"Able-bodied men--yes--the rest of ye!" said the constable.
"Have you some good stout staves and pitchforks--"
"Staves and pitchforks--in the name o' the law! And take 'em in yer
hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye!"
Thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase. The evidence was,
indeed, though circumstantial, so convincing, that but little argument
was needed to show the shepherd's guests that after what they had seen
it would look very much like connivance if they did not instantly
pursue the unhappy third stranger, who could not as yet have gone more
than a few hundred yards over such uneven country.
A shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting these
hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured out of the
door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill, away from the
town, the rain having fortunately a little abated.
Disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her
baptism, the child who had been christened began to cry heart-brokenly
in the room overhead. These notes of grief came down through the
chinks of the floor to the ears of the women below, who jumped up one
by one, and seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and comfort the baby,
for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly oppressed them. Thus
in the space of two or three minutes the room on the ground-floor was
deserted quite.
But it was not for long. Hardly had the sound of footsteps died away
when a man returned round the corner of the house from the direction
the pursuers had taken. Peeping in at the door, and seeing
nobody there, he entered leisurely. It was the stranger of the
chimney-corner, who had gone out with the rest. The motive of his
return was shown by his helping himself to a cut piece of skimmer-cake
that lay on a ledge beside where he had sat, and which he had
apparently forgotten to take with him. He also poured out half a cup
more mead from the quantity that remained, ravenously eating and
drinking these as he stood. He had not finished when another figure
came in just as quietly--his friend in cinder-gray.
"O--you here?" said the latter, smiling. "I thought you had gone to
help in the capture." And this speaker also revealed the object of his
return by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug of old
mead.
"And I thought you had gone," said the other, continuing his
skimmer-cake with some effort.
"Well, on second thoughts, I felt there were enough without me," said
the first confidentially, "and such a night as it is, too. Besides,
'tis the business o' the Government to take care of its criminals--not
mine."
"True; so it is. And I felt as you did, that there were enough without
me."
"I don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows of
this wild country."
"Nor I neither, between you and me."
"These shepherd-people are used to it--simple-minded souls, you know,
stirred up to anything in a moment. They'll have him ready for me
before the morning, and no trouble to me at all."
"They'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labor in the
matter."
"True, true. Well, my way is to Casterbridge; and 'tis as much as my
legs will do to take me that far. Going the same way?"
"No, I am sorry to say! I have to get home over there" (he nodded
indefinitely to the right), "and I feel as you do, that it is quite
enough for my legs to do before bedtime."
The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after which,
shaking hands heartily at the door, and wishing each other well, they
went their several ways.
In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the
hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the down. They had
decided on no particular plan of action; and, finding that the man of
the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed quite
unable to form any such plan now. They descended in all directions
down the hill, and straightway several of the party fell into the
snare set by Nature for all misguided midnight ramblers over this part
of the cretaceous formation. The "lanchets," or flint slopes, which
belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen yards, took the less
cautious ones unawares, and losing their footing on the rubbly steep
they slid sharply downward, the lanterns rolling from their hands to
the bottom, and there lying on their sides till the horn was scorched
through.
When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as the
man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them round
these treacherous inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather to
dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in the
exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed; and in this
more rational order they plunged into the vale. It was a grassy,
briery, moist defile, affording some shelter to any person who had
sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and ascended on the
other side. Here they wandered apart, and after an interval closed
together again to report progress. At the second time of closing in
they found themselves near a lonely ash, the single tree on this part
of the coomb, probably sown there by a passing bird some fifty years
before. And here, standing a little to one side of the trunk, as
motionless as the trunk itself, appeared the man they were in quest
of, his outline being well defined against the sky beyond. The band
noiselessly drew up and faced him.
"Your money or your life!" said the constable sternly to the still
figure.
"No, no," whispered John Pitcher. "'Tisn't our side ought to say that.
That's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the side of
the law."
"Well, well," replied the constable, impatiently; "I must say
something, mustn't I? and if you had all the weight o' this
undertaking upon your mind, perhaps you'd say the wrong thing,
too!--Prisoner at the bar, surrender, in the name of the Father--the
Crown, I mane!"
