was, to care to defend herself. It was hopeless to attempt to explain to
her mother that the oscillations of her mind might arise as naturally
from the perfection of its balance, like those of a logan-stone, as from
inherent lightness; and such an explanation, however comforting to its
subject, was little better than none to simple hearts who only could
look to tangible outcrops.
'Really, Ethelberta,' remonstrated her mother, 'this is very odd. Making
yourself miserable in trying to get a position on our account is one
thing, and not necessary; but I think it ridiculous to rush into the
other extreme, and go wilfully down in the scale. You may just as well
exercise your wits in trying to swim as in trying to sink.'
'Yes; that's what I think,' said her father. 'But of course Berta knows
best.'
'I think so too,' said Gwendoline.
'And so do I,' said Cornelia. 'If I had once moved about in large
circles like Ethelberta, I wouldn't go down and be a schoolmistress-not
I.'
'I own it is foolish-suppose it is,' said Ethelberta wearily, and with a
readiness of misgiving that showed how recent and hasty was the scheme.
'Perhaps you are right, mother; anything rather than retreat. I wonder
if you are right! Well, I will think again of it to-night. Do not let us
speak more about it now.'
She did think of it that night, very long and painfully. The arguments
of her relatives seemed ponderous as opposed to her own inconsequent
longing for escape from galling trammels. If she had stood alone, the
sentiment that she had begun to build but was not able to finish, by
whomsoever it might have been entertained, would have had few terrors;
but that the opinion should be held by her nearest of kin, to cause them
pain for life, was a grievous thing. The more she thought of it, the
less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From
regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that
desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train
events, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar with
Viscount Mountclere?
In one determination she never faltered; to commit her sin thoroughly if
she committed it at all. Her relatives believed her choice to lie
between Neigh and Ladywell alone. But once having decided to pass over
Christopher, whom she had loved, there could be no pausing for Ladywell
because she liked him, or for Neigh in that she was influenced by him.
They were both too near her level to be trusted to bear the shock of
receiving her from her father's hands. But it was possible that though
her genesis might tinge with vulgarity a commoner's household,
susceptible of such depreciation, it might show as a picturesque
contrast in the family circle of a peer. Hence it was just as well to go
to the end of her logic, where reasons for tergiversation would be most
pronounced. This thought of the viscount, however, was a secret for her
own breast alone.
Nearly the whole of that night she sat weighing-first, the question
itself of marrying Lord Mountclere; and, at other times, whether, for
safety, she might marry him without previously revealing family
particulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed-a piece of conduct
she had once felt to be indefensible. The ingenious Ethelberta, much
more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the
need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous
course before finally committing herself to it.
She took down a well-known treatise on Utilitarianism which she had
perused once before, and to which she had given her adherence ere any
instance had arisen wherein she might wish to take it as a guide. Here
she desultorily searched for argument, and found it; but the application
of her author's philosophy to the marriage question was an operation of
her own, as unjustifiable as it was likely in the circumstances.
'The ultimate end,' she read, 'with reference to and for the sake of
which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own
good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible
from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of
quantity and quality. . . . This being, according to the utilitarian
opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of
morality.'
It was an open question, so far, whether her own happiness should or
should not be preferred to that of others. But that her personal
interests were not to be considered as paramount appeared further on:-
'The happiness which forms the standard of what is right in conduct is
not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned. As between his
own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as
strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.'
As to whose happiness was meant by that of 'other people,' 'all
concerned,' and so on, her luminous moralist soon enlightened her:-
'The occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in
his power to do this on an extended scale-in other words, to be a public
benefactor-are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he
called on to consider public utility; in every other case private
utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to
attend to.'
And that these few persons should be those endeared to her by every
domestic tie no argument was needed to prove. That their happiness would
be in proportion to her own well-doing, and power to remove their risks
of indigence, required no proving either to her now.
By a sorry but unconscious misapplication of sound and wide reasoning
did the active mind of Ethelberta thus find itself a solace. At about
the midnight hour she felt more fortified on the expediency of marriage
with Lord Mountclere than she had done at all since musing on it. In
respect of the second query, whether or not, in that event, to conceal
from Lord Mountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be
too late for him to object to them, she found her conscience
inconveniently in the way of her theory, and the oracle before her
afforded no hint. 'Ah-it is a point for a casuist!' she said.
An old treatise on Casuistry lay on the top shelf. She opened it-more
from curiosity than from guidance this time, it must be observed-at a
chapter bearing on her own problem, 'The disciplina arcani, or, the
doctrine of reserve.'
Here she read that there were plenty of apparent instances of this in
Scripture, and that it was formed into a recognized system in the early
Church. With reference to direct acts of deception, it was argued that
since there were confessedly cases where killing is no murder, might
there not be cases where lying is no sin? It could not be right-or,
indeed, anything but most absurd-to say in effect that no doubt
circumstances would occur where every sound man would tell a lie, and
would be a brute or a fool if he did not, and to say at the same time
that it is quite indefensible in principle. Duty was the key to conduct
then, and if in such cases duties appeared to clash they would be found
not to do so on examination. The lesser duty would yield to the greater,
and therefore ceased to be a duty.
This author she found to be not so tolerable; he distracted her. She put
him aside and gave over reading, having decided on this second point,
that she would, at any hazard, represent the truth to Lord Mountclere
before listening to another word from him. 'Well, at last I have done,'
she said, 'and am ready for my r\xF4le.'
In looking back upon her past as she retired to rest, Ethelberta could
almost doubt herself to be the identical woman with her who had entered
on a romantic career a few short years ago. For that doubt she had good
reason. She had begun as a poet of the Satanic school in a sweetened
form; she was ending as a pseudo-utilitarian. Was there ever such a
transmutation effected before by the action of a hard environment? It
was not without a qualm of regret that she discerned how the last
infirmity of a noble mind had at length nearly departed from her. She
wondered if her early notes had had the genuine ring in them, or whether
a poet who could be thrust by realities to a distance beyond recognition
as such was a true poet at all. Yet Ethelberta's gradient had been
regular: emotional poetry, light verse, romance as an object, romance as
a means, thoughts of marriage as an aid to her pursuits, a vow to marry
for the good of her family; in other words, from soft and playful
Romanticism to distorted Benthamism. Was the moral incline upward or
down?
37. KNOLLSEA-AN ORNAMENTAL VILLA
Her energies collected and fermented anew by the results of the vigil,
Ethelberta left town for Knollsea, where she joined Picotee the same
evening. Picotee produced a letter, which had been addressed to her
sister at their London residence, but was not received by her there,
Mrs. Chickerel having forwarded it to Knollsea the day before Ethelberta
arrived in town.
The crinkled writing, in character like the coast-line of Tierra del
Fuego, was becoming familiar by this time. While reading the note she
informed Picotee, between a quick breath and a rustle of frills, that it
was from Lord Mountclere, who wrote on the subject of calling to see
her, suggesting a day in the following week. 'Now, Picotee,' she
continued, 'we shall have to receive him, and make the most of him, for
I have altered my plans since I was last in Knollsea.'
'Altered them again? What are you going to be now-not a poor person
after all?'
'Indeed not. And so I turn and turn. Can you imagine what Lord
Mountclere is coming for? But don't say what you think. Before I reply
to this letter we must go into new lodgings, to give them as our
address. The first business to-morrow morning will be to look for the
gayest house we can find; and Captain Flower and this little cabin of
his must be things we have never known.'
The next day after breakfast they accordingly sallied forth.
Knollsea had recently begun to attract notice in the world. It had this
year undergone visitation from a score of professional gentlemen and
their wives, a minor canon, three marine painters, seven young ladies
with books in their hands, and nine-and-thirty babies. Hence a few
lodging-houses, of a dash and pretentiousness far beyond the mark of the
old cottages which formed the original substance of the village, had
been erected to meet the wants of such as these. To a building of this
class Ethelberta now bent her steps, and the crush of the season having
departed in the persons of three-quarters of the above-named visitors,
who went away by a coach, a van, and a couple of wagonettes one morning,
she found no difficulty in arranging for a red and yellow streaked
villa, which was so bright and glowing that the sun seemed to be shining
upon it even on a cloudy day, and the ruddiest native looked pale when
standing by its walls. It was not without regret that she renounced the
sailor's pretty cottage for this porticoed and balconied dwelling; but
her lines were laid down clearly at last, and thither she removed
forthwith.
From this brand-new house did Ethelberta pen the letter fixing the time
at which she would be pleased to see Lord Mountclere.
When the hour drew nigh enormous force of will was required to keep her
perturbation down. She had not distinctly told Picotee of the object of
the viscount's visit, but Picotee guessed nearly enough. Ethelberta was
upon the whole better pleased that the initiative had again come from
him than if the first step in the new campaign had been her sending the
explanatory letter, as intended and promised. She had thought almost
directly after the interview at Rouen that to enlighten him by writing a
confession in cold blood, according to her first intention, would be
little less awkward for her in the method of telling than in the facts
to be told.
So the last hair was arranged and the last fold adjusted, and she sat
down to await a new page of her history. Picotee sat with her, under
orders to go into the next room when Lord Mountclere should call; and
Ethelberta determined to waste no time, directly he began to make
advances, in clearing up the phenomena of her existence to him; to the
end that no fact which, in the event of his taking her to wife, could be
used against her as an example of concealment, might remain unrelated.
The collapse of his attachment under the test might, however, form the
grand climax of such a play as this.
The day was rather cold for the season, and Ethelberta sat by a fire;
but the windows were open, and Picotee was amusing herself on the
balcony outside. The hour struck: Ethelberta fancied she could hear the
wheels of a carriage creeping up the steep ascent which led to the drive
before the door.
'Is it he?' she said quickly.
'No,' said Picotee, whose indifference contrasted strangely with the
restlessness of her who was usually the coolest. 'It is a man shaking
down apples in the garden over the wall.'
They lingered on till some three or four minutes had gone by. 'Surely
that's a carriage?' said Ethelberta, then.
'I think it is,' said Picotee outside, stretching her neck forward as
far as she could. 'No, it is the men on the beach dragging up their
boats; they expect wind to-night.'
'How wearisome! Picotee, you may as well come inside; if he means to
call he will; but he ought to be here by this time.'
It was only once more, and that some time later that she again said
'Listen!'
'That's not the noise of a carriage; it is the fizz of a rocket. The
coastguardsmen are practising the life-apparatus to-day, to be ready for
the autumn wrecks.'
'Ah!' said Ethelberta, her face clearing up. Hers had not been a
sweetheart's impatience, but her mood had intensified during these
minutes of suspense to a harassing mistrust of her man-compelling power,
which was, if that were possible, more gloomy than disappointed love. 'I
know now where he is. That operation with the cradle-apparatus is very
interesting, and he is stopping to see it. . . . But I shall not wait
indoors much longer, whatever he may be stopping to see. It is very
unaccountable, and vexing, after moving into this new house too. We were
much more comfortable in the old one. In keeping any previous
appointment in which I have been concerned he has been ridiculously
early.'
'Shall I run round?' said Picotee, 'and if he is not watching them we
will go out.'
'Very well,' said her sister.
The time of Picotee's absence seemed an age. Ethelberta heard the roar
of another rocket, and still Picotee did not return. 'What can the girl
be thinking of?' she mused. . . . 'What a half-and-half policy mine has
been! Thinking of marrying for position, and yet not making it my rigid
plan to secure the man the first moment that he made his offer. So I
lose the comfort of having a soul above worldliness, and my compensation
for not having it likewise!' A minute or two more and in came Picotee.
'What has kept you so long-and how excited you look,' said Ethelberta.
'I thought I would stay a little while, as I had never seen a rocket-
apparatus,' said Picotee, faintly and strangely.
'But is he there?' asked her sister impatiently.
'Yes-he was. He's gone now!'
'Lord Mountclere?'
'No. There is no old man there at all. Mr Julian was there.'
A little 'Ah!' came from Ethelberta, like a note from a storm-bird at
night. She turned round and went into the back room. 'Is Mr. Julian
going to call here?' she inquired, coming forward again.
'No-he's gone by the steamboat. He was only passing through on his way
to Sandbourne, where he is gone to settle a small business relating to
his father's affairs. He was not in Knollsea ten minutes, owing to
something which detained him on the way.'
'Did he inquire for me?'
'No. And only think, Ethelberta-such a remarkable thing has happened,
though I nearly forgot to tell you. He says that coming along the road
he was overtaken by a carriage, and when it had just passed him one of
the horses shied, pushed the other down a slope, and overturned the
carriage. One wheel came off and trundled to the bottom of the hill by
itself. Christopher of course ran up, and helped out of the carriage an
old gentleman-now do you know what's likely?'
'It was Lord Mountclere. I am glad that's the cause,' said Ethelberta
involuntarily.
'I imagined you would suppose it to be Lord Mountclere. But Mr. Julian
did not know the gentleman, and said nothing about who he might be.'
'Did he describe him?'
'Not much-just a little.'
'Well?'
'He said he was a sly old dog apparently, to hear how he swore in
whispers. This affair is what made Mr. Julian so late that he had no
time to call here. Lord Mountclere's ankle-if it was Lord Mountclere-was
badly sprained. But the servants were not injured beyond a scratch on
the coachman's face. Then they got another carriage and drove at once
back again. It must be he, or else why is he not come? It is a pity,
too, that Mr. Julian was hindered by this, so that there was no
opportunity for him to bide a bit in Knollsea.'
Ethelberta was not disposed to believe that Christopher would have
called, had time favoured him to the utmost. Between himself and her
there was that kind of division which is more insurmountable than
enmity; for estrangements produced by good judgment will last when those
of feeling break down in smiles. Not the lovers who part in passion, but
the lovers who part in friendship, are those who most frequently part
for ever.
'Did you tell Mr. Julian that the injured gentleman was possibly Lord
Mountclere, and that he was coming here?' said Ethelberta.
'I made no remark at all-I did not think of him till afterwards.'
The inquiry was hardly necessary, for Picotee's words would dry away
like a brook in the sands when she held conversation with Christopher.
As they had anticipated, the sufferer was no other than their intending
visitor. Next morning there was a note explaining the accident, and
expressing its writer's suffering from the cruel delay as greater than
that from the swollen ankle, which was progressing favourably.
Nothing further was heard of Lord Mountclere for more than a week, when
she received another letter, which put an end to her season of
relaxation, and once more braced her to the contest. This epistle was
very courteously written, and in point of correctness, propriety, and
gravity, might have come from the quill of a bishop. Herein the old
nobleman gave a further description of the accident, but the main
business of the communication was to ask her if, since he was not as yet
very active, she would come to Enckworth Court and delight himself and a
small group of friends who were visiting there.
She pondered over the letter as she walked by the shore that day, and
after some hesitation decided to go.
38. ENCKWORTH COURT
It was on a dull, stagnant, noiseless afternoon of autumn that
Ethelberta first crossed the threshold of Enckworth Court. The daylight
was so lowered by the impervious roof of cloud overhead that it scarcely
reached further into Lord Mountclere's entrance-hall than to the splays
of the windows, even but an hour or two after midday; and indoors the
glitter of the fire reflected itself from the very panes, so
inconsiderable were the opposing rays.
Enckworth Court, in its main part, had not been standing more than a
hundred years. At that date the weakened portions of the original
mediaeval structure were pulled down and cleared away, old jambs being
carried off for rick-staddles, and the foliated timbers of the hall roof
making themselves useful as fancy chairs in the summer-houses of rising
inns. A new block of masonry was built up from the ground of such height
and lordliness that the remnant of the old pile left standing became as
a mere cup-bearer and culinary menial beside it. The rooms in this old
fragment, which had in times past been considered sufficiently dignified
for dining-hall, withdrawing-room, and so on, were now reckoned barely
high enough for sculleries, servants' hall, and laundries, the whole of
which were arranged therein.
The modern portion had been planned with such a total disregard of
association, that the very rudeness of the contrast gave an interest to
the mass which it might have wanted had perfect harmony been attempted
between the old nucleus and its adjuncts, a probable result if the
enlargement had taken place later on in time. The issue was that the
hooded windows, simple string-courses, and random masonry of the Gothic
workman, stood elbow to elbow with the equal-spaced ashlar, architraves,
and fasciae of the Classic addition, each telling its distinct tale as
to stage of thought and domestic habit without any of those artifices of
blending or restoration by which the seeker for history in stones will
be utterly hoodwinked in time to come.
To the left of the door and vestibule which Ethelberta passed through
rose the principal staircase, constructed of a freestone so milk-white
and delicately moulded as to be easily conceived in the lamplight as of
biscuit-ware. Who, unacquainted with the secrets of geometrical
construction, could imagine that, hanging so airily there, to all
appearance supported on nothing, were twenty or more tons dead weight of
stone, that would have made a prison for an elephant if so arranged? The
art which produced this illusion was questionable, but its success was
undoubted. 'How lovely!' said Ethelberta, as she looked at the fairy
ascent. 'His staircase alone is worth my hand!'
Passing along by the colonnade, which partly fenced the staircase from
the visitor, the saloon was reached, an apartment forming a double cube.
About the left-hand end of this were grouped the drawing-rooms and
library; while on the right was the dining-hall, with billiard, smoking,
and gun rooms in mysterious remoteness beyond.
Without attempting to trace an analogy between a man and his mansion, it
may be stated that everything here, though so dignified and magnificent,
was not conceived in quite the true and eternal spirit of art. It was a
house in which Pugin would have torn his hair. Those massive blocks of
red-veined marble lining the hall-emulating in their surface-glitter the
Escalier de Marbre at Versailles-were cunning imitations in paint and
plaster by workmen brought from afar for the purpose, at a prodigious
expense, by the present viscount's father, and recently repaired and re-
varnished. The dark green columns and pilasters corresponding were brick
at the core. Nay, the external walls, apparently of massive and solid
freestone, were only veneered with that material, being, like the
pillars, of brick within.
To a stone mask worn by a brick face a story naturally appertained-one
which has since done service in other quarters. When the vast addition
had just been completed King George visited Enckworth. Its owner pointed
out the features of its grand architectural attempt, and waited for
commendation.
'Brick, brick, brick,' said the king.
The Georgian Lord Mountclere blushed faintly, albeit to his very poll,
and said nothing more about his house that day. When the king was gone
he sent frantically for the craftsmen recently dismissed, and soon the
green lawns became again the colour of a Nine-Elms cement wharf. Thin
freestone slabs were affixed to the whole series of fronts by copper
cramps and dowels, each one of substance sufficient to have furnished a
poor boy's pocket with pennies for a month, till not a speck of the
original surface remained, and the edifice shone in all the grandeur of
massive masonry that was not massive at all. But who remembered this
save the builder and his crew? and as long as nobody knew the truth,
pretence looked just as well.
What was honest in Enckworth Court was that portion of the original
edifice which still remained, now degraded to subservient uses. Where
the untitled Mountclere of the White Rose faction had spread his knees
over the brands, when the place was a castle and not a court, the still-
room maid now simmered her preserves; and where Elizabethan mothers and
daughters of that sturdy line had tapestried the love-scenes of Isaac
and Jacob, boots and shoes were now cleaned and coals stowed away.
Lord Mountclere had so far recovered from the sprain as to be nominally
quite well, under pressure of a wish to receive guests. The sprain had
in one sense served him excellently. He had now a reason, apart from
that of years, for walking with his stick, and took care to let the
reason be frequently known. To-day he entertained a larger number of
persons than had been assembled within his walls for a great length of
time.
Until after dinner Ethelberta felt as if she were staying at an hotel.
Few of the people whom she had met at the meeting of the Imperial
Association greeted her here. The viscount's brother was not present,
but Sir Cyril Blandsbury and his wife were there, a lively pair of
persons, entertaining as actors, and friendly as dogs. Beyond these all
the faces and figures were new to her, though they were handsome and
dashing enough to satisfy a court chronicler. Ethelberta, in a dress
sloped about as high over the shoulder as would have drawn approval from
Reynolds, and expostulation from Lely, thawed and thawed each friend who
came near her, and sent him or her away smiling; yet she felt a little
surprise. She had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of
the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but
the present assemblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned
stability and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under
this historical roof. Nobody of her entertainer's own rank appeared. Not
a single clergyman was there. A tendency to talk Walpolean scandal about
foreign courts was particularly manifest. And although tropical
travellers, Indian officers and their wives, courteous exiles, and
descendants of Irish kings, were infinitely more pleasant than Lord
Mountclere's landed neighbours would probably have been, to such a
cosmopolite as Ethelberta a calm Tory or old Whig company would have
given a greater treat. They would have struck as gratefully upon her
senses as sylvan scenery after crags and cliffs, or silence after the
roar of a cataract.
It was evening, and all these personages at Enckworth Court were merry,
snug, and warm within its walls. Dinner-time had passed, and everything
had gone on well, when Mrs. Tara O'Fanagan, who had a gold-clamped
tooth, which shone every now and then, asked Ethelberta if she would
amuse them by telling a story, since nobody present, except Lord
Mountclere, had ever heard one from her lips.
Seeing that Ethelberta had been working at that art as a profession, it
can hardly be said that the question was conceived with tact, though it
was put with grace. Lord Mountclere evidently thought it objectionable,
for he looked unhappy. To only one person in the brilliant room did the
request appear as a timely accident, and that was to Ethelberta herself.
Her honesty was always making war upon her manoeuvres, and shattering
their delicate meshes, to her great inconvenience and delay. Thus there
arose those devious impulses and tangential flights which spoil the
works of every would-be schemer who instead of being wholly machine is
half heart. One of these now was to show herself as she really was, not
only to Lord Mountclere, but to his friends assembled, whom, in her
ignorance, she respected more than they deserved, and so get rid of that
self-reproach which had by this time reached a morbid pitch, through her
over-sensitiveness to a situation in which a large majority of women and
men would have seen no falseness.
Full of this curious intention, she quietly assented to the request, and
laughingly bade them put themselves in listening order.
'An old story will suit us,' said the lady who had importuned her. 'We
have never heard one.'
'No; it shall be quite new,' she replied. 'One not yet made public;
though it soon will be.'
The narrative began by introducing to their notice a girl of the poorest
and meanest parentage, the daughter of a serving-man, and the fifth of
ten children. She graphically recounted, as if they were her own, the
strange dreams and ambitious longings of this child when young, her
attempts to acquire education, partial failures, partial successes, and
constant struggles; instancing how, on one of these occasions, the girl
concealed herself under a bookcase of the library belonging to the
mansion in which her father served as footman, and having taken with her
there, like a young Fawkes, matches and a halfpenny candle, was going to
sit up all night reading when the family had retired, until her father
discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as
nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and
her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. Next
came another epoch. To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a
truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up. The
master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who,
perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless
governess, and rated the son, the consequence being that the youthful
pair resolved to marry secretly, and carried their resolution into
effect. The runaway journey came next, and then a moving description of
the death of the young husband, and the terror of the bride.
The guests began to look perplexed, and one or two exchanged whispers.
This was not at all the kind of story that they had expected; it was
quite different from her usual utterances, the nature of which they knew
by report. Ethelberta kept her eye upon Lord Mountclere. Soon, to her
amazement, there was that in his face which told her that he knew the
story and its heroine quite well. When she delivered the sentence ending
with the professedly fictitious words: 'I thus was reduced to great
distress, and vainly cast about me for directions what to do,' Lord
Mountclere's manner became so excited and anxious that it acted
reciprocally upon Ethelberta; her voice trembled, she moved her lips but
uttered nothing. To bring the story up to the date of that very evening
had been her intent, but it was beyond her power. The spell was broken;
she blushed with distress and turned away, for the folly of a disclosure
here was but too apparent.
Though every one saw that she had broken down, none of them appeared to
know the reason why, or to have the clue to her performance. Fortunately
Lord Mountclere came to her aid.
'Let the first part end here,' he said, rising and approaching her. 'We
have been well entertained so far. I could scarcely believe that the
story I was listening to was utterly an invention, so vividly does Mrs.
Petherwin bring the scenes before our eyes. She must now be exhausted;
we will have the remainder to-morrow.'
They all agreed that this was well, and soon after fell into groups, and
dispersed about the rooms. When everybody's attention was thus occupied
Lord Mountclere whispered to Ethelberta tremulously, 'Don't tell more:
you think too much of them: they are no better than you! Will you meet
me in the little winter garden two minutes hence? Pass through that
door, and along the glass passage.' He himself left the room by an
opposite door.
She had not set three steps in the warm snug octagon of glass and plants
when he appeared on the other side.
'You knew it all before!' she said, looking keenly at him. 'Who told
you, and how long have you known it?'
'Before yesterday or last week,' said Lord Mountclere. 'Even before we
met in France. Why are you so surprised?'
Ethelberta had been surprised, and very greatly, to find him, as it
were, secreted in the very rear of her position. That nothing she could
tell was new to him was a good deal to think of, but it was little
beside the recollection that he had actually made his first declaration
in the face of that knowledge of her which she had supposed so fatal to
all her matrimonial ambitions.
'And now only one point remains to be settled,' he said, taking her
hand. 'You promised at Rouen that at our next interview you would honour
me with a decisive reply-one to make me happy for ever.'
'But my father and friends?' said she.
'Are nothing to be concerned about. Modern developments have shaken up
the classes like peas in a hopper. An annuity, and a comfortable
cottage-'
'My brothers are workmen.'
'Manufacture is the single vocation in which a man's prospects may be
said to be illimitable. Hee-hee!-they may buy me up before they die! And
now what stands in the way? It would take fifty alliances with fifty
families so little disreputable as yours, darling, to drag mine down.'
