Owen accompanied the newly-married couple to the railway-station, and in
his anxiety to see the last of his sister, left the brougham and stood
upon his crutches whilst the train was starting.
When the husband and wife were about to enter the railway-carriage they
saw one of the porters looking frequently and furtively at them. He was
pale, and apparently very ill.
‘Look at that poor sick man,’ said Cytherea compassionately, ‘surely he
ought not to be here.’
‘He’s been very queer to-day, madam, very queer,’ another porter
answered. ‘He do hardly hear when he’s spoken to, and d’ seem giddy, or
as if something was on his mind. He’s been like it for this month past,
but nothing so bad as he is to-day.’
‘Poor thing.’
She could not resist an innate desire to do some just thing on this most
deceitful and wretched day of her life. Going up to him she gave him
money, and told him to send to the old manor-house for wine or whatever
he wanted.
The train moved off as the trembling man was murmuring his incoherent
thanks. Owen waved his hand; Cytherea smiled back to him as if it were
unknown to her that she wept all the while.
Owen was driven back to the Old House. But he could not rest in the
lonely place. His conscience began to reproach him for having forced on
the marriage of his sister with a little too much peremptoriness. Taking
up his crutches he went out of doors and wandered about the muddy roads
with no object in view save that of getting rid of time.
The clouds which had hung so low and densely during the day cleared from
the west just now as the sun was setting, calling forth a weakly twitter
from a few small birds. Owen crawled down the path to the waterfall, and
lingered thereabout till the solitude of the place oppressed him, when
he turned back and into the road to the village. He was sad; he said to
himself--
‘If there is ever any meaning in those heavy feelings which are called
presentiments--and I don’t believe there is--there will be in mine
to-day.... Poor little Cytherea!’
At that moment the last low rays of the sun touched the head and
shoulders of a man who was approaching, and showed him up to Owen’s
view. It was old Mr. Springrove. They had grown familiar with each other
by reason of Owen’s visits to Knapwater during the past year. The farmer
inquired how Owen’s foot was progressing, and was glad to see him so
nimble again.
‘How is your son?’ said Owen mechanically.
‘He is at home, sitting by the fire,’ said the farmer, in a sad voice.
‘This morning he slipped indoors from God knows where, and there he sits
and mopes, and thinks, and thinks, and presses his head so hard, that I
can’t help feeling for him.’
‘Is he married?’ said Owen. Cytherea had feared to tell him of the
interview in the garden.
‘No. I can’t quite understand how the matter rests.... Ah! Edward, too,
who started with such promise; that he should now have become such a
careless fellow--not a month in one place. There, Mr. Graye, I know what
it is mainly owing to. If it hadn’t been for that heart affair, he might
have done--but the less said about him the better. I don’t know what we
should have done if Miss Aldclyffe had insisted upon the conditions of
the leases. Your brother-in-law, the steward, had a hand in making
it light for us, I know, and I heartily thank him for it.’ He ceased
speaking, and looked round at the sky.
‘Have you heard o’ what’s happened?’ he said suddenly; ‘I was just
coming out to learn about it.’
‘I haven’t heard of anything.’
‘It is something very serious, though I don’t know what. All I know is
what I heard a man call out bynow--that it very much concerns somebody
who lives in the parish.’
It seems singular enough, even to minds who have no dim beliefs in
adumbration and presentiment, that at that moment not the shadow of a
thought crossed Owen’s mind that the somebody whom the matter concerned
might be himself, or any belonging to him. The event about to transpire
was as portentous to the woman whose welfare was more dear to him than
his own, as any, short of death itself, could possibly be; and ever
afterwards, when he considered the effect of the knowledge the next
half-hour conveyed to his brain, even his practical good sense could not
refrain from wonder that he should have walked toward the village after
hearing those words of the farmer, in so leisurely and unconcerned a
way. ‘How unutterably mean must my intelligence have appeared to the eye
of a foreseeing God,’ he frequently said in after-time. ‘Columbus on the
eve of his discovery of a world was not so contemptibly unaware.’
After a few additional words of common-place the farmer left him, and,
as has been said, Owen proceeded slowly and indifferently towards the
village.
The labouring men had just left work, and passed the park gate, which
opened into the street as Owen came down towards it. They went along in
a drift, earnestly talking, and were finally about to turn in at their
respective doorways. But upon seeing him they looked significantly at
one another, and paused. He came into the road, on that side of the
village-green which was opposite the row of cottages, and turned round
to the right. When Owen turned, all eyes turned; one or two men went
hurriedly indoors, and afterwards appeared at the doorstep with their
wives, who also contemplated him, talking as they looked. They seemed
uncertain how to act in some matter.
‘If they want me, surely they will call me,’ he thought, wondering
more and more. He could no longer doubt that he was connected with the
subject of their discourse.
The first who approached him was a boy.
‘What has occurred?’ said Owen.
‘O, a man ha’ got crazy-religious, and sent for the pa’son.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, sir. He wished he was dead, he said, and he’s almost out of his
mind wi’ wishen it so much. That was before Mr. Raunham came.’
‘Who is he?’ said Owen.
‘Joseph Chinney, one of the railway-porters; he used to be
night-porter.’
‘Ah--the man who was ill this afternoon; by the way, he was told to come
to the Old House for something, but he hasn’t been. But has anything
else happened--anything that concerns the wedding to-day?’
‘No, sir.’
Concluding that the connection which had seemed to be traced between
himself and the event must in some way have arisen from Cytherea’s
friendliness towards the man, Owen turned about and went homewards in
a much quieter frame of mind--yet scarcely satisfied with the solution.
The route he had chosen led through the dairy-yard, and he opened the
gate.
Five minutes before this point of time, Edward Springrove was looking
over one of his father’s fields at an outlying hamlet of three or four
cottages some mile and a half distant. A turnpike-gate was close by the
gate of the field.
The carrier to Casterbridge came up as Edward stepped into the road, and
jumped down from the van to pay toll. He recognized Springrove. ‘This is
a pretty set-to in your place, sir,’ he said. ‘You don’t know about it,
I suppose?’
‘What?’ said Springrove.
The carrier paid his dues, came up to Edward, and spoke ten words in a
confidential whisper: then sprang upon the shafts of his vehicle, gave a
clinching nod of significance to Springrove, and rattled away.
Edward turned pale with the intelligence. His first thought was, ‘Bring
her home!’
The next--did Owen Graye know what had been discovered? He probably
did by that time, but no risks of probability must be run by a woman
he loved dearer than all the world besides. He would at any rate make
perfectly sure that her brother was in possession of the knowledge, by
telling it him with his own lips.
Off he ran in the direction of the old manor-house.
The path was across arable land, and was ploughed up with the rest of
the field every autumn, after which it was trodden out afresh. The thaw
had so loosened the soft earth, that lumps of stiff mud were lifted
by his feet at every leap he took, and flung against him by his rapid
motion, as it were doggedly impeding him, and increasing tenfold the
customary effort of running,
But he ran on--uphill, and downhill, the same pace alike--like the
shadow of a cloud. His nearest direction, too, like Owen’s, was through
the dairy-barton, and as Owen entered it he saw the figure of Edward
rapidly descending the opposite hill, at a distance of two or three
hundred yards. Owen advanced amid the cows.
The dairyman, who had hitherto been talking loudly on some absorbing
subject to the maids and men milking around him, turned his face towards
the head of the cow when Owen passed, and ceased speaking.