The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time,
and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their courage,
he strolled slowly toward them. He was, indeed, the little man, the
third stranger; but his trepidation had in a great measure gone.
"Well, travellers," he said, "did I hear you speak to me?"
"You did; you've got to come and be our prisoner at once!" said the
constable. "We arrest 'ee on the charge of not biding in Casterbridge
jail in a decent proper manner to be hung to-morrow morning.
Neighbors, do your duty, and seize the culpet!"
On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not
another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the
search-party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him on
all sides, and marched him back toward the shepherd's cottage.
It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived. The light shining from
the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to them as
they approached the house that some new events had arisen in their
absence. On entering they discovered the shepherd's living-room to
be invaded by two officers from Casterbridge jail, and a well-known
magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat, intelligence of the
escape having become generally circulated.
"Gentlemen," said the constable, "I have brought back your man--not
without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty! He is inside
this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid,
considering their ignorance of Crown work. Men, bring forward your
prisoner!" And the third stranger was led to the light.
"Who is this?" said one of the officials.
"The man," said the constable.
"Certainly not," said the turnkey; and the first corroborated his
statement.
"But how can it be otherwise?" asked the constable. "Or why was he
so terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law who sat
there?" Here he related the strange behavior of the third stranger on
entering the house during the hangman's song.
"Can't understand it," said the officer coolly. "All I know is that it
is not the condemned man. He's quite a different character from this
one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-looking,
and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once you'd never
mistake as long as you lived."
"Why, souls--'twas the man in the chimney-corner!"
"Hey--what?" said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring
particulars from the shepherd in the background. "Haven't you got the
man after all?"
"Well, sir," said the constable, "he's the man we were in search of,
that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the
man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you
understand my every-day way; for 'twas the man in the chimney-corner!"
"A pretty kettle of fish altogether!" said the magistrate. "You had
better start for the other man at once."
The prisoner now spoke for the first time. The mention of the man in
the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do.
"Sir," he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, "take no more
trouble about me. The time is come when I may as well speak. I have
done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my brother. Early
this afternoon I left home at Shottsford to tramp it all the way to
Casterbridge jail to bid him farewell. I was benighted, and called
here to rest and ask the way. When I opened the door I saw before me
the very man, my brother, that I thought to see in the condemned cell
at Casterbridge. He was in this chimney-corner; and jammed close
to him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried, was the
executioner who'd come to take his life, singing a song about it and
not knowing that it was his victim who was close by, joining in to
save appearances. My brother looked a glance of agony at me, and I
know he meant, 'Don't reveal what you see; my life depends on it.' I
was so terror-struck that I could hardly stand, and, not knowing what
I did, I turned and hurried away."
The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story
made a great impression on all around.
"And do you know where your brother is at the present time?" asked the
magistrate.
"I do not. I have never seen him since I closed this door."
"I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since." said
the constable.
"Where does he think to fly to?--what is his occupation?"
"He's a watch-and-clock-maker, sir."
"'A said 'a was a wheelwright--a wicked rogue," said the constable.
"The wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt," said Shepherd
Fennel. "I thought his hands were palish for's trade."
"Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this
poor man in custody," said the magistrate; "your business lies with
the other, unquestionably."
And so the little man was released off-hand; but he looked nothing the
less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or
constable to raze out the written troubles in his brain, for they
concerned another whom he regarded with more solicitude than himself.
When this was done, and the man had gone his way, the night was found
to be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew the search
before the next morning.
Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became
general and keen, to all appearance at least. But the intended
punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the
sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly on
the side of the fugitive. Moreover, his marvellous coolness and
daring in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented
circumstances of the shepherd's party, won their admiration. So that
it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so
busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough
when it came to the private examination of their own lofts and
outhouses. Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure being
occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other, remote
from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any of these
suspected quarters nobody was found. Thus the days and weeks passed
without tidings.
In brief, the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never
recaptured. Some said that he went across the sea, others that he did
not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city. At any
rate, the gentleman in cinder-gray never did his morning's work at
Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all, for business purposes, the
genial comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the
lonely house on the coomb.
The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and his
frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have mainly
followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honor they
all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf. But the arrival
of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details
connected therewith, is a story as well-known as ever in the country
about Higher Crowstairs.