Ethelberta had anticipated the scene, and settled her course; what had
to be said and done here was mere formality; yet she had been unable to
go straight to the assent required. However, after these words of self-
depreciation, which were let fall as much for her own future ease of
conscience as for his present warning, she made no more ado.
'I shall think it a great honour to be your wife,' she said simply.
39. KNOLLSEA-MELCHESTER
The year was now moving on apace, but Ethelberta and Picotee chose to
remain at Knollsea, in the brilliant variegated brick and stone villa to
which they had removed in order to be in keeping with their ascending
fortunes. Autumn had begun to make itself felt and seen in bolder and
less subtle ways than at first. In the morning now, on coming
downstairs, in place of a yellowish-green leaf or two lying in a corner
of the lowest step, which had been the only previous symptoms around the
house, she saw dozens of them playing at corkscrews in the wind,
directly the door was opened. Beyond, towards the sea, the slopes and
scarps that had been muffled with a thick robe of cliff herbage, were
showing their chill grey substance through the withered verdure, like
the background of velvet whence the pile has been fretted away.
Unexpected breezes broomed and rasped the smooth bay in evanescent
patches of stippled shade, and, besides the small boats, the ponderous
lighters used in shipping stone were hauled up the beach in anticipation
of the equinoctial attack.
A few days after Ethelberta's reception at Enckworth, an improved
stanhope, driven by Lord Mountclere himself, climbed up the hill until
it was opposite her door. A few notes from a piano softly played reached
his ear as he descended from his place: on being shown in to his
betrothed, he could perceive that she had just left the instrument.
Moreover, a tear was visible in her eye when she came near him.
They discoursed for several minutes in the manner natural between a
defenceless young widow and an old widower in Lord Mountclere's position
to whom she was plighted-a great deal of formal considerateness making
itself visible on her part, and of extreme tenderness on his. While thus
occupied, he turned to the piano, and casually glanced at a piece of
music lying open upon it. Some words of writing at the top expressed
that it was the composer's original copy, presented by him, Christopher
Julian, to the author of the song. Seeing that he noticed the sheet
somewhat lengthily, Ethelberta remarked that it had been an offering
made to her a long time ago-a melody written to one of her own poems.
'In the writing of the composer,' observed Lord Mountclere, with
interest. 'An offering from the musician himself-very gratifying and
touching. Mr. Christopher Julian is the name I see upon it, I believe? I
knew his father, Dr. Julian, a Sandbourne man, if I recollect.'
'Yes,' said Ethelberta placidly. But it was really with an effort. The
song was the identical one which Christopher sent up to her from
Sandbourne when the fire of her hope burnt high for less material ends;
and the discovery of the sheet among her music that day had started
eddies of emotion for some time checked.
'I am sorry you have been grieved,' said Lord Mountclere, with gloomy
restlessness.
'Grieved?' said Ethelberta.
'Did I not see a tear there? or did my eyes deceive me?'
'You might have seen one.'
'Ah! a tear, and a song. I think-'
'You naturally think that a woman who cries over a man's gift must be in
love with the giver?' Ethelberta looked him serenely in the face.
Lord Mountclere's jealous suspicions were considerably shaken.
'Not at all,' he said hastily, as if ashamed. 'One who cries over a song
is much affected by its sentiment.'
'Do you expect authors to cry over their own words?' she inquired,
merging defence in attack. 'I am afraid they don't often do that.'
'You would make me uneasy.'
'On the contrary, I would reassure you. Are you not still doubting?' she
asked, with a pleasant smile.
'I cannot doubt you!'
'Swear, like a faithful knight.'
'I swear, my fairy, my flower!'
After this the old man appeared to be pondering; indeed, his thoughts
could hardly be said to be present when he uttered the words. For though
the tabernacle was getting shaky by reason of years and merry living, so
that what was going on inside might often be guessed without by the
movement of the hangings, as in a puppet-show with worn canvas, he could
be quiet enough when scheming any plot of particular neatness, which had
less emotion than impishness in it. Such an innocent amusement he was
pondering now.
Before leaving her, he asked if she would accompany him to a morning
instrumental concert at Melchester, which was to take place in the
course of that week for the benefit of some local institution.
'Melchester,' she repeated faintly, and observed him as searchingly as
it was possible to do without exposing herself to a raking fire in
return. Could he know that Christopher was living there, and was this
said in prolongation of his recent suspicion? But Lord Mountclere's face
gave no sign.
'You forget one fatal objection,' said she; 'the secrecy in which it is
imperative that the engagement between us should be kept.'
'I am not known in Melchester without my carriage; nor are you.'
'We may be known by somebody on the road.'
'Then let it be arranged in this way. I will not call here to take you
up, but will meet you at the station at Anglebury; and we can go on
together by train without notice. Surely there can be no objection to
that? It would be mere prudishness to object, since we are to become one
so shortly.' He spoke a little impatiently. It was plain that he
particularly wanted her to go to Melchester.
'I merely meant that there was a chance of discovery in our going out
together. And discovery means no marriage.' She was pale now, and sick
at heart, for it seemed that the viscount must be aware that Christopher
dwelt at that place, and was about to test her concerning him.
'Why does it mean no marriage?' said he.
'My father might, and almost certainly would, object to it. Although he
cannot control me, he might entreat me.'
'Why would he object?' said Lord Mountclere uneasily, and somewhat
haughtily.
'I don't know.'
'But you will be my wife-say again that you will.'
'I will.'
He breathed. 'He will not object-hee-hee!' he said. 'O no-I think you
will be mine now.'
'I have said so. But look to me all the same.'
'You malign yourself, dear one. But you will meet me at Anglebury, as I
wish, and go on to Melchester with me?'
'I shall be pleased to-if my sister may accompany me.'
'Ah-your sister. Yes, of course.'
They settled the time of the journey, and when the visit had been
stretched out as long as it reasonably could be with propriety, Lord
Mountclere took his leave.
When he was again seated on the driving-phaeton which he had brought
that day, Lord Mountclere looked gleeful, and shrewd enough in his own
opinion to outwit Mephistopheles. As soon as they were ascending a hill,
and he could find time to free his hand, he pulled off his glove, and
drawing from his pocket a programme of the Melchester concert referred
to, contemplated therein the name of one of the intended performers. The
name was that of Mr. C. Julian. Replacing it again, he looked ahead, and
some time after murmured with wily mirth, 'An excellent test-a lucky
thought!'
Nothing of importance occurred during the intervening days. At two
o'clock on the appointed afternoon Ethelberta stepped from the train at
Melchester with the viscount, who had met her as proposed; she was
followed behind by Picotee.
The concert was to be held at the Town-hall half-an-hour later. They
entered a fly in waiting, and secure from recognition, were driven
leisurely in that direction, Picotee silent and absorbed with her own
thoughts.
'There's the Cathedral,' said Lord Mountclere humorously, as they caught
a view of one of its towers through a street leading into the Close.
'Yes.'
'It boasts of a very fine organ.'
'Ah.'
'And the organist is a clever young man.'
'Oh.'
Lord Mountclere paused a moment or two. 'By the way, you may remember
that he is the Mr. Julian who set your song to music!'
'I recollect it quite well.' Her heart was horrified and she thought
Lord Mountclere must be developing into an inquisitor, which perhaps he
was. But none of this reached her face.
They turned in the direction of the Hall, were set down, and entered.
The large assembly-room set apart for the concert was upstairs, and it
was possible to enter it in two ways: by the large doorway in front of
the landing, or by turning down a side passage leading to council-rooms
and subsidiary apartments of small size, which were allotted to
performers in any exhibition; thus they could enter from one of these
directly upon the platform, without passing through the audience.
'Will you seat yourselves here?' said Lord Mountclere, who, instead of
entering by the direct door, had brought the young women round into this
green-room, as it may be called. 'You see we have come in privately
enough; when the musicians arrive we can pass through behind them, and
step down to our seats from the front.'
The players could soon be heard tuning in the next room. Then one came
through the passage-room where the three waited, and went in, then
another, then another. Last of all came Julian.
Ethelberta sat facing the door, but Christopher, never in the least
expecting her there, did not recognize her till he was quite inside.
When he had really perceived her to be the one who had troubled his soul
so many times and long, the blood in his face-never very much-passed off
and left it, like the shade of a cloud. Between them stood a table
covered with green baize, which, reflecting upwards a band of sunlight
shining across the chamber, flung upon his already white features the
virescent hues of death. The poor musician, whose person, much to his
own inconvenience, constituted a complete breviary of the gentle
emotions, looked as if he were going to fall down in a faint.
Ethelberta flung at Lord Mountclere a look which clipped him like
pincers: he never forgot it as long as he lived.
'This is your pretty jealous scheme-I see it!' she hissed to him, and
without being able to control herself went across to Julian.
But a slight gasp came from behind the door where Picotee had been
sitting. Ethelberta and Lord Mountclere looked that way: and behold,
Picotee had nearly swooned.
Ethelberta's show of passion went as quickly as it had come, for she
felt that a splendid triumph had been put into her hands. 'Now do you
see the truth?' she whispered to Lord Mountclere without a drachm of
feeling; pointing to Christopher and then to Picotee-as like as two
snowdrops now.
'I do, I do,' murmured the viscount hastily.
They both went forward to help Christopher in restoring the fragile
Picotee: he had set himself to that task as suddenly as he possibly
could to cover his own near approach to the same condition. Not much
help was required, the little girl's indisposition being quite
momentary, and she sat up in the chair again.
'Are you better?' said Ethelberta to Christopher.
'Quite well-quite,' he said, smiling faintly. 'I am glad to see you. I
must, I think, go into the next room now.' He bowed and walked out
awkwardly.
'Are you better, too?' she said to Picotee.
'Quite well,' said Picotee.
'You are quite sure you know between whom the love lies now-eh?'
Ethelberta asked in a sarcastic whisper of Lord Mountclere.
'I am-beyond a doubt,' murmured the anxious nobleman; he feared that
look of hers, which was not less dominant than irresistible.
Some additional moments given to thought on the circumstances rendered
Ethelberta still more indignant and intractable. She went out at the
door by which they had entered, along the passage, and down the stairs.
A shuffling footstep followed, but she did not turn her head. When they
reached the bottom of the stairs the carriage had gone, their exit not
being expected till two hours later. Ethelberta, nothing daunted, swept
along the pavement and down the street in a turbulent prance, Lord
Mountclere trotting behind with a jowl reduced to a mere nothing by his
concern at the discourtesy into which he had been lured by jealous
whisperings.
'My dearest-forgive me; I confess I doubted you-but I was beside
myself,' came to her ears from over her shoulder. But Ethelberta walked
on as before.
Lord Mountclere sighed like a poet over a ledger. 'An old man-who is not
very old-naturally torments himself with fears of losing-no, no-it was
an innocent jest of mine-you will forgive a joke-hee-hee?' he said
again, on getting no reply.
'You had no right to mistrust me!'
'I do not-you did not blench. You should have told me before that it was
your sister and not yourself who was entangled with him.'
'You brought me to Melchester on purpose to confront him!'
'Yes, I did.'
'Are you not ashamed?'
'I am satisfied. It is better to know the truth by any means than to die
of suspense; better for us both-surely you see that?'
They had by this time got to the end of a long street, and into a
deserted side road by which the station could be indirectly reached.
Picotee appeared in the distance as a mere distracted speck of girlhood,
following them because not knowing what else to do in her sickness of
body and mind. Once out of sight here, Ethelberta began to cry.
'Ethelberta,' said Lord Mountclere, in an agony of trouble, 'don't be
vexed! It was an inconsiderate trick-I own it. Do what you will, but do
not desert me now! I could not bear it-you would kill me if you were to
leave me. Anything, but be mine.'
Ethelberta continued her way, and drying her eyes entered the station,
where, on searching the time-tables, she found there would be no train
for Anglebury for the next two hours. Then more slowly she turned
towards the town again, meeting Picotee and keeping in her company.
Lord Mountclere gave up the chase, but as he wished to get into the town
again, he followed in the same direction. When Ethelberta had proceeded
as far as the Red Lion Hotel, she turned towards it with her companion,
and being shown to a room, the two sisters shut themselves in. Lord
Mountclere paused and entered the White Hart, the rival hotel to the Red
Lion, which stood in an adjoining street.
Having secluded himself in an apartment here, walked from window to
window awhile, and made himself generally uncomfortable, he sat down to
the writing materials on the table, and concocted a note:-
'WHITE HART HOTEL.
'MY DEAR MRS. PETHERWIN,-You do not mean to be so cruel as to break your
plighted word to me? Remember, there is no love without much jealousy,
and lovers are ever full of sighs and misgiving. I have owned to as
much contrition as can reasonably be expected. I could not endure the
suspicion that you loved another.-Yours always,
'MOUNTCLERE.'
This he sent, watching from the window its progress along the street. He
awaited anxiously for an answer, and waited long. It was nearly twenty
minutes before he could hear a messenger approaching the door. Yes-she
had actually sent a reply; he prized it as if it had been the first
encouragement he had ever in his life received from woman:-
'MY LORD' (wrote Ethelberta),-'I am not prepared at present to enter
into the question of marriage at all. The incident which has occurred
affords me every excuse for withdrawing my promise, since it was given
under misapprehensions on a point that materially affects my happiness.
'E. PETHERWIN.'
'Ho-ho-ho-Miss Hoity-toity!' said Lord Mountclere, trotting up and down.
But, remembering it was her June against his November, this did not last
long, and he frantically replied:-
'MY DARLING,-I cannot release you-I must do anything to keep my
treasure. Will you not see me for a few minutes, and let bygones go to
the winds?'
Was ever a thrush so safe in a cherry net before!
The messenger came back with the information that Mrs. Petherwin had
taken a walk to the Close, her companion alone remaining at the hotel.
There being nothing else left for the viscount to do, he put on his hat,
and went out on foot in the same direction. He had not walked far when
he saw Ethelberta moving slowly along the High Street before him.
Ethelberta was at this hour wandering without any fixed intention beyond
that of consuming time. She was very wretched, and very indifferent: the
former when thinking of her past, the latter when thinking of the days
to come. While she walked thus unconscious of the streets, and their
groups of other wayfarers, she saw Christopher emerge from a door not
many paces in advance, and close it behind him: he stood for a moment on
the step before descending into the road.
She could not, even had she wished it, easily check her progress without
rendering the chance of his perceiving her still more certain. But she
did not wish any such thing, and it made little difference, for he had
already seen her in taking his survey round, and came down from the door
to her side. It was impossible for anything formal to pass between them
now.
'You are not at the concert, Mr. Julian?' she said. 'I am glad to have a
better opportunity of speaking to you, and of asking for your sister.
Unfortunately there is not time for us to call upon her to-day.'
'Thank you, but it makes no difference,' said Julian, with somewhat sad
reserve. 'I will tell her I have met you; she is away from home just at
present.' And finding that Ethelberta did not rejoin immediately he
observed, 'The chief organist, old Dr. Breeve, has taken my place at the
concert, as it was arranged he should do after the opening part. I am
now going to the Cathedral for the afternoon service. You are going
there too?'
'I thought of looking at the interior for a moment.'
So they went on side by side, saying little; for it was a situation in
which scarcely any appropriate thing could be spoken. Ethelberta was the
less reluctant to walk in his company because of the provocation to
skittishness that Lord Mountclere had given, a provocation which she
still resented. But she was far from wishing to increase his jealousy;
and yet this was what she was doing, Lord Mountclere being a perturbed
witness from behind of all that was passing now.
They turned the corner of the short street of connection which led under
an archway to the Cathedral Close, the old peer dogging them still.
Christopher seemed to warm up a little, and repeated the invitation.
'You will come with your sister to see us before you leave?' he said.
'We have tea at six.'
'We shall have left Melchester before that time. I am now only waiting
for the train.'
'You two have not come all the way from Knollsea alone?'
'Part of the way,' said Ethelberta evasively.
'And going back alone?'
'No. Only for the last five miles. At least that was the arrangement-I
am not quite sure if it holds good.'
'You don't wish me to see you safely in the train?'
'It is not necessary: thank you very much. We are well used to getting
about the world alone, and from Melchester to Knollsea is no serious
journey, late or early. . . . Yet I think I ought, in honesty, to tell
you that we are not entirely by ourselves in Melchester to-day.'
'I remember I saw your friend-relative-in the room at the Town-hall. It
did not occur to my mind for the moment that he was any other than a
stranger standing there.'
'He is not a relative,' she said, with perplexity. 'I hardly know,
Christopher, how to explain to you my position here to-day, because of
some difficulties that have arisen since we have been in the town, which
may alter it entirely. On that account I will be less frank with you
than I should like to be, considering how long we have known each other.
It would be wrong, however, if I were not to tell you that there has
been a possibility of my marriage with him.'
'The elderly gentleman?'
'Yes. And I came here in his company, intending to return with him. But
you shall know all soon. Picotee shall write to Faith.'
'I always think the Cathedral looks better from this point than from the
point usually chosen by artists,' he said, with nervous quickness,
directing her glance upwards to the silent structure, now misty and
unrelieved by either high light or deep shade. 'We get the grouping of
the chapels and choir-aisles more clearly shown-and the whole culminates
to a more perfect pyramid from this spot-do you think so?'
'Yes. I do.'
A little further, and Christopher stopped to enter, when Ethelberta bade
him farewell. 'I thought at one time that our futures might have been
different from what they are apparently becoming,' he said then,
regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot
afford to buy. 'But one gets weary of repining about that. I wish
Picotee and yourself could see us oftener; I am as confirmed a bachelor
now as Faith is an old maid. I wonder if-should the event you
contemplate occur-you and he will ever visit us, or we shall ever visit
you!'
Christopher was evidently imagining the elderly gentleman to be some
retired farmer, or professional man already so intermixed with the
metamorphic classes of society as not to be surprised or inconvenienced
by her beginnings; one who wished to secure Ethelberta as an ornament to
his parlour fire in a quiet spirit, and in no intoxicated mood
regardless of issues. She could scarcely reply to his supposition; and
the parting was what might have been predicted from a conversation so
carefully controlled.
Ethelberta, as she had intended, now went on further, and entering the
nave began to inspect the sallow monuments which lined the grizzled
pile. She did not perceive amid the shadows an old gentleman who had
crept into the mouldy place as stealthily as a worm into a skull, and
was keeping himself carefully beyond her observation. She continued to
regard feature after feature till the choristers had filed in from the
south side, and peals broke forth from the organ on the black oaken mass
at the junction of nave and choir, shaking every cobweb in the dusky
vaults, and Ethelberta's heart no less. She knew the fingers that were
pressing out those rolling sounds, and knowing them, became absorbed in
tracing their progress. To go towards the organ-loft was an act of
unconsciousness, and she did not pause till she stood almost beneath it.
Ethelberta was awakened from vague imaginings by the close approach of
the old gentleman alluded to, who spoke with a great deal of agitation.
'I have been trying to meet with you,' said Lord Mountclere. 'Come, let
us be friends again!-Ethelberta, I MUST not lose you! You cannot mean
that the engagement shall be broken off?' He was far too desirous to
possess her at any price now to run a second risk of exasperating her,
and forbore to make any allusion to the recent pantomime between herself
and Christopher that he had beheld, though it might reasonably have
filled him with dread and petulance.
'I do not mean anything beyond this,' said she, 'that I entirely
withdraw from it on the faintest sign that you have not abandoned such
miserable jealous proceedings as those you adopted to-day.'
'I have quite abandoned them. Will you come a little further this way,
and walk in the aisle? You do still agree to be mine?'
'If it gives you any pleasure, I do.'
'Yes, yes. I implore that the marriage may be soon-very soon.' The
viscount spoke hastily, for the notes of the organ which were plunging
into their ears ever and anon from the hands of his young rival seemed
inconveniently and solemnly in the way of his suit.
'Well, Lord Mountclere?'
'Say in a few days?-it is the only thing that will satisfy me.'
'I am absolutely indifferent as to the day. If it pleases you to have it
early I am willing.'
'Dare I ask that it may be this week?' said the delighted old man.
'I could not say that.'
'But you can name the earliest day?'
'I cannot now. We had better be going from here, I think.'
The Cathedral was filling with shadows, and cold breathings came round
the piers, for it was November, when night very soon succeeds noon in
spots where noon is sobered to the pallor of eve. But the service was
not yet over, and before quite leaving the building Ethelberta cast one
other glance towards the organ and thought of him behind it. At this
moment her attention was arrested by the form of her sister Picotee, who
came in at the north door, closed the lobby-wicket softly, and went
lightly forward to the choir. When within a few yards of it she paused
by a pillar, and lingered there looking up at the organ as Ethelberta
had done. No sound was coming from the ponderous mass of tubes just
then; but in a short space a whole crowd of tones spread from the
instrument to accompany the words of a response. Picotee started at the
burst of music as if taken in a dishonest action, and moved on in a
manner intended to efface the lover's loiter of the preceding moments
from her own consciousness no less than from other people's eyes.
'Do you see that?' said Ethelberta. 'That little figure is my dearest
sister. Could you but ensure a marriage between her and him she listens
to, I would do anything you wish!'
'That is indeed a gracious promise,' said Lord Mountclere. 'And would
you agree to what I asked just now?'
'Yes.'
'When?' A gleeful spark accompanied this.
'As you requested.'
'This week? The day after to-morrow?'
'If you will. But remember what lies on your side of the contract. I
fancy I have given you a task beyond your powers.'
'Well, darling, we are at one at last,' said Lord Mountclere, rubbing
his hand against his side. 'And if my task is heavy and I cannot
guarantee the result, I can make it very probable. Marry me on Friday-
the day after to-morrow-and I will do all that money and influence can
effect to bring about their union.'
'You solemnly promise? You will never cease to give me all the aid in
your power until the thing is done?'
'I do solemnly promise-on the conditions named.'
'Very good. You will have ensured my fulfilment of my promise before I
can ensure yours; but I take your word.'
'You will marry me on Friday! Give me your hand upon it.'
She gave him her hand.
'Is it a covenant?' he asked.
'It is,' said she.
Lord Mountclere warmed from surface to centre as if he had drunk of
hippocras, and, after holding her hand for some moments, raised it
gently to his lips.
'Two days and you are mine,' he said.
'That I believe I never shall be.'
'Never shall be? Why, darling?'
'I don't know. Some catastrophe will prevent it. I shall be dead
perhaps.'
'You distress me. Ah,-you meant me-you meant that I should be dead,
because you think I am old! But that is a mistake-I am not very old!'
'I thought only of myself-nothing of you.'
'Yes, I know. Dearest, it is dismal and chilling here-let us go.'
Ethelberta mechanically moved with him, and felt there was no retreating
now. In the meantime the young ladykin whom the solemn vowing concerned
had lingered round the choir screen, as if fearing to enter, yet loth to
go away. The service terminated, the heavy books were closed, doors were
opened, and the feet of the few persons who had attended evensong began
pattering down the paved alleys. Not wishing Picotee to know that the
object of her secret excursion had been discovered, Ethelberta now
stepped out of the west doorway with the viscount before Picotee had
emerged from the other; and they walked along the path together until
she overtook them.
'I fear it becomes necessary for me to stay in Melchester to-night,'
said Lord Mountclere. 'I have a few matters to attend to here, as the
result of our arrangements. But I will first accompany you as far as
Anglebury, and see you safely into a carriage there that shall take you
home. To-morrow I will drive to Knollsea, when we will make the final
preparations.'
Ethelberta would not have him go so far and back again, merely to attend
upon her; hence they parted at the railway, with due and correct
tenderness; and when the train had gone, Lord Mountclere returned into
the town on the special business he had mentioned, for which there
remained only the present evening and the following morning, if he were
to call upon her in the afternoon of the next day-the day before the
wedding-now so recklessly hastened on his part, and so coolly assented
to on hers.
By the time that the two young people had started it was nearly dark.
Some portions of the railway stretched through little copses and
plantations where, the leaf-shedding season being now at its height, red
and golden patches of fallen foliage lay on either side of the rails;
and as the travellers passed, all these death-stricken bodies boiled up
in the whirlwind created by the velocity, and were sent flying right and
left of them in myriads, a clean-fanned track being left behind.
Picotee was called from the observation of these phenomena by a remark
from her sister: 'Picotee, the marriage is to be very early indeed. It
is to be the day after to-morrow-if it can. Nevertheless I don't believe
in the fact-I cannot.'
'Did you arrange it so? Nobody can make you marry so soon.'
'I agreed to the day,' murmured Ethelberta languidly.
'How can it be? The gay dresses and the preparations and the people-how
can they be collected in the time, Berta? And so much more of that will
be required for a lord of the land than for a common man. O, I can't
think it possible for a sister of mine to marry a lord!'
'And yet it has been possible any time this last month or two, strange
as it seems to you. . . . It is to be not only a plain and simple
wedding, without any lofty appliances, but a secret one-as secret as if
I were some under-age heiress to an Indian fortune, and he a young man
of nothing a year.'
'Has Lord Mountclere said it must be so private? I suppose it is on
account of his family.'
'No. I say so; and it is on account of my family. Father might object to
the wedding, I imagine, from what he once said, or he might be much
disturbed about it; so I think it better that he and the rest should
know nothing till all is over. You must dress again as my sister to-
morrow, dear. Lord Mountclere is going to pay us an early visit to
conclude necessary arrangements.'
'O, the life as a lady at Enckworth Court! The flowers, the woods, the
rooms, the pictures, the plate, and the jewels! Horses and carriages
rattling and prancing, seneschals and pages, footmen hopping up and
hopping down. It will be glory then!'
