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. Tomorrow!"
"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.
_A Re-encounter_
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, "COUNTY JAIL: 1793."
This had been the façade 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 grey 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 cursed 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 wagon 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 paralysed 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 experience 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.
CLARIMONDE
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Brother, you ask me if I have ever loved. Yes. My story is a strange and
terrible one; and though I am sixty-six years of age, I scarcely dare
even now to disturb the ashes of that memory.
From my earliest childhood I had felt a vocation to the priesthood, so
that all my studies were directed with that idea in view. Up to the age
of twenty-four my life had been only a prolonged novitiate. Having
completed my course of theology I successively received all the minor
orders, and my superiors judged me worthy, despite my youth, to pass the
last awful degree. My ordination was fixed for Easter week.
I had never gone into the world. My world was confined by the walls of
the college and the seminary. I knew in a vague sort of a way that there
was something called Woman, but I never permitted my thoughts to dwell
on such a subject, and I lived in a state of perfect innocence. Twice a
year only I saw my infirm and aged mother, and in those visits were
comprised my sole relations with the outer world.
I regretted nothing; I felt not the least hesitation at taking the last
irrevocable step; I was filled with joy and impatience. Never did a
betrothed lover count the slow hours with more feverish ardour; I slept
only to dream that I was saying mass; I believed there could be nothing
in the world more delightful than to be a priest; I would have refused
to be a king or a poet in preference. My ambition could conceive of no
loftier aim.
At last the great day came. I walked to the church with a step so light
that I fancied myself sustained in air, or that I had wings upon my
shoulders. I believed myself an angel, and wondered at the sombre and
thoughtful faces of my companions, for there were several of us. I had
passed all the night in prayer, and was in a condition wellnigh
bordering on ecstasy. The bishop, a venerable old man, seemed to me God
the Father leaning over his Eternity, and I beheld Heaven through the
vault of the temple.
You well know the details of that ceremony--the benediction, the
communion under both forms, the anointing of the palms of the hands with
the Oil of Catechumens, and then the holy sacrifice offered in concert
with the bishop.
Ah, truly spake Job when he declared that the imprudent man is one who
hath not made a covenant with his eyes! I accidentally lifted my head,
which until then I had kept down, and beheld before me, so close that it
seemed that I could have touched her--although she was actually a
considerable distance from me and on the further side of the sanctuary
railing--a young woman of extraordinary beauty, and attired with royal
magnificence. It seemed as though scales had suddenly fallen from my
eyes. I felt like a blind man who unexpectedly recovers his sight. The
bishop, so radiantly glorious but an instant before, suddenly vanished
away, the tapers paled upon their golden candlesticks like stars in the
dawn, and a vast darkness seemed to fill the whole church. The charming
creature appeared in brief relief against the background of that
darkness, like some angelic revelation. She seemed herself radiant, and
radiating light rather than receiving it.
I lowered my eyelids, firmly resolved not to again open them, that I
might not be influenced by external objects, for distraction had
gradually taken possession of me until I hardly knew what I was doing.
In another minute, nevertheless, I reopened my eyes, for through my
eyelashes I still beheld her, all sparkling with prismatic colours, and
surrounded with such a purple penumbra as one beholds in gazing at the
sun.
Oh, how beautiful she was! The greatest painters, who followed ideal
beauty into heaven itself, and thence brought back to earth the true
portrait of the Madonna, never in their delineations even approached
that wildly beautiful reality which I saw before me. Neither the verses
of the poet nor the palette of the artist could convey any conception of
her. She was rather tall, with a form and bearing of a goddess. Her
hair, of a soft blonde hue, was parted in the midst and flowed back over
her temples in two rivers of rippling gold; she seemed a diademed
queen. Her forehead, bluish-white in its transparency, extended its calm
breadth above the arches of her eyebrows, which by a strange singularity
were almost black, and admirably relieved the effect of sea-green eyes
of unsustainable vivacity and brilliancy. What eyes! With a single flash
they could have decided a man's destiny. They had a life, a limpidity,
an ardour, a humid light which I have never seen in human eyes; they
shot forth rays like arrows, which I could distinctly _see_ enter my
heart. I know not if the fire which illumined them came from heaven or
from hell, but assuredly it came from one or the other. That woman was
either an angel or a demon, perhaps both. Assuredly she never sprang
from the flank of Eve, our common mother. Teeth of the most lustrous
pearl gleamed in her ruddy smile, and at every inflection of her lips
little dimples appeared in the satiny rose of her adorable cheeks. There
was a delicacy and pride in the regal outline of her nostrils bespeaking
noble blood. Agate gleams played over the smooth lustrous skin of her
half-bare shoulders, and strings of great blonde pearls--almost equal to
her neck in beauty of colour--descended upon her bosom. From time to
time she elevated her head with the undulating grace of a startled
serpent or peacock, thereby imparting a quivering motion to the high
lace ruff which surrounded it like a silver trellis-work.
She wore a robe of orange-red velvet, and from her wide ermine-lined
sleeves there peeped forth patrician hands of infinite delicacy, and so
ideally transparent that, like the fingers of Aurora, they permitted
the light to shine through them.
All these details I can recollect at this moment as plainly as though
they were of yesterday, for notwithstanding I was greatly troubled at
the time, nothing escaped me; the faintest touch of shading, the little
dark speck at the point of the chin, the imperceptible down at the
corners of the lips, the velvety floss upon the brow, the quivering
shadows of the eyelashes upon the cheeks, I could notice everything with
astonishing lucidity of perception.
