as in that of one who mentally feels his way; and despite the fact
that it was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort that he
wore, there was something about him which suggested that he naturally
belonged to the black-coated tribes of men. His clothes were of
fustian, and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he showed not
the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed and fustianed peasantry.
By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises
the rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined
violence. The outskirts of the little settlement partially broke the
force of wind and rain, and this induced him to stand still. The most
salient of the shepherd's domestic erections was an empty sty at the
forward corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these latitudes the
principle of masking the homelier features of your establishment by a
conventional frontage was unknown. The traveller's eye was attracted
to this small building by the pallid shine of the wet slates that
covered it. He turned aside, and, finding it empty, stood under the
pent-roof for shelter.
While he stood, the boom of the serpent within the adjacent house,
and the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an
accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its
louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or
ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the
eaves into a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under
the walls of the cottage. For at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such
elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an
insufficiency of water; and a casual rainfall was utilized by turning
out, as catchers, every utensil that the house contained. Some queer
stories might be told of the contrivances for economy in suds and
dishwaters that are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations
during the droughts of summer. But at this season there were no
such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies bestowed was
sufficient for an abundant store.
At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent. This
cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the reverie
into which he had elapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with an
apparently new intention, he walked up the path to the house-door.
Arrived here, his first act was to kneel down on a large stone beside
the row of vessels, and to drink a copious draught from one of them.
Having quenched his thirst, he rose and lifted his hand to knock, but
paused with his eye upon the panel. Since the dark surface of the wood
revealed absolutely nothing, it was evident that he must be mentally
looking through the door, as if he wished to measure thereby all the
possibilities that a house of this sort might include, and how they
might bear upon the question of his entry.
In his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around. Not a soul
was anywhere visible. The garden-path stretched downward from his
feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little well
(mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden-gate, were
varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the
vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the
rivers were high in the meads. Beyond all this winked a few bleared
lamplights through the beating drops--lights that denoted the
situation of the county-town from which he had appeared to come. The
absence of all notes of life in that direction seemed to clinch his
intentions, and he knocked at the door.
Within, a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical
sound. The hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company, which
nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock afforded
a not unwelcome diversion.
"Walk in!" said the shepherd, promptly.
The latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian appeared
upon the door-mat. The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the nearest
candles, and turned to look at him.
Their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and not
unprepossessing as to feature. His hat, which for a moment he did not
remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they were
large, open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a glance
round the room. He seemed pleased with his survey, and, baring his
shaggy head, said, in a rich, deep voice: "The rain is so heavy,
friends, that I ask leave to come in and rest awhile."
"To be sure, stranger," said the shepherd. "And faith, you've been
lucky in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling for
a glad cause--though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad
cause to happen more than once a year."
"Nor less," spoke up a woman. "For 'tis best to get your family over
and done with, as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of
the fag o't."
"And what may be this glad cause?" asked the stranger.
"A birth and christening," said the shepherd.
The stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too
many or two few of such episodes, and being invited by a gesture to
a pull at the mug, he readily acquiesced. His manner, which, before
entering, had been so dubious, was now altogether that of a careless
and candid man.
"Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb--hey?" said the engaged man
of fifty.
"Late it is, master, as you say.--I'll take a seat in the
chimney-corner, if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am; for I
am a little moist on the side that was next the rain."
Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited
comer, who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner, stretched
out his legs and arms with the expansiveness of a person quite at
home.
"Yes, I am rather cracked in the vamp," he said freely, seeing that
the eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, "and I am not
well fitted either. I have had some rough times lately, and have been
forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing, but I must
find a suit better fit for working-days when I reach home."
"One of hereabouts?" she inquired.
"Not quite that--further up the country."
"I thought so. And so be I; and by your tongue you come from my
neighborhood."
"But you would hardly have heard of me," he said quickly. "My time
would be long before yours, ma'am, you see."
This testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect of
stopping her cross-examination.