'We might hire our father as one of my retainers, to increase it,' said
Ethelberta drily.
Picotee's countenance fell. 'How shall we manage all about that? 'Tis
terrible, really!'
'The marriage granted, those things will right themselves by time and
weight of circumstances. You take a wrong view in thinking of glories of
that sort. My only hope is that my life will be quite private and
simple, as will best become my inferiority and Lord Mountclere's
staidness. Such a splendid library as there is at Enckworth, Picotee-
quartos, folios, history, verse, Elzevirs, Caxtons-all that has been
done in literature from Moses down to Scott-with such companions I can
do without all other sorts of happiness.'
'And you will not go to town from Easter to Lammastide, as other noble
ladies do?' asked the younger girl, rather disappointed at this aspect
of a viscountess's life.
'I don't know.'
'But you will give dinners, and travel, and go to see his friends, and
have them to see you?'
'I don't know.'
'Will you not be, then, as any other peeress; and shall not I be as any
other peeress's sister?'
'That, too, I do not know. All is mystery. Nor do I even know that the
marriage will take place. I feel that it may not; and perhaps so much
the better, since the man is a stranger to me. I know nothing whatever
of his nature, and he knows nothing of mine.'
40. MELCHESTER (continued)
The commotion wrought in Julian's mind by the abrupt incursion of
Ethelberta into his quiet sphere was thorough and protracted. The
witchery of her presence he had grown strong enough to withstand in
part; but her composed announcement that she had intended to marry
another, and, as far as he could understand, was intending it still,
added a new chill to the old shade of disappointment which custom was
day by day enabling him to endure. During the whole interval in which he
had produced those diapason blasts, heard with such inharmonious
feelings by the three auditors outside the screen, his thoughts had
wandered wider than his notes in conjectures on the character and
position of the gentleman seen in Ethelberta's company. Owing to his
assumption that Lord Mountclere was but a stranger who had accidentally
come in at the side door, Christopher had barely cast a glance upon him,
and the wide difference between the years of the viscount and those of
his betrothed was not so particularly observed as to raise that point to
an item in his objections now. Lord Mountclere was dressed with all the
cunning that could be drawn from the metropolis by money and reiterated
dissatisfaction; he prided himself on his upright carriage; his stick
was so thin that the most malevolent could not insinuate that it was of
any possible use in walking; his teeth had put on all the vigour and
freshness of a second spring. Hence his look was the slowest of possible
clocks in respect of his age, and his manner was equally as much in the
rear of his appearance.
Christopher was now over five-and-twenty. He was getting so well
accustomed to the spectacle of a world passing him by and splashing him
with its wheels that he wondered why he had ever minded it. His habit of
dreaming instead of doing had led him up to a curious discovery. It is
no new thing for a man to fathom profundities by indulging humours: the
active, the rapid, the people of splendid momentum, have been surprised
to behold what results attend the lives of those whose usual plan for
discharging their active labours has been to postpone them indefinitely.
Certainly, the immediate result in the present case was, to all but
himself, small and invisible; but it was of the nature of highest
things. What he had learnt was that a woman who has once made a
permanent impression upon a man cannot altogether deny him her image by
denying him her company, and that by sedulously cultivating the
acquaintance of this Creature of Contemplation she becomes to him almost
a living soul. Hence a sublimated Ethelberta accompanied him everywhere-
one who never teased him, eluded him, or disappointed him: when he
smiled she smiled, when he was sad she sorrowed. He may be said to have
become the literal duplicate of that whimsical unknown rhapsodist who
wrote of his own similar situation-
'By absence this good means I gain, That I can catch her, Where none can
watch her, In some close corner of my brain: There I embrace and kiss
her; And so I both enjoy and miss her.'
This frame of mind naturally induced an amazing abstraction in the
organist, never very vigilant at the best of times. He would stand and
look fixedly at a frog in a shady pool, and never once think of
batrachians, or pause by a green bank to split some tall blade of grass
into filaments without removing it from its stalk, passing on ignorant
that he had made a cat-o'-nine-tails of a graceful slip of vegetation.
He would hear the cathedral clock strike one, and go the next minute to
see what time it was. 'I never seed such a man as Mr. Julian is,' said
the head blower. 'He'll meet me anywhere out-of-doors, and never wink or
nod. You'd hardly expect it. I don't find fault, but you'd hardly expect
it, seeing how I play the same instrument as he do himself, and have
done it for so many years longer than he. How I have indulged that man,
too! If 'tis Pedals for two martel hours of practice I never complain;
and he has plenty of vagaries. When 'tis hot summer weather there's
nothing will do for him but Choir, Great, and Swell altogether, till yer
face is in a vapour; and on a frosty winter night he'll keep me there
while he tweedles upon the Twelfth and Sixteenth till my arms be
scrammed for want of motion. And never speak a word out-of-doors.'
Somebody suggested that perhaps Christopher did not notice his
coadjutor's presence in the street; and time proved to the organ-blower
that the remark was just.
Whenever Christopher caught himself at these vacuous tricks he would be
struck with admiration of Ethelberta's wisdom, foresight, and self-
command in refusing to wed such an incapable man: he felt that he ought
to be thankful that a bright memory of her was not also denied to him,
and resolved to be content with it as a possession, since it was as much
of her as he could decently maintain.
Wrapped thus in a humorous sadness he passed the afternoon under notice,
and in the evening went home to Faith, who still lived with him, and
showed no sign of ever being likely to do otherwise. Their present place
and mode of life suited her well. She revived at Melchester like an
exotic sent home again. The leafy Close, the climbing buttresses, the
pondering ecclesiastics, the great doors, the singular keys, the
whispered talk, echoes of lonely footsteps, the sunset shadow of the
tall steeple, reaching further into the town than the good bishop's
teaching, and the general complexion of a spot where morning had the
stillness of evening and spring some of the tones of autumn, formed a
proper background to a person constituted as Faith, who, like Miss
Hepzibah Pyncheon's chicken, possessed in miniature all the antiquity of
her progenitors.
After tea Christopher went into the streets, as was frequently his
custom, less to see how the world crept on there than to walk up and
down for nothing at all. It had been market-day, and remnants of the
rural population that had visited the town still lingered at corners,
their toes hanging over the edge of the pavement, and their eyes
wandering about the street.
The angle which formed the turning-point of Christopher's promenade was
occupied by a jeweller's shop, of a standing which completely outshone
every other shop in that or any trade throughout the town. Indeed, it
was a staple subject of discussion in Melchester how a shop of such
pretensions could find patronage sufficient to support its existence in
a place which, though well populated, was not fashionable. It had not
long been established there, and was the enterprise of an incoming man
whose whole course of procedure seemed to be dictated by an intention to
astonish the native citizens very considerably before he had done.
Nearly everything was glass in the frontage of this fairy mart, and its
contents glittered like the hammochrysos stone. The panes being of
plate-glass, and the shop having two fronts, a diagonal view could be
had through it from one to the other of the streets to which it formed a
corner.
This evening, as on all evenings, a flood of radiance spread from the
window-lamps into the thick autumn air, so that from a distance that
corner appeared as the glistening nucleus of all the light in the town.
Towards it idle men and women unconsciously bent their steps, and closed
in upon the panes like night-birds upon the lantern of a lighthouse.
When Christopher reached the spot there stood close to the pavement a
plain close carriage, apparently waiting for some person who was
purchasing inside. Christopher would hardly have noticed this had he not
also perceived, pressed against the glass of the shop window, an unusual
number of local noses belonging to overgrown working lads, tosspots, an
idiot, the ham-smoker's assistant with his sleeves rolled up, a scot-
and-lot freeholder, three or four seamstresses, the young woman who
brought home the washing, and so on. The interest of these gazers in
some proceedings within, which by reason of the gaslight were as public
as if carried on in the open air, was very great.
'Yes, that's what he's a buying o'-haw, haw!' said one of the young men,
as the shopman removed from the window a gorgeous blue velvet tray of
wedding-rings, and laid it on the counter.
''Tis what you may come to yerself, sooner or later, God have mercy upon
ye; and as such no scoffing matter,' said an older man. 'Faith, I'd as
lief cry as laugh to see a man in that corner.'
'He's a gent getting up in years too. He must hev been through it a few
times afore, seemingly, to sit down and buy the tools so cool as that.'
'Well, no. See what the shyest will do at such times. You bain't yerself
then; no man living is hisself then.'
'True,' said the ham-smoker's man. ''Tis a thought to look at that a
chap will take all this trouble to get a woman into his house, and a
twelvemonth after would as soon hear it thunder as hear her sing!'
The policeman standing near was a humane man, through having a young
family he could hardly keep, and he hesitated about telling them to move
on. Christopher had before this time perceived that the articles were
laid down before an old gentleman who was seated in the shop, and that
the gentleman was none other than he who had been with Ethelberta in the
concert-room. The discovery was so startling that, constitutionally
indisposed as he was to stand and watch, he became as glued to the spot
as the other idlers. Finding himself now for the first time directly
confronting the preliminaries of Ethelberta's marriage to a stranger, he
was left with far less equanimity than he could have supposed possible
to the situation.
'So near the time!' he said, and looked hard at Lord Mountclere.
Christopher had now a far better opportunity than before for observing
Ethelberta's betrothed. Apart from any bias of jealousy, disappointment,
or mortification, he was led to judge that this was not quite the man to
make Ethelberta happy. He had fancied her companion to be a man under
fifty; he was now visibly sixty or more. And it was not the sort of
sexagenarianism beside which a young woman's happiness can sometimes
contrive to keep itself alive in a quiet sleepy way. Suddenly it
occurred to him that this was the man whom he had helped in the carriage
accident on the way to Knollsea. He looked again.
By no means undignified, the face presented that combination of slyness
and jocundity which we are accustomed to imagine of the canonical jolly-
dogs in mediaeval tales. The gamesome Curate of Meudon might have
supplied some parts of the countenance; cunning Friar Tuck the
remainder. Nothing but the viscount's constant habit of going to church
every Sunday morning when at his country residence kept unholiness out
of his features, for though he lived theologically enough on the
Sabbath, as it became a man in his position to do, he was strikingly
mundane all the rest of the week, always preferring the devil to God in
his oaths. And nothing but antecedent good-humour prevented the short
fits of crossness incident to his passing infirmities from becoming
established. His look was exceptionally jovial now, and the corners of
his mouth twitched as the telegraph-needles of a hundred little erotic
messages from his heart to his brain. Anybody could see that he was a
merry man still, who loved good company, warming drinks, nymph-like
shapes, and pretty words, in spite of the disagreeable suggestions he
received from the pupils of his eyes, and the joints of his lively
limbs, that imps of mischief were busy sapping and mining in those
regions, with the view of tumbling him into a certain cool cellar under
the church aisle.
In general, if a lover can find any ground at all for serenity in the
tide of an elderly rival's success, he finds it in the fact itself of
that ancientness. The other side seems less a rival than a makeshift.
But Christopher no longer felt this, and the significant signs before
his eyes of the imminence of Ethelberta's union with this old hero
filled him with restless dread. True, the gentleman, as he appeared
illuminated by the jeweller's gas-jets, seemed more likely to injure
Ethelberta by indulgence than by severity, while her beauty lasted; but
there was a nameless something in him less tolerable than this.
The purchaser having completed his dealings with the goldsmith, was
conducted to the door by the master of the shop, and into the carriage,
which was at once driven off up the street.
Christopher now much desired to know the name of the man whom a nice
chain of circumstantial evidence taught him to regard as the happy
winner where scores had lost. He was grieved that Ethelberta's confessed
reserve should have extended so far as to limit her to mere indefinite
hints of marriage when they were talking almost on the brink of the
wedding-day. That the ceremony was to be a private one-which it probably
would be because of the disparity of ages-did not in his opinion justify
her secrecy. He had shown himself capable of a transmutation as valuable
as it is rare in men, the change from pestering lover to staunch friend,
and this was all he had got for it. But even an old lover sunk to an
indifferentist might have been tempted to spend an unoccupied half-hour
in discovering particulars now, and Christopher had not lapsed nearly so
far as to absolute unconcern.
That evening, however, nothing came in his way to enlighten him. But the
next day, when skirting the Close on his ordinary duties, he saw the
same carriage standing at a distance, and paused to behold the same old
gentleman come from a well-known office and re-enter the vehicle-Lord
Mountclere, in fact, in earnest pursuit of the business of yesternight,
having just pocketed a document in which romance, rashness, law, and
gospel are so happily made to work together that it may safely be
regarded as the neatest compromise which has ever been invented since
Adam sinned.
This time Julian perceived that the brougham was one belonging to the
White Hart Hotel, which Lord Mountclere was using partly from the
necessities of these hasty proceedings, and also because, by so doing,
he escaped the notice that might have been bestowed upon his own
equipage, or men-servants, the Mountclere hammer-cloths being known in
Melchester. Christopher now walked towards the hotel, leisurely, yet
with anxiety. He inquired of a porter what people were staying there
that day, and was informed that they had only one person in the house,
Lord Mountclere, whom sudden and unexpected business had detained in
Melchester since the previous day.
Christopher lingered to hear no more. He retraced the street much more
quickly than he had come; and he only said, 'Lord Mountclere-it must
never be!'
As soon as he entered the house, Faith perceived that he was greatly
agitated. He at once told her of his discovery, and she exclaimed, 'What
a brilliant match!'
'O Faith,' said Christopher, 'you don't know! You are far from knowing.
It is as gloomy as midnight. Good God, can it be possible?'
Faith bHANDlinked in alarm, without speaking.
'Did you never hear anything of Lord Mountclere when we lived at
Sandbourne?'
'I knew the name-no more.'
'No, no-of course you did not. Well, though I never saw his face, to my
knowledge, till a short time ago, I know enough to say that, if earnest
representations can prevent it, this marriage shall not be. Father knew
him, or about him, very well; and he once told me-what I cannot tell
you. Fancy, I have seen him three times-yesterday, last night, and this
morning-besides helping him on the road some weeks ago, and never once
considered that he might be Lord Mountclere. He is here almost in
disguise, one may say; neither man nor horse is with him; and his object
accounts for his privacy. I see how it is-she is doing this to benefit
her brothers and sisters, if possible; but she ought to know that if she
is miserable they will never be happy. That's the nature of women-they
take the form for the essence, and that's what she is doing now. I
should think her guardian angel must have quitted her when she agreed to
a marriage which may tear her heart out like a claw.'
'You are too warm about it, Kit-it cannot be so bad as that. It is not
the thing, but the sensitiveness to the thing, which is the true measure
of its pain. Perhaps what seems so bad to you falls lightly on her mind.
A campaigner in a heavy rain is not more uncomfortable than we are in a
slight draught; and Ethelberta, fortified by her sapphires and gold cups
and wax candles, will not mind facts which look like spectres to us
outside. A title will turn troubles into romances, and she will shine as
an interesting viscountess in spite of them.'
The discussion with Faith was not continued, Christopher stopping the
argument by saying that he had a good mind to go off at once to
Knollsea, and show her her danger. But till the next morning Ethelberta
was certainly safe; no marriage was possible anywhere before then. He
passed the afternoon in a state of great indecision, constantly
reiterating, 'I will go!'
41. WORKSHOPS-AN INN-THE STREET
On an extensive plot of ground, lying somewhere between the Thames and
the Kensington squares, stood the premises of Messrs. Nockett and Perch,
builders and contractors. The yard with its workshops formed part of one
of those frontier lines between mangy business and garnished domesticity
that occur in what are called improving neighbourhoods. We are
accustomed to regard increase as the chief feature in a great city's
progress, its well-known signs greeting our eyes on every outskirt.
Slush-ponds may be seen turning into basement-kitchens; a broad causeway
of shattered earthenware smothers plots of budding gooseberry-bushes and
vegetable trenches, foundations following so closely upon gardens that
the householder may be expected to find cadaverous sprouts from
overlooked potatoes rising through the chinks of his cellar floor. But
the other great process, that of internal transmutation, is not less
curious than this encroachment of grey upon green. Its first erections
are often only the milk-teeth of a suburb, and as the district rises in
dignity they are dislodged by those which are to endure. Slightness
becomes supplanted by comparative solidity, commonness by novelty,
lowness and irregularity by symmetry and height.
An observer of the precinct which has been named as an instance in point
might have stood under a lamp-post and heard simultaneously the peal of
the visitor's bell from the new terrace on the right hand, and the
stroke of tools from the musty workshops on the left. Waggons laden with
deals came up on this side, and landaus came down on the other-the
former to lumber heavily through the old-established contractors' gates,
the latter to sweep fashionably into the square.
About twelve o'clock on the day following Lord Mountclere's exhibition
of himself to Christopher in the jeweller's shop at Melchester, and
almost at the identical time when the viscount was seen to come from the
office for marriage-licences in the same place, a carriage drove nearly
up to the gates of Messrs. Nockett and Co.'s yard. A gentleman stepped
out and looked around. He was a man whose years would have been
pronounced as five-and-forty by the friendly, fifty by the candid,
fifty-two or three by the grim. He was as handsome a study in grey as
could be seen in town, there being far more of the raven's plumage than
of the gull's in the mixture as yet; and he had a glance of that
practised sort which can measure people, weigh them, repress them,
encourage them to sprout and blossom as a March sun encourages crocuses,
ask them questions, give them answers-in short, a glance that could do
as many things as an American cooking-stove or a multum-in-parvo pocket-
knife. But, as with most men of the world, this was mere mechanism: his
actual emotions were kept so far within his person that they were rarely
heard or seen near his features.
On reading the builders' names over the gateway he entered the yard, and
asked at the office if Solomon Chickerel was engaged on the premises.
The clerk was going to be very attentive, but finding the visitor had
come only to speak to a workman, his tense attitude slackened a little,
and he merely signified the foot of a Flemish ladder on the other side
of the yard, saying, 'You will find him, sir, up there in the joiner's
shop.'
When the man in the black coat reached the top he found himself at the
end of a long apartment as large as a chapel and as low as a malt-room,
across which ran parallel carpenters' benches to the number of twenty or
more, a gangway being left at the side for access throughout. Behind
every bench there stood a man or two, planing, fitting, or chiselling,
as the case might be. The visitor paused for a moment, as if waiting for
some cessation of their violent motions and uproar till he could make
his errand known. He waited ten seconds, he waited twenty; but, beyond
that a quick look had been thrown upon him by every pair of eyes, the
muscular performances were in no way interrupted: every one seemed
oblivious of his presence, and absolutely regardless of his wish. In
truth, the texture of that salmon-coloured skin could be seen to be
aristocratic without a microscope, and the exceptious artizan has an
offhand way when contrasts are made painfully strong by an idler of this
kind coming, gloved and brushed, into the very den where he is sweating
and muddling in his shirt-sleeves.
The gentleman from the carriage then proceeded down the workshop, wading
up to his knees in a sea of shavings, and bruising his ankles against
corners of board and sawn-off blocks, that lay hidden like reefs
beneath. At the ninth bench he made another venture.
'Sol Chickerel?' said the man addressed, as he touched his plane-iron
upon the oilstone. 'He's one of them just behind.'
'Damn it all, can't one of you show me?' the visitor angrily observed,
for he had been used to more attention than this. 'Here, point him out.'
He handed the man a shilling.
'No trouble to do that,' said the workman; and he turned and signified
Sol by a nod without moving from his place.
The stranger entered Sol's division, and, nailing him with his eye, said
at once: 'I want to speak a few words with you in private. Is not a Mrs.
Petherwin your sister?'
Sol started suspiciously. 'Has anything happened to her?' he at length
said hurriedly.
'O no. It is on a business matter that I have called. You need not mind
owning the relationship to me-the secret will be kept. I am the brother
of one whom you may have heard of from her-Lord Mountclere.'
'I have not. But if you will wait a minute, sir-' He went to a little
glazed box at the end of the shop, where the foreman was sitting, and,
after speaking a few words to this person, Sol led Mountclere to the
door, and down the ladder.
'I suppose we cannot very well talk here, after all?' said the
gentleman, when they reached the yard, and found several men moving
about therein.
'Perhaps we had better go to some room-the nearest inn will answer the
purpose, won't it?'
'Excellently.'
'There's the "Green Bushes" over the way. They have a very nice private
room upstairs.'
'Yes, that will do.' And passing out of the yard, the man with the
glance entered the inn with Sol, where they were shown to the parlour as
requested.
While the waiter was gone for some wine, which Mountclere ordered, the
more ingenuous of the two resumed the conversation by saying, awkwardly:
'Yes, Mrs. Petherwin is my sister, as you supposed, sir; but on her
account I do not let it be known.'
'Indeed,' said Mountclere. 'Well, I came to see you in order to speak of
a matter which I thought you might know more about than I do, for it has
taken me quite by surprise. My brother, Lord Mountclere, is, it seems,
to be privately married to Mrs. Petherwin to-morrow.'
'Is that really the fact?' said Sol, becoming quite shaken. 'I had no
thought that such a thing could be possible!'
'It is imminent.'
'Father has told me that she has lately got to know some nobleman; but I
never supposed there could be any meaning in that.'
'You were altogether wrong,' said Mountclere, leaning back in his chair
and looking at Sol steadily. 'Do you feel it to be a matter upon which
you will congratulate her?'
'A very different thing!' said Sol vehemently. 'Though he is your
brother, sir, I must say this, that I would rather she married the
poorest man I know.'
'Why?'
'From what my father has told me of him, he is not-a more desirable
brother-in-law to me than I shall be in all likelihood to him. What
business has a man of that character to marry Berta, I should like to
ask?'
'That's what I say,' returned Mountclere, revealing his satisfaction at
Sol's estimate of his noble brother: it showed that he had calculated
well in coming here. 'My brother is getting old, and he has lived
strangely: your sister is a highly respectable young lady.'
'And he is not respectable, you mean? I know he is not. I worked near
Enckworth once.'
'I cannot say that,' returned Mountclere. Possibly a certain fraternal
feeling repressed a direct assent: and yet this was the only
representation which could be expected to prejudice the young man
against the wedding, if he were such an one as the visitor supposed Sol
to be-a man vulgar in sentiment and ambition, but pure in his anxiety
for his sister's happiness. 'At any rate, we are agreed in thinking that
this would be an unfortunate marriage for both,' added Mountclere.
'About both I don't know. It may be a good thing for him. When do you
say it is to be, sir-to-morrow?'
'Yes.'
'I don't know what to do!' said Sol, walking up and down. 'If half what
I have heard is true, I would lose a winter's work to prevent her
marrying him. What does she want to go mixing in with people who despise
her for? Now look here, Mr. Mountclere, since you have been and called
me out to talk this over, it is only fair that you should tell me the
exact truth about your brother. Is it a lie, or is it true, that he is
not fit to be the husband of a decent woman?'
'That is a curious inquiry,' said Mountclere, whose manner and aspect,
neutral as a winter landscape, had little in common with Sol's warm and
unrestrained bearing. 'There are reasons why I think your sister will
not be happy with him.'
'Then it is true what they say,' said Sol, bringing down his fist upon
the table. 'I know your meaning well enough. What's to be done? If I
could only see her this minute, she might be kept out of it.'
'You think your presence would influence your sister-if you could see
her before the wedding?'
'I think it would. But who's to get at her?'
'I am going, so you had better come on with me-unless it would be best
for your father to come.'
'Perhaps it might,' said the bewildered Sol. 'But he will not be able to
get away; and it's no use for Dan to go. If anybody goes I must! If she
has made up her mind nothing can be done by writing to her.'
'I leave at once to see Lord Mountclere,' the other continued. 'I feel
that as my brother is evidently ignorant of the position of Mrs.
Petherwin's family and connections, it is only fair in me, as his
nearest relative, to make them clear to him before it is too late.'
'You mean that if he knew her friends were working-people he would not
think of her as a wife? 'Tis a reasonable thought. But make your mind
easy: she has told him. I make a great mistake if she has for a moment
thought of concealing that from him.'
'She may not have deliberately done so. But-and I say this with no ill-
feeling-it is a matter known to few, and she may have taken no steps to
undeceive him. I hope to bring him to see the matter clearly.
Unfortunately the thing has been so secret and hurried that there is
barely time. I knew nothing until this morning-never dreamt of such a
preposterous occurrence.'
'Preposterous! If it should come to pass, she would play her part as his
lady as well as any other woman, and better. I wish there was no more
reason for fear on my side than there is on yours! Things have come to a
sore head when she is not considered lady enough for such as he. But
perhaps your meaning is, that if your brother were to have a son, you
would lose your heir-presumptive title to the cor'net of Mountclere?
Well, 'twould be rather hard for ye, now I come to think o't-upon my
life, 'twould.'
'The suggestion is as delicate as the \x97- atmosphere of this vile room.
But let your ignorance be your excuse, my man. It is hardly worth while
for us to quarrel when we both have the same object in view: do you
think so?'
'That's true-that's true. When do you start, sir?'
'We must leave almost at once,' said Mountclere, looking at his watch.
'If we cannot catch the two o'clock train, there is no getting there to-
night-and to-morrow we could not possibly arrive before one.'
'I wish there was time for me to go and tidy myself a bit,' said Sol,
anxiously looking down at his working clothes. 'I suppose you would not
like me to go with you like this?'
'Confound the clothes! If you cannot start in five minutes, we shall not
be able to go at all.'
'Very well, then-wait while I run across to the shop, then I am ready.
How do we get to the station?'
'My carriage is at the corner waiting. When you come out I will meet you
at the gates.'