_March_, 1883.
JULIA BRIDE[1]
[Footnote 1: 1909.]
_Henry James_ (1843)
I
She had walked with her friend to the top of the wide steps of the
Museum, those that descended from the galleries of painting, and then,
after the young man had left her, smiling, looking back, waving all
gayly and expressively his hat and stick, had watched him, smiling
too, but with a different intensity--had kept him in sight till he
passed out of the great door. She might have been waiting to see if he
would turn there for a last demonstration; which was exactly what he
did, renewing his cordial gesture and with his look of glad devotion,
the radiance of his young face, reaching her across the great space,
as she felt, in undiminished truth. Yes, so she could feel, and she
remained a minute even after he was gone; she gazed at the empty air
as if he had filled it still, asking herself what more she wanted and
what, if it didn't signify glad devotion, his whole air could have
represented.
She was at present so anxious that she could wonder if he stepped and
smiled like that for mere relief at separation; yet if he desired in
that degree to break the spell and escape the danger why did he keep
coming back to her, and why, for that matter, had she felt safe
a moment before in letting him go? She felt safe, felt almost
reckless--that was the proof--so long as he was with her; but the
chill came as soon as he had gone, when she took the measure,
instantly, of all she yet missed. She might now have been taking it
afresh, by the testimony of her charming clouded eyes and of the
rigor that had already replaced her beautiful play of expression. Her
radiance, for the minute, had "carried" as far as his, travelling on
the light wings of her brilliant prettiness--he, on his side, not
being facially handsome, but only sensitive, clean and eager. Then,
with its extinction, the sustaining wings dropped and hung.
She wheeled about, however, full of a purpose; she passed back through
the pictured rooms, for it pleased her, this idea of a talk with Mr.
Pitman--as much, that is, as anything could please a young person so
troubled. It happened indeed that when she saw him rise at sight of
her from the settee where he had told her five minutes before that she
would find him, it was just with her nervousness that his presence
seemed, as through an odd suggestion of help, to connect itself.
Nothing truly would be quite so odd for her case as aid proceeding
from Mr. Pitman; unless perhaps the oddity would be even greater for
himself--the oddity of her having taken into her head an appeal to
him.
She had had to feel alone with a vengeance--inwardly alone and
miserably alarmed--to be ready to "meet," that way, at the first
sign from him, the successor to her dim father in her dim father's
lifetime, the second of her mother's two divorced husbands. It made a
queer relation for her; a relation that struck her at this moment as
less edifying, less natural and graceful than it would have been even
for her remarkable mother--and still in spite of this parent's third
marriage, her union with Mr. Connery, from whom she was informally
separated. It was at the back of Julia's head as she approached Mr.
Pitman, or it was at least somewhere deep within her soul, that if
this last of Mrs. Connery's withdrawals from the matrimonial yoke had
received the sanction of the court (Julia had always heard, from far
back, so much about the "Court") she herself, as after a fashion,
in that event, a party to it, would not have had the cheek to make
up--which was how she inwardly phrased what she was doing--to the
long, lean, loose, slightly cadaverous gentleman who was a memory, for
her, of the period from her twelfth to her seventeenth year. She had
got on with him, perversely, much better than her mother had, and the
bulging misfit of his duck waistcoat, with his trick of swinging his
eye-glass, at the end of an extraordinarily long string, far over
the scene, came back to her as positive features of the image of her
remoter youth. Her present age--for her later time had seen so many
things happen--gave her a perspective.
Fifty things came up as she stood there before him, some of them
floating in from the past, others hovering with freshness: how she
used to dodge the rotary movement made by his pince-nez while he
always awkwardly, and kindly, and often funnily, talked--it had
once hit her rather badly in the eye; how she used to pull down and
straighten his waistcoat, making it set a little better, a thing of
a sort her mother never did; how friendly and familiar she must have
been with him for that, or else a forward little minx; how she felt
almost capable of doing it again now, just to sound the right note,
and how sure she was of the way he would take it if she did; how much
nicer he had clearly been, all the while, poor dear man, than his wife
and the court had made it possible for him publicly to appear; how
much younger, too, he now looked, in spite of his rather melancholy,
his mildly jaundiced, humorously determined sallowness and his
careless assumption, everywhere, from his forehead to his exposed and
relaxed blue socks, almost sky-blue, as in past days, of creases and
folds and furrows that would have been perhaps tragic if they hadn't
seemed rather to show, like his whimsical black eyebrows, the vague,
interrogative arch.