"There is only one thing more wanted to make me happy," continued the
new-comer, "and that is a little baccy, which I am sorry to say I am
out of."
"I'll fill your pipe," said the shepherd.
"I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise."
"A smoker, and no pipe about 'ee?"
"I have dropped it somewhere on the road."
The shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying, as he did
so, "Hand me your baccy-box--I'll fill that too, now I am about it."
The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.
"Lost that too?" said his entertainer, with some surprise.
"I am afraid so," said the man with some confusion. "Give it to me in
a screw of paper." Lighting his pipe at the candle with a suction that
drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner
and bent his looks upon the faint steam from his damp legs, as if he
wished to say no more.
Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice of
this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they were
engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance. The matter
being settled, they were about to stand up when an interruption came
in the shape of another knock at the door.
At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker
and began stirring the brands as if doing it thoroughly were the one
aim of his existence; and a second time the shepherd said, "Walk in!"
In a moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat. He too
was a stranger.
This individual was one of a type radically different from the first.
There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a certain jovial
cosmopolitanism sat upon his features. He was several years older
than the first arrival, his hair being slightly frosted, his eyebrows
bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks. His face was
rather full and flabby, and yet it was not altogether a face without
power. A few grog-blossoms marked the neighborhood of his nose. He
flung back his long drab greatcoat, revealing that beneath it he wore
a suit of cinder-gray shade throughout, large heavy seals, of some
metal or other that would take a polish, dangling from his fob as his
only personal ornament. Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned
glazed hat, he said, "I must ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades,
or I shall be wetted to my skin before I get to Casterbridge."
"Make yourself at home, master," said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle
less heartily than on the first occasion. Not that Fennel had the
least tinge of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was far
from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions were
not altogether desirable at close quarters for the women and girls in
their bright-colored gowns.
However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and hanging
his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had been
specially invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the table.
This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all
available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow
of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus the two
strangers were brought into close companionship. They nodded to each
other by way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance, and the first
stranger handed his neighbor the family mug--a huge vessel of brown
ware, having its upper edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of
whole generations of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh,
and bearing the following inscription burnt upon its rotund side in
yellow letters:
THERE IS NO FUN
UNTILL I CUM.
The other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank on,
and on, and on--till a curious blueness overspread the countenance
of the shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the
first stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong to
him to dispense.
"I knew it!" said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction.
"When I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives all
of a row, I said to myself, 'Where there's bees there's honey,
and where there's honey there's mead,' But mead of such a truly
comfortable sort as this I really didn't expect to meet in my older
days." He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed an ominous
elevation.
"Glad you enjoy it!" said the shepherd warmly.
"It is goodish mead," assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of
enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for
one's cellar at too heavy a price. "It is trouble enough to make--and
really I hardly think we shall make any more. For honey sells well,
and we ourselves can make shift with a drop o' small mead and
metheglin for common use from the comb-washings."
"O, but you'll never have the heart!" reproachfully cried the stranger
in cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time and setting it
down empty. "I love mead, when 'tis old like this, as I love to go to
church o' Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of the week."
"Ha, ha, ha!" said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the
taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not
refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humor.
Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or
maiden honey, four pounds to the gallon--with its due complement of
white of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and
processes of working, bottling, and cellaring--tasted remarkably
strong; but it did not taste so strong as it actually was. Hence,
presently, the stranger in cinder-gray at the table, moved by its
creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in
his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various
ways.
"Well, well, as I say," he resumed, "I am going to Casterbridge, and
to Casterbridge I must go. I should have been almost there by this
time; but the rain drove me into your dwelling, and I'm not sorry for
it."
"You don't live in Casterbridge?" said the shepherd.
"Not as yet; though I shortly mean to move there."
"Going to set up in trade, perhaps?"
"No, no," said the shepherd's wife. "It is easy to see that the
gentleman is rich, and don't want to work at anything."
The cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would
accept that definition of himself. He presently rejected it by
answering, "Rich is not quite the word for me, dame. I do work, and I
must work. And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I must
begin work there at eight to-morrow morning. Yes, het or wet, blow or
snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must be done."
"Poor man! Then, in spite o' seeming, you be off than we." replied the
shepherd's wife.
"'Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens. Tis the nature of my
trade more than my poverty.... But really and truly I must up and off,
or I shan't get a lodging in the town." However, the speaker did
not move, and directly added, "There's time for one more draught of
friendship before I go; and I'd perform it at once if the mug were not
dry."
"Here's a mug o' small," said Mrs. Fennel. "Small, we call it, though
to be sure 'tis only the first wash o' the combs."
"No," said the stranger, disdainfully. "I won't spoil your first
kindness by partaking o' your second."
"Certainly not," broke in Fennel. "We don't increase and multiply
every day, and I'll fill the mug again." He went away to the dark
place under the stairs where the barrel stood. The shepherdess
followed him.
"Why should you do this?" she said, reproachfully, as soon as they
were alone. "He's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten
people; and now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs call
for more o' the strong! And a stranger unbeknown to any of us. For my
part, I don't like the look o' the man at all."
"But he's in the house, my honey; and 'tis a wet night, and a
christening. Daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less? There'll be
plenty more next bee-burning."
"Very well--this time, then," she answered, looking wistfully at the
barrel. "But what is the man's calling, and where is he one of, that
he should come in and join us like this?"
"I don't know. I'll ask him again."
The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the
stranger in cinder-gray was effectually guarded against this time by
Mrs. Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the
large one at a discreet distance from him. When he had tossed off
his portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the stranger's
occupation.
The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the
chimney-corner, with sudden demonstrativeness, said, "Anybody may know
my trade--I'm a wheelwright."
"A very good trade for these parts," said the shepherd.
"And anybody may know mine--if they've the sense to find it out," said
the stranger in cinder-gray.
"You may generally tell what a man is by his claws," observed the
hedge-carpenter, looking at his own hands. "My fingers be as full of
thorns as an old pin-cushion is of pins."
The hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the
shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe. The man at
the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly,
"True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark
upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers."
No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this enigma,
the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles
presented themselves as at the former time--one had no voice, another
had forgotten the first verse. The stranger at the table, whose soul
had now risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty
by exclaiming that, to start the company, he would sing himself.
Thrusting one thumb into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, he waved the
other hand in the air, and, with an extemporizing gaze at the shining
sheep-crooks above the mantelpiece, began:
"O my trade it is the rarest one,
Simple shepherds all--
My trade is a sight to see;
For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,
And waft 'em to a far countree!"
The room was silent when he had finished the verse--with one
exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer's
word, "Chorus!" joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish:
"And waft 'em to a far countree!"
Oliver Giles, John Pitcher the dairyman, the parish-clerk, the engaged
man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall, seemed lost in
thought not of the gayest kind. The shepherd looked meditatively on
the ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the singer, and with some
suspicion; she was doubting whether this stranger were merely singing
an old song from recollection, or was composing one there and then for
the occasion. All were as perplexed at the obscure revelation as the
guests at Belshazzar's Feast, except the man in the chimney-corner,
who quietly said, "Second verse, stranger," and smoked on.
The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inward, and went
on with the next stanza as requested:
"My tools are but common ones,
Simple shepherds all--
My tools are no sight to see:
A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
Are implements enough for me!"
Shepherd Fennel glanced round. There was no longer any doubt that the
stranger was answering his question rhythmically. The guests one and
all started back with suppressed exclamations. The young woman engaged
to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have proceeded,
but finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her she sat down
trembling.