Sol then hurried downstairs, and a minute or two later Mr. Mountclere
followed, looking like a man bent on policy at any price. The carriage
was brought round by the time that Sol reappeared from the yard. He
entered and sat down beside Mountclere, not without a sense that he was
spoiling good upholstery; the coachman then allowed the lash of his whip
to alight with the force of a small fly upon the horses, which set them
up in an angry trot. Sol rolled on beside his new acquaintance with the
shamefaced look of a man going to prison in a van, for pedestrians
occasionally gazed at him, full of what seemed to himself to be ironical
surprise.
'I am afraid I ought to have changed my clothes after all,' he said,
writhing under a perception of the contrast between them. 'Not knowing
anything about this, I ain't a bit prepared. If I had got even my
second-best hat, it wouldn't be so bad.'
'It makes no difference,' said Mountclere inanimately.
'Or I might have brought my portmantle, with some things.'
'It really is not important.'
On reaching the station they found there were yet a few minutes to
spare, which Sol made use of in writing a note to his father, to explain
what had occurred.
42. THE DONCASTLES' RESIDENCE, AND OUTSIDE THE SAME
Mrs. Doncastle's dressing-bell had rung, but Menlove, the lady's maid,
having at the same time received a letter by the evening post, paused to
read it before replying to the summons:-
'ENCKWORTH COURT, Wednesday.
DARLING LOUISA,-I can assure you that I am no more likely than yourself
to form another attachment, as you will perceive by what follows.
Before we left town I thought that to be able to see you occasionally
was sufficient for happiness, but down in this lonely place the case is
different. In short, my dear, I ask you to consent to a union with me
as soon as you possibly can. Your prettiness has won my eyes and lips
completely, sweet, and I lie awake at night to think of the golden curls
you allowed to escape from their confinement on those nice times of
private clothes, when we walked in the park and slipped the bonds of
service, which you were never born to any more than I. . . .
'Had not my own feelings been so strong, I should have told you at the
first dash of my pen that what I expected is coming to pass at last-the
old dog is going to be privately married to Mrs. P. Yes, indeed, and
the wedding is coming off to-morrow, secret as the grave. All her
friends will doubtless leave service on account of it. What he does now
makes little difference to me, of course, as I had already given
warning, but I shall stick to him like a Briton in spite of it. He has
to-day made me a present, and a further five pounds for yourself,
expecting you to hold your tongue on every matter connected with Mrs.
P.'s friends, and to say nothing to any of them about this marriage
until it is over. His lordship impressed this upon me very strong, and
familiar as a brother, and of course we obey his instructions to the
letter; for I need hardly say that unless he keeps his promise to help
me in setting up the shop, our nuptials cannot be consumed. His help
depends upon our obedience, as you are aware. . . .'
This, and much more, was from her very last lover, Lord Mountclere's
valet, who had been taken in hand directly she had convinced herself of
Joey's hopeless youthfulness. The missive sent Mrs. Menlove's spirits
soaring like spring larks; she flew upstairs in answer to the bell with
a joyful, triumphant look, which the illuminated figure of Mrs.
Doncastle in her dressing-room could not quite repress. One could almost
forgive Menlove her arts when so modest a result brought such vast
content.
Mrs. Doncastle seemed inclined to make no remark during the dressing,
and at last Menlove could repress herself no longer.
'I should like to name something to you, m'm.'
'Yes.'
'I shall be wishing to leave soon, if it is convenient.'
'Very well, Menlove,' answered Mrs. Doncastle, as she serenely surveyed
her right eyebrow in the glass. 'Am I to take this as a formal notice?'
'If you please; but I could stay a week or two beyond the month if
suitable. I am going to be married-that's what it is, m'm.'
'O! I am glad to hear it, though I am sorry to lose you.'
'It is Lord Mountclere's valet-Mr. Tipman-m'm.'
'Indeed.'
Menlove went on building up Mrs. Doncastle's hair awhile in silence.
'I suppose you heard the other news that arrived in town to-day, m'm?'
she said again. 'Lord Mountclere is going to be married to-morrow.'
'To-morrow? Are you quite sure?'
'O yes, m'm. Mr. Tipman has just told me so in his letter. He is going
to be married to Mrs. Petherwin. It is to be quite a private wedding.'
Mrs. Doncastle made no remark, and she remained in the same still
position as before; but a countenance expressing transcendent surprise
was reflected to Menlove by the glass.
At this sight Menlove's tongue so burned to go further, and unfold the
lady's relations with the butler downstairs, that she would have lost a
month's wages to be at liberty to do it. The disclosure was almost too
magnificent to be repressed. To deny herself so exquisite an indulgence
required an effort which nothing on earth could have sustained save the
one thing that did sustain it-the knowledge that upon her silence hung
the most enormous desideratum in the world, her own marriage. She said
no more, and Mrs. Doncastle went away.
It was an ordinary family dinner that day, but their nephew Neigh
happened to be present. Just as they were sitting down Mrs. Doncastle
said to her husband: 'Why have you not told me of the wedding to-
morrow?-or don't you know anything about it?'
'Wedding?' said Mr. Doncastle.
'Lord Mountclere is to be married to Mrs. Petherwin quite privately.'
'Good God!' said some person.
Mr. Doncastle did not speak the words; they were not spoken by Neigh:
they seemed to float over the room and round the walls, as if
originating in some spiritualistic source. Yet Mrs. Doncastle,
remembering the symptoms of attachment between Ethelberta and her nephew
which had appeared during the summer, looked towards Neigh instantly, as
if she thought the words must have come from him after all; but Neigh's
face was perfectly calm; he, together with her husband, was sitting with
his eyes fixed in the direction of the sideboard; and turning to the
same spot she beheld Chickerel standing pale as death, his lips being
parted as if he did not know where he was.
'Did you speak?' said Mrs. Doncastle, looking with astonishment at the
butler.
'Chickerel, what's the matter-are you ill?' said Mr. Doncastle
simultaneously. 'Was it you who said that?'
'I did, sir,' said Chickerel in a husky voice, scarcely above a whisper.
'I could not help it.'
'Why?'
'She is my daughter, and it shall be known at once!'
'Who is your daughter?'
He paused a few moments nervously. 'Mrs. Petherwin,' he said.
Upon this announcement Neigh looked at poor Chickerel as if he saw
through him into the wall. Mrs. Doncastle uttered a faint exclamation
and leant back in her chair: the bare possibility of the truth of
Chickerel's claims to such paternity shook her to pieces when she viewed
her intimacies with Ethelberta during the past season-the court she had
paid her, the arrangements she had entered into to please her; above
all, the dinner-party which she had contrived and carried out solely to
gratify Lord Mountclere and bring him into personal communication with
the general favourite; thus making herself probably the chief though
unconscious instrument in promoting a match by which her butler was to
become father-in-law to a peer she delighted to honour. The crowd of
perceptions almost took away her life; she closed her eyes in a white
shiver.
'Do you mean to say that the lady who sat here at dinner at the same
time that Lord Mountclere was present, is your daughter?' asked
Doncastle.
'Yes, sir,' said Chickerel respectfully.
'How did she come to be your daughter?'
'I- Well, she is my daughter, sir.'
'Did you educate her?'
'Not altogether, sir. She was a very clever child. Lady Petherwin took a
deal of trouble about her education. They were both left widows about
the same time: the son died, then the father. My daughter was only
seventeen then. But though she's older now, her marriage with Lord
Mountclere means misery. He ought to marry another woman.'
'It is very extraordinary,' Mr. Doncastle murmured. 'If you are ill you
had better go and rest yourself, Chickerel. Send in Thomas.'
Chickerel, who seemed to be much disturbed, then very gladly left the
room, and dinner proceeded. But such was the peculiarity of the case,
that, though there was in it neither murder, robbery, illness, accident,
fire, or any other of the tragic and legitimate shakers of human nerves,
two of the three who were gathered there sat through the meal without
the least consciousness of what viands had composed it. Impressiveness
depends as much upon propinquity as upon magnitude; and to have honoured
unawares the daughter of the vilest Antipodean miscreant and murderer
would have been less discomfiting to Mrs. Doncastle than it was to make
the same blunder with the daughter of a respectable servant who happened
to live in her own house. To Neigh the announcement was as the
catastrophe of a story already begun, rather than as an isolated wonder.
Ethelberta's words had prepared him for something, though the nature of
that thing was unknown.
'Chickerel ought not to have kept us in ignorance of this-of course he
ought not!' said Mrs. Doncastle, as soon as they were left alone.
'I don't see why not,' replied Mr. Doncastle, who took the matter very
coolly, as was his custom.
'Then she herself should have let it be known.'
'Nor does that follow. You didn't tell Mrs. Petherwin that your
grandfather narrowly escaped hanging for shooting his rival in a duel.'
'Of course not. There was no reason why I should give extraneous
information.'
'Nor was there any reason why she should. As for Chickerel, he doubtless
felt how unbecoming it would be to make personal remarks upon one of
your guests-Ha-ha-ha! Well, well-Ha-ha-ha-ha!'
'I know this,' said Mrs. Doncastle, in great anger, 'that if my father
had been in the room, I should not have let the fact pass unnoticed, and
treated him like a stranger!'
'Would you have had her introduce Chickerel to us all round? My dear
Margaret, it was a complicated position for a woman.'
'Then she ought not to have come!'
'There may be something in that, though she was dining out at other
houses as good as ours. Well, I should have done just as she did, for
the joke of the thing. Ha-ha-ha!-it is very good-very. It was a case in
which the appetite for a jest would overpower the sting of conscience in
any well-constituted being-that, my dear, I must maintain.'
'I say she should not have come!' answered Mrs. Doncastle firmly. 'Of
course I shall dismiss Chickerel.'
'Of course you will do no such thing. I have never had a butler in the
house before who suited me so well. It is a great credit to the man to
have such a daughter, and I am not sure that we do not derive some
lustre of a humble kind from his presence in the house. But, seriously,
I wonder at your short-sightedness, when you know the troubles we have
had through getting new men from nobody knows where.'
Neigh, perceiving that the breeze in the atmosphere might ultimately
intensify to a palpable black squall, seemed to think it would be well
to take leave of his uncle and aunt as soon as he conveniently could;
nevertheless, he was much less discomposed by the situation than by the
active cause which had led to it. When Mrs. Doncastle arose, her husband
said he was going to speak to Chickerel for a minute or two, and Neigh
followed his aunt upstairs.
Presently Doncastle joined them. 'I have been talking to Chickerel,' he
said. 'It is a very curious affair-this marriage of his daughter and
Lord Mountclere. The whole situation is the most astounding I have ever
met with. The man is quite ill about the news. He has shown me a letter
which has just reached him from his son on the same subject. Lord
Mountclere's brother and this young man have actually gone off together
to try to prevent the wedding, and Chickerel has asked to be allowed to
go himself, if he can get soon enough to the station to catch the night
mail. Of course he may go if he wishes.'
'What a funny thing!' said the lady, with a wretchedly factitious smile.
'The times have taken a strange turn when the angry parent of the
comedy, who goes post-haste to prevent the undutiful daughter's rash
marriage, is a gentleman from below stairs, and the unworthy lover a
peer of the realm!'
Neigh spoke for almost the first time. 'I don't blame Chickerel in
objecting to Lord Mountclere. I should object to him myself if I had a
daughter. I never liked him.'
'Why?' said Mrs. Doncastle, lifting her eyelids as if the act were a
heavy task.
'For reasons which don't generally appear.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Doncastle, in a low tone. 'Still, we must not believe
all we hear.'
'Is Chickerel going?' said Neigh.
'He leaves in five or ten minutes,' said Doncastle.
After a few further words Neigh mentioned that he was unable to stay
longer that evening, and left them. When he had reached the outside of
the door he walked a little way up the pavement and back again, as if
reluctant to lose sight of the street, finally standing under a lamp-
post whence he could command a view of Mr. Doncastle's front. Presently
a man came out in a great-coat and with a small bag in his hand; Neigh
at once recognizing the person as Chickerel, went up to him.
'Mr. Doncastle tells me you are going on a sudden journey. At what time
does your train leave?' Neigh asked.
'I go by the ten o'clock, sir: I hope it is a third-class,' said
Chickerel; 'though I am afraid it may not be.'
'It is as much as you will do to get to the station,' said Neigh,
turning the face of his watch to the light. 'Here, come into my cab-I am
driving that way.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Chickerel.
Neigh called a cab at the first opportunity, and they entered and drove
along together. Neither spoke during the journey. When they were driving
up to the station entrance Neigh looked again to see the hour.
'You have not a minute to lose,' he said, in repressed anxiety. 'And
your journey will be expensive: instead of walking from Anglebury to
Knollsea, you had better drive-above all, don't lose time. Never mind
what class the train is. Take this from me, since the emergency is
great.' He handed something to Chickerel folded up small.
The butler took it without inquiry, and stepped out hastily.
'I sincerely hope she- Well, good-night, Chickerel,' continued Neigh,
ending his words abruptly. The cab containing him drove again towards
the station-gates, leaving Chickerel standing on the kerb.
He passed through the booking-office, and looked at the paper Neigh had
put into his hand. It was a five-pound note.
Chickerel mused on the circumstance as he took his ticket and got into
the train.
43. THE RAILWAY-THE SEA-THE SHORE BEYOND
By this time Sol and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere had gone far on
their journey into Wessex. Enckworth Court, Mountclere's destination,
though several miles from Knollsea, was most easily accessible by the
same route as that to the village, the latter being the place for which
Sol was bound.
From the few words that passed between them on the way, Mountclere
became more stubborn than ever in a belief that this was a carefully
laid trap of the fair Ethelberta's to ensnare his brother without
revealing to him her family ties, which it therefore behoved him to make
clear, with the utmost force of representation, before the fatal union
had been contracted. Being himself the viscount's only remaining brother
and near relative, the disinterestedness of his motives may be left to
imagination; that there was much real excuse for his conduct must,
however, be borne in mind. Whether his attempt would prevent the union
was another question: he believed that, conjoined with his personal
influence over the viscount, and the importation of Sol as a firebrand
to throw between the betrothed pair, it might do so.
About half-an-hour before sunset the two individuals, HANDlinked by
their differences, reached the point of railway at which the branch to
Sandbourne left the main line. They had taken tickets for Sandbourne,
intending to go thence to Knollsea by the steamer that plied between the
two places during the summer months-making this a short and direct
route. But it occurred to Mountclere on the way that, summer being over,
the steamer might possibly have left off running, the wind might be too
high for a small boat, and no large one might be at hand for hire:
therefore it would be safer to go by train to Anglebury, and the
remaining sixteen miles by driving over the hills, even at a great loss
of time.
Accident, however, determined otherwise. They were in the station at the
junction, inquiring of an official if the Speedwell had ceased to sail,
when a countryman who had just come up from Sandbourne stated that,
though the Speedwell had left off for the year, there was that day
another steamer at Sandbourne. This steamer would of necessity return to
Knollsea that evening, partly because several people from that place had
been on board, and also because the Knollsea folk were waiting for
groceries and draperies from London: there was not an ounce of tea or a
hundredweight of coal in the village, owing to the recent winds, which
had detained the provision parcels at Sandbourne, and kept the colliers
up-channel until the change of weather this day. To introduce
necessaries by a roundabout land journey was not easy when they had been
ordered by the other and habitual route. The boat returned at six
o'clock.
So on they went to Sandbourne, driving off to the pier directly they
reached that place, for it was getting towards night. The steamer was
there, as the man had told them, much to the relief of Sol, who, being
extremely anxious to enter Knollsea before a late hour, had known that
this was the only way in which it could be done.
Some unforeseen incident delayed the boat, and they walked up and down
the pier to wait. The prospect was gloomy enough. The wind was north-
east; the sea along shore was a chalky-green, though comparatively calm,
this part of the coast forming a shelter from wind in its present
quarter. The clouds had different velocities, and some of them shone
with a coppery glare, produced by rays from the west which did not enter
the inferior atmosphere at all. It was reflected on the distant waves in
patches, with an effect as if the waters were at those particular spots
stained with blood. This departed, and what daylight was left to the
earth came from strange and unusual quarters of the heavens. The zenith
would be bright, as if that were the place of the sun; then all overhead
would close, and a whiteness in the east would give the appearance of
morning; while a bank as thick as a wall barricaded the west, which
looked as if it had no acquaintance with sunsets, and would blush red no
more.
'Any other passengers?' shouted the master of the steamboat. 'We must be
off: it may be a dirty night.'
Sol and Mountclere went on board, and the pier receded in the dusk.
'Shall we have any difficulty in getting into Knollsea Bay?' said
Mountclere.
'Not if the wind keeps where it is for another hour or two.'
'I fancy it is shifting to the east'ard,' said Sol.
The captain looked as if he had thought the same thing.
'I hope I shall be able to get home to-night,' said a Knollsea woman.
'My little children be left alone. Your mis'ess is in a bad way, too-
isn't she, skipper?'
'Yes.'
'And you've got the doctor from Sandbourne aboard, to tend her?'
'Yes.'
'Then you'll be sure to put into Knollsea, if you can?'
'Yes. Don't be alarmed, ma'am. We'll do what we can. But no one must
boast.'
The skipper's remark was the result of an observation that the wind had
at last flown to the east, the single point of the compass whence it
could affect Knollsea Bay. The result of this change was soon
perceptible. About midway in their transit the land elbowed out to a
bold chalk promontory; beyond this stretched a vertical wall of the same
cliff, in a line parallel with their course. In fair weather it was
possible and customary to steer close along under this hoary facade for
the distance of a mile, there being six fathoms of water within a few
boats' lengths of the precipice. But it was an ugly spot at the best of
times, landward no less than seaward, the cliff rounding off at the top
in vegetation, like a forehead with low-grown hair, no defined edge
being provided as a warning to unwary pedestrians on the downs above.
As the wind sprung up stronger, white clots could be discerned at the
water level of the cliff, rising and falling against the black band of
shaggy weed that formed a sort of skirting to the base of the wall. They
were the first-fruits of the new east blast, which shaved the face of
the cliff like a razor-gatherings of foam in the shape of heads,
shoulders, and arms of snowy whiteness, apparently struggling to rise
from the deeps, and ever sinking back to their old levels again. They
reminded an observer of a drowning scene in a picture of the Deluge. At
some points the face of rock was hollowed into gaping caverns, and the
water began to thunder into these with a leap that was only topped by
the rebound seaward again. The vessel's head was kept a little further
to sea, but beyond that everything went on as usual.
The precipice was still in view, and before it several huge columns of
rock appeared, detached from the mass behind. Two of these were
particularly noticeable in the grey air-one vertical, stout and square;
the other slender and tapering. They were individualized as husband and
wife by the coast men. The waves leapt up their sides like a pack of
hounds; this, however, though fearful in its boisterousness, was nothing
to the terrible games that sometimes went on round the knees of those
giants in stone. Yet it was sufficient to cause the course of the frail
steamboat to be altered yet a little more-from south-west-by-south to
south-by-west-to give the breakers a still wider berth.
'I wish we had gone by land, sir; 'twould have been surer play,' said
Sol to Mountclere, a cat-and-dog friendship having arisen between them.
'Yes,' said Mountclere. 'Knollsea is an abominable place to get into
with an east wind blowing, they say.'
Another circumstance conspired to make their landing more difficult,
which Mountclere knew nothing of. With the wind easterly, the highest
sea prevailed in Knollsea Bay from the slackening of flood-tide to the
first hour of ebb. At that time the water outside stood without a
current, and ridges and hollows chased each other towards the beach
unchecked. When the tide was setting strong up or down Channel its flow
across the mouth of the bay thrust aside, to some extent, the landward
plunge of the waves.
We glance for a moment at the state of affairs on the land they were
nearing.
This was the time of year to know the truth about the inner nature and
character of Knollsea; for to see Knollsea smiling to the summer sun was
to see a courtier before a king; Knollsea was not to be known by such
simple means. The half-dozen detached villas used as lodging-houses in
the summer, standing aloof from the cots of the permanent race, rose in
the dusk of this gusty evening, empty, silent, damp, and dark as tombs.
The gravel walks leading to them were invaded by leaves and tufts of
grass. As the darkness thickened the wind increased, and each blast
raked the iron railings before the houses till they hummed as if in a
song of derision. Certainly it seemed absurd at this time of year that
human beings should expect comfort in a spot capable of such moods as
these.
However, one of the houses looked cheerful, and that was the dwelling to
which Ethelberta had gone. Its gay external colours might as well have
been black for anything that could be seen of them now, but an unblinded
window revealed inside it a room bright and warm. It was illuminated by
firelight only. Within, Ethelberta appeared against the curtains, close
to the glass. She was watching through a binocular a faint light which
had become visible in the direction of the bluff far away over the bay.
'Here is the Spruce at last, I think,' she said to her sister, who was
by the fire. 'I hope they will be able to land the things I have
ordered. They are on board I know.'
The wind continued to rise till at length something from the lungs of
the gale alighted like a feather upon the pane, and remained there
sticking. Seeing the substance, Ethelberta opened the window to secure
it. The fire roared and the pictures kicked the walls; she closed the
sash, and brought to the light a crisp fragment of foam.
'How suddenly the sea must have risen,' said Picotee.
The servant entered the room. 'Please, mis'ess says she is afraid you
won't have your things to-night, 'm. They say the steamer can't land,
and mis'ess wants to know if she can do anything?'
'It is of no consequence,' said Ethelberta. 'They will come some time,
unless they go to the bottom.'
The girl left the room. 'Shall we go down to the shore and see what the
night is like?' said Ethelberta. 'This is the last opportunity I shall
have.'
'Is it right for us to go, considering you are to be married to-morrow?'
said Picotee, who had small affection for nature in this mood.
Her sister laughed. 'Let us put on our cloaks-nobody will know us. I am
sorry to leave this grim and primitive place, even for Enckworth Court.'
They wrapped themselves up, and descended the hill.
On drawing near the battling line of breakers which marked the meeting
of sea and land they could perceive within the nearly invisible horizon
an equilateral triangle of lights. It was formed of three stars, a red
on the one side, a green on the other, and a white on the summit. This,
composed of mast-head and side lamps, was all that was visible of the
Spruce, which now faced end-on about half-a-mile distant, and was still
nearing the pier. The girls went further, and stood on the foreshore,
listening to the din. Seaward appeared nothing distinct save a black
horizontal band embodying itself out of the grey water, strengthening
its blackness, and enlarging till it looked like a nearing wall. It was
the concave face of a coming wave. On its summit a white edging arose
with the aspect of a lace frill; it broadened, and fell over the front
with a terrible concussion. Then all before them was a sheet of
whiteness, which spread with amazing rapidity, till they found
themselves standing in the midst of it, as in a field of snow. Both felt
an insidious chill encircling their ankles, and they rapidly ran up the
beach.
'You girls, come away there, or you'll be washed off: what need have ye
for going so near?'
Ethelberta recognized the stentorian voice as that of Captain Flower,
who, with a party of boatmen, was discovered to be standing near, under
the shelter of a wall. He did not know them in the gloom, and they took
care that he should not. They retreated further up the beach, when the
hissing fleece of froth slid again down the shingle, dragging the
pebbles under it with a rattle as of a beast gnawing bones.
The spot whereon the men stood was called 'Down-under-wall;' it was a
nook commanding a full view of the bay, and hither the nautical portion
of the village unconsciously gravitated on windy afternoons and nights,
to discuss past disasters in the reticent spirit induced by a sense that
they might at any moment be repeated. The stranger who should walk the
shore on roaring and sobbing November eves when there was not light
sufficient to guide his footsteps, and muse on the absoluteness of the
solitude, would be surprised by a smart 'Good-night' being returned from
this corner in company with the echo of his tread. In summer the six or
eight perennial figures stood on the breezy side of the wall-in winter
and in rain to leeward; but no weather was known to dislodge them.
'I had no sooner come ashore than the wind began to fly round,' said the
previous speaker; 'and it must have been about the time they were off
Old-Harry Point. "She'll put back for certain," I said; and I had no
more thought o' seeing her than John's set-net that was carried round
the point o' Monday.'
'Poor feller: his wife being in such a state makes him anxious to land
if 'a can: that's what 'tis, plain enough.'
'Why that?' said Flower.
'The doctor's aboard, 'a believe: "I'll have the most understanding man
in Sandbourne, cost me little or much," he said.'
''Tis all over and she's better,' said the other. 'I called half-an-hour
afore dark.'
Flower, being an experienced man, knew how the judgment of a ship's
master was liable to be warped by family anxieties, many instances of
the same having occurred in the history of navigation. He felt uneasy,
for he knew the deceit and guile of this bay far better than did the
master of the Spruce, who, till within a few recent months, had been a
stranger to the place. Indeed, it was the bay which had made Flower what
he was, instead of a man in thriving retirement. The two great ventures
of his life had been blown ashore and broken up within that very
semicircle. The sturdy sailor now stood with his eyes fixed on the
triangle of lights which showed that the steamer had not relinquished
her intention of bringing up inside the pier if possible; his right hand
was in his pocket, where it played with a large key which lay there. It
was the key of the lifeboat shed, and Flower was coxswain. His musing
was on the possibility of a use for it this night.
It appeared that the captain of the Spruce was aiming to pass in under
the lee of the pier; but a strong current of four or five knots was
running between the piles, drifting the steamer away at every attempt as
soon as she slowed. To come in on the other side was dangerous, the hull
of the vessel being likely to crash against and overthrow the fragile
erection, with damage to herself also. Flower, who had disappeared for a
few minutes, now came back.
'It is just possible I can make 'em hear with the trumpet, now they be
to leeward,' he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope
his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten
piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing
to keep the unwary from tumbling off. At the water level the piles were
eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man's wrist,
and at every fresh influx the whole structure trembled like a spider's
web. In this lay the danger of making fast, for a strong pull from a
headfast rope might drag the erection completely over. Flower arrived at
the end, where a lantern hung.