Of course he wasn't wretched if he wasn't more sure of his
wretchedness than that! Julia Bride would have been sure--had she been
through what she supposed _he_ had! With his thick, loose black hair,
in any case, untouched by a thread of gray, and his kept gift of a
certain big-boyish awkwardness--that of his taking their encounter,
for instance, so amusedly, so crudely, though, as she was not unaware,
so eagerly too--he could by no means have been so little his wife's
junior as it had been that lady's habit, after the divorce, to
represent him. Julia had remembered him as old, since she had so
constantly thought of her mother as old; which Mrs. Connery was indeed
now--for her daughter--with her dozen years of actual seniority to
Mr. Pitman and her exquisite hair, the densest, the finest tangle
of arranged silver tendrils that had ever enhanced the effect of a
preserved complexion.
Something in the girl's vision of her quondam stepfather as still
comparatively young--with the confusion, the immense element of
rectification, not to say of rank disproof, that it introduced into
Mrs. Connery's favorite picture of her own injured past--all this
worked, even at the moment, to quicken once more the clearness and
harshness of judgment, the retrospective disgust, as she might have
called it, that had of late grown up in her, the sense of all the
folly and vanity and vulgarity, the lies, the perversities, the
falsification of all life in the interest of who could say what
wretched frivolity, what preposterous policy; amid which she had been
condemned so ignorantly, so pitifully to sit, to walk, to grope, to
flounder, from the very dawn of her consciousness. Didn't poor Mr.
Pitman just touch the sensitive nerve of it when, taking her in with
his facetious, cautious eyes, he spoke to her, right out, of the old,
old story, the everlasting little wonder of her beauty?
"Why, you know, you've grown up so lovely--you're the prettiest girl
I've ever seen!" Of course she was the prettiest girl he had ever
seen; she was the prettiest girl people much more privileged than he
had ever seen; since when hadn't she been passing for the prettiest
girl any one had ever seen? She had lived in that, from far back, from
year to year, from day to day and from hour to hour--she had lived
for it and literally _by_ it, as who should say; but Mr. Pitman was
somehow more illuminating than he knew, with the present lurid light
that he cast upon old dates, old pleas, old values, and old mysteries,
not to call them old abysses: it had rolled over her in a swift wave,
with the very sight of him, that her mother couldn't possibly have
been right about him--as about what in the world had she ever been
right?--so that in fact he was simply offered her there as one more of
Mrs. Connery's lies. She might have thought she knew them all by this
time; but he represented for her, coming in just as he did, a fresh
discovery, and it was this contribution of freshness that made her
somehow feel she liked him. It was she herself who, for so long,
with her retained impression, had been right about him; and the
rectification he represented had _all_ shone out of him, ten minutes
before, on his catching her eye while she moved through the room with
Mr. French. She had never doubted of his probable faults--which her
mother had vividly depicted as the basest of vices; since some of
them, and the most obvious (not the vices, but the faults) were
written on him as he stood there: notably, for instance, the
exasperating "business slackness" of which Mrs. Connery had, before
the tribunal, made so pathetically much. It might have been, for that
matter, the very business slackness that affected Julia as presenting
its friendly breast, in the form of a cool loose sociability, to her
own actual tension; though it was also true for her, after they had
exchanged fifty words, that he had as well his inward fever and that,
if he was perhaps wondering what was so particularly the matter with
her, she could make out not less that something was the matter
with _him_. It had been vague, yet it had been intense, the mute
reflection, "Yes, I'm going to like him, and he's going somehow to
help me!" that had directed her steps so straight to him. She was
sure even then of this, that he wouldn't put to her a query about his
former wife, that he took to-day no grain of interest in Mrs. Connery;
that his interest, such as it was--and he couldn't look _quite_ like
that, to Julia Bride's expert perception, without something in the
nature of a new one--would be a thousand times different.