"O, he's the--!" whispered the people in the background, mentioning
the name of an ominous public officer. "He's come to do it! 'Tis to be
at Casterbridge jail to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--the poor
clock-maker we heard of, who used to live away at Shottsford and had
no work to do--Timothy Summers, whose family were a-starving, and so
he went out of Shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep in open
daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's
lad, and every man jack among 'em. He" (and they nodded toward the
stranger of the deadly trade) "is come from up the country to do it
because there's not enough to do in his own county-town, and he's got
the place here now our own county man's dead; he's going to live in
the same cottage under the prison wall."
The stranger in cinder-gray took no notice of this whispered string of
observations, but again wetted his lips. Seeing that his friend in the
chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality in any
way, he held out his cup toward that appreciative comrade, who also
held out his own. They clinked together, the eyes of the rest of the
room hanging upon the singer's actions. He parted his lips for the
third verse; but at that moment another knock was audible upon the
door. This time the knock was faint and hesitating.
The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation
toward the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted his
alarmed wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third time the
welcoming words, "Walk in!"
The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat. He,
like those who had preceded him, was a stranger. This time it was a
short, small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent
suit of dark clothes.
"Can you tell me the way to--?" he began: when, gazing round the room
to observe the nature of the company among whom he had fallen, his
eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder-gray. It was just at the
instant when the latter, who had thrown his mind into his song with
such a will that he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced all
whispers and inquiries by bursting into his third verse:
"To-morrow is my working day,
Simple shepherds all--
To-morrow is a working day for me:
For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en,
And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!"
The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cups with the singer so
heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his
bass voice as before:
"And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!"
All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway.
Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests
particularly regarded him. They noticed to their surprise that he
stood before them the picture of abject terror--his knees trembling,
his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch by which he
supported himself rattled audibly: his white lips were parted, and his
eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the middle of the room.
A moment more and he had turned, closed the door, and fled.
"What a man can it be?" said the shepherd.
The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to
think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew further and
further from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them
seemed to take for the Prince of Darkness himself, till they formed
a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them and
him--
"... circulus, cujus centrum diabolus."
The room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people in
it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the
window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop
that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of
the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay.
The stillness was unexpectedly broken. The distant sound of a gun
reverberated through the air--apparently from the direction of the
county-town.
"Be jiggered!" cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.
"What does that mean?" asked several.
"A prisoner escaped from the jail--that's what it means."
All listened. The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but the
man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, "I've often been told
that in this county they fire a gun at such times; but I never heard
it till now."
"I wonder if it is _my_ man?" murmured the personage in cinder-gray.
"Surely it is!" said the shepherd involuntarily. "And surely we've
zeed him! That little man who looked in at the door by now, and
quivered like a leaf when he zeed ye and heard your song!"
"His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body," said the
dairyman.
"And his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone," said Oliver
Giles.
"And he bolted as if he'd been shot at," said the hedge-carpenter.
"True--his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink; and he
bolted as if he'd been shot at," slowly summed up the man in the
chimney-corner.
"I didn't notice it," remarked the hangman.
"We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,"
faltered one of the women against the wall, "and now 'tis explained!"
The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly,
and their suspicions became a certainty. The sinister gentleman in
cinder-gray roused himself. "Is there a constable here?" he asked, in
thick tones. "If so, let him step forward."
The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out from the wall, his
betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.
"You are a sworn constable?"
"I be, sir."
"Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him back
here. He can't have gone far."
"I will, sir, I will--when I've got my staff. I'll go home and get it,
and come sharp here, and start in a body."
"Staff!--never mind your staff; the man'll be gone!"
"But I can't do nothing without my staff--can I, William, and John,
and Charles Jake? No; for there's the king's royal crown a-painted
on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I
raise en up and hit my prisoner, 'tis made a lawful blow thereby. I
wouldn't 'tempt to take up a man without my staff--no, not I. If I
hadn't the law to gie me courage, why, instead o' my taking up him he
might take up me!"
"Now, I'm a king's man myself, and can give you authority enough for
this," said the formidable officer in gray. "Now then, all of ye, be
ready. Have ye any lanterns?"
"Yes--have ye any lanterns?--I demand it!" said the constable.