'Spruce ahoy!' he blared through the speaking trumpet two or three
times.
There seemed to be a reply of some sort from the steamer.
'Tuesday's gale hev loosened the pier, Cap'n Ounce; the bollards be too
weak to make fast to: must land in boats if ye will land, but dangerous;
yer wife is out of danger, and 'tis a boy-y-y-y!'
Ethelberta and Picotee were at this time standing on the beach a hundred
and fifty yards off. Whether or not the master of the steamer received
the information volunteered by Flower, the two girls saw the triangle of
lamps get narrow at its base, reduce themselves to two in a vertical
line, then to one, then to darkness. The Spruce had turned her head from
Knollsea.
'They have gone back, and I shall not have my wedding things after all!'
said Ethelberta. 'Well, I must do without them.'
'You see, 'twas best to play sure,' said Flower to his comrades, in a
tone of complacency. 'They might have been able to do it, but 'twas
risky. The shop-folk be out of stock, I hear, and the visiting lady up
the hill is terribly in want of clothes, so 'tis said. But what's that?
Ounce ought to have put back afore.'
Then the lantern which hung at the end of the jetty was taken down, and
the darkness enfolded all around from view. The bay became nothing but a
voice, the foam an occasional touch upon the face, the Spruce an
imagination, the pier a memory. Everything lessened upon the senses but
one; that was the wind. It mauled their persons like a hand, and caused
every scrap of their raiment to tug westward. To stand with the face to
sea brought semi-suffocation, from the intense pressure of air.
The boatmen retired to their position under the wall, to lounge again in
silence. Conversation was not considered necessary: their sense of each
other's presence formed a kind of conversation. Meanwhile Picotee and
Ethelberta went up the hill.
'If your wedding were going to be a public one, what a misfortune this
delay of the packages would be,' said Picotee.
'Yes,' replied the elder.
'I think the bracelet the prettiest of all the presents he brought to-
day-do you?'
'It is the most valuable.'
'Lord Mountclere is very kind, is he not? I like him a great deal better
than I did-do you, Berta?'
'Yes, very much better,' said Ethelberta, warming a little. 'If he were
not so suspicious at odd moments I should like him exceedingly. But I
must cure him of that by a regular course of treatment, and then he'll
be very nice.'
'For an old man. He likes you better than any young man would take the
trouble to do. I wish somebody else were old too.'
'He will be some day.'
'Yes, but-'
'Never mind: time will straighten many crooked things.'
'Do you think Lord Mountclere has reached home by this time?'
'I should think so: though I believe he had to call at the parsonage
before leaving Knollsea.'
'Had he? What for?'
'Why, of course somebody must-'
'O yes. Do you think anybody in Knollsea knows it is going to be except
us and the parson?'
'I suppose the clerk knows.'
'I wonder if a lord has ever been married so privately before.'
'Frequently: when he marries far beneath him, as in this case. But even
if I could have had it, I should not have liked a showy wedding. I have
had no experience as a bride except in the private form of the
ceremony.'
'Berta, I am sometimes uneasy about you even now and I want to ask you
one thing, if I may. Are you doing this for my sake? Would you have
married Mr. Julian if it had not been for me?'
'It is difficult to say exactly. It is possible that if I had had no
relations at all, I might have married him. And I might not.'
'I don't intend to marry.'
'In that case you will live with me at Enckworth. However, we will leave
such details till the ground-work is confirmed. When we get indoors will
you see if the boxes have been properly corded, and are quite ready to
be sent for? Then come in and sit by the fire, and I'll sing some songs
to you.'
'Sad ones, you mean.'
'No, they shall not be sad.'
'Perhaps they may be the last you will ever sing to me.'
'They may be. Such a thing has occurred.'
'But we will not think so. We'll suppose you are to sing many to me
yet.'
'Yes. There's good sense in that, Picotee. In a world where the blind
only are cheerful we should all do well to put out our eyes. There, I
did not mean to get into this state: forgive me, Picotee. It is because
I have had a thought-why I cannot tell-that as much as this man brings
to me in rank and gifts he may take out of me in tears.'
'Berta!'
'But there's no reason in it-not any; for not in a single matter does
what has been supply us with any certain ground for knowing what will be
in the world. I have seen marriages where happiness might have been said
to be ensured, and they have been all sadness afterwards; and I have
seen those in which the prospect was black as night, and they have led
on to a time of sweetness and comfort. And I have seen marriages neither
joyful nor sorry, that have become either as accident forced them to
become, the persons having no voice in it at all. Well, then, why should
I be afraid to make a plunge when chance is as trustworthy as
calculation?'
'If you don't like him well enough, don't have him, Berta. There's time
enough to put it off even now.'
'O no. I would not upset a well-considered course on the haste of an
impulse. Our will should withstand our misgivings. Now let us see if all
has been packed, and then we'll sing.'
That evening, while the wind was wheeling round and round the dwelling,
and the calm eye of the lighthouse afar was the single speck perceptible
of the outside world from the door of Ethelberta's temporary home, the
music of songs mingled with the stroke of the wind across the iron
railings, and was swept on in the general tide of the gale, and the
noise of the rolling sea, till not the echo of a tone remained.
An hour before this singing, an old gentleman might have been seen to
alight from a little one-horse brougham, and enter the door of Knollsea
parsonage. He was bent upon obtaining an entrance to the vicar's study
without giving his name.
But it happened that the vicar's wife was sitting in the front room,
making a pillow-case for the children's bed out of an old surplice which
had been excommunicated the previous Easter; she heard the newcomer's
voice through the partition, started, and went quickly to her husband,
who was where he ought to have been, in his study. At her entry he
looked up with an abstracted gaze, having been lost in meditation over a
little schooner which he was attempting to rig for their youngest boy.
At a word from his wife on the suspected name of the visitor, he resumed
his earlier occupation of inserting a few strong sentences, full of the
observation of maturer life, between the lines of a sermon written
during his first years of ordination, in order to make it available for
the coming Sunday. His wife then vanished with the little ship in her
hand, and the visitor appeared. A talk went on in low tones.
After a ten minutes' stay he departed as secretly as he had come. His
errand was the cause of much whispered discussion between the vicar and
his wife during the evening, but nothing was said concerning it to the
outside world.
44. SANDBOURNE-A LONELY HEATH-THE 'RED LION'-THE HIGHWAY
It was half-past eleven before the Spruce, with Mountclere and Sol
Chickerel on board, had steamed back again to Sandbourne. The direction
and increase of the wind had made it necessary to keep the vessel still
further to sea on their return than in going, that they might clear
without risk the windy, sousing, thwacking, basting, scourging Jack
Ketch of a corner called Old-Harry Point, which lay about halfway along
their track, and stood, with its detached posts and stumps of white
rock, like a skeleton's lower jaw, grinning at British navigation. Here
strong currents and cross currents were beginning to interweave their
scrolls and meshes, the water rising behind them in tumultuous heaps,
and slamming against the fronts and angles of cliff, whence it flew into
the air like clouds of flour. Who could now believe that this roaring
abode of chaos smiled in the sun as gently as an infant during the
summer days not long gone by, every pinnacle, crag, and cave returning a
doubled image across the glassy sea?
They were now again at Sandbourne, a point in their journey reached more
than four hours ago. It became necessary to consider anew how to
accomplish the difficult remainder. The wind was not blowing much beyond
what seamen call half a gale, but there had been enough unpleasantness
afloat to make landsmen glad to get ashore, and this dissipated in a
slight measure their vexation at having failed in their purpose. Still,
Mountclere loudly cursed their confidence in that treacherously short
route, and Sol abused the unknown Sandbourne man who had brought the
news of the steamer's arrival to them at the junction. The only course
left open to them now, short of giving up the undertaking, was to go by
the road along the shore, which, curving round the various little creeks
and inland seas between their present position and Knollsea, was of no
less length than thirty miles. There was no train back to the junction
till the next morning, and Sol's proposition that they should drive
thither in hope of meeting the mail-train, was overruled by Mountclere.
'We will have nothing more to do with chance,' he said. 'We may miss the
train, and then we shall have gone out of the way for nothing. More than
that, the down mail does not stop till it gets several miles beyond the
nearest station for Knollsea; so it is hopeless.'
'If there had only been a telegraph to the confounded place!'
'Telegraph-we might as well telegraph to the devil as to an old booby
and a damned scheming young widow. I very much question if we shall do
anything in the matter, even if we get there. But I suppose we had
better go on now?'
'You can do as you like. I shall go on, if I have to walk every step
o't.'
'That's not necessary. I think the best posting-house at this end of the
town is Tempett's-we must knock them up at once. Which will you do-
attempt supper here, or break the back of our journey first, and get on
to Anglebury? We may rest an hour or two there, unless you feel really
in want of a meal.'
'No. I'll leave eating to merrier men, who have no sister in the hands
of a cursed old Vandal.'
'Very well,' said Mountclere. 'We'll go on at once.'
An additional half-hour elapsed before they were fairly started, the
lateness and abruptness of their arrival causing delay in getting a
conveyance ready: the tempestuous night had apparently driven the whole
town, gentle and simple, early to their beds. And when at length the
travellers were on their way the aspect of the weather grew yet more
forbidding. The rain came down unmercifully, the booming wind caught it,
bore it across the plain, whizzed it against the carriage like a sower
sowing his seed. It was precisely such weather, and almost at the same
season, as when Picotee traversed the same moor, stricken with her great
disappointment at not meeting Christopher Julian.
Further on for several miles the drive lay through an open heath, dotted
occasionally with fir plantations, the trees of which told the tale of
their species without help from outline or colour; they spoke in those
melancholy moans and sobs which give to their sound a solemn sadness
surpassing even that of the sea. From each carriage-lamp the long rays
stretched like feelers into the air, and somewhat cheered the way, until
the insidious damp that pervaded all things above, around, and
underneath, overpowered one of them, and rendered every attempt to
rekindle it ineffectual. Even had the two men's dislike to each other's
society been less, the general din of the night would have prevented
much talking; as it was, they sat in a rigid reticence that was almost a
third personality. The roads were laid hereabouts with a light sandy
gravel, which, though not clogging, was soft and friable. It speedily
became saturated, and the wheels ground heavily and deeply into its
substance.
At length, after crossing from ten to twelve miles of these eternal
heaths under the eternally drumming storm, they could discern eyelets of
light winking to them in the distance from under a nebulous brow of pale
haze. They were looking on the little town of Havenpool. Soon after this
cross-roads were reached, one of which, at right angles to their present
direction, led down on the left to that place. Here the man stopped, and
informed them that the horses would be able to go but a mile or two
further.
'Very well, we must have others that can,' said Mountclere. 'Does our
way lie through the town?'
'No, sir-unless we go there to change horses, which I thought to do. The
direct road is straight on. Havenpool lies about three miles down there
on the left. But the water is over the road, and we had better go round.
We shall come to no place for two or three miles, and then only to
Flychett.'
'What's Flychett like?'
'A trumpery small bit of a village.'
'Still, I think we had better push on,' said Sol. 'I am against running
the risk of finding the way flooded about Havenpool.'
'So am I,' returned Mountclere.
'I know a wheelwright in Flychett,' continued Sol, 'and he keeps a beer-
house, and owns two horses. We could hire them, and have a bit of sommat
in the shape of victuals, and then get on to Anglebury. Perhaps the rain
may hold up by that time. Anything's better than going out of our way.'
'Yes. And the horses can last out to that place,' said Mountclere. 'Up
and on again, my man.'
On they went towards Flychett. Still the everlasting heath, the black
hills bulging against the sky, the barrows upon their round summits like
warts on a swarthy skin. The storm blew huskily over bushes of heather
and furze that it was unable materially to disturb, and the travellers
proceeded as before. But the horses were now far from fresh, and the
time spent in reaching the next village was quite half as long as that
taken up by the previous heavy portion of the drive. When they entered
Flychett it was about three.
'Now, where's the inn?' said Mountclere, yawning.
'Just on the knap,' Sol answered. ''Tis a little small place, and we
must do as well as we can.'
They pulled up before a cottage, upon the whitewashed front of which
could be seen a square board representing the sign. After an infinite
labour of rapping and shouting, a casement opened overhead, and a
woman's voice inquired what was the matter. Sol explained, when she told
them that the horses were away from home.
'Now we must wait till these are rested,' growled Mountclere. 'A pretty
muddle!'
'It cannot be helped,' answered Sol; and he asked the woman to open the
door. She replied that her husband was away with the horses and van, and
that they could not come in.
Sol was known to her, and he mentioned his name; but the woman only
began to abuse him.
'Come, publican, you'd better let us in, or we'll have the law for't,'
rejoined Sol, with more spirit. 'You don't dare to keep nobility waiting
like this.'
'Nobility!'
'My mate hev the title of Honourable, whether or no; so let's have none
of your slack,' said Sol.
'Don't be a fool, young chopstick,' exclaimed Mountclere. 'Get the door
opened.'
'I will-in my own way,' said Sol testily. 'You mustn't mind my trading
upon your quality, as 'tis a case of necessity. This is a woman nothing
will bring to reason but an appeal to the higher powers. If every man of
title was as useful as you are to-night, sir, I'd never call them lumber
again as long as I live.'
'How singular!'
'There's never a bit of rubbish that won't come in use if you keep it
seven years.'
'If my utility depends upon keeping you company, may I go to h\x97- for
lacking every atom of the virtue.'
'Hear, hear! But it hardly is becoming in me to answer up to a man so
much older than I, or I could say more. Suppose we draw a line here for
the present, sir, and get indoors?'
'Do what you will, in Heaven's name.'
A few more words to the woman resulted in her agreeing to admit them if
they would attend to themselves afterwards. This Sol promised, and the
key of the door was let down to them from the bedroom window by a
string. When they had entered, Sol, who knew the house well, busied
himself in lighting a fire, the driver going off with a lantern to the
stable, where he found standing-room for the two horses. Mountclere
walked up and down the kitchen, mumbling words of disgust at the
situation, the few of this kind that he let out being just enough to
show what a fearfully large number he kept in.
'A-calling up people at this time of morning!' the woman occasionally
exclaimed down the stairs. 'But folks show no mercy upon their flesh and
blood-not one bit or mite.'
'Now never be stomachy, my good soul,' cried Sol from the fireplace,
where he stood blowing the fire with his breath. 'Only tell me where the
victuals bide, and I'll do all the cooking. We'll pay like princes-
especially my mate.'
'There's but little in house,' said the sleepy woman from her bedroom.
'There's pig's fry, a side of bacon, a conger eel, and pickled onions.'
'Conger eel?' said Sol to Mountclere.
'No, thank you.'
'Pig's fry?'
'No, thank you.'
'Well, then, tell me where the bacon is,' shouted Sol to the woman.
'You must find it,' came again down the stairs. ''Tis somewhere up in
chimley, but in which part I can't mind. Really I don't know whether I
be upon my head or my heels, and my brain is all in a spin, wi' being
rafted up in such a larry!'
'Bide where you be, there's a dear,' said Sol. 'We'll do it all. Just
tell us where the tea-caddy is, and the gridiron, and then you can go to
sleep again.'
The woman appeared to take his advice, for she gave the information, and
silence soon reigned upstairs.
When one piece of bacon had been with difficulty cooked over the newly-
lit fire, Sol said to Mountclere, with the rasher on his fork: 'Now look
here, sir, I think while I am making the tea, you ought to go on
griddling some more of these, as you haven't done nothing at all?'
'I do the paying. . . . Well, give me the bacon.'
'And when you have done yours, I'll cook the man's, as the poor feller's
hungry, I make no doubt.'
Mountclere, fork in hand, then began with his rasher, tossing it about
the gridiron in masterly style, Sol attending to the tea. He was
attracted from this occupation by a brilliant flame up the chimney,
Mountclere exclaiming, 'Now the cursed thing is on fire!'
'Blow it out-hard-that's it! Well now, sir, do you come and begin upon
mine, as you must be hungry. I'll finish the griddling. Ought we to mind
the man sitting down in our company, as there's no other room for him? I
hear him coming in.'
'O no-not at all. Put him over at that table.'
'And I'll join him. You can sit here by yourself, sir.'
The meal was despatched, and the coachman again retired, promising to
have the horses ready in about an hour and a half. Sol and Mountclere
made themselves comfortable upon either side of the fireplace, since
there was no remedy for the delay: after sitting in silence awhile, they
nodded and slept.
How long they would have remained thus, in consequence of their
fatigues, there is no telling, had not the mistress of the cottage
descended the stairs about two hours later, after peeping down upon them
at intervals of five minutes during their sleep, lest they should leave
without her knowledge. It was six o'clock, and Sol went out for the man,
whom he found snoring in the hay-loft. There was now real necessity for
haste, and in ten minutes they were again on their way.
Day dawned upon the 'Red Lion' inn at Anglebury with a timid and watery
eye. From the shadowy archway came a shining lantern, which was seen to
be dangling from the hand of a little bow-legged old man-the hostler,
John. Having reached the front, he looked around to measure the
daylight, opened the lantern, and extinguished it by a pinch of his
fingers. He paused for a moment to have the customary word or two with
his neighbour the milkman, who usually appeared at this point at this
time.
'It sounds like the whistle of the morning train,' the milkman said as
he drew near, a scream from the further end of the town reaching their
ears. 'Well, I hope, now the wind's in that quarter, we shall ha'e a
little more fine weather-hey, hostler?'
'What be ye a talking o'?'
'Can hear the whistle plain, I say.'
'O ay. I suppose you do. But faith, 'tis a poor fist I can make at
hearing anything. There, I could have told all the same that the wind
was in the east, even if I had not seed poor Thomas Tribble's smoke
blowing across the little orchard. Joints be a true weathercock enough
when past three-score. These easterly rains, when they do come, which is
not often, come wi' might enough to squail a man into his grave.'
'Well, we must look for it, hostler. . . . Why, what mighty ekkypage is
this, come to town at such a purbHANDlinking time of day?'
''Tis what time only can tell-though 'twill not be long first,' the
hostler replied, as the driver of the pair of horses and carriage
containing Sol and Mountclere slackened pace, and drew rein before the
inn.
Fresh horses were immediately called for, and while they were being put
in the two travellers walked up and down.
'It is now a quarter to seven o'clock,' said Mountclere; 'and the
question arises, shall I go on to Knollsea, or branch off at Corvsgate
Castle for Enckworth? I think the best plan will be to drive first to
Enckworth, set me down, and then get him to take you on at once to
Knollsea. What do you say?'
'When shall I reach Knollsea by that arrangement?'
'By half-past eight o'clock. We shall be at Enckworth before eight,
which is excellent time.'
'Very well, sir, I agree to that,' said Sol, feeling that as soon as one
of the two birds had been caught, the other could not mate without their
knowledge.
The carriage and horses being again ready, away they drove at once, both
having by this time grown too restless to spend in Anglebury a minute
more than was necessary.
The hostler and his lad had taken the jaded Sandbourne horses to the
stable, rubbed them down, and fed them, when another noise was heard
outside the yard; the omnibus had returned from meeting the train.
Relinquishing the horses to the small stable-lad, the old hostler again
looked out from the arch.
A young man had stepped from the omnibus, and he came forward. 'I want a
conveyance of some sort to take me to Knollsea, at once. Can you get a
horse harnessed in five minutes?'
'I'll make shift to do what I can master, not promising about the
minutes. The truest man can say no more. Won't ye step into the bar,
sir, and give your order? I'll let ye know as soon as 'tis ready.'
Christopher turned into a room smelling strongly of the night before,
and stood by the newly-kindled fire to wait. He had just come in haste
from Melchester. The upshot of his excitement about the wedding, which,
as the possible hour of its solemnization drew near, had increased till
it bore him on like a wind, was this unpremeditated journey. Lying awake
the previous night, the hangings of his bed pulsing to every beat of his
heart, he decided that there was one last and great service which it
behoved him, as an honest man and friend, to say nothing of lover, to
render to Ethelberta at this juncture. It was to ask her by some means
whether or not she had engaged with open eyes to marry Lord Mountclere;
and if not, to give her a word or two of enlightenment. That done, she
might be left to take care of herself.
His plan was to obtain an interview with Picotee, and learn from her
accurately the state of things. Should he, by any possibility, be
mistaken in his belief as to the contracting parties, a knowledge of the
mistake would be cheaply purchased by the journey. Should he not, he
would send up to Ethelberta the strong note of expostulation which was
already written, and waiting in his pocket. To intrude upon her at such
a time was unseemly; and to despatch a letter by a messenger before
evidence of its necessity had been received was most undesirable. The
whole proceeding at best was clumsy; yet earnestness is mostly clumsy;
and how could he let the event pass without a protest? Before daylight
on that autumn morning he had risen, told Faith of his intention, and
started off.
As soon as the vehicle was ready, Christopher hastened to the door and
stepped up. The little stable-boy led the horse a few paces on the way
before relinquishing his hold; at the same moment a respectably dressed
man on foot, with a small black bag in his hand, came up from the
opposite direction, along the street leading from the railway. He was a
thin, elderly man, with grey hair; that a great anxiety pervaded him was
as plainly visible as were his features. Without entering the inn, he
came up at once to old John.
'Have you anything going to Knollsea this morning that I can get a lift
in?' said the pedestrian-no other than Ethelberta's father.
'Nothing empty, that I know of.'
'Or carrier?'
'No.'
'A matter of fifteen shillings, then, I suppose?'
'Yes-no doubt. But yond there's a young man just now starting; he might
not take it ill if ye were to ask him for a seat, and go halves in the
hire of the trap. Shall I call out?'
'Ah, do.'
The hostler bawled to the stable-boy, who put the question to
Christopher. There was room for two in the dogcart, and Julian had no
objection to save the shillings of a fellow-traveller who was evidently
not rich. When Chickerel mounted to his seat, Christopher paused to look
at him as we pause in some enactment that seems to have been already
before us in a dream long ago. Ethelberta's face was there, as the
landscape is in the map, the romance in the history, the aim in the
deed: denuded, rayless, and sorry, but discernible.
For the moment, however, this did not occur to Julian. He took the whip,
the boy loosed his hold upon the horse, and they proceeded on their way.
'What slap-dash jinks may there be going on at Knollsea, then, my
sonny?' said the hostler to the lad, as the dogcart and the backs of the
two men diminished on the road. 'You be a Knollsea boy: have anything
reached your young ears about what's in the wind there, David Straw?'
'No, nothing: except that 'tis going to be Christmas day in five weeks:
and then a hide-bound bull is going to be killed if he don't die afore
the time, and gi'ed away by my lord in three-pound junks, as a reward to
good people who never curse and sing bad songs, except when they be
drunk; mother says perhaps she will have some, and 'tis excellent if
well stewed, mother says.'
'A very fair chronicle for a boy to give, but not what I asked for. When
you try to answer a old man's question, always bear in mind what it was
that old man asked. A hide-bound bull is good when well stewed, I make
no doubt-for they who like it; but that's not it. What I said was, do
you know why three fokes, a rich man, a middling man, and a poor man,
should want horses for Knollsea afore seven o'clock in the morning on a
bHANDlinking day in Fall, when everything is as wet as a dishclout,
whereas that's more than often happens in fine summer weather?'
'No-I don't know, John hostler.'
'Then go home and tell your mother that ye be no wide-awake boy, and
that old John, who went to school with her father afore she was born or
thought o', says so. . . . Chok' it all, why should I think there's
sommat going on at Knollsea? Honest travelling have been so rascally
abused since I was a boy in pinners, by tribes of nobodies tearing from
one end of the country to t'other, to see the sun go down in salt water,
or the moon play jack-lantern behind some rotten tower or other, that,
upon my song, when life and death's in the wind there's no telling the
difference!'
'I like their sixpences ever so much.'
'Young sonny, don't you answer up to me when you baint in the story-
stopping my words in that fashion. I won't have it, David. Now up in the
tallet with ye, there's a good boy, and down with another lock or two of
hay-as fast as you can do it for me.'
The boy vanished under the archway, and the hostler followed at his
heels. Meanwhile the carriage bearing Mr. Mountclere and Sol was
speeding on its way to Enckworth. When they reached the spot at which
the road forked into two, they left the Knollsea route, and keeping
thence under the hills for the distance of five or six miles, drove into
Lord Mountclere's park. In ten minutes the house was before them, framed
in by dripping trees.
Mountclere jumped out, and entered without ceremony. Sol, being anxious
to know if Lord Mountclere was there, ordered the coachman to wait a few
moments. It was now nearly eight o'clock, and the smoke which ascended
from the newly-lit fires of the Court painted soft blue tints upon the
brown and golden leaves of lofty boughs adjoining.
'O, Ethelberta!' said Sol, as he regarded the fair prospect.
The gravel of the drive had been washed clean and smooth by the night's
rain, but there were fresh wheelmarks other than their own upon the
track. Yet the mansion seemed scarcely awake, and stillness reigned
everywhere around.
Not more than three or four minutes had passed when the door was opened
for Mountclere, and he came hastily from the doorsteps.
'I must go on with you,' he said, getting into the vehicle. 'He's gone.'
'Where-to Knollsea?' said Sol.
'Yes,' said Mountclere. 'Now, go ahead to Knollsea!' he shouted to the
man. 'To think I should be fooled like this! I had no idea that he would
be leaving so soon! We might perhaps have been here an hour earlier by
hard striving. But who was to dream that he would arrange to leave it at
such an unearthly time of the morning at this dark season of the year?
