CHAPTER 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 Château 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

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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-à-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!’

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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 —‘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

CHAPTER 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.’