And gazing I felt opening within me gates that had until then remained
closed; vents long obstructed became all clear, permitting glimpses of
unfamiliar perspectives within; life suddenly made itself visible to me
under a totally novel aspect. I felt as though I had just been born into
a new world and a new order of things. A frightful anguish commenced to
torture my heart as with red-hot pincers. Every successive minute seemed
to me at once but a second and yet a century. Meanwhile the ceremony was
proceeding, and with an effort of will sufficient to have uprooted a
mountain, I strove to cry out that I would not be a priest, but I could
not speak; my tongue seemed nailed to my palate, and I found it
impossible to express my will by the least syllable of negation. Though
fully awake, I felt like one under the influence of a nightmare, who
vainly strives to shriek out the one word upon which life depends.
She seemed conscious of the martyrdom I was undergoing, and, as though
to encourage me, she gave me a look replete with divinest promise. Her
eyes were a poem; their every glance was a song.
She said to me:
"If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God Himself in His
paradise. The angels themselves will be jealous of thee. Tear off that
funeral shroud in which thou art about to wrap thyself. I am Beauty, I
am Youth, I am Life. Come to me! Together we shall be Love. Can Jehovah
offer thee aught in exchange? Our lives will flow on like a dream, in
one eternal kiss.
"Fling forth the wine of that chalice, and thou art free. I will conduct
thee to the Unknown Isles. Thou shalt sleep in my bosom upon a bed of
massy gold under a silver pavilion, for I love thee and would take thee
away from thy God, before whom so many noble hearts pour forth floods of
love which never reach even the steps of His throne!"
These words seemed to float to my ears in a rhythm of infinite
sweetness, for her look was actually sonorous, and the utterances of her
eyes were re-echoed in the depths of my heart as though living lips had
breathed them into my life. I felt myself willing to renounce God, and
yet my tongue mechanically fulfilled all the formalities of the
ceremony. The fair one gave me another look, so beseeching, so
despairing that keen blades seemed to pierce my heart, and I felt my
bosom transfixed by more swords than those of Our Lady of Sorrows.
All was consummated; I had become a priest.
Never was deeper anguish painted on human face than upon hers. The
maiden who beholds her affianced lover suddenly fall dead at her side,
the mother bending over the empty cradle of her child, Eve seated at the
threshold of the gate of Paradise, the miser who finds a stone
substituted for his stolen treasure, the poet who accidentally permits
the only manuscript of his finest work to fall into the fire, could not
wear a look so despairing, so inconsolable. All the blood had abandoned
her charming face, leaving it whiter than marble; her beautiful arms
hung lifelessly on either side of her body as though their muscles had
suddenly relaxed, and she sought the support of a pillar, for her
yielding limbs almost betrayed her. As for myself, I staggered toward
the door of the church, livid as death, my forehead bathed with a sweat
bloodier than that of Calvary; I felt as though I were being strangled;
the vault seemed to have flattened down upon my shoulders, and it seemed
to me that my head alone sustained the whole weight of the dome.
As I was about to cross the threshold a hand suddenly caught mine--a
woman's hand! I had never till then touched the hand of any woman. It
was cold as a serpent's skin, and yet its impress remained upon my
wrist, burnt there as though branded by a glowing iron. It was she.
"Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done?" she exclaimed in a low
voice, and immediately disappeared in the crowd.
The aged bishop passed by. He cast a severe and scrutinizing look upon
me. My face presented the wildest aspect imaginable; I blushed and
turned pale alternately; dazzling lights flashed before my eyes. A
companion took pity on me. He seized my arm and led me out. I could not
possibly have found my way back to the seminary unassisted. At the
corner of a street, while the young priest's attention was momentarily
turned in another direction, a negro page, fantastically garbed,
approached me, and without pausing on his way slipped into my hand a
little pocket-book with gold-embroidered corners, at the same time
giving me a sign to hide it. I concealed it in my sleeve, and there kept
it until I found myself alone in my cell. Then I opened the clasp. There
were only two leaves within, bearing the words, "Clarimonde. At the
Concini Palace." So little acquainted was I at that time with the things
of this world that I had never heard of Clarimonde, celebrated as she
was, and I had no idea as to where the Concini Palace was situated. I
hazarded a thousand conjectures, each more extravagant than the last;
but, in truth, I cared little whether she were a great lady or a
courtesan, so that I could but see her once more.
My love, although the growth of a single hour, had taken imperishable
root. I gave myself up to a thousand extravagancies. I kissed the place
upon my hand which she had touched, and I repeated her name over and
over again for hours in succession. I only needed to close my eyes in
order to see her distinctly as though she were actually present; and I
reiterated to myself the words she had uttered in my ear at the church
porch: "Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done?" I comprehended
at last the full horror of my situation, and the funereal and awful
restraints of the state into which I had just entered became clearly
revealed to me. To be a priest!--that is, to be chaste, to never love,
to observe no distinction of sex or age, to turn from the sight of all
beauty, to put out one's own eyes, to hide forever crouching in the
chill shadows of some church or cloister, to visit none but the dying,
to watch by unknown corpses, and ever bear about with one the black
soutane as a garb of mourning for one's self, so that your very dress
might serve as a pall for your coffin.
What could I do in order to see Clarimonde once more? I had no pretext
to offer for desiring to leave the seminary, not knowing any person in
the city. I would not even be able to remain there but a short time, and
was only waiting my assignment to the curacy which I must thereafter
occupy. I tried to remove the bars of the window; but it was at a
fearful height from the ground, and I found that as I had no ladder it
would be useless to think of escaping thus. And, furthermore, I could
descend thence only by night in any event, and afterward how should I be
able to find my way through the inextricable labyrinth of streets? All
these difficulties, which to many would have appeared altogether
insignificant, were gigantic to me, a poor seminarist who had fallen in
love only the day before for the first time, without experience,
without money, without attire.