Drive-drive!' he called again out of the window, and the pace was
increased.
'I have come two or three miles out of my way on account of you,' said
Sol sullenly. 'And all this time lost. I don't see why you wanted to
come here at all. I knew it would be a waste of time.'
'Damn it all, man,' said Mountclere; 'it is no use for you to be angry
with me!'
'I think it is, for 'tis you have brought me into this muddle,' said
Sol, in no sweeter tone. 'Ha, ha! Upon my life I should be inclined to
laugh, if I were not so much inclined to do the other thing, at Berta's
trick of trying to make close family allies of such a cantankerous pair
as you and I! So much of one mind as we be, so alike in our ways of
living, so close connected in our callings and principles, so matched in
manners and customs! 'twould be a thousand pities to part us-hey, Mr.
Mountclere!'
Mountclere faintly laughed with the same hideous merriment at the same
idea, and then both remained in a withering silence, meant to express
the utter contempt of each for the other, both in family and in person.
They passed the Lodge, and again swept into the highroad.
'Drive on!' said Mountclere, putting his head again out of the window,
and shouting to the man. 'Drive like the devil!' he roared again a few
minutes afterwards, in fuming dissatisfaction with their rate of
progress.
'Baint I doing of it?' said the driver, turning angrily round. 'I ain't
going to ruin my governor's horses for strangers who won't pay double
for 'em-not I. I am driving as fast as I can. If other folks get in the
way with their traps I suppose I must drive round 'em, sir?'
There was a slight crash.
'There!' continued the coachman. 'That's what comes of my turning
round!'
Sol looked out on the other side, and found that the forewheel of their
carriage had become locked in the wheel of a dogcart they had overtaken,
the road here being very narrow. Their coachman, who knew he was to
blame for this mishap, felt the advantage of taking time by the forelock
in a case of accusation, and began swearing at his victim as if he were
the sinner. Sol jumped out, and looking up at the occupants of the other
conveyance, saw against the sky the back elevation of his father and
Christopher Julian, sitting upon a little seat which they overhung, like
two big puddings upon a small dish.
'Father-what, you going?' said Sol. 'Is it about Berta that you've
come?'
'Yes, I got your letter,' said Chickerel, 'and I felt I should like to
come-that I ought to come, to save her from what she'll regret. Luckily,
this gentleman, a stranger to me, has given me a lift from Anglebury, or
I must have hired.' He pointed to Christopher.
'But he's Mr. Julian!' said Sol.
'You are Mrs. Petherwin's father?-I have travelled in your company
without knowing it!' exclaimed Christopher, feeling and looking both
astonished and puzzled. At first, it had appeared to him that, in direct
antagonism to his own purpose, her friends were favouring Ethelberta's
wedding; but it was evidently otherwise.
'Yes, that's father,' said Sol. 'Father, this is Mr. Julian. Mr. Julian,
this gentleman here is Lord Mountclere's brother-and, to cut the story
short, we all wish to stop the wedding.'
'Then let us get on, in Heaven's name!' said Mountclere. 'You are the
lady's father?'
'I am,' said Chickerel.
'Then you had better come into this carriage. We shall go faster than
the dogcart. Now, driver, are the wheels right again?'
Chickerel hastily entered with Mountclere, Sol joined them, and they
sped on. Christopher drove close in their rear, not quite certain
whether he did well in going further, now that there were plenty of
people to attend to the business, but anxious to see the end. The other
three sat in silence, with their eyes upon their knees, though the
clouds were dispersing, and the morning grew bright. In about twenty
minutes the square unembattled tower of Knollsea Church appeared below
them in the vale, its summit just touching the distant line of sea upon
sky. The element by which they had been victimized on the previous
evening now smiled falsely to the low morning sun.
They descended the road to the village at a little more mannerly pace
than that of the earlier journey, and saw the rays glance upon the hands
of the church clock, which marked five-and-twenty minutes to nine.
45. KNOLLSEA-THE ROAD THENCE-ENCKWORTH
All eyes were directed to the church-gate, as the travellers descended
the hill. No wedding carriages were there, no favours, no slatternly
group of women brimming with interest, no aged pauper on two sticks, who
comes because he has nothing else to do till dying time, no nameless
female passing by on the other side with a laugh of indifference, no
ringers taking off their coats as they vanish up a turret, no
hobbledehoys on tiptoe outside the chancel windows-in short, none
whatever of the customary accessories of a country wedding was anywhere
visible.
'Thank God!' said Chickerel.
'Wait till you know he deserves it,' said Mountclere.
'Nothing's done yet between them.'
'It is not likely that anything is done at this time of day. But I have
decided to go to the church first. You will probably go to your
relative's house at once?'
Sol looked to his father for a reply.
'No, I too shall go to the church first, just to assure myself,' said
Chickerel. 'I shall then go on to Mrs Petherwin's.'
The carriage was stopped at the corner of a steep incline leading down
to the edifice. Mountclere and Chickerel alighted and walked on towards
the gates, Sol remaining in his place. Christopher was some way off,
descending the hill on foot, having halted to leave his horse and trap
at a small inn at the entrance to the village.
When Chickerel and Mountclere reached the churchyard gate they found it
slightly open. The church-door beyond it was also open, but nobody was
near the spot.
'We have arrived not a minute too soon, however,' said Mountclere.
'Preparations have apparently begun. It was to be an early wedding, no
doubt.'
Entering the building, they looked around; it was quite empty. Chickerel
turned towards the chancel, his eye being attracted by a red kneeling-
cushion, placed at about the middle of the altar-railing, as if for
early use. Mountclere strode to the vestry, somewhat at a loss how to
proceed in his difficult task of unearthing his brother, obtaining a
private interview with him, and then, by the introduction of Sol and
Chickerel, causing a general convulsion.
'Ha! here's somebody,' he said, observing a man in the vestry. He
advanced with the intention of asking where Lord Mountclere was to be
found. Chickerel came forward in the same direction.
'Are you the parish clerk?' said Mountclere to the man, who was dressed
up in his best clothes.
'I hev the honour of that calling,' the man replied.
Two large books were lying before him on the vestry table, one of them
being open. As the clerk spoke he looked slantingly on the page, as a
person might do to discover if some writing were dry. Mountclere and
Chickerel gazed on the same page. The book was the marriage-register.
'Too late!' said Chickerel.
There plainly enough stood the signatures of Lord Mountclere and
Ethelberta. The viscount's was very black, and had not yet dried. Her
strokes were firm, and comparatively thick for a woman's, though paled
by juxtaposition with her husband's muddled characters. In the space for
witnesses' names appeared in trembling lines as fine as silk the
autograph of Picotee, the second name being that of a stranger, probably
the clerk.
'Yes, yes-we are too late, it seems,' said Mountclere coolly. 'Who could
have thought they'd marry at eight!'
Chickerel stood like a man baked hard and dry. Further than his first
two words he could say nothing.
'They must have set about it early, upon my soul,' Mountclere continued.
'When did the wedding take place?' he asked of the clerk sharply.
'It was over about five minutes before you came in,' replied that
luminary pleasantly, as he played at an invisible game of pitch-and-toss
with some half-sovereigns in his pocket. 'I received orders to have the
church ready at five minutes to eight this morning, though I knew
nothing about such a thing till bedtime last night. It was very private
and plain, not that I should mind another such a one, sir;' and he
secretly pitched and tossed again.
Meanwhile Sol had found himself too restless to sit waiting in the
carriage for more than a minute after the other two had left it. He
stepped out at the same instant that Christopher came past, and together
they too went on to the church.
'Father, ought we not to go on at once to Ethelberta's, instead of
waiting?' said Sol, on reaching the vestry, still in ignorance. ''Twas
no use in coming here.'
'No use at all,' said Chickerel, as if he had straw in his throat. 'Look
at this. I would almost sooner have had it that in leaving this church I
came from her grave-well, no, perhaps not that, but I fear it is a bad
thing.'
Sol then saw the names in the register, Christopher saw them, and the
man closed the book. Christopher could not well command himself, and he
retired.
'I knew it. I always said that pride would lead Berta to marry an
unworthy man, and so it has!' said Sol bitterly. 'What shall we do now?
I'll see her.'
'Do no such thing, young man,' said Mountclere. 'The best course is to
leave matters alone. They are married. If you are wise, you will try to
think the match a good one, and be content to let her keep her position
without inconveniencing her by your intrusions or complaints. It is
possible that the satisfaction of her ambition will help her to endure
any few surprises to her propriety that may occur. She is a clever young
woman, and has played her cards adroitly. I only hope she may never
repent of the game! A-hem. Good morning.' Saying this, Mountclere
slightly bowed to his relations, and marched out of the church with
dignity; but it was told afterwards by the coachman, who had no love for
Mountclere, that when he stepped into the fly, and was as he believed
unobserved, he was quite overcome with fatuous rage, his lips frothing
like a mug of hot ale.
'What an impertinent gentleman 'tis,' said Chickerel. 'As if we had
tried for her to marry his brother!'
'He knows better than that,' said Sol. 'But he'll never believe that
Berta didn't lay a trap for the old fellow. He thinks at this moment
that Lord Mountclere has never been told of us and our belongings.'
'I wonder if she has deceived him in anything,' murmured Chickerel. 'I
can hardly suppose it. But she is altogether beyond me. However, if she
has misled him on any point she will suffer for it.'
'You need not fear that, father. It isn't her way of working. Why
couldn't she have known that when a title is to be had for the asking,
the owner must be a shocking one indeed?'
'The title is well enough. Any poor scrubs in our place must be fools
not to think the match a very rare and astonishing honour, as far as the
position goes. But that my brave girl will be miserable is a part of the
honour I can't stomach so well. If he had been any other lord in the
kingdom, we might have been merry indeed. I believe he will ruin her
happiness-yes, I do-not by any personal snubbing or rough conduct, but
by other things, causing her to be despised; and that is a thing she
can't endure.'
'She's not to be despised without a deal of trouble-we must remember
that. And if he insults her by introducing new favourites, as they say
he did his first wife, I'll call upon him and ask his meaning, and take
her away.'
'Nonsense-we shall never know what he does, or how she feels; she will
never let out a word. However unhappy she may be, she will always deny
it-that's the unfortunate part of such marriages.'
'An old chap like that ought to leave young women alone, damn him!'
The clerk came nearer. 'I am afraid I cannot allow bad words to be spoke
in this sacred pile,' he said. 'As far as my personal self goes, I
should have no objection to your cussing as much as you like, but as a
official of the church my conscience won't allow it to be done.'
'Your conscience has allowed something to be done that cussing and
swearing are godly worship to.'
'The prettiest maid is left out of harness, however,' said the clerk.
'The little witness was the chicken to my taste-Lord forgive me for
saying it, and a man with a wife and family!'
Sol and his father turned to withdraw, and soon forgot the remark, but
it was frequently recalled by Christopher.
'Do you think of trying to see Ethelberta before you leave?' said Sol.
'Certainly not,' said Chickerel. 'Mr. Mountclere's advice was good in
that. The more we keep out of the way the more good we are doing her. I
shall go back to Anglebury by the carrier, and get on at once to London.
You will go with me, I suppose?'
'The carrier does not leave yet for an hour or two.'
'I shall walk on, and let him overtake me. If possible, I will get one
glimpse of Enckworth Court, Berta's new home; there may be time, if I
start at once.'
'I will walk with you,' said Sol.
'There is room for one with me,' said Christopher. 'I shall drive back
early in the afternoon.'
'Thank you,' said Sol. 'I will endeavour to meet you at Corvsgate.'
Thus it was arranged. Chickerel could have wished to search for Picotee,
and learn from her the details of this mysterious matter. But it was
particularly painful to him to make himself busy after the event; and to
appear suddenly and uselessly where he was plainly not wanted to appear
would be an awkwardness which the pleasure of seeing either daughter
could scarcely counterbalance. Hence he had resolved to return at once
to town, and there await the news, together with the detailed directions
as to his own future movements, carefully considered and laid down,
which were sure to be given by the far-seeing Ethelberta.
Sol and his father walked on together, Chickerel to meet the carrier
just beyond Enckworth, Sol to wait for Christopher at Corvsgate. His
wish to see, in company with his father, the outline of the seat to
which Ethelberta had been advanced that day, was the triumph of youthful
curiosity and interest over dogged objection. His father's wish was
based on calmer reasons.
Christopher, lone and out of place, remained in the church yet a little
longer. He desultorily walked round. Reaching the organ chamber, he
looked at the instrument, and was surprised to find behind it a young
man. Julian first thought him to be the organist; on second inspection,
however, he proved to be a person Christopher had met before, under far
different circumstances; it was our young friend Ladywell, looking as
sick and sorry as a lily with a slug in its stalk.
The occasion, the place, and their own condition, made them kin.
Christopher had despised Ladywell, Ladywell had disliked Christopher;
but a third item neutralized the other two-it was their common lot.
Christopher just nodded, for they had only met on Ethelberta's stairs.
Ladywell nodded more, and spoke. 'The church appears to be interesting,'
he said.
'Yes. Such a tower is rare in England,' said Christopher.
They then dwelt on other features of the building, thence enlarging to
the village, and then to the rocks and marine scenery, both avoiding the
malady they suffered from-the marriage of Ethelberta.
'The village streets are very picturesque, and the cliff scenery is good
of its kind,' rejoined Ladywell. 'The rocks represent the feminine side
of grandeur. Here they are white, with delicate tops. On the west coast
they are higher, black, and with angular summits. Those represent
grandeur in its masculine aspect. It is merely my own idea, and not very
bright, perhaps.'
'It is very ingenious,' said Christopher, 'and perfectly true.'
Ladywell was pleased. 'I am here at present making sketches for my next
subject-a winter sea. Otherwise I should not have-happened to be in the
church.'
'You are acquainted with Mrs. Petherwin-I think you are Mr. Ladywell,
who painted her portrait last season?'
'Yes,' said Ladywell, colouring.
'You may have heard her speak of Mr. Julian?'
'O yes,' said Ladywell, offering his hand. Then by degrees their tongues
wound closer round the subject of their sadness, each tacitly owning to
what he would not tell.
'I saw it,' said Ladywell heavily.
'Did she look troubled?'
'Not in the least-bright and fresh as a May morning. She has played me
many a bitter trick, and poor Neigh too, a friend of mine. But I cannot
help forgiving her. . . . I saw a carriage at the door, and strolled in.
The ceremony was just proceeding, so I sat down here. Well, I have done
with Knollsea. The place has no further interest for me now. I may own
to you as a friend, that if she had not been living here I should have
studied at some other coast-of course that's in confidence.'
'I understand, quite.'
'I only arrived in the neighbourhood two days ago, and did not set eyes
upon her till this morning, she has kept so entirely indoors.'
Then the young men parted, and half-an-hour later the ingenuous Ladywell
came from the visitors' inn by the shore, a man walking behind him with
a quantity of artists' materials and appliances. He went on board the
steamer, which this morning had performed the passage in safety.
Ethelberta single having been the loadstone in the cliffs that had
attracted Ladywell hither, Ethelberta married was the negative pole of
the same, sending him away. And thus did a woman put an end to the only
opportunity of distinction, on Art-exhibition walls, that ever offered
itself to the tortuous ways, quaint alleys, and marbled bluffs of
Knollsea, as accessories in the picture of a winter sea.
Christopher's interest in the village was of the same evaporating
nature. He looked upon the sea, and the great swell, and the waves
sending up a sound like the huzzas of multitudes; but all the wild scene
was irksome now. The ocean-bound steamers far away on the horizon
inspired him with no curiosity as to their destination; the house
Ethelberta had occupied was positively hateful; and he turned away to
wait impatiently for the hour at which he had promised to drive on to
meet Sol at Corvsgate.
Sol and Chickerel plodded along the road, in order to skirt Enckworth
before the carrier came up. Reaching the top of a hill on their way,
they paused to look down on a peaceful scene. It was a park and wood,
glowing in all the matchless colours of late autumn, parapets and
pediments peering out from a central position afar. At the bottom of the
descent before them was a lodge, to which they now descended. The gate
stood invitingly open. Exclusiveness was no part of the owner's
instincts: one could see that at a glance. No appearance of a well-
rolled garden-path attached to the park-drive; as is the case with many,
betokening by the perfection of their surfaces their proprietor's
deficiency in hospitality. The approach was like a turnpike road full of
great ruts, clumsy mendings; bordered by trampled edges and incursions
upon the grass at pleasure. Butchers and bakers drove as freely herein
as peers and peeresses. Christening parties, wedding companies, and
funeral trains passed along by the doors of the mansion without check or
question. A wild untidiness in this particular has its recommendations;
for guarded grounds ever convey a suspicion that their owner is young to
landed possessions, as religious earnestnesss implies newness of
conversion, and conjugal tenderness recent marriage.
Half-an-hour being wanting as yet to Chickerel's time with the carrier,
Sol and himself, like the rest of the world when at leisure, walked into
the extensive stretch of grass and grove. It formed a park so large that
not one of its owners had ever wished it larger, not one of its owner's
rivals had ever failed to wish it smaller, and not one of its owner's
satellites had ever seen it without praise. They somewhat avoided the
roadway passing under the huge, misshapen, ragged trees, and through
fern brakes, ruddy and crisp in their decay. On reaching a suitable
eminence, the father and son stood still to look upon the many-chimneyed
building, or rather conglomeration of buildings, to which these groves
and glades formed a setting.
'We will just give a glance,' said Chickerel, 'and then go away. It
don't seem well to me that Ethelberta should have this; it is too much.
The sudden change will do her no good. I never believe in anything that
comes in the shape of wonderful luck. As it comes, so it goes. Had she
been brought home today to one of those tenant-farms instead of these
woods and walls, I could have called it good fortune. What she should
have done was glorify herself by glorifying her own line of life, not by
forsaking that line for another. Better have been admired as a governess
than shunned as a peeress, which is what she will be. But it is just the
same everywhere in these days. Young men will rather wear a black coat
and starve than wear fustian and do well.'
'One man to want such a monstrous house as that! Well, 'tis a fine
place. See, there's the carpenters' shops, the timber-yard, and
everything, as if it were a little town. Perhaps Berta may hire me for a
job now and then.'
'I always knew she would cut herself off from us. She marked for it from
childhood, and she has finished the business thoroughly.'
'Well, it is no matter, father, for why should we want to trouble her?
She may write, and I shall answer; but if she calls to see me, I shall
not return the visit; and if she meets me with her husband or any of her
new society about her, I shall behave as a stranger.'
'It will be best,' said Chickerel. 'Well, now I must move.'
However, by the sorcery of accident, before they had very far retraced
their steps an open carriage became visible round a bend in the drive.
Chickerel, with a servant's instinct, was for beating a retreat.
'No,' said Sol. 'Let us stand our ground. We have already been seen, and
we do no harm.'
So they stood still on the edge of the drive, and the carriage drew
near. It was a landau, and the sun shone in upon Lord Mountclere, with
Lady Mountclere sitting beside him, like Abishag beside King David.
Very blithe looked the viscount, for he rode upon a cherub to-day. She
appeared fresh, rosy, and strong, but dubious; though if mien was
anything, she was a viscountess twice over. Her dress was of a dove-
coloured material, with a bonnet to match, a little tufted white feather
resting on the top, like a truce-flag between the blood of noble and
vassal. Upon the cool grey of her shoulders hung a few locks of hair,
toned warm as fire by the sunshiny addition to its natural hue.
Chickerel instinctively took off his hat; Sol did the same.
For only a moment did Ethelberta seem uncertain how to act. But a
solution to her difficulty was given by the face of her brother. There
she saw plainly at one glance more than a dozen speeches would have
told-for Sol's features thoroughly expressed his intention that to him
she was to be a stranger. Her eyes flew to Chickerel, and he slightly
shook his head. She understood them now. With a tear in her eye for her
father, and a sigh in her bosom for Sol, she bowed in answer to their
salute; her husband moved his hat and nodded, and the carriage rolled
on. Lord Mountclere might possibly be making use of the fine morning in
showing her the park and premises. Chickerel, with a moist eye, now went
on with his son towards the highroad. When they reached the lodge, the
lodge-keeper was walking in the sun, smoking his pipe. 'Good morning,'
he said to Chickerel.
'Any rejoicings at the Court to-day?' the butler inquired.
'Quite the reverse. Not a soul there. 'Tisn't knowed anywhere at all. I
had no idea of such a thing till he brought my lady here. Not going off,
neither. They've come home like the commonest couple in the land, and
not even the bells allowed to ring.'
They walked along the public road, and the carrier came in view.
'Father,' said Sol, 'I don't think I'll go further with you. She's gone
into the house; and suppose she should run back without him to try to
find us? It would be cruel to disappoint her. I'll bide about here for a
quarter of an hour, in case she should. Mr. Julian won't have passed
Corvsgate till I get there.'
'Well, one or two of her old ways may be left in her still, and it is
not a bad thought. Then you will walk the rest of the distance if you
don't meet Mr. Julian? I must be in London by the evening.'
'Any time to-night will do for me. I shall not begin work until to-
morrow, so that the four o'clock train will answer my purpose.'
Thus they parted, and Sol strolled leisurely back. The road was quite
deserted, and he lingered by the park fence.
'Sol!' said a bird-like voice; 'how did you come here?'
He looked up, and saw a figure peering down upon him from the top of the
park wall, the ground on the inside being higher than the road. The
speaker was to the expected Ethelberta what the moon is to the sun, a
star to the moon. It was Picotee.
'Hullo, Picotee!' said Sol.
'There's a little gate a quarter of a mile further on,' said Picotee.
'We can meet there without your passing through the big lodge. I'll be
there as soon as you.'
Sol ascended the hill, passed through the second gate, and turned back
again, when he met Picotee coming forward under the trees. They walked
together in this secluded spot.
'Berta says she wants to see you and father,' said Picotee breathlessly.
'You must come in and make yourselves comfortable. She had no idea you
were here so secretly, and she didn't know what to do.'
'Father's gone,' said Sol.
'How vexed she will be! She thinks there is something the matter-that
you are angry with her for not telling you earlier. But you will come
in, Sol?'
'No, I can't come in,' said her brother.
'Why not? It is such a big house, you can't think. You need not come
near the front apartments, if you think we shall be ashamed of you in
your working clothes. How came you not to dress up a bit, Sol? Still,
Berta won't mind it much. She says Lord Mountclere must take her as she
is, or he is kindly welcome to leave her.'
'Ah, well! I might have had a word or two to say about that, but the
time has gone by for it, worse luck. Perhaps it is best that I have said
nothing, and she has had her way. No, I shan't come in, Picotee. Father
is gone, and I am going too.'
'O Sol!'
'We are rather put out at her acting like this-father and I and all of
us. She might have let us know about it beforehand, even if she is a
lady and we what we always was. It wouldn't have let her down so
terrible much to write a line. She might have learnt something that
would have led her to take a different step.'
'But you will see poor Berta? She has done no harm. She was going to
write long letters to all of you to-day, explaining her wedding, and how
she is going to help us all on in the world.'
Sol paused irresolutely. 'No, I won't come in,' he said. 'It would
disgrace her, for one thing, dressed as I be; more than that, I don't
want to come in. But I should like to see her, if she would like to see
me; and I'll go up there to that little fir plantation, and walk up and
down behind it for exactly half-an-hour. She can come out to me there.'
Sol had pointed as he spoke to a knot of young trees that hooded a knoll
a little way off.
'I'll go and tell her,' said Picotee.
'I suppose they will be off somewhere, and she is busy getting ready?'
'O no. They are not going to travel till next year. Ethelberta does not
want to go anywhere; and Lord Mountclere cannot endure this changeable
weather in any place but his own house.'
'Poor fellow!'
'Then you will wait for her by the firs? I'll tell her at once.'
Picotee left him, and Sol went across the glade.
46. ENCKWORTH (continued)-THE ANGLEBURY HIGHWAY
He had not paced behind the firs more than ten minutes when Ethelberta
appeared from the opposite side. At great inconvenience to herself, she
had complied with his request.
Ethelberta was trembling. She took her brother's hand, and said, 'Is
father, then, gone?'
'Yes,' said Sol. 'I should have been gone likewise, but I thought you
wanted to see me.'
'Of course I did, and him too. Why did you come so mysteriously, and, I
must say, unbecomingly? I am afraid I did wrong in not informing you of
my intention.'
'To yourself you may have. Father would have liked a word with you
before-you did it.'
'You both looked so forbidding that I did not like to stop the carriage
when we passed you. I want to see him on an important matter-his leaving
Mrs. Doncastle's service at once. I am going to write and beg her to
dispense with a notice, which I have no doubt she will do.'
'He's very much upset about you.'
'My secrecy was perhaps an error of judgment,' she said sadly. 'But I
had reasons. Why did you and my father come here at all if you did not
want to see me?'
'We did want to see you up to a certain time.'
'You did not come to prevent my marriage?'
'We wished to see you before the marriage-I can't say more.'
'I thought you might not approve of what I had done,' said Ethelberta
mournfully. 'But a time may come when you will approve.'
'Never.'
'Don't be harsh, Sol. A coronet covers a multitude of sins.'
'A coronet: good Lord-and you my sister! Look at my hand.' Sol extended
his hand. 'Look how my thumb stands out at the root, as if it were out
of joint, and that hard place inside there. Did you ever see anything so
ugly as that hand-a misshaped monster, isn't he? That comes from the
jackplane, and my pushing against it day after day and year after year.
If I were found drowned or buried, dressed or undressed, in fustian or
in broadcloth, folk would look at my hand and say, "That man's a
carpenter." Well now, how can a man, branded with work as I be, be
brother to a viscountess without something being wrong? Of course
there's something wrong in it, or he wouldn't have married you-something
which won't be righted without terrible suffering.'
'No, no,' said she. 'You are mistaken. There is no such wonderful
quality in a title in these days. What I really am is second wife to a
quiet old country nobleman, who has given up society. What more
commonplace? My life will be as simple, even more simple, than it was
before.'
'Berta, you have worked to false lines. A creeping up among the useless
lumber of our nation that'll be the first to burn if there comes a
flare. I never see such a deserter of your own lot as you be! But you
were always like it, Berta, and I am ashamed of ye. More than that, a
good woman never marries twice.'
'You are too hard, Sol,' said the poor viscountess, almost crying. 'I've
done it all for you! Even if I have made a mistake, and given my
ambition an ignoble turn, don't tell me so now, or you may do more harm
in a minute than you will cure in a lifetime. It is absurd to let
republican passions so blind you to fact. A family which can be
honourably traced through history for five hundred years, does affect
the heart of a person not entirely hardened against romance. Whether you
like the peerage or no, they appeal to our historical sense and love of
old associations.'
'I don't care for history. Prophecy is the only thing can do poor men
any good. When you were a girl, you wouldn't drop a curtsey to 'em,
historical or otherwise, and there you were right. But, instead of
sticking to such principles, you must needs push up, so as to get girls
such as you were once to curtsey to you, not even thinking marriage with
a bad man too great a price to pay for't.'
'A bad man? What do you mean by that? Lord Mountclere is rather old, but
he's worthy. What did you mean, Sol?'
'Nothing-a mere sommat to say.'
At that moment Picotee emerged from behind a tree, and told her sister
that Lord Mountclere was looking for her.
'Well, Sol, I cannot explain all to you now,' she said. 'I will send for
you in London.' She wished him goodbye, and they separated, Picotee
accompanying Sol a little on his way.
Ethelberta was greatly perturbed by this meeting. After retracing her
steps a short distance, she still felt so distressed and unpresentable
that she resolved not to allow Lord Mountclere to see her till the
clouds had somewhat passed off; it was but a bare act of justice to him
to hide from his sight such a bridal mood as this. It was better to keep
him waiting than to make him positively unhappy. She turned aside, and
went up the valley, where the park merged in miles of wood and copse.
She opened an iron gate and entered the wood, casually interested in the
vast variety of colours that the half-fallen leaves of the season wore:
more, much more, occupied with personal thought. The path she pursued
became gradually involved in bushes as well as trees, giving to the spot
the character rather of a coppice than a wood. Perceiving that she had
gone far enough, Ethelberta turned back by a path which at this point
intersected that by which she had approached, and promised a more direct
return towards the Court. She had not gone many steps among the hazels,
which here formed a perfect thicket, when she observed a belt of holly-
bushes in their midst; towards the outskirts of these an opening on her
left hand directly led, thence winding round into a clear space of
greensward, which they completely enclosed. On this isolated and mewed-
up bit of lawn stood a timber-built cottage, having ornamental barge-
boards, balconettes, and porch. It was an erection interesting enough as
an experiment, and grand as a toy, but as a building contemptible.
A blue gauze of smoke floated over the chimney, as if somebody was
living there; round towards the side some empty hen-coops were piled
away; while under the hollies were divers frameworks of wire netting and
sticks, showing that birds were kept here at some seasons of the year.
Being lady of all she surveyed, Ethelberta crossed the leafy sward, and
knocked at the door. She was interested in knowing the purpose of the
peculiar little edifice.
The door was opened by a woman wearing a clean apron upon a not very
clean gown. Ethelberta asked who lived in so pretty a place.
'Miss Gruchette,' the servant replied. 'But she is not here now.'
'Does she live here alone?'
'Yes-excepting myself and a fellow-servant.'
'Oh.'
'She lives here to attend to the pheasants and poultry, because she is
so clever in managing them. They are brought here from the keeper's over
the hill. Her father was a fancier.'
'Miss Gruchette attends to the birds, and two servants attend to Miss
Gruchette?'
'Well, to tell the truth, m'm, the servants do almost all of it. Still,
that's what Miss Gruchette is here for. Would you like to see the house?
It is pretty.' The woman spoke with hesitation, as if in doubt between
the desire of earning a shilling and the fear that Ethelberta was not a
stranger. That Ethelberta was Lady Mountclere she plainly did not dream.
'I fear I can scarcely stay long enough; yet I will just look in,' said
Ethelberta. And as soon as they had crossed the threshold she was glad
of having done so.
The cottage internally may be described as a sort of boudoir extracted
from the bulk of a mansion and deposited in a wood. The front room was
filled with nicknacks, curious work-tables, filigree baskets, twisted
brackets supporting statuettes, in which the grotesque in every case
ruled the design; love-birds, in gilt cages; French bronzes, wonderful
boxes, needlework of strange patterns, and other attractive objects. The
apartment was one of those which seem to laugh in a visitor's face and
on closer examination express frivolity more distinctly than by words.
'Miss Gruchette is here to keep the fowls?' said Ethelberta, in a
puzzled tone, after a survey.
'Yes. But they don't keep her.'
Ethelberta did not attempt to understand, and ceased to occupy her mind
with the matter. They came from the cottage to the door, where she gave
the woman a trifling sum, and turned to leave. But footsteps were at
that moment to be heard beating among the leaves on the other side of
the hollies, and Ethelberta waited till the walkers should have passed.
The voices of two men reached herself and the woman as they stood. They
were close to the house, yet screened from it by the holly-bushes, when
one could be heard to say distinctly, as if with his face turned to the
cottage-
'Lady Mountclere gone for good?'
'I suppose so. Ha-ha! So come, so go.'
The speakers passed on, their backs becoming visible through the
opening. They appeared to be woodmen.
'What Lady Mountclere do they mean?' said Ethelberta.
The woman blushed. 'They meant Miss Gruchette.'
'Oh-a nickname.'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
The woman whispered why in a story of about two minutes' length.
Ethelberta turned pale.
'Is she going to return?' she inquired, in a thin hard voice.
'Yes; next week. You know her, m'm?'
'No. I am a stranger.'
'So much the better. I may tell you, then, that an old tale is flying
about the neighbourhood-that Lord Mountclere was privately married to
another woman, at Knollsea, this morning early. Can it be true?'
'I believe it to be true.'
'And that she is of no family?'
'Of no family.'
'Indeed. Then the Lord only knows what will become of the poor thing.
There will be murder between 'em.'
'Between whom?'
'Her and the lady who lives here. She won't budge an inch-not she!'
Ethelberta moved aside. A shade seemed to overspread the world, the sky,
the trees, and the objects in the foreground. She kept her face away
from the woman, and, whispering a reply to her Good-morning, passed
through the hollies into the leaf-strewn path. As soon as she came to a
large trunk she placed her hands against it and rested her face upon
them. She drew herself lower down, lower, lower, till she crouched upon
the leaves. 'Ay-'tis what father and Sol meant! O Heaven!' she
whispered.
She soon arose, and went on her way to the house. Her fair features were
firmly set, and she scarcely heeded the path in the concentration which
had followed her paroxysm. When she reached the park proper she became
aware of an excitement that was in progress there.
Ethelberta's absence had become unaccountable to Lord Mountclere, who
could hardly permit her retirement from his sight for a minute. But at
first he had made due allowance for her eccentricity as a woman of
genius, and would not take notice of the half-hour's desertion,
unpardonable as it might have been in other classes of wives. Then he
had inquired, searched, been alarmed: he had finally sent men-servants
in all directions about the park to look for her. He feared she had
fallen out of a window, down a well, or into the lake. The next stage of
search was to have been drags and grapnels: but Ethelberta entered the
house.
Lord Mountclere rushed forward to meet her, and such was her contrivance
that he noticed no change. The searchers were called in, Ethelberta
explaining that she had merely obeyed the wish of her brother in going
out to meet him. Picotee, who had returned from her walk with Sol, was
upstairs in one of the rooms which had been allotted to her. Ethelberta
managed to run in there on her way upstairs to her own chamber.
'Picotee, put your things on again,' she said. 'You are the only friend
I have in this house, and I want one badly. Go to Sol, and deliver this
message to him-that I want to see him at once. You must overtake him, if
you walk all the way to Anglebury. But the train does not leave till
four, so that there is plenty of time.'
'What is the matter?' said Picotee. 'I cannot walk all the way.'
'I don't think you will have to do that-I hope not.'
'He is going to stop at Corvsgate to have a bit of lunch: I might
overtake him there, if I must!'
'Yes. And tell him to come to the east passage door. It is that door
next to the entrance to the stable-yard. There is a little yew-tree
outside it. On second thoughts you, dear, must not come back. Wait at
Corvsgate in the little inn parlour till Sol comes to you again. You
will probably then have to go home to London alone; but do not mind it.
The worst part for you will be in going from the station to the
Crescent; but nobody will molest you in a four-wheel cab: you have done
it before. However, he will tell you if this is necessary when he gets
back. I can best fight my battles alone. You shall have a letter from me
the day after to-morrow, stating where I am. I shall not be here.'
'But what is it so dreadful?'
'Nothing to frighten you.' But she spoke with a breathlessness that
completely nullified the assurance. 'It is merely that I find I must
come to an explanation with Lord Mountclere before I can live here
permanently, and I cannot stipulate with him while I am here in his
power. Till I write, good-bye. Your things are not unpacked, so let them
remain here for the present-they can be sent for.'
Poor Picotee, more agitated than her sister, but never questioning her
orders, went downstairs and out of the house. She ran across the
shrubberies, into the park, and to the gate whereat Sol had emerged some
half-hour earlier. She trotted along upon the turnpike road like a lost
doe, crying as she went at the new trouble which had come upon Berta,
whatever that trouble might be. Behind her she heard wheels and the
stepping of a horse, but she was too concerned to turn her head. The
pace of the vehicle slackened, however, when it was abreast of Picotee,
and she looked up to see Christopher as the driver.
'Miss Chickerel!' he said, with surprise.
Picotee had quickly looked down again, and she murmured, 'Yes.'
Christopher asked what he could not help asking in the circumstances,
'Would you like to ride?'
'I should be glad,' said she, overcoming her flurry. 'I am anxious to
overtake my brother Sol.'
'I have arranged to pick him up at Corvsgate,' said Christopher.
He descended, and assisted her to mount beside him, and drove on again,
almost in silence. He was inclined to believe that some supernatural
legerdemain had to do with these periodic impacts of Picotee on his
path. She sat mute and melancholy till they were within half-a-mile of
Corvsgate.
'Thank you,' she said then, perceiving Sol upon the road, 'there is my
brother; I will get down now.'
'He was going to ride on to Anglebury with me,' said Julian.
Picotee did not reply, and Sol turned round. Seeing her he instantly
exclaimed, 'What's the matter, Picotee?'
She explained to him that he was to go back immediately, and meet her
sister at the door by the yew, as Ethelberta had charged her.
Christopher, knowing them so well, was too much an interested member of
the group to be left out of confidence, and she included him in her
audience.
'And what are you to do?' said Sol to her.
'I am to wait at Corvsgate till you come to me.'
'I can't understand it,' Sol muttered, with a gloomy face. 'There's
something wrong; and it was only to be expected; that's what I say, Mr.
Julian.'
'If necessary I can take care of Miss Chickerel till you come,' said
Christopher.
'Thank you,' said Sol. 'Then I will return to you as soon as I can, at
the "Castle" Inn, just ahead. 'Tis very awkward for you to be so
burdened by us, Mr. Julian; but we are in a trouble that I don't yet see
the bottom of.'
'I know,' said Christopher kindly. 'We will wait for you.'
He then drove on with Picotee to the inn, which was not far off, and Sol
returned again to Enckworth. Feeling somewhat like a thief in the night,
he zigzagged through the park, behind belts and knots of trees, until he
saw the yew, dark and clear, as if drawn in ink upon the fair face of
the mansion. The way up to it was in a little cutting between shrubs,
the door being a private entrance, sunk below the surface of the lawn,
and invisible from other parts of the same front. As soon as he reached
it, Ethelberta opened it at once, as if she had listened for his
footsteps.
She took him along a passage in the basement, up a flight of steps, and
into a huge, solitary, chill apartment. It was the ball-room. Spacious
mirrors in gilt frames formed panels in the lower part of the walls, the
remainder being toned in sage-green. In a recess between each mirror was
a statue. The ceiling rose in a segmental curve, and bore sprawling upon
its face gilt figures of wanton goddesses, cupids, satyrs with
tambourines, drums, and trumpets, the whole ceiling seeming alive with
them. But the room was very gloomy now, there being little light
admitted from without, and the reflections from the mirrors gave a
depressing coldness to the scene. It was a place intended to look joyous
by night, and whatever it chose to look by day.
'We are safe here,' said she. 'But we must listen for footsteps. I have
only five minutes: Lord Mountclere is waiting for me. I mean to leave
this place, come what may.'
'Why?' said Sol, in astonishment.
'I cannot tell you-something has occurred. God has got me in his power
at last, and is going to scourge me for my bad doings-that's what it
seems like. Sol, listen to me, and do exactly what I say. Go to
Anglebury, hire a brougham, bring it on as far as Little Enckworth: you
will have to meet me with it at one of the park gates later in the
evening-probably the west, at half-past seven. Leave it at the village
with the man, come on here on foot, and stay under the trees till just
before six: it will then be quite dark, and you must stand under the
projecting balustrade a little further on than the door you came in by.
I will just step upon the balcony over it, and tell you more exactly
than I can now the precise time that I shall be able to slip out, and
where the carriage is to be waiting. But it may not be safe to speak on
account of his closeness to me-I will hand down a note. I find it is
impossible to leave the house by daylight-I am certain to be pursued-he
already suspects something. Now I must be going, or he will be here, for
he watches my movements because of some accidental words that escaped
me.'
'Berta, I shan't have anything to do with this,' said Sol. 'It is not
right!'
'I am only going to Rouen, to Aunt Charlotte!' she implored. 'I want to
get to Southampton, to be in time for the midnight steamer. When I am at
Rouen I can negotiate with Lord Mountclere the terms on which I will
return to him. It is the only chance I have of rooting out a scandal and
a disgrace which threatens the beginning of my life here! My letters to
him, and his to me, can be forwarded through you or through father, and
he will not know where I am. Any woman is justified in adopting such a
course to bring her husband to a sense of her dignity. If I don't go
away now, it will end in a permanent separation. If I leave at once, and
stipulate that he gets rid of her, we may be reconciled.'
'I can't help you: you must stick to your husband. I don't like them, or
any of their sort, barring about three or four, for the reason that they
despise me and all my sort. But, Ethelberta, for all that I'll play fair
with them. No half-and-half trimming business. You have joined 'em, and
'rayed yourself against us; and there you'd better bide. You have
married your man, and your duty is towards him. I know what he is and so
does father; but if I were to help you to run away now, I should scorn
myself more than I scorn him.'
'I don't care for that, or for any such politics! The Mountclere line is
noble, and how was I to know that this member was not noble, too? As the
representative of an illustrious family I was taken with him, but as a
man-I must shun him.'
'How can you shun him? You have married him!'
'Nevertheless, I won't stay! Neither law nor gospel demands it of me
after what I have learnt. And if law and gospel did demand it, I would
not stay. And if you will not help me to escape, I go alone.'
'You had better not try any such wild thing.'
The creaking of a door was heard. 'O Sol,' she said appealingly, 'don't
go into the question whether I am right or wrong-only remember that I am
very unhappy. Do help me-I have no other person in the world to ask! Be
under the balcony at six o'clock. Say you will-I must go-say you will!'
'I'll think,' said Sol, very much disturbed. 'There, don't cry; I'll try
to be under the balcony, at any rate. I cannot promise more, but I'll
try to be there.'
She opened in the panelling one of the old-fashioned concealed modes of
exit known as jib-doors, which it was once the custom to construct
without architraves in the walls of large apartments, so as not to
interfere with the general design of the room. Sol found himself in a
narrow passage, running down the whole length of the ball-room, and at
the same time he heard Lord Mountclere's voice within, talking to
Ethelberta. Sol's escape had been marvellous: as it was the viscount
might have seen her tears. He passed down some steps, along an area from
which he could see into a row of servants' offices, among them a kitchen
with a fireplace flaming like an altar of sacrifice. Nobody seemed to be
concerned about him; there were workmen upon the premises, and he nearly
matched them. At last he got again into the shrubberies and to the side
of the park by which he had entered.
On reaching Corvsgate he found Picotee in the parlour of the little inn,
as he had directed. Mr. Julian, she said, had walked up to the ruins,
and would be back again in a few minutes. Sol ordered the horse to be
put in, and by the time it was ready Christopher came down from the
hill. Room was made for Sol by opening the flap of the dogcart, and
Christopher drove on.
He was anxious to know the trouble, and Sol was not reluctant to share
the burden of it with one whom he believed to be a friend. He told,
scrap by scrap, the strange request of Ethelberta. Christopher, though
ignorant of Ethelberta's experience that morning, instantly assumed that
the discovery of some concealed spectre had led to this precipitancy.
'When does she wish you to meet her with the carriage?'
'Probably at half-past seven, at the west lodge; but that is to be
finally fixed by a note she will hand down to me from the balcony.'
'Which balcony?'
'The nearest to the yew-tree.'
'At what time will she hand the note?'
'As the Court clock strikes six, she says. And if I am not there to take
her instructions of course she will give up the idea, which is just what
I want her to do.'
Christopher begged Sol to go. Whether Ethelberta was right or wrong, he
did not stop to inquire. She was in trouble; she was too clear-headed to
be in trouble without good reason; and she wanted assistance out of it.
But such was Sol's nature that the more he reflected the more determined
was he in not giving way to her entreaty. By the time that they reached
Anglebury he repented having given way so far as to withhold a direct
refusal.
'It can do no good,' he said mournfully. 'It is better to nip her notion
in its beginning. She says she wants to fly to Rouen, and from there
arrange terms with him. But it can't be done-she should have thought of
terms before.'
Christopher made no further reply. Leaving word at the 'Red Lion' that a
man was to be sent to take the horse of him, he drove directly onwards
to the station.
'Then you don't mean to help her?' said Julian, when Sol took the
tickets-one for himself and one for Picotee.
'I serve her best by leaving her alone!' said Sol.
'I don't think so.'
'She has married him.'
'She is in distress.'
'She has married him.'
Sol and Picotee took their seats, Picotee upbraiding her brother. 'I can
go by myself!' she said, in tears. 'Do go back for Berta, Sol. She said
I was to go home alone, and I can do it!'
'You must not. It is not right for you to be hiring cabs and driving
across London at midnight. Berta should have known better than propose
it.'
'She was flurried. Go, Sol!'
But her entreaty was fruitless.
'Have you got your ticket, Mr. Julian?' said Sol. 'I suppose we shall go
together till we get near Melchester?'
'I have not got my ticket yet-I'll be back in two minutes.'
The minutes went by, and Christopher did not reappear. The train moved
off: Christopher was seen running up the platform, as if in a vain hope
to catch it.
'He has missed the train,' said Sol. Picotee looked disappointed, and
said nothing. They were soon out of sight.
'God forgive me for such a hollow pretence!' said Christopher to
himself. 'But he would have been uneasy had he known I wished to stay
behind. I cannot leave her in trouble like this!'
He went back to the 'Red Lion' with the manner and movement of a man who
after a lifetime of desultoriness had at last found something to do. It
was now getting late in the afternoon. Christopher ordered a one-horse
brougham at the inn, and entering it was driven out of the town towards
Enckworth as the evening shades were beginning to fall. They passed into
the hamlet of Little Enckworth at half-past five, and drew up at a beer-
house at the end. Jumping out here, Julian told the man to wait till he
should return.
Thus far he had exactly obeyed her orders to Sol. He hoped to be able to
obey them throughout, and supply her with the aid her brother refused.
He also hoped that the change in the personality of her confederate
would make no difference to her intention. That he was putting himself
in a wrong position he allowed, but time and attention were requisite
for such analysis: meanwhile Ethelberta was in trouble. On the one hand
was she waiting hopefully for Sol; on the other was Sol many miles on
his way to town; between them was himself.
He ran with all his might towards Enckworth Park, mounted the lofty
stone steps by the lodge, saw the dark bronze figures on the piers
through the twilight, and then proceeded to thread the trees. Among
these he struck a light for a moment: it was ten minutes to six. In
another five minutes he was panting beneath the walls of her house.
Enckworth Court was not unknown to Christopher, for he had frequently
explored that spot in his Sandbourne days. He perceived now why she had
selected that particular balcony for handing down directions; it was the
only one round the house that was low enough to be reached from the
outside, the basement here being a little way sunk in the ground.
He went close under, turned his face outwards, and waited. About a foot
over his head was the stone floor of the balcony, forming a ceiling to
his position. At his back, two or three feet behind, was a blank wall-
the wall of the house. In front of him was the misty park, crowned by a
sky sparkling with winter stars. This was abruptly cut off upward by the
dark edge of the balcony which overhung him.
It was as if some person within the room above had been awaiting his
approach. He had scarcely found time to observe his situation when a
human hand and portion of a bare arm were thrust between the balusters,
descended a little way from the edge of the balcony, and remained
hanging across the starlit sky. Something was between the fingers.
Christopher lifted his hand, took the scrap, which was paper, and the
arm was withdrawn. As it withdrew, a jewel on one of the fingers
sparkled in the rays of a large planet that rode in the opposite sky.
Light steps retreated from the balcony, and a window closed. Christopher
had almost held his breath lest Ethelberta should discover him at the
critical moment to be other than Sol, and mar her deliverance by her
alarm. The still silence was anything but silence to him; he felt as if
he were listening to the clanging chorus of an oratorio. And then he
could fancy he heard words between Ethelberta and the viscount within
the room; they were evidently at very close quarters, and dexterity must
have been required of her. He went on tiptoe across the gravel to the
grass, and once on that he strode in the direction whence he had come.
By the thick trunk of one of a group of aged trees he stopped to get a
light, just as the Court clock struck six in loud long tones. The
transaction had been carried out, through her impatience possibly, four
or five minutes before the time appointed.
The note contained, in a shaken hand, in which, however, the well-known
characters were distinguishable, these words in pencil:
'At half-past seven o'clock. Just outside the north lodge; don't fail.'
This was the time she had suggested to Sol as that which would probably
best suit her escape, if she could escape at all. She had changed the
place from the west to the north lodge-nothing else. The latter was
certainly more secluded, though a trifle more remote from the course of
the proposed journey; there was just time enough and none to spare for
fetching the brougham from Little Enckworth to the lodge, the village
being two miles off. The few minutes gained by her readiness at the
balcony were useful now. He started at once for the village, diverging
somewhat to observe the spot appointed for the meeting. It was
excellently chosen; the gate appeared to be little used, the lane
outside it was covered with trees, and all around was silent as the
grave. After this hasty survey by the wan starlight, he hastened on to
Little Enckworth.
An hour and a quarter later a little brougham without lamps was creeping
along by the park wall towards this spot. The leaves were so thick upon
the unfrequented road that the wheels could not be heard, and the
horse's pacing made scarcely more noise than a rabbit would have done in
limping along. The vehicle progressed slowly, for they were in good
time. About ten yards from the park entrance it stopped, and Christopher
stepped out.
'We may have to wait here ten minutes,' he said to the driver. 'And then
shall we be able to reach Anglebury in time for the up mail-train to
Southampton?'
'Half-past seven, half-past eight, half-past nine-two hours. O yes, sir,
easily. A young lady in the case perhaps, sir?'
'Yes.'
'Well, I hope she'll be done honestly by, even if she is of humble
station. 'Tis best, and cheapest too, in the long run.' The coachman was
apparently imagining the dove about to flit away to be one of the pretty
maid-servants that abounded in Enckworth Court; such escapades as these
were not unfrequent among them, a fair face having been deemed a
sufficient recommendation to service in that house, without too close an
inquiry into character, since the death of the first viscountess.
'Now then, silence; and listen for a footstep at the gate.'
Such calmness as there was in the musician's voice had been produced by
considerable effort. For his heart had begun to beat fast and loud as he
strained his attentive ear to catch the footfall of a woman who could
only be his illegally.
The obscurity was as great as a starry sky would permit it to be.
Beneath the trees where the carriage stood the darkness was total.
47. ENCKWORTH AND ITS PRECINCTS-MELCHESTER
To be wise after the event is often to act foolishly with regard to it;
and to preserve the illusion which has led to the event would frequently
be a course that omniscience itself could not find fault with. Reaction
with Ethelberta was complete, and the more violent in that it threatened
to be useless. Sol's bitter chiding had been the first thing to
discompose her fortitude. It reduced her to a consciousness that she had
allowed herself to be coerced in her instincts, and yet had not
triumphed in her duty. She might have pleased her family better by
pleasing her tastes, and have entirely avoided the grim irony of the
situation disclosed later in the day.
After the second interview with Sol she was to some extent composed in
mind by being able to nurse a definite intention. As momentum causes the
narrowest wheel to stand upright, a scheme, fairly imbibed, will give
the weakest some power to maintain a position stoically.
In the temporary absence of Lord Mountclere, about six o'clock, she
slipped out upon the balcony and handed down a note. To her relief, a
hand received it instantly.
The hour and a half wanting to half-past seven she passed with great
effort. The main part of the time was occupied by dinner, during which
she attempted to devise some scheme for leaving him without suspicion
just before the appointed moment.
Happily, and as if by a Providence, there was no necessity for any such
thing.
A little while before the half-hour, when she moved to rise from dinner,
he also arose, tenderly begging her to excuse him for a few minutes,
that he might go and write an important note to his lawyer, until that
moment forgotten, though the postman was nearly due. She heard him
retire along the corridor and shut himself into his study, his promised
time of return being a quarter of an hour thence.
Five minutes after that memorable parting Ethelberta came from the
little door by the bush of yew, well and thickly wrapped up from head to
heels. She skimmed across the park and under the boughs like a shade,
mounting then the stone steps for pedestrians which were fixed beside
the park gates here as at all the lodges. Outside and below her she saw
an oblong shape-it was a brougham, and it had been drawn forward close
to the bottom of the steps that she might not have an inch further to go
on foot than to this barrier. The whole precinct was thronged with
trees; half their foliage being overhead, the other half under foot, for
the gardeners had not yet begun to rake and collect the leaves; thus it
was that her dress rustled as she descended the steps.
The carriage door was held open by the driver, and she entered
instantly. He shut her in, and mounted to his seat. As they drove away
she became conscious of another person inside.
'O! Sol-it is done!' she whispered, believing the man to be her brother.
Her companion made no reply.
Ethelberta, familiar with Sol's moods of troubled silence, did not press
for an answer. It was, indeed, certain that Sol's assistance would have
been given under a sullen protest; even if unwilling to disappoint her,
he might well have been taciturn and angry at her course.
They sat in silence, and in total darkness. The road ascended an
incline, the horse's tramp being still deadened by the carpet of leaves.
Then the large trees on either hand became interspersed by a low
brushwood of varied sorts, from which a large bird occasionally flew, in
its fright at their presence beating its wings recklessly against the
hard stems with force enough to cripple the delicate quills. It showed
how deserted was the spot after nightfall.
'Sol?' said Ethelberta again. 'Why not talk to me?'
She now noticed that her fellow-traveller kept his head and his whole
person as snugly back in the corner, out of her way, as it was possible
to do. She was not exactly frightened, but she could not understand the
reason. The carriage gave a quick turn, and stopped.
'Where are we now?' she said. 'Shall we get to Anglebury by nine? What
is the time, Sol?'
'I will see,' replied her companion. They were the first words he had
uttered.
The voice was so different from her brother's that she was terrified;
her limbs quivered. In another instant the speaker had struck a wax
vesta, and holding it erect in his fingers he looked her in the face.
'Hee-hee-hee!' The laugher was her husband the viscount.
He laughed again, and his eyes gleamed like a couple of tarnished brass
buttons in the light of the wax match.
Ethelberta might have fallen dead with the shock, so terrible and
hideous was it. Yet she did not. She neither shrieked nor fainted; but
no poor January fieldfare was ever colder, no ice-house more dank with
perspiration, than she was then.
'A very pleasant joke, my dear-hee-hee! And no more than was to be
expected on this merry, happy day of our lives. Nobody enjoys a good
jest more than I do: I always enjoyed a jest-hee-hee! Now we are in the
dark again; and we will alight and walk. The path is too narrow for the
carriage, but it will not be far for you. Take your husband's arm.'
While he had been speaking a defiant pride had sprung up in her,
instigating her to conceal every weakness. He had opened the carriage
door and stepped out. She followed, taking the offered arm.
'Take the horse and carriage to the stables,' said the viscount to the
coachman, who was his own servant, the vehicle and horse being also his.
The coachman turned the horse's head and vanished down the woodland
track by which they had ascended.
The viscount moved on, uttering private chuckles as numerous as a
woodpecker's taps, and Ethelberta with him. She walked as by a miracle,
but she would walk. She would have died rather than not have walked
then.
She perceived now that they were somewhere in Enckworth wood. As they
went, she noticed a faint shine upon the ground on the other side of the
viscount, which showed her that they were walking beside a wet ditch.
She remembered having seen it in the morning: it was a shallow ditch of
mud. She might push him in, and run, and so escape before he could
extricate himself. It would not hurt him. It was her last chance. She
waited a moment for the opportunity.
'We are one to one, and I am the stronger!' she at last exclaimed
triumphantly, and lifted her hand for a thrust.
'On the contrary, darling, we are one to half-a-dozen, and you
considerably the weaker,' he tenderly replied, stepping back adroitly,
and blowing a whistle. At once the bushes seemed to be animated in four
or five places.
'John?' he said, in the direction of one of them.
'Yes, my lord,' replied a voice from the bush, and a keeper came
forward.
'William?'
Another man advanced from another bush.
'Quite right. Remain where you are for the present. Is Tomkins there?'
'Yes, my lord,' said a man from another part of the thicket.
'You go and keep watch by the further lodge: there are poachers about.
Where is Strongway?'
'Just below, my lord.'
'Tell him and his brother to go to the west gate, and walk up and down.
Let them search round it, among the trees inside. Anybody there who
cannot give a good account of himself to be brought before me to-morrow
morning. I am living at the cottage at present. That's all I have to say
to you.' And, turning round to Ethelberta: 'Now, dearest, we will walk a
little further if you are able. I have provided that your friends shall
be taken care of.' He tried to pull her hand towards him, gently, like a
cat opening a door.
They walked a little onward, and Lord Mountclere spoke again, with
imperturbable good-humour:
'I will tell you a story, to pass the time away. I have learnt the art
from you-your mantle has fallen upon me, and all your inspiration with
it. Listen, dearest. I saw a young man come to the house to-day.
Afterwards I saw him cross a passage in your company. You entered the
ball-room with him. That room is a treacherous place. It is panelled
with wood, and between the panels and the walls are passages for the
servants, opening from the room by doors hidden in the woodwork. Lady
Mountclere knew of one of these, and made use of it to let out her
conspirator; Lord Mountclere knew of another, and made use of it to let
in himself. His sight is not good, but his ears are unimpaired. A
meeting was arranged to take place at the west gate at half-past seven,
unless a note handed from the balcony mentioned another time and place.
He heard it all-hee-hee!
'When Lady Mountclere's confederate came for the note, I was in waiting
above, and handed one down a few minutes before the hour struck,
confirming the time, but changing the place. When Lady Mountclere handed
down her note, just as the clock was striking, her confederate had gone,
and I was standing beneath the balcony to receive it. She dropped it
into her husband's hands-ho-ho-ho-ho!
'Lord Mountclere ordered a brougham to be at the west lodge, as fixed by
Lady Mountclere's note. Probably Lady Mountclere's friend ordered a
brougham to be at the north gate, as fixed by my note, written in
imitation of Lady Mountclere's hand. Lady Mountclere came to the spot
she had mentioned, and like a good wife rushed into the arms of her
husband-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!'
As if by an ungovernable impulse, Ethelberta broke into laughter also-
laughter which had a wild unnatural sound; it was hysterical. She sank
down upon the leaves, and there continued the fearful laugh just as
before.
Lord Mountclere became greatly frightened. The spot they had reached was
a green space within a girdle of hollies, and in front of them rose an
ornamental cottage. This was the building which Ethelberta had visited
earlier in the day: it was the Petit Trianon of Enckworth Court.
The viscount left her side and hurried forward. The door of the building
was opened by a woman.
'Have you prepared for us, as I directed?'
'Yes, my lord; tea and coffee are both ready.'
'Never mind that now. Lady Mountclere is ill; come and assist her
indoors. Tell the other woman to bring wine and water at once.'
He returned to Ethelberta. She was better, and was sitting calmly on the
bank. She rose without assistance.
'You may retire,' he said to the woman who had followed him, and she
turned round. When Ethelberta saw the building, she drew back quickly.
'Where is the other Lady Mountclere?' she inquired.
'Gone!'
'She shall never return-never?'
'Never. It was not intended that she should.'
'That sounds well. Lord Mountclere, we may as well compromise matters.'
'I think so too. It becomes a lady to make a virtue of a necessity.'
'It was stratagem against stratagem. Mine was ingenious; yours was
masterly! Accept my acknowledgment. We will enter upon an armed
neutrality.'
'No. Let me be your adorer and slave again, as ever. Your beauty,
dearest, covers everything! You are my mistress and queen! But here we
are at the door. Tea is prepared for us here. I have a liking for life
in this cottage mode, and live here on occasion. Women, attend to Lady
Mountclere.'
The woman who had seen Ethelberta in the morning was alarmed at
recognizing her, having since been informed officially of the marriage:
she murmured entreaties for pardon. They assisted the viscountess to a
chair, the door was closed, and the wind blew past as if nobody had ever
stood there to interrupt its flight.
Full of misgivings, Christopher continued to wait at the north gate.
Half-past seven had long since been past, and no Ethelberta had
appeared. He did not for the moment suppose the delay to be hers, and
this gave him patience; having taken up the position, he was induced by
fidelity to abide by the consequences. It would be only a journey of two
hours to reach Anglebury Station; he would ride outside with the driver,
put her into the train, and bid her adieu for ever. She had cried for
help, and he had heard her cry.
At last through the trees came the sound of the Court clock striking
eight, and then, for the first time, a doubt arose in his mind whether
she could have mistaken the gate. She had distinctly told Sol the west
lodge; her note had expressed the north lodge. Could she by any accident
have written one thing while meaning another? He entered the carriage,
and drove round to the west gate. All was as silent there as at the
other, the meeting between Ethelberta and Lord Mountclere being then
long past; and he drove back again.
He left the carriage, and entered the park on foot, approaching the
house slowly. All was silent; the windows were dark; moping sounds came
from the trees and sky, as from Sorrow whispering to Night. By this time
he felt assured that the scheme had miscarried. While he stood here a
carriage without lights came up the drive; it turned in towards the
stable-yard without going to the door. The carriage had plainly been
empty.
Returning across the grass by the way he had come, he was startled by
the voices of two men from the road hard by.
'Have ye zeed anybody?'
'Not a soul.'
'Shall we go across again?'
'What's the good? let's home to supper.'
'My lord must have heard somebody, or 'a wouldn't have said it.'
'Perhaps he's nervous now he's living in the cottage again. I thought
that fancy was over. Well, I'm glad 'tis a young wife he's brought us.
She'll have her routs and her rackets as well as the high-born ones,
you'll see, as soon as she gets used to the place.'
'She must be a queer Christian to pick up with him.'
'Well, if she've charity 'tis enough for we poor men; her faith and hope
may be as please God. Now I be for on-along homeward.'
As soon as they had gone Christopher moved from his hiding, and,
avoiding the gravel-walk, returned to his coachman, telling him to drive
at once to Anglebury.
Julian was so impatient of the futility of his adventure that he wished
to annihilate its existence. On reaching Anglebury he determined to get
on at once to Melchester, that the event of the night might be summarily
ended; to be still in the neighbourhood was to be still engaged in it.
He reached home before midnight.
Walking into their house in a quiet street, as dissatisfied with himself
as a man well could be who still retained health and an occupation, he
found Faith sitting up as usual. His news was simple: the marriage had
taken place before he could get there, and he had seen nothing of either
ceremony or viscountess. The remainder he reserved for a more convenient
season.
Edith looked anxiously at him as he ate supper, smiling now and then.
'Well, I am tired of this life,' said Christopher.
'So am I,' said Faith. 'Ah, if we were only rich!'
'Ah, yes.'
'Or if we were not rich,' she said, turning her eyes to the fire. 'If we
were only slightly provided for, it would be better than nothing. How
much would you be content with, Kit?'
'As much as I could get.'
'Would you be content with a thousand a year for both of us?'
'I daresay I should,' he murmured, breaking his bread.
'Or five hundred for both?'
'Or five hundred.'
'Or even three hundred?'
'Bother three hundred. Less than double the sum would not satisfy me. We
may as well imagine much as little.'
Faith's countenance had fallen. 'O Kit,' she said, 'you always
disappoint me.'
'I do. How do I disappoint you this time?'
'By not caring for three hundred a year-a hundred and fifty each-when
that is all I have to offer you.'
'Faith!' said he, looking up for the first time. 'Ah-of course! Lucy's
will. I had forgotten.'
'It is true, and I had prepared such a pleasant surprise for you, and
now you don't care! Our cousin Lucy did leave us something after all. I
don't understand the exact total sum, but it comes to a hundred and
fifty a year each-more than I expected, though not so much as you
deserved. Here's the letter. I have been dwelling upon it all day, and
thinking what a pleasure it would be; and it is not after all!'
'Good gracious, Faith, I was only supposing. The real thing is another
matter altogether. Well, the idea of Lucy's will containing our names! I
am sure I would have gone to the funeral had I known.'
'I wish it were a thousand.'
'O no-it doesn't matter at all. But, certainly, three hundred for two is
a tantalizing sum: not enough to enable us to change our condition, and
enough to make us dissatisfied with going on as we are.'
'We must forget we have it, and let it increase.'
'It isn't enough to increase much. We may as well use it. But how? Take
a bigger house-what's the use? Give up the organ?-then I shall be rather
worse off than I am at present. Positively, it is the most provoking
amount anybody could have invented had they tried ever so long. Poor
Lucy, to do that, and not even to come near us when father died. . . .
Ah, I know what we'll do. We'll go abroad-we'll live in Italy.'
SEQUEL. ANGLEBURY-ENCKWORTH-SANDBOURNE
Two years and a half after the marriage of Ethelberta and the evening
adventures which followed it, a man young in years, though considerably
older in mood and expression, walked up to the 'Red Lion' Inn at
Anglebury. The anachronism sat not unbecomingly upon him, and the voice
was precisely that of the Christopher Julian of heretofore. His way of
entering the inn and calling for a conveyance was more off-hand than
formerly; he was much less afraid of the sound of his own voice now than
when he had gone through the same performance on a certain chill evening
the last time that he visited the spot. He wanted to be taken to
Knollsea to meet the steamer there, and was not coming back by the same
vehicle.
It was a very different day from that of his previous journey along the
same road; different in season; different in weather; and the humour of
the observer differed yet more widely from its condition then than did
the landscape from its former hues. In due time they reached a
commanding situation upon the road, from which were visible knots and
plantations of trees on the Enckworth manor. Christopher broke the
silence.
'Lord Mountclere is still alive and well, I am told?'
'O ay. He'll live to be a hundred. Never such a change as has come over
the man of late years.'
'Indeed!'
'O, 'tis my lady. She's a one to put up with! Still, 'tis said here and
there that marrying her was the best day's work that he ever did in his
life, although she's got to be my lord and my lady both.'
'Is she happy with him?'
'She is very sharp with the pore man-about happy I don't know. He was a
good-natured old man, for all his sins, and would sooner any day lay out
money in new presents than pay it in old debts. But 'tis altered now.
'Tisn't the same place. Ah, in the old times I have seen the floor of
the servants' hall over the vamp of your boot in solid beer that we had
poured aside from the horns because we couldn't see straight enough to
pour it in. See? No, we couldn't see a hole in a ladder! And now, even
at Christmas or Whitsuntide, when a man, if ever he desires to be
overcome with a drop, would naturally wish it to be, you can walk out of
Enckworth as straight as you walked in. All her doings.'
'Then she holds the reins?'
'She do! There was a little tussle at first; but how could a old man
hold his own against such a spry young body as that! She threatened to
run away from him, and kicked up Bob's-a-dying, and I don't know what
all; and being the woman, of course she was sure to beat in the long
run. Pore old nobleman, she marches him off to church every Sunday as
regular as a clock, makes him read family prayers that haven't been read
in Enckworth for the last thirty years to my certain knowledge, and
keeps him down to three glasses of wine a day, strict, so that you never
see him any the more generous for liquor or a bit elevated at all, as it
used to be. There, 'tis true, it has done him good in one sense, for
they say he'd have been dead in five years if he had gone on as he was
going.'
'So that she's a good wife to him, after all.'
'Well, if she had been a little worse 'twould have been a little better
for him in one sense, for he would have had his own way more. But he was
a curious feller at one time, as we all know and I suppose 'tis as much
as he can expect; but 'tis a strange reverse for him. It is said that
when he's asked out to dine, or to anything in the way of a jaunt, his
eye flies across to hers afore he answers: and if her eye says yes, he
says yes: and if her eye says no, he says no. 'Tis a sad condition for
one who ruled womankind as he, that a woman should lead him in a string
whether he will or no.'
'Sad indeed!'
'She's steward, and agent, and everything. She has got a room called "my
lady's office," and great ledgers and cash-books you never see the like.
In old times there were bailiffs to look after the workfolk, foremen to
look after the tradesmen, a building-steward to look after the foremen,
a land-steward to look after the building-steward, and a dashing grand
agent to look after the land-steward: fine times they had then, I assure
ye. My lady said they were eating out the property like a honeycomb, and
then there was a terrible row. Half of 'em were sent flying; and now
there's only the agent, and the viscountess, and a sort of surveyor man,
and of the three she does most work so 'tis said. She marks the trees to
be felled, settles what horses are to be sold and bought, and is out in
all winds and weathers. There, if somebody hadn't looked into things
'twould soon have been all up with his lordship, he was so very
extravagant. In one sense 'twas lucky for him that she was born in
humble life, because owing to it she knows the ins and outs of
contriving, which he never did.'
'Then a man on the verge of bankruptcy will do better to marry a poor
and sensible wife than a rich and stupid one. Well, here we are at the
tenth milestone. I will walk the remainder of the distance to Knollsea,
as there is ample time for meeting the last steamboat.'
When the man was gone Christopher proceeded slowly on foot down the
hill, and reached that part of the highway at which he had stopped in
the cold November breeze waiting for a woman who never came. He was
older now, and he had ceased to wish that he had not been disappointed.
There was the lodge, and around it were the trees, brilliant in the
shining greens of June. Every twig sustained its bird, and every blossom
its bee. The roadside was not muffled in a garment of dead leaves as it
had been then, and the lodge-gate was not open as it always used to be.
He paused to look through the bars. The drive was well kept and
gravelled; the grass edgings, formerly marked by hoofs and ruts, and
otherwise trodden away, were now green and luxuriant, bent sticks being
placed at intervals as a protection.
While he looked through the gate a woman stepped from the lodge to open
it. In her haste she nearly swung the gate into his face, and would have
completely done so had he not jumped back.
'I beg pardon, sir,' she said, on perceiving him. 'I was going to open
it for my lady, and I didn't see you.'
Christopher moved round the corner. The perpetual snubbing that he had
received from Ethelberta ever since he had known her seemed about to be
continued through the medium of her dependents.
A trotting, accompanied by the sound of light wheels, had become
perceptible; and then a vehicle came through the gate, and turned up the
road which he had come down. He saw the back of a basket carriage, drawn
by a pair of piebald ponies. A lad in livery sat behind with folded
arms; the driver was a lady. He saw her bonnet, her shoulders, her hair-
but no more. She lessened in his gaze, and was soon out of sight.
He stood a long time thinking; but he did not wish her his.
In this wholesome frame of mind he proceeded on his way, thankful that
he had escaped meeting her, though so narrowly. But perhaps at this
remote season the embarrassment of a rencounter would not have been
intense. At Knollsea he entered the steamer for Sandbourne.
Mr. Chickerel and his family now lived at Firtop Villa, in that place, a
house which, like many others, had been built since Julian's last visit
to the town. He was directed to the outskirts, and into a fir plantation
where drives and intersecting roads had been laid out, and where new
villas had sprung up like mushrooms. He entered by a swing gate, on
which 'Firtop' was painted, and a maid-servant showed him into a neatly-
furnished room, containing Mr. Chickerel, Mrs. Chickerel, and Picotee,
the matron being reclined on a couch, which improved health had
permitted her to substitute for a bed.
He had been expected, and all were glad to see again the sojourner in
foreign lands, even down to the ladylike tabby, who was all purr and
warmth towards him except when she was all claws and nippers. But had
the prime sentiment of the meeting shown itself it would have been the
unqualified surprise of Christopher at seeing how much Picotee's face
had grown to resemble her sister's: it was less a resemblance in
contours than in expression and tone.
They had an early tea, and then Mr. Chickerel, sitting in a patriarchal
chair, conversed pleasantly with his guest, being well acquainted with
him through other members of the family. They talked of Julian's
residence at different Italian towns with his sister; of Faith, who was
at the present moment staying with some old friends in Melchester: and,
as was inevitable, the discourse hovered over and settled upon
Ethelberta, the prime ruler of the courses of them all, with little
exception, through recent years.
'It was a hard struggle for her,' said Chickerel, looking reflectively
out at the fir trees. 'I never thought the girl would have got through
it. When she first entered the house everybody was against her. She had
to fight a whole host of them single-handed. There was the viscount's
brother, other relations, lawyers, ladies, servants, not one of them was
her friend; and not one who wouldn't rather have seen her arrive there
in evil relationship with him than as she did come. But she stood her
ground. She was put upon her mettle; and one by one they got to feel
there was somebody among them whose little finger, if they insulted her,
was thicker than a Mountclere's loins. She must have had a will of iron;
it was a situation that would have broken the hearts of a dozen ordinary
women, for everybody soon knew that we were of no family, and that's
what made it so hard for her. But there she is as mistress now, and
everybody respecting her. I sometimes fancy she is occasionally too
severe with the servants and I know what service is. But she says it is
necessary, owing to her birth; and perhaps she is right.'
'I suppose she often comes to see you?'
'Four or five times a year,' said Picotee.
'She cannot come quite so often as she would,' said Mrs. Chickerel,
'because of her lofty position, which has its juties. Well, as I always
say, Berta doesn't take after me. I couldn't have married the man even
though he did bring a coronet with him.'
'I shouldn't have cared to let him ask ye,' said Chickerel. 'However,
that's neither here nor there-all ended better than I expected. He's
fond of her.'
'And it is wonderful what can be done with an old man when you are his
darling,' said Mrs. Chickerel.
'If I were Berta I should go to London oftener,' said Picotee, to turn
the conversation. 'But she lives mostly in the library. And, O, what do
you think? She is writing an epic poem, and employs Emmeline as her
reader.'
'Dear me. And how are Sol and Dan? You mentioned them once in your
letters,' said Christopher.
'Berta has set them up as builders in London.'
'She bought a business for them,' said Chickerel. 'But Sol wouldn't
accept her help for a long time, and now he has only agreed to it on
condition of paying her back the money with interest, which he is doing.
They have just signed a contract to build a hospital for twenty thousand
pounds.'
Picotee broke in-'You knew that both Gwendoline and Cornelia married two
years ago, and went to Queensland? They married two brothers, who were
farmers, and left England the following week. Georgie and Myrtle are at
school.'
'And Joey?'
'We are thinking of making Joseph a parson,' said Mrs. Chickerel.
'Indeed! a parson.'
'Yes; 'tis a genteel living for the boy. And he's talents that way.
Since he has been under masters he knows all the strange sounds the old
Romans and Greeks used to make by way of talking, and the love stories
of the ancient women as if they were his own. I assure you, Mr. Julian,
if you could hear how beautiful the boy tells about little Cupid with
his bow and arrows, and the rows between that pagan apostle Jupiter and
his wife because of another woman, and the handsome young gods who
kissed Venus, you'd say he deserved to be made a bishop at once!'
The evening advanced, and they walked in the garden. Here, by some
means, Picotee and Christopher found themselves alone.
'Your letters to my sister have been charming,' said Christopher. 'And
so regular, too. It was as good as a birthday every time one arrived.'
Picotee blushed and said nothing.
Christopher had full assurance that her heart was where it always had
been. A suspicion of the fact had been the reason of his visit here to-
day.
'Other letters were once written from England to Italy, and they
acquired great celebrity. Do you know whose?'
'Walpole's?' said Picotee timidly.
'Yes; but they never charmed me half as much as yours. You may rest
assured that one person in the world thinks Walpole your second.'
'You should not have read them; they were not written to you. But I
suppose you wished to hear of Ethelberta?'
'At first I did,' said Christopher. 'But, oddly enough, I got more
interested in the writer than in her news. I don't know if ever before
there has been an instance of loving by means of letters. If not, it is
because there have never been such sweet ones written. At last I looked
for them more anxiously than Faith.'
'You see, you knew me before.' Picotee would have withdrawn this remark
if she could, fearing that it seemed like a suggestion of her love long
ago.
'Then, on my return, I thought I would just call and see you, and go
away and think what would be best for me to do with a view to the
future. But since I have been here I have felt that I could not go away
to think without first asking you what you think on one point-whether
you could ever marry me?'
'I thought you would ask that when I first saw you.'
'Did you. Why?'
'You looked at me as if you would.'
'Well,' continued Christopher, 'the worst of it is I am as poor as Job.
Faith and I have three hundred a year between us, but only half is mine.
So that before I get your promise I must let your father know how poor I
am. Besides what I mention, I have only my earnings by music. But I am
to be installed as chief organist at Melchester soon, instead of deputy,
as I used to be; which is something.'
'I am to have five hundred pounds when I marry. That was Lord
Mountclere's arrangement with Ethelberta. He is extremely anxious that I
should marry well.'
'That's unfortunate. A marriage with me will hardly be considered well.'
'O yes, it will,' said Picotee quickly, and then looked frightened.
Christopher drew her towards him, and imprinted a kiss upon her cheek,
at which Picotee was not so wretched as she had been some years before
when he mistook her for another in that performance.
'Berta will never let us come to want,' she said, with vivacity, when
she had recovered. 'She always gives me what is necessary.'
'We will endeavour not to trouble her,' said Christopher, amused by
Picotee's utter dependence now as ever upon her sister, as upon an
eternal Providence. 'However, it is well to be kin to a coach though you
never ride in it. Now, shall we go indoors to your father? You think he
will not object?'
'I think he will be very glad,' replied Picotee. 'Berta will, I know.'
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Thomas Hardy